TRAVEL DAY 09

The Elite Left Wing Media

2012-01-30T09:16:00.000-08:00

I rarely comment on politics online as I found that engaging with unknown forum wackos often solves no real problems. And while I'm considered a moderate liberal in Canada, I probably am Left Wing in the U.S. Which gives you an idea of how liberal Canada is even though we have a Conservative Prime Minister, who's politics would compare with a moderate Democrat here in the U.S.

I worked for Bobby Kennedy back in 1968 in Indiana just a few months before he was shot and killed in Los Angeles. I was one of those kids in sport coat and tie who went house-to-house to register voters and my territory was the African-American areas of Indianapolis.

But that's another story.

I have watched most of the Republican caucaus debates with interest and objectivity, something I learned when I worked in TV News. I don't really need to dwell on the debates too much as it's pretty self-evident that the Republican Party is fractured and falling apart. Evidence of this is simple; look at who's running.

And to be fair, my Liberal party in Canada is going the same way. In fact, they lost the last election and were, for the first time, not the ruling or opposition party. We have a handful of parties in Canada, including Quebec's own party.

So I watch the debates to see what happens as the candidates go after each other with everything they can find or make up.

Then there's the Newtster.

Even his own party doesn't want him and for good reason. Look back to the Clinton years and you'll see he's not going to win anything. Even Bob Dole and Ann Coulter don't like him, not to mention a growing list of prominent Republicans.

But it didn't matter to me until Newt said this:

The Elite, liberal media.

Newt has a great way of getting people on his side, except maybe for women of whom 80% today don't like him. And I'm sure you know why.

The "media" has been taking heat, primarily from Conservatives, but I hear it everyday how the news media is so bad. Is there too much media? Probably. But there's too many tablet books, too many types of cell phones, too many channels on TV, etc. etc.

I worked in the news media, first as a TV news writer, then as a film crew who went out to film the news (not video-- film).

The first thing about "news" is this; it's not always good. The saying goes "if an airplane takes off from LA to Chicago and lands, that's not news. If it takes off from LA to Chicago and crashes -- that's news."

But - as far as bias, no, that's not the rule. Most news media go for as much objectivity as they can and that's where Newt and his kind don't like it. They don't note Fox News because it is biased - to them. It's practically the media arm of right-wing Republicans.

And Newt knows that if he says something about the elite, liberal media, that his audience will applaud and he will get off having to answer a pertinent question that the media asked. I give this to Newt, he's a lot smarter than his supporters.

I have a test that I offer to people who differ with my objectivity theory. I will challenge anyone to watch the network news shows at 6:30pm every day with Brian Williams and the other two and tell me what they say that is biased.

Well, so far nobody has taken the challenge, one person did but after ten minutes he walked out.

I agree that some of the news is way too sensational and even dumb, but biased; for the most part no, they really do try to get the story objectively. I don't like how they sensationalize storys, especially murders and other crimes.

But without them, where would we be. Who would be our voices?

Probably none of you remember Edward R. Murrow, the legendary TV news personality of the 1950's. Actually I don't remember him either. It was during the McCarthy hearings where a sociopathic politician named Joe McCarthy was accusing hundreds of Americans, including actors and writers and directors, of being communists.

And this led to many of them going to jail, leaving the country and even being blacklisted for years afterwards.

Murrow would broadcast from CBS and detailed the hypocrisy and lies that McCarthy spewed and it led to a giant backlash from the public and even with congressmen who were at the hearings. In the end, it led to the crash of McCarthy and his right wing attacks at innocent people.

And there's also a great movie to see if you haven't already. It's called "Goodnight and good luck" which was Murrow's sign-off. The movie is recent, directed by George Clooney. Yes, that George Clooney.

The lesson - watch TV news with a critical eye, definitely but don't believe anyone who says they're biased, except for Fox of course.

And the best movie is...

2012-01-26T09:05:00.000-08:00

Well, the nominations are out and the LA Times carries it's usual Entertainment segment that's larger than all the other segments put together. Everybody will have their opinions, who should have gotten a nomination, who shouldn't have and who deserves it the most.

For the most part, it's a pretty average group of nominees, once again Meryl Streep is nominated for once again doing what she does better than any other actor in the world, and yet makes it look easy.

And she seems to live a real life as well, not the high maintenance actors who are either in re-hab or soon to be in re-hab.

But about the movies, they're still doing the 10 best for some odd reason, my favorites are two; Woody Allan's Midnight in Paris and Martin Scorceses Hugo. Both have that element that good feature movies should have; that being a genuine feeling of the story and an element that takes you into another world of fantasy where all things can happen.

On the other side is The Descendants, a favorite no doubt of George Clooney fans, of which I dare say are mostly women. I do like Clooney as well, Syriana was great, as was Good Night, Good Luck.

But The Descendants is a Hallmark TV movie, a nice movie, even admirable, but not a feature movie, more like a TV movie. Only difference is a few curse words.

So what's the difference between a TV movie and a feature. These days it's harder to tell because so many feature movies look more like episodes of Law and Order than The Verdict. But the main element is that thing that takes you into the story with powerful performances and a feeling you don't get by watching a TV movie.

And by the way, I like TV movies, in fact most of the movies I've written and re-written were TV movies, so I am not knocking them. The biggest problem for TV movies is that you are catering to specific audiences and thus, the writing tends to lower the bar for the lowest common denominator -- the least intelligent person watching.

Hallmark's credo is that anyone can enter a living room and watch a Hallmark movie without feeling awkward or uncomfortable. A few F-bombs would certainly not qualify there.

And then there's The Artist. A silent movie. A brand new silent movie. Made by a Frenchman too. I haven't seen it but my friends who did either liked it or didn't. It went from brilliant to boring. Hollywood has taken to it because it's about... us. Movie makers. Hollywood likes to slap itself on it's back, how wonderful "we" are.

I'll hold my opinion until I see it later this week.

How does one compare movies? My friend Marilyn, a film historian, has a great bar:

How does it stand up to Bridge on The River Kwai?

Bridge on The River Kwai was movie entertainment and spectacle at the same time with some of the best performances you'll ever see. In 1958, it won 7 Oscars and a few dozen other awards.

Paris at Midnight and Hugo almost stand up to that standard, and they really are two different movies, although the element of a dreamlike fantasy runs through both. Hugo is more of a movie fan's movie while Paris is more of an intellectual movie (try watching it with an audience in a blue-collar town -- I did, my 2nd hometown).

Spielberg's War Horse is a good movie in an old fashioned way, even at his worst, Spielberg can still bring out emotion. You know, that element that doesn't include car crashes and CGI monsters.

I haven't mentioned The Help because I feel a little divided by it. Being Canadian, I have what most Canadians feel, a genuine dislike of the south. Blame it on all the movies we've seen set in the south. Remember, Canada did not have slavery, in fact England banned slavery 50 years before American wrote it's Declaration of Independence.

What would you think if your impression of the south was In The Heat Of The Night, ironically directed by Canadian Norman Jewison. And an Oscar winner with 5 wins. (Not for the director, but I have this theory that Canadian directors and actors never win Oscars).

On that note, George Lucas just released Red Tails, an action story about the legendary Tuskagee Airmen, which consisted of black fighter pilots in WW11. Lucas couldn't find any studio who would take it on, he eventually paid for it himself.

Even when he had screenings for studios, some never showed up.

This is George Lucas. How much has he made for the studios? Billions of dollars. And they wouldn't come to a screening of what is essentially an all-black cast. Lucas put in a total of $100 million dollars in both production and advertising, all of it his own money. It opened with $19 million, respectable, but not block buster.

Back to the awards. The lead actors aren't anything special, rarely are, but the supporting male actors this year are exceptional, all of them at their prime and all good. Naturally I'm hoping for Christopher Plummer, another Canadian boy in his early 80's.

And come Oscar, I will sit in front of the TV with potato chips and french-onion dip as I have for at least 40 years and watch the return of Billy Crystal.

Yeah, I know, get a life.

The future of cameras.

2012-01-23T08:53:00.000-08:00

"Rich Lackey thinks 4K is the future, not out of necessity but because "we can sell it and fuel untold billions of dollars of business in cameras, post, data transmission and networking infrastructure, televisions, new portable devices and of course, content production. Since when has need ever really fueled consumption in the digital age."
- Digital Age Magazine

For those who don't know 4K, it's basically a concept in digital cameras. Your basic DV camera which is now pretty much gone, was around 480 pixels (those little square dots that make up the picture) and now we have 720p which is HD and the higher amount 1080p which is the highest resolution to date and 4K meaning 4000 pixels.

Sort of like the difference between 8mm film and Super 8 and then 16mm and 35mm. Obviously the picture at 35mm is way superior to 8mm (at least for those of you who remember 8mm).

Our movie world was fine with 35 mm as a standard for movie film and every movie you saw up until the 2000's, was most likely 35mm. It's the same film used in still cameras, both SLR and Rangefinder styles.

35mm is still being used now, many of the drama series still shoot it as do features. There are differences in both film and digital both pro and con for each format. And film will still be around for awhile.

But the point I'm getting to is this; how good does it have to be?

4K resolution is almost as good as film (and notice I said "almost"), in fact, on the screen it's almost comparable. Where digital fails is in contrast levels primarily in the blacks. Digital doesn't handle blacks as well as film does even at 4K.

Contrast is basically the difference between black and white. Film is believed to have a 1000:1 ratio while digital is much less. Thus film always wins. But digital at 4K is getting closer.

But the point of this blog was to suggest something else -- how good is good? Already actors dislike digital because it's so damn sharp and all those facial lines begin to really show up actor's facial flaws. In fact they're creating special make-up for actors to help hide them lines and imperfections.

And as the author of the quote at the top suggests, it really isn't about pixels nor 4K, it's about selling a product. Like Apple and Microsoft and thousands of other corporations, they have to continue to "upgrade" their products.

And so do the camera manufacturers. A big deal in the last few years was the introduction of the Canon 5D SLR (Single Lens Reflex camera and later to be dubbed the DSLR for Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. And last December I saw the newer video camera replacing that Canon 5D and while you can get a 5D for around $5000, the new video camera started at $10,000 with no lens!

And then Canon is now introducing the new version of the 5D.

There's just too many damn cameras.

When I began shooting film around 1970, we only used film of course, but a person could buy a camera and keep it for the rest of their life!

No upgrade, no new technology, no plastic casing.

And you could still shoot with it, even today in 2012. My favorite was the Arriflex 16mm BL and you can see that in the photo I used a few blogs ago.

It's a beautiful camera, still good in 2012 and still being used now and then through-out the world.

There were a handful of different film cameras, Beaulieu, CP 16, Auricon, Bolex and Eclair were 16mm. Arriflex had both 16 and 35 and the Eclair also had a 16/35mm camera. I saw someone using an Eclair NPR a year ago. This is me with a Bolex back in the 70's.

The Godfather of all film cameras was probably the Panavision camera, which is only available as a rental.

But there's another issue as well, something besides the constant upgrades we are required to make to our song list and cameras...

And that's the story.

You know, that thing where actors pretend to be other people.

The Concept of Copyright

2012-01-19T10:25:00.000-08:00

Whenever you write anything, be it a sentence or a screenplay or a book, it is copyrighted. You don't have to pay to have it copyrighted and you don't have to do anything. It just happens.

Well, sort of. (there's always a "sort of")

For example, if you sell a screenplay to a U.S. studio, they will inevitably sneak in a clause that says they own the copyright. In perpetuity. Throughout the known Universe. Really.

So what happened to that copyright that you own? You give it up by selling the screenplay. Hollywood learned a long time ago to grab up everything. A clause in their contracts says "work for hire" and just like that you lose your copyright.

Most other countries, like Canada, simply don't allow transfer of copyright.

But they try.

I had a meeting over Christmas with a cable company representative in Calgary. It was about the video footage I got on Georgie Collins, an actress, now 86, who played a role in Ghostkeeper. I edited a version of it, 13 minutes long, and it can be seen on Youtube by clicking on Georgie under Materials in this blog.

I had thought about extending the Georgie video as she talks about her early years as a child and eventually going into the acting profession. She is the Grand Dame of Drama in Alberta and I thought I could extend the video to 30 minutes as a tribute to her.

I was turned down by some broadcasters but then had an opportunity to have it shown on a local cable station. A "cable station" in Canada is a specific channel that provides a full-scale broadcast studio for anyone who wants to put on a local show, gardening, local events, anything.

It's also known as a "local access channel". It's there because the government makes them have this local access in exchange for allowing the broadcaster to sell his 150 regular channels.

The representative was very excited about this possibility (and yes, he did say he was "excited). My friend who introduced us thought this would be good too. I figured that while it's not a real broadcaster in the sense of TV shows and drama, it's more for someone who wants to do something in their neighborhood. Still an audience is an audience and right now nobody else wants Georgie's tribute.

Then, after a couple of weeks, an email arrived and they were still excited, and offered their needs and wants and --- copyright of the finished product.

It is customary to sell a program to television by license, in that you license them to have a certain amount of broadcasts (also referred to as plays) under specific rules.

I had suspected that they would ask for it for free, as they rarely pay for anything but I wasn't expecting a copyright issue.

Suddenly the game changed. I could not, nor would not give away any aspect of copyright for many reasons. My copyright on Ghostkeeper means that I own it. By giving away the copyright as is often done in the U.S. , I lose that right.

Meaning that the local access channel could say they own several minutes of Ghostkeeper. And that would make it very difficult to sell Ghostkeeper or any parts of it. In fact, impossible.

I emailed a few friends, all of whom agreed that giving copyright to the cable company was not going to happen. Rather a licence could be agreed on, giving very minimal and specific rights for a certain period of time. After all they're getting the Georgie video and specific scenes from Ghostkeeper itself, for nothing except a licence.

Say, they can show it 20 times over a period of 1 year. Local access/cable channels often repeat shows so that's a realistic start. Oh, and no copyright.

What this is about for me is Georgie. She is a wonderful lady and a great actress and at 86, more than worthy of a tribute and it's not right for her to be caught in a copyright catfight, in fact nobody knows this except me, 3 references, my friend and the very nice access representative. And you.

I sent the email today but the rep is out of town so I'll hear from him Friday or next week. And just in case, I'm making a few other calls, there might be someone out there in Alberta who wants to honor their homegrown star.

BTW the cable company that I'm dealing with made $1.2 billion in 2011 and paid $24 million to it's former CEO Jim Shaw.

Jim the cameraman

2012-01-16T08:48:00.000-08:00

I'm off today to shoot interviews with the nephew of Raoul Walsh, a Hollywood director considered one of the top directors in town in his day. Walsh directed movies with Bogart (High Sierra), Errol Flynn (Objective Burma), Alan Ladd (Saskatchewan), Clark Gable and many others. While never considered the level of the great independants like Ford and Huston, Walsh did somewhere around 140 movies in his lifetime and is considered one of the best studio directors of his era.

I'm doing this as a favor to a director friend and also to the woman who recently wrote a book on Walsh, published last year. She hopes to compile this into a documentary to supplement the book.

Today I get a chance to visit his home in Simi Valley as well as shoot the interview with his nephew. It's also an opportunity to shoot some HD finally as I can now edit it in my newer version of Final Cut Pro.

Pretty uneventful, but I'll have a longer blog Wednesday.

And just to show you I know y way around cameras, here's a pic that's at least a hundred years old... at least I think that's me... with hair!!

BTW that's my favorite camera, an Arriflex BL 16mm, a work of art.

How it all started

2012-01-12T09:46:00.000-08:00

It all begins somewhere.

I passed a guy hammering a nail into a wood plywood board yesterday. I was riding my bike in Sherman Oaks near the library on Moorpark when I heard the distinctive sound of a nail being driven into wood by a hammer. It's a sound you rarely hear today, yet it's as common as it was since the hammer was created.

For some reason, it caught my attention, even as cars sped by. It took a beat or two before I realized something. That sound brought back to the house my dad built in Windsor, almost 40 years ago. It brought back a flood of memories, last summer I drove past the house which was well kept and still the same and probably with a few owners by this time.

My father wasn't as whimsical as me; he said that "a house is a house, when you're dead and gone it doesn't remember you." So much for that.

Just for your information, hammers go back at least to 30,000 bc, stone hammers go back even further. Nails have been with us at least since the Roman Period.

And it still looks the same. No upgrades here, except maybe that machine gun-like hammer that shoots nails. But there's something else that came to me yesterday, actually two things;

First, the sound of a nail being hammered in goes back at least 3000 years, maybe even more. And secondly, it's the beginning of something; a house, a garage, a war shield and many other things.

And what about writing?

Writing began to show up around 4000 bc in Mesopotania and was created for keeping track of numbers, as in 50 sheaves of wheat or 10 cows. Eventually there was need for words describing the objects rather than only the numbers. It took off over the thousands of years until now.

Like, totally, for sure, dude.

Okay, not the best example of writing.

But now we write with every type and shape of pens, pencils and computer keys and ipad surfaces.

Which brings me to the Rhodia.

I discovered the Rhodia at one of the last real office supply stores, A&B in Studio City. Unlike the big box stores, A&B has pens and pencils where you can buy one, not 10. It's a classic mom & pop store on Ventura and is rarely crowded. But it's the kind of place where you can buy one envelope or a hundred, and it has more pens and pencils than any Staples.

And you even get to try them out on small 2x2-inch sheets of white paper.

And that's where I found the Rhodia.

It's an upscale pencil and costs almost $2 for one. You can buy 10 pencils at Staples for the same price. But they're not Rhodias.

I didn't know anything about Rhodia pencils until I hunted around on the internet and discovered a world I never knew. Pencil fanatics with forums where they compare, discuss and argue.

The Rhodia pencil is a pale orange with black details, made in France and just finely made. The designers of this pencil went so far as to dye the wood black, so that the pencil is absolutely and completely black and orange.

It's tip is cut by a knife rather than a pencil sharpener. How's that?

So, does it perform better than a dime pencil? I can't really tell, but holding it and using it seems to make me feel like it's really something special. But somehow, along with the nail being hammered into wood, the idea of holding a wood pencil again brings me back to the past and a time when the world was a bigger place.

And a 12-year old who had a crush on his teacher and learned how to write by using a pencil.

The rewards of writing.

2012-01-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

What a wonderful surprise and Christmas present ,Jim. I was totally taken aback, ELATED,OVERWHELMED, DELIGHTED, etc. etc. to receive your book and dedication to me. This is the greatest reward I have received in my lifetime. I had many rewards and a lot of fun while teaching, but this topped everything. Everyone is so excited for me.

First of all, no, I didn't write that, and since there might be non-believers, hard to believe, let's make it one specific non-believer, this was written by my Grade 6 teacher, who always inspired and encouraged me.

The novelization of Emperor of Mars was dedicated to her.

The book has been out now a little over two weeks and unfortunately was too late for the Christmas sales. I could have kept it back till next Christmas but I decided to put it out now. It's on Amazon, Kindle and Nook, and Amazon in Canada.

So why is it dedicated to her?

Because she is a big part of the book. I've told you it's a story based on my life as a 12-year old (not all that interesting) and a true-story character who called himself the Emperor of Mars (much more interesting).

Put them together and you have a book. Or rather a book based on a true story. Or a book based on a true story based on a screenplay.

I've said this before, but EOM (the business loves to use letters rather than titles) was written as a screenplay in 1989 and almost made into a movie 5 times. It was the screenplay that got me into every studio in town. Every one. They loved it. Steve Teisch, producer of Forrest Gump loved it.

But nobody wanted to make it. They considered me for other writing assignments, and I got a handful or so but nobody wanted to make it.

One reason was that "it had no star role". Meaning no big role that a star would want, after all it was about a boy. You can say that Stand By Me had no stars, but they had Stephen King's story and Rob Reiner, entrenched into the Hollywood world.

The 5 "almosts" were indie producers, the 1st attempt was an option that eventually expired, the second had an oscar-winning director (honest) and financing fell through, the 3rd was an option again, the fourth was the closest, I was director and had done locations when the dreaded call came.

Finally it was with 2 producers from Calgary who did an award-winning western with Robert Duvall. They lost interest eventually because, as with most Canadian producers, they really don't want to look for money, they want someone to give them the money so they can spend it.

I had friend who suggested I novelize the screenplay and put it on Amazon which published books for anyone, sort of like "vanity publishing" but at no cost. Then a former UCLA student told me of his success with a book. In 3 years he made over $15,000. He also showed me how to do it.

So I got a graphic artist to design the cover and a tech to help format and upload the book. It took almost 2 months to write as I didn't plunge right into it. By last December it was ready.

The teacher was one of those who suddenly appear into your life, she was around 18, and in the late 1950's, typical of many teachers who took a 1 year teaching course. Everything about her was spectacular to a kid of 12, I couldn't wait to get to school and just be around her.

In later years I would come back to Manitoba and often see her again. I remember sitting in her home and drinking scotch. Then she moved and I lost track of her. We met again at a 100 year anniversary of the little town I lived in and reconnected with email.

Some time ago, she emailed that she faced a serious health problem, and in her words "wouldn't go without a fight". I emailed with another student, a woman who became a politician in Canada, herself inspired by our teacher. We kept in touch over a year, hoping for the best until the politician emailed to say our teacher was back home and in better health.

Three weeks ago I mailed her the first copy of the book and wasn't sure what she would think. Her response is what you read at the heading, except for her very nice words about my writing abilities and that she hopes we meet again soon.

If anyone wonders why anyone would want to write for a living, I think this is at least half of it.

The other half is because it's the only thing I know how to do well besides shooting film and video and some darn good photography.

Airplanes, schedules & being behind

2012-01-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

Finally made it back to Sherman Oaks, where the temperature was 87F, as compared to around 38F in the foothills of the Rockies in Alberta. And 38F was good, as usually it's in the double digit minus temps.

Spending the last 2 days getting ready for what looks like a busy spring in which I will attempt to write another novelization, 2 spec screenplays, a budget for Ghostkeeper 2 that reflects some new technology that will lessen the expenses, and maybe, a screenwriting book based on my UCLA lectures.

Yeah, I know, like we need another book on screenwriting? Well, mine's gonna be different. And written by someone who has actual produced credits.

All of that should happen before April.

Monday begins the year for Badland Company, I hope many of you stick around.

Still here

2012-01-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

Been running around in Calgary and today, Banff and Lake Louise where I had a mini-reunion with Ghostkeeper. Traveling now and will be back and ready for 2012 with an interesting proposition and some new leads.

Usually don't get this far behind but I'll be back in form Wednesday, Jan 4th.

Back to the beginning

2011-12-26T09:20:00.000-08:00

My real feature film career really began in oil-rich Alberta and specifically in Calgary, which when I was there had almost 300,000 people, and now has over 1 million. One of the remaining icons was the Husky Tower, above, which in its day was the highest structure in the city.

Today it's crowded in between towering buildings that for the most part, deal with oil. Think Houston set near the Rocky Mountains and you have Calgary. A dozen or more major oil companies from the US and Britain and even Canada play their oil and gas games here.

In the US, Obama has to deal with the pipeline which would stretch from oil sands northeast of Calgary and extend all the way to Texas. This issue is coming up in 2012 and the problem deals with the usual suspects; those who want oil and those who want to preserve pristine land.

But this isn't about pipelines. It's about movies.

Before Calgary I worked in television all across the country, starting in Windsor and Detroit and then to Vancouver and Regina. And then Calgary where I worked as a "writer/producer" for commercials. After 2 years of commercials I wanted out and I wanted to make a movie.

Another writer/producer, Harry, left before me and we got together to make a movie he wanted to produce. But that fell through and Harry had a handful of investors who were still excited about financing a movie. It would be a shame to see them go away.

So I came up with an idea with my friend Doug who did government educational films. Doug knew the owners of the Deer Lodge Hotel in the heart of the Rockies and a little over 100 miles from Calgary.

The hotel was a perfect place with a 1920's feel to it, but also incredibly creepy. It was a natural.

Back in Calgary, Harry talked 6 investors, most from oil money, who wrote 6 checks for around $650,000 (around $1.6 million in today's dollars). As this was 100% tax shelter money (meaning investors could write off 100% of their investment), we had to hurry as that money had to be invested before the end of the year.

I wrote a screenplay, my first real one, with some help from Doug and my brother and we rushed into production, starting around Dec 3, 1980. It was a full union shoot with IATSE (grips, gaffers,make-up, etc), ACTRA (actors) and Harry, me, Doug and a few others.

We shot it in 15 days, with a great help being that it was set in one building and the surrounding snow which gave it an isolated feeling even though a major ski resort was a couple of miles away.

We stayed at one of the ski resort motels as the hotel was closed for the winter and had no heat. As we began filming, I began to notice that the actors seemed to be living their parts, and not always aware of it. And the crew gradually began to feel it as well, they acted like there really were ghosts there.

At the end of a day, nobody wanted to hang around to clean up unless they had someone else around. The dark halls and the constant cold was not particularly cuddly. And I began to realize that of the six characters in the movie, there were two other ones, two that nobody really paid attention to --

The -25 degree weather and, of course, the hotel.

And they were just as real as the flesh and blood that walked down the creaky hallways. While filming, we used torpedo-like construction heaters that blasted heat down the hallways that gave us about 15 minutes as we had to turn off the heaters to film with sound. Then the cold began to creep upon us again.

One critic said this of the ambience of the movie; paraphrased "you had a choice, either say in the hotel with a crazy old woman or go outside into the freezing cold".

(Wed: feuds, snow and the money running out)

The true north...

2011-12-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

It's 6 degrees in Canada. Well, not actually all of Canada, but in Calgary which is a short distance from the incredible Rocky Mountains, already snow-capped and camera ready. I stepped out of my dad's old Sable (which was the source of a week of blogs back in 2009 as I traveled across the prairies while waiting for the car to break down in minus 40 degrees) to see a great evening sky.

The 6 degrees is in celsius not fahrenheit. For Americans 6C translates to about 42F. Cold for SoCal and Arizona but pretty warm for anyone living along the US/Canada border. It's warm enough to wear a sweater.

I'm sort of home for the holidays, with my brother who's a copy editor at the big newspaper in town. It's also the place where I made my first feature film, Ghostkeeper way back in 1980.

I've already had breakfast with Doug Macleod, who got his first feature credit as well, he was the production manager and went on to become an excellent producer. Doug was also credited as co-writer.

Then there's Murray Ord, one of the film's stars and also a good friend for over 30 years. Murray and I will visit Georgie Collins who played the "old woman" in the movie. Georgie is 86 and as bright and sharp as she was at 56.

Then there's others, crewmembers and actors and friends so it's going to be a great time. We're also going out to the Deer Lodge hotel where we filmed Ghostkeeper. The hotel is still open and the management has already been in line for the DVD, which will be released in February.

The hotel also wants to sell copies, which is great, seeing that it's a horror film, although more of psychological horror than explicit.

So it is Christmas mixed with the Ghostkeeper movie theme, so....

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....

Politics of Low Budget filmmaking

2011-12-16T09:01:00.000-08:00

Recapping Monday's blog, I discovered a new way to make Ghostkeeper 2, the sequel to my 1980 film Ghostkeeper. #2 was budgeted at just under $2 million, and at that, was difficult to finance.

What broke the budget barrier was the use of a Canon SLR that shoots HD video was well as it's primary purpose, that of a single lens reflex camera meant to shoot still photography. And it's small and extremely portable, meaning that you can film more in less time.

To put it simply; I can cut down a budget of $2 million to just under $500,000. Maybe even less. And come out with a product just as good, maybe even better.

But there are issues, as some would suggest.

The camera package would be far less than for a 35mm shoot or even the popular "RED" digital camera. For one thing, John (the DP) prefers to use a Nikon similar to the Canon 5D. With the Nikon he can use older Nikkor lenses, many of which are damn good lenses. And you can pick them up at really good prices.

Add to that the camera body, less than $2000, add the accessories and it's about a third of the price of a regular movie camera package. You could even add a spare body at that price.

But the issue is this;

While the technical advantage works for the camera package, as well as editing on Final Cut Pro (of which I can use), the "other" part of making the movie is labor. And the unions.

While we can cut the price of cameras, cutting weekly and day rates is another story. There's two ways to do this; first you just grab a dozen people and head out to the mountains and just shoot it. Fast and quiet, don't bring attention to yourself.

Second is a little harder; you talk to the unions and hope they give you a break.

One major note here; I'm talking about shooting in Canada, in the mountains. Shooting in LA is far easier, I could pick up a non-union crew at bargain-basement rates, maybe even a union person who needs a job for a few weeks.

The advantage here is that there's so many crew members in the L.A. area, that nobody is really going to bother with you, there's too much going on.

But Canada is a smaller crew base and it's harder to pull off. Union people have been known to protest non-union shoots to the point where they either hire union or leave.

Another point here for anyone who thinks we're taking advantage of people; our pay rates would be probably half of what union pays, but this goes for "above-the-line" also, meaning I get the same cut, in fact my cut would be lower than anyone else on the crew, and I would be doing three jobs, writing, directing and co-producing.

What would I get: Probably around $5000 for the whole thing, meaning months of working on the project, doing the budget on MMB, writing, directing and signing checks. But there's a catch here dictated by WGA. I will eventually get paid.

This matters if and when the movie is sold. Once it's sold, I have to be paid my minimum WGA writer's fee. But only if the film is sold. And only if it makes enough money for me to get some.

And this goes for the crew, who would also share in a portion of any sale, in accordance to what they were paid on the shoot. And they would have worked maybe 4 weeks at most.

Another factor also exists; some provinces in Canada are not getting as much movie production as a few years ago when the Canadian dollar was almost 65 cents. So now any movie that comes in is welcome and compromises can be had.

Unions can help, but you always have to be straight up with them, you can't pay the stars $100,000 and the gaffers $500 a week. But that makes sense.

I'll be up in the mountains next week and try to figure out how best too do this; there's other issues, even at a low budget. One big one is accomodation, food and per diems, which can kill a low budget production, 4 weeks on a shoot would easily take 25% of the budget.

To deal with this I would go back to the Hollywood of the 1940's and 50's wherein the studio would go on location for 2 weeks, shoot every exterior they could, then go back to the studio and built sets to shoot for 4, 5, 6 or more weeks. Thus I would spend maybe 5 days on location with a full crew, and pick-up shots with a minimum crew of 3 or 4.

While all this sounds like a lot of work, I really enjoy it, figuring out how to do the technical and logistical side while also remaining faithful to the story and the tone of the movie.

And there's the potential of working with the original 4 actors, one of which is 86 now, as well as the DP, John and a few others. All this after 32 years, it would be completing a circle.

But we'll see where this goes for 2012.

A new idea for Ghostkeeper 2?

2011-12-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

Edward Burns came into the film world by making a feature film called The Brothers McMullen, for $30,000. The film was successful and it led to several other features with real budgets and famous actors. In between he acted in some movies, including Saving Private Ryan.

Like many directors, he found that making his movies became harder and harder. So after making multi-million dollar movies, his newest movie was made for far less.

How about $9000.

He used the now common Canon 5D SLR. For those who don't know what this is; here's a little history.

Digital movies changed in a major way in the last few years. Where you had your "camcorder" you could also take video still photos as well. Not great. But then Canon came out with a brand new still camera series which included the 5D, but with a remarkable twist.

The Single Lens Reflex camera has been around for at least 60 years, it's the one your parents had until digital cameras came along. What makes the Canon not just a picture-taking camera, it can also shoot video.

So what's the big deal? Your camera shoots video too. My point and shoot Nikon shoots video.

Well, the Canon 5D not only shoots video, it also shoots 4K. Yeah, another abbreviation to deal with.

But it's simple, 4K stands for the size of the chip in the camera. Whereas your regular HD cameras have chips 1/4 of the size or so, the Canon has a chip that is the identical size of a frame of 35mm film.

For camera guys, and remember I started as a news cameraman, this was ground-breaking. One of the weaknesses in digital was always depth-of-field, meaning that everything was always in focus.

Film, on the other hand, had a great advantage (and still has) by reducing depth of field when you needed it to. You know those shots in movies where the background is out of focus but the actor is clearly sharp. That's depth-of-field. Every movie uses this, everyone ever made. At least on film. It's a little more complex but it's enough for this purpose.

Now, HD is even closer to film and the best part is that you can buy a Canon D5 with lenses for under $10,000. Compare that with the price of a Panavision 35mm which costs around $120,000 (nobody really knows because they're only for rent). And even the Red camera being touted will cost around $40,000 with accessories.

The Canon 5D is now practically essential on all movies being made, even if it's just a secondary camera to grab shots that would take a big rig an hour to take. You just lift it up and shoot. It's used in tandom with big 35mm & digital camera units, especially for action scenes where you can see as many as 10 of the Canons covering every aspect of the action.

But how does this deal with Ghostkeeper 2?

Well, besides being a fraction of the cost of a camera rental from a renting house, it's easy to use, light and portable and can give you an image equal to any movie shot today. And now Nikon's got into the act as well.

And it represents a new shot for Ghostkeeper 2 as I can cut the budget to less than a quarter of the original $2 million budget.

But it's not that easy, the camera deal is attractive, but there's more than that to deal with.

(Thurs: The politics of low budget filmmaking)

Canadian Irony

2011-12-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

"In Canada when I did strange things, people looked at me. In the U.S. when I did the same, they paid me."
- Michael J. Fox

That quote from Michael J. Fox has more to it than one would really think. While the true north, strong and free remains my home country it also presents some contradictions in the world of writers in particular.

In the 1980's, I was at the early stages of what now is a booming business in Canada which got it's big push when Americans began to come to Canada during the booming tax shelter days. Money was everywhere, and so were lawyers and accountants with schemes that would find ways to hide money in a 100% tax shelter. Eventually the government caught on and ended it.

But the Canadian crews had learned from the U.S. crews and it wasn't long before writers emerged on a whole pile of series the likes of which had never been seen before. With new networks, Canadian series took off. And not just the kid shows.

Like the U.S., the industry was primarily centered in Toronto and Montreal, and after a few years, in Vancouver. And that was about the time I left the country.

I had made a movie in Calgary, Ghostkeeper, and finding work in Calgary was hard. There was none. I didn't want to move to Toronto or Montreal. So I got a Green Card through a lottery way back in 1989 from the U.S. government.

And a funny thing happened when I moved to the U.S.

I got more jobs in Canada.

Now this could be defined in a few ways, but mostly, it was the identification of being in "L.A." and actually living there. The same people in Canada who wouldn't hire me because I wasn't from Toronto, suddenly took interest in me.

With the premise that because I lived in L.A., I must be good. Of course, that's ridiculous, but a job is a job.

I'm not the only one who thought this, I have a half dozen writers and directors who agree with the idea that having an LA address ironically made us more employable in Canada. In one year alone I wrote 2 screenplays and rewrote 4 screenplays of other Canadian writers, which took me too Luxembourg, Winnipeg and Mexico. My best year.

But it did not sit well with Canadian writers living in Canada.

I belong to two guilds, Writer's Guild of Canada and Writer's Guild of America, commonly referred to as WGC and WGA. They have mutual agreements so that Canadians living in the US can still work in Canada and vice versa. It's got some complicated wording but essentially all is happy within the two guilds.

But some writers in Canada began to complain. "Why should he/she take away Canadian jobs when they live in LA".

The answer was, to my mind (and others) because I am Canadian. In the first years,70% of my work was done for Canadian productions from 1990 to 2000 while living in LA. In that time I worked on 4 Canadian series in Canada and 1Canadian/French show (Highlander) in the U.S.

Then I got into a little dispute with the head of WGC when he wrote an editorial in the WGC magazine about the carpetbaggers stealing Canadian jobs. It wasn't in exactly those words, but the intent was there.

I wrote him a letter saying that I'm just as employable as anyone else. But I'm leaving out some crucial details. His answer was that I and any other Canadian writers who betrayed our country, should not be let back in.

One big reason I and other Canadians in the US got work was particularly upsetting to the head of WGC.

The big advantage we had was that US Companies doing movies and series in Canada received tax credits for having Canadians on the crew. And tax credits meant they got more money.

In a weird formula, the federal government said any company who wished Canadian financing must have this; 6 out of 10 points in "above the line".

There were 2 points for the following; Producer, director, writer, star, and 1 point for editor, production designer, cameraperson. So a company could have a U.S. star and then mix the above labels to at least 6 points.

And to make it more confusing, not only did the feds ask for this, so did the provinces. If you wanted to make a movie in Vancouver, you had to go by the same formula, more or less, except everyone had to be from British Columbia. Same as Ontario and Montreal.

It then became harder for people like me to get work in Canada because of my LA address. But it also became harder for a Canadian in Ontario to work anywhere else in Canada too.

In my letter to the WGC head, I said I have as much right as anyone in Canada to work there and not only is the system unfair to me, it's unfair to every writer in Canada.

Eventually the system was altered but by then I was working on US productions so it wasn't as important. My last movie in 2010 was with WGC and I never left L.A. even though it was filmed in Ontario.

But I don't deny that it gives Canadians living in the U.S. a bit of an edge on both U.S. and Canadian writers working and living in Canada.

And if you can understand all of this in one reading, I have the greatest admiration. Like this business, it's all a little crazy.

Rambling Monday

2011-12-05T09:52:00.000-08:00

Bunch of things as I begin to wind down to Christmas in the Rockies, still hope for a meeting or two, roll out a winter parka and get that damn book out this week. I had to make some changes which caused some reformatting but I should get the 3rd proof tomorrow, if it's clean, then it's good to go.

WGA party was as always, crowded with lots of people I don't know. In fact there was nobody I knew, fortunately we both are starters and thus met a handful of writers, everyone from a soap opera writer to a game-show question writer and some hopeful aspiring writers who somehow got into WGA (you have to get a WGA signatory company contract in order to join the Guild).

This time they rented a club in the heart of Hollywood and as usual, the first drink was free and anything after that was around $13 but for some reason tickets seemed to be available. It was loud and noisy and the average age was probably around 35, maybe less.

What's always interesting about writers, at least the WGA members is their look. It's very generational in that there's the old writers like me, and the older ones and then the middle aged ones and the young ones.

All in all you wouldn't think this bunch of people had anything in common.

And to make it more challenging, there are no real rules, an old guy can wear jeans and t-shirt, a young kid can wear an expensive sport coat, girls can come in red dresses or black jeans or anything. We're tall, short, thin, fat, a typical cross section of America (and Canada) and thus the variety of costumes and behaviors.

The younger ones think they know everything, the older ones think they don't know enough and somewhere between there's the ones who don't care.

And then there's the working ones. Ah, the lucky ones who are getting a paycheck. It's also the divider often in conversations; the working ones tend to stay with other working ones and the unemployed stay with other unemployed.Of course there's crossovers all the time.

And then there's the usual 2nd or 3rd question after "Hi, I'm......

"So... what are you working on now?"

This question solicits the following answers:

Not much
I'm developing a project
We're working on a spec
I'm working on some ideas
I got a deal with Hallmark and Levinson
We're going to pitch NBC.
I'm a guest of a WGA writer
I know the doorman

And many, many more. I remember the first time I attended a union meeting in the early 1990's at the Sheraton Universal. There were about a thousand writers there, filling two huge auditoriums.

My first reaction was that most of the writers looked like me. Meaning white, European and eastern European heritage. There were women and Asians and African Americans, but the majority was the proverbial white anglo-saxon look.

There's more diversity now, 20 years later, but not as much as there could be. I think probably the least represented if you count population, were the Hispanics. I might be wrong, but how many Hispanics do you see on TV shows and movies with respect to their portion of the American dream?

There was also something else I wondered about. Since the WGA has allegedly around 10,000 members, most of which live in Los Angeles, the turn-out for the party was maybe 200 or so "give or take".

Where are the others?
Maybe they just stay home.

Taking jobs away

2011-12-01T08:46:00.000-08:00

One of the topics our little group discuss over Sunday breakfasts at the Figtree restaurant on the beach in Venice, is the subject of jobs. Not necessarily for us but for the country.

Having grown up across from Detroit and with lots of relatives in Detroit, I know all too well how hard hit Detroit is, their unemployment rate is around 15% while the reality is closer to 35% if you discount the suburbs.

I've always said that many jobs have simply disappeared, never to return no matter who's President.

Take my book, Emperor, it took 2 people to get it published. There was one formatting expert who will cost me around $150 and a graphic artist who has cost me $250. She did the front and back covers I posted a week ago.

And that's it.

My director friend Malcom has a background in publishing and graphics and he figured that I just took jobs away from around 20 people. Now this would be pre-computer era. All those people, typesetters, readers and more.

So 18 jobs have disappeared. Never to come back.

And how about this; I'm doing a favor for a friend in a week or two. She has written books on directors and wants to interview a handful of older actors who worked with the director in question.

Since my background is camerawork, mostly film but lots of still photography also, I said I could help her out. I would film the interviews and then edit them into whatever she needed.

Here's who was left out:

An assistant cameraperson
A soundperson
A lighting person
The processing lab
The counterperson at the lab
An editor
A colorist
An effects person (titles, fades, dissolves, etc.)

How's that. 8 jobs lost.

I can do all of those jobs now with digital cameras (I will rent one for about $150/day) as well as a wireless microphone ($35/day), a reflector and maybe a light ($50), tape/memory card ($50) and lunch.

When I finish, I will take the video to my iMac where I have Final Cut Pro, used by many feature and TV editors who prefer it to Avid, the industry standard. I learned FCP when I had comp courses at UCLA when I taught screenwriting extension classes.

In short, I can do it all.

Of course, the argument is; is this a good thing? If you're an editor looking for work, it probably isn't. Or a cameraperson.

And of course, there's the often repeated saying; "the good news is that everyone can make a movie, the bad news is that everyone can make a movie".

If this is what's going on in the film business, if I can literally make a movie for free, what does it speak for every job in the country.

Fresh & Easy, a British food store has locations in L.A. and they don't have cashiers at all, it's all scanners. Ralph's has 6 scanners in Sherman Oaks. Robots are making cars and work more efficiently and better than humans.

Where are these jobs Republicans are claiming to have if they're elected? Trickle down does not work as we've seen, and they're mostly delusional. Or just lying. A politician lying?

The American worker hit his/her peak in 1973, meaning that was the moment when the average worker made the most money, say when a dollar was worth a dollar. It went downhill from then.

And American industry peaked in 1979. That was when America had it's highest level of industry, everyone was working. And that went downhill steadily too. A lot of experts say that industry is no longer driving America, now it's consumers.

Neither of these ever came back, there were spikes now and then but as of 2010 it was 65 cents.

So how can consumers drive the economy if there's so much unemployment (average is just around 9% but doesn't include those who stopped looking, and that's more like 15%)?

I think that as population increased, there are simply more people who can buy things. Go by Fashion Square here in Sherman Oaks, yesterday there was a half a block of traffic going into the Mall and Macy's in particular.

Go figure? Who are these people? While unemployment is high, I can only think that there are enough people (and sales) that they continue to drive the economy.

And of course, I told you often that of the alleged 10,000 writers in WGA that only 1500 or so are actually working.

So don't complain to me.

And there's always "The Singularity". You know, when computers take over completely. Just like Terminator.

What did and didn't happen in 2011

2011-11-28T08:25:00.000-08:00

Well, it wasn't a great year for me, I didn't make much money, about $2200 in residuals but I didn't sell a spec script in spite of having a fresh credit for 2010. Fresh credits are important to the creative people in the film business, notably being writers, directors and actors.

Anyone whose credits are 3-5 years old will find jobs hard to get. Anything after 5 years and you might as well be dead.

And I mean that in the nicest way.

Any of the above-the-line people, aka "creative" want to keep their credits current. That means you're working and it's easier to find a job if you have a job. In the same way as it's easier to find an agent when you have one.

The other way to find a job is to know someone who's working.

What didn't happen? I didn't get Casualties of Love made like I thought I would. I did the reading with actors but afterwards something didn't feel right about the script. One could consider this a "writer's block", maybe it is. But it just doesn't feel real.

Emperor of Mars didn't get made as a film, however the book is almost ready to go, I'm getting the 2nd proof version Tuesday and if it looks good, my first book will step out into the real world.

I didn't get much further with my Ghostkeeper sequel and the re-release of Ghostkeeper 1980 will happen in February. It's actually making the rounds of potential buyers but the DVD itself will "drop" February. I've already got a handful of inquiries so I know we'll sell at least 5 or 6 DVDs.

Would be nicer if it was 500-600, but who knows.

I did get a serious offer on another screenplay of mine and at the moment it's being looked at. And given that the town is winding down, I expect to know more by the middle of January. And I still have a few meetings before I leave for Canada so that's a positive.

My Christmas Carole movie didn't catch on in 2011, but oddly enough I have 3 solid production companies in town who all like it. It would be nice if they optioned it, but in this current climate, nobody wants to put out money if they don't have to. One of the companies has asked to take it to two networks so again, I'll probably hear about it next year.

But the Christmas script has also gotten me interest from 2 new agents, which is always nice. However the catch is that since the company above has taken it to 2 networks, the new agents are in a holding pattern.

So all in all, it's been a productive year, especially for the book, but also for a list of a dozen new ideas for 2012, of which I've already started one.

It's a funny thing about ideas. I heard Sting (of Police fame) say that as he's reaching the age of 60 (yes, 60!) he is getting more ideas than he's ever had. I know the feeling.

I come up with at least one new idea or concept every day, sometimes 2 or 3 ideas. Not that all of them are good, of course. Most of the time the ideas fade after one night. But a few of them hang on. I've got a great idea for another Christmas script, you could say "it's out of this world", as the 60's slang went. My idea is literally out of this world.

It's so different that I'm going to register it with WGA and WGC in the next 2 weeks. More on this later.

Also another book; on screenwriting.

Yes... another book on that subject to join the list of around 250 books on screenwriting. But it'll be a little different. For one thing; it'll be written by a real writer with credits (and a recent one too!), not writing teachers who've never sold a screenplay nor seen a screenplay of theirs make it to the screen.

Believe it or not, there is a difference. When I taught at UCLA extension, most of my students took my class because I was a working writer. I've said this before, Frank, my favorite agent at Paradigm, said to never mention I was doing part-time teaching. Why?

It's the kiss of death.

It means you're finished in the business. You know, those who write, write. Those who can't teach.

Now of course, to be fair, that's not always the truth. But coming from an agent is enough to make you worry about it.

But that's going to be another blog.

Hollywood closes down?

2011-11-21T06:53:00.000-08:00

"The town is closing down", my agent friend said after I told him I'm behind on two 1-page outlines for two Hallmark-type screenplays yet to write. It took me a beat to figure out what he meant.

Already? It's too early.

But, just like the fake Christmas trees at Target, the holiday season is on us. Thanksgiving is on Thursday and even Black Friday was early, a week early. I guess you could call it a "prequel". For those of you who don't know about BF, it's the week-end after Thanksgiving when retailers all across America pray for huge sales as Americans begin the Christmas money spending time.

Because if they do, they are "in the black" after a year of so-so sales.

And just like Black Friday, the movie and TV industry begins to slowly shut down their doors. Projects that have begun are finished or in the process of wrapping up. Executives and million dollar actors prepare to go to Aspen or Sun Valley or New York, Santa Fe and even Taos.

Studio labor begins to wonder if they'll be called back next year and for writers, new projects are shelved until the new year begins. Typically around the last half of January.

So my Christmas Carole script will be on somebody's desk for the next two months even if it's on the top of the stack. And nobody calls back.

I have two meetings set for the next few weeks which is quite nice and I'm glad to have them. With people who like me, too.

Not that anything will happen. No deals will be made, just a "meet 'n greet" as they say.

Hollywood closes down often during the year, any holiday will do, Valentine Day starts a few days before, as do Father's and Mother's Days. Thanksgiving begins two weeks before as pumpkins are dumped onto empty lots and sold.

Christmas trees from Oregon will replace the pumpkin by Friday this week as well.

All in all, there's a lot of holidays in the movie and TV business. I learned through my TiVo that David Letterman takes a lot of time off. My TiVo records only first run shows and when a week goes by with old shows, my TiVo doesn't record them.

"Everybody's gone" my director friend Malcom says at least a dozen times a year. You wonder how movies get made.

And me, I'm off to Calgary December 18 to visit my brother and a number of friends from the time I worked there in 1979. We'll go to the Deer Lodge Hotel in the heart of the Rockies, where Ghostkeeper was filmed and have a great dinner at the Post Hotel where we got kicked out after Riva, the lead actress threw wine at me after the DP cameraman teased her.

Yeah, me. Not the DP.

But that taught me a lesson; and that is that actors need to know someone likes them, they're like kids who need to be praised and encouraged. There was a lot of trouble between her and the crew and I was the only one she could complain to. And that led to the wine toss, I was the only one she could trust.

Chris is gonna nail me for this, just watch. But he's one of the few who isn't like that.

So, it seems the industry is wrapping up for 2011 and once again we all reflect on what we accomplished or didn't. But I'll save my complaining for later.

And besides, the WGA party is coming up, December 4th, wherein WGA rents out the kind of hipster nightclub that no respectable writer would ever go to on their own, let alone afford. It's an evening where we get one free drink and funny little morsels of food carried by aspiring actors who know writers can't get you a job.

It's kind of like construction workers finding themselves at Donald Trump's Christmas Party.

Last year my second drink, a Manhattan, cost me $16. Which gives me even more reason to never go there on my own.

So Hollywood has begun shutting down and for most of the industry, it's a shutting down that they really don't need, or like. And those who are not major execs or stars will courageously drive their giant leased Lincoln Navigators and Escalades and BMW 700's to Palm Springs or Santa Barbara.

Most of my friends will be going to shopping malls in the valley and maybe a day trip to Santa Monica 9 miles away.

I gotta find richer friends.

The Book is done

2011-11-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

Just wrapped up the final items for the Emperor of Mars book. Above is the final cover with a few changes from the previous one a few days ago. The process of formatting and uploading a Word document into the CreateSpace website is not as easy as Amazon makes it out to be.

It drove me crazy for a week and a half after which I was directed by a friend of mine to Greg, a whiz at these things. The final artwork cover, both front and back, was finished by Katie, a graphic artist. Both of them were remarkable in their dedication to making the book cover and the text inside as good as it could be.

So now I await a proof copy of the novel which should take 3-5 days. Once I get it in my hands, I'll go over every aspect, the cover art, page numbers, dedication, chapter numbers and a handful of other checks to make sure it's ready to go on the market.

As you know, I've never written a novel before and while that was not too hard, being that it was based on my screenplay, the publishing side was a whole new beast.Normally, a publisher would take care of all of this but since I wasn't able to find a publisher who would even read it, I decided to go the Amazon way.

Why didn't any publisher want it? Well, to be truthful, I only wrote about 20 publishers, all of whom passed. Publishing books, it turns out, is just like the movies; they're looking for a proven novelist, rather than take on a new writer. And even though I've been a screenwriter for 31 years, it apparently didn't count.

The only other alternative was what they used to call "vanity press". This was where a writer can't find a publisher and decides to spend their own money by hiring a printing company who would print their books and novels. Thus the term "vanity" meaning you're doing it on your own.

Most, if not all of the books were not very good, being a blend of bad novels, conspiracy books from wackos and a lot of self help books, oddly enough. A vanity press book was considered not very good and usually only friends bought them.

Until Amazon came into the game.

With Amazon a writer could publish his/her own book and automatically have it for sale on Amazon along with Stephen King and Al Gore. In short, you're automatically in with every author in the world. Unlike vanity press, where you had to haul your books around to book stores hoping they'd put them on their shelf, or using mail order although the internet has made that easier, you are now with the pros.

And it doesn't cost anything like the vanity presses charged, for that you had to order a minimum, maybe 100 books or more. Amazon only prints a book when it's ordered. They get orders from 20 people, they print 20 copies.

So what's the catch? Nothing. Amazon takes almost half and the writer gets the other half. It's actually a good deal. And if you pay $39, you get more than half and the book is put on lists for libraries, other countries and more.

And there's no stigma like vanity presses presented. As I mentioned a week ago, Penny Marshall sold her autobiography to Amazon for $600,000. Book publishers saw this as a warning shot across the bow, as they say. And it's scaring the hell out of them.

Emperor of Mars will be listed (after I proof it) as "Young adult - ages 10 and up" and the genre is Sci-Fi, fantasy, adventure, fiction.

You get a lot of help from CreateSpace, the Amazon website for book publishing, there are forums where you talk to other writers and lots of advice on how to market and sell your book.

So let's see where this goes. I'll be happy if I sell 10 books, a hundred would be even better, but I learned long ago as a writer, to not get too full of one's self as it can all fall flat.

The Difference between original ideas and copycats

2011-11-14T09:24:00.000-08:00

Last week a new series premiered on AMC, home of Mad Men, among other series called Hell On Wheels. If you're wondering if that title suggests car racing, you're wrong. It's a town. But don't feel bad if you guessed wrong, a lot of people have.

But it's sort of a town. Actually it's a railroad camp set back in the late 1800's and is about the building of the railway. The plot line is somewhat simple, a Confederate solider travels there after the war to get revenge on some bad guys who killed his wife.

And chaos ensues.

But it's not Deadwood by far. Whereas Deadwood gave us unique and rich characters set in a dirty, greedy gold mining town, HOW is filled with cliches and flat characters with little presence. And the ones that aren't flat are over the top, like Colm Meany, the English actor who is quite over the top, but all he succeeds in is that the other performers aren't up to his level.

And it's not doing well in the ratings.

This is about how most if not all great shows on TV are driven by passion and need. Deadwood was created by David Milch of NYPD Blue and a writer driven by those ghosts of creativity that only one person can have. And it was evident in the writing, even though there were other writers. It was always guided by Milch's hand. It was his idea, his baby and his lift for the time the show was on.

Same as Sopranos, David Chase, the creator and writer paid his dues in shows like Rockford Files, where you can see his use of gangsters and eccentric characters. Finally he got his chance to write what he always wanted to do. And the rest is history.

Even sitcoms have this; while Charlie Sheen took all the credit, it was obviously Chuck Lorre's baby all the way, as evidenced in the new series w/o Sheeb. Again, a writer who knew what to write and when to write it.

Back to HOW is a disjointed and often confusing series of scenes you've seen everywhere but yet it's lacking any true feelings.

In other words, you don't really fall in with the characters, nor the plot. Because you've seen it before. And Better. AMC had Broken Trails in 2006 with Robert Duvall, and it won awards and was a good western. But it was guided by Duvall who would not compromise. It was his story.

HOW seems to me to be a work by committee in which AMC decided to do a western without any specific reason or vision. And that's where it falls apart. Committees rarely come up with something good. Take a look at Congress.

To make something distinctive, interesting and believeable you need two things; a good story and a good cast. Duvall's Broken Trails wasn't bad, but Lonesome Dove was better. First of all it was based on a Larry McMurtry novel and secondly it had Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Angelica Huston, Chris Cooper and Robert Urich and other great actors in it.

Ultimately, everything starts with a good story.

Having worked on several series, I know all to well how, if not guided by a strong idea from a strong writer, you rarely get a good show. I only had a good show once, driven by a writer who lived his premise and took from his life. On the other hand I worked with psychopaths who only lived to drag a show down with their lack of human interest and passion.

You can see this attitude in websites like InkTip and others where producers list what they're looking for. It's usually something that is a copy of something out there that had minor success. Good example is Paranormal Activity, shot supposedly for less than $15,000 and earned well over $1 million.

So there's always listings for a "paranormal activity type script" or a fast car script or whatever was hot last week-end.

I even fall into that crowd with my Christmas movie in 2010 and now am being asked to write something for thanksgiving, Mother's Day and everything else. I've already mentioned this but it bears repeating.

So how do I deal with copying something? I try, I really try to make it mine, and most of the time it works. After all these years, I have developed a "style" that one actress, when she read my script said "It's so Jim".

Yeah, I know, mushy crap, right.

But hey, it keeps me honest.

End of the week

2011-11-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

Nothing really of any significant happenings in Sherman Oaks. I'm refining the cover of Emperor of Mars book, hope to have it in early next week. Met one of the handful of producers who still maintain contact with me, he had a meeting with someone who thought the Emperor screenplay could be a great vehicle for Will Smith's boy Jaden, who did Karate Kid 4, I think.

But I wasn't sure of 2 things, that the source really knows Smith's agent, and that I'm never sure of what the producer says. But as my director friend Paul says, "you never know what these guys can come up with."

I would say about 2/3rds of the producers I know aren't really capable of putting a movie together, the other third just barely and not in a short time period. But you never know who can unexpectedly do something for you so I keep all doors open.

This producer also reached out to Lions Gate with a screenplay I wrote called Deadhead, about a jetliner that suddenly veers off into the northern Pacific. It's actually not a very expensive movie, as I discussed CGI (or VFX as they say now) effects for the jetliner and discovered that the airplane effects would cost around $20,000. Cheap as borscht.

All in all it could be done for under $1 million. That's the key word now for a low budget movie, although $15,000 seems to be common too, where everyone works for free and you use a Canon 5D SLR to shoot it.

He said he had a director who just finished a horror film for that much, called Live Animals, wherein people are put in cages. This is what you deal with when you deal with some producers. All they usually see is money, not story.

But do I care? No.

I have screenplays that were written to sell, and screenplays that are my little pets and you know which ones sell faster. Oddly enough its the pets. Never figured that out.

So as of now, I'm editing a trailer for the Ghostkeeper release and re-reading a screenplay I wrote called Mojave for possible no-budget filming with that 5D.

But the big thing right now for tv movies is holiday movies; and not necessarily Christmas, but any holiday. I've been asked to write a thanksgiving script, a Valentine's Day script and a Mother's Day script.

What's the catch?

It doesn't mean that they'll make it.

Five years ago a writer could get a meeting and pitch an idea and then told to go home and write a few pages, upon which a deal is made, you get some initial funding and you go away and write it.

Today you have to have the competed screenplay. No pitch, no money up front. There are deals made now and then, but whereas it was standard practice, it's now rare. Fortunately for me, I do write a lot of specs, it comes easy to me, after all these years.

And besides what else would I be waiting for?

Writers Guild does not like this nor encourage it, but they don't have to pay my bills.

So I write.

Now, which one; Valentine's is coming up in February so it's probably too late to write one now as it would be finished in December, too close to the holiday to get it made. So maybe Mother's Day and afterwards Thanksgiving.

Better than waiting for that big call from Spielberg.

Here goes nothing...

2011-11-07T08:53:00.000-08:00

Well, the book cover is finally finished. It will go to Amazon publishing in the next few days. There's a few little things yet to be done on the cover above; make the radio smaller (the space to the right of the radio is for the barcode).

I'm also going to edit the synopsis and my credits and drop the "He lives in Los Angeles", someone suggested that always goes in novels but I figure it really doesn't have to be there. I have a thing about too many credits.

Publishing your own book used to be called the "Vanity Press", mostly because the books were often so bad that nobody wanted to publish them. That and the "wacko" fringe who wrote books that were for marginal readers.

Amazon, of course, changed all that. A few weeks ago Penny Marshall sold her autobiography to Amazon for $600,000. That's not chump change, as they say. It also indicates where publishing is going.

Like movie scripts, books are getting harder and harder to publish. And you have to already be famous (or infamous) to even get a publishing company to consider your book. I spent 8 months writing to publishers without a bite.

But you can bet that publishing houses did not greet the Amazon deal with Marshall with enthusiasm. Book stores are closing, look at Border's. There's a big empty 2-story building here in Sherman Oaks that was built for a Border's store and now it's locked and empty.

A friend of mine has a crime novel on Amazon that has earned him around $14,000 for the last 3 years and averages around $3000 a year. Not like Penny Marshall, but nice enough for a totally unknown writer.

And then there's audio books and that's an increasing market. Amazon is coming out with 3 new Kindle e-book readers with prices starting at $79, $99 and $199 for a souped up reader with iPad features and screen.

The last model, the $199 is going to change the iPad market. While Apple will still be the leader, they and other companies like Samsung, Sony, Acer and all the others will have to drop their prices as they now sell for anywhere from $400 to $700.

As some of you know, Emperor of Mars is based on a screenplay I wrote in 1989 and have had it nearly made 5 times. "Nearly" doesn't count of course so I spent some time writing it as a novel, which I had never done before

Novels are a different animal, while a screenplay is in present tense (as in "he reaches for the door"), novels are written in the past tense (he reached for the door). Simple as it sounds, it changes the whole dynamic of writing.

Another thing is that you can extend your character's history by going into their head or into your head. Again, the screenplay would read: "He reaches for the door". In a novel you can say "he reached for the door, remembering the last time he stood there and wondering if this was the right time".

While a screenplay scene could be one line, a novel could stretch that single line into a full page.

Is there money to be made by using Amazon? That depends on a lot of other things; you have to design your campaign by yourself, they suggest a Twitter account, a website, a Facebook page, copies to reviewers and a whole lot of other things.

Twitter?

Never say never, eh?

2011-11-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

Or... how Hollywood wins and I lose.

As you know, my last blog was about possessory titles, as in "A Film By Whomever" or "A (fill in name) Film) and how I resisted that kind of credit on a film screen because I was above it all, or at least not wishing to join the rank of hack directors who do take the credit.

As I said, "A Film by..." should be for accomplished directors who have a track record of great movies and maybe even an oscar thrown in here and there. But certainly not a director who made a rather obscure film called Ghostkeeper that for some reason has a small but faithful following, enough to re-release the film in January 2012.

But there it was, the DVD cover and at the top it read... "A Jim Makichuk Film". My eastern-European guilt and insecurities went into the words of my father, who, when any attention was potentially bestowed on any member of our family including him, said this;

Don't show off.

Don't buy the convertible, don't get a bigger TV set than your neighbor and don't ever think you're better than anyone else. One out of three ain't bad I guess.

I emailed the distributor and asked him to make it "A Badland Picture" instead. After all it was my company so it's almost the same thing. Just less bragging.

He called me and said it should stay as a "Jim....etc" film. And that's when he also gave me a lesson I had forgotten over the past few years. Jerry Lewis had a famous saying that went like this;

"I don't care what you write about me, just make sure you spell my name right."

"But," I said, "nobody knows who I am or cares". And it's a movie that's quite obscure.

He reminded me that most of Hollywood isn't that smart anyways, they just released a Justin Timberlake movie in LA without a single ad in the LA Times. Well, he must feel a lot worse than me, I guess. Not a single ad?

The distrib's point was this; put your name wherever you can, it won't hurt. As they say, this is the business in the term show business. You're not here to be humble, save that for speeches. You're here to find work.

And besides, it's gone to the printers.

So.... that's Makichuk, not Mackinchuck and with two K's.

The Possessory credit

2011-10-31T09:53:00.000-07:00

One of things I dislike most about making films is what is called "The Possessory Credit". And while it's hardly worth noticing for most people, it certainly bothers screenwriters.

What it is is this; a title at the beginning (or the end which is becoming more fashionable) which reads: A Film By Harvey Glick". And who is Harvey Glick? Well, I made up that name but this credit is becoming more and more common. And it is always taken by the director.

There's others too, A Film by Martin Scorceses, A Spike Lee Joint, A John Ford Production, A Steven Spielberg Film and many others.

And what the credit suggests, is that the director is totally responsible for every element of the movie. So why does this bother writers so much?

Well, for one thing the director is rarely there when the writer spends days, months and longer to write the screenplay, especially if it's a spec, than have the hired director enter and say it's all his idea.

But then, there's also another factor to take in.

Personally I don't mind the great directors taking this credit, mostly because they have proven to have a unique style unlike your average director. Can you tell the difference between a film by someone you've never heard of, and a film by, say, Robert Altman.

There's a huge difference. Altman's style is unique and therefore he is entitled to "A Film by". So is Warren Beatty and Brian DePalma and Coppola. They have earned their strips, so to speak and have established a unique style from movie to movie.

And which writer wouldn't want a great director to make his movie, credit and all.

But where it bothers me is when someone makes his/her first film and uses the credit there. They just don't deserve it as very few of them have any style at all, rather they are copying ideas they've seen from the great directors.

In other words, you gotta earn that "Film by" credit.

But the new directors coming up are demanding the credit even on really bad movies that nobody sees until they end up on Netflix. While usually it's the gorilla on the film (most often the director) who can negotiate the credit, it's also been give to writers (Neil Simon) and producers (David O. Selznick). And who would deny Alfred Hitchcock taking the credit?

And some directors feel that giving the credit to newbies or hacks demeans the intent of the credit. Other directors feel it discredits the writer and the crew, all of whom "made" the movie.

I even had a chance to put a possessory credit on the 3 movies I directed, but two of them were direct to video and hardly the quality of an Altman film so I said no. On Ghostkeeper, a film I wrote, directed and produced through my company, I chose to use the credit as "A Badland Picture Film" as it was truly a company film.

There's an element of me that gives away credits all the time. On Cooperage, the short film I filmed and co-produced in 1976, I had to leave production for a week and let a newcomer cameraman take my place. I gave him first standing because he needed the credit while I was more established.

You know us Canadians, we just want to be liked.

So watch for those "Film by..." credits and see if that director has done anything remarkable that gives him/her the right to take credit for the entire production.

Catching up.

2011-10-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

I'm getting a little behind on the blogs but will pick it up Monday. Having a good week, I'm going to publish my novelization of Emperor of Mars in about a week or so, waiting for the cover from the artist.

Also editing a short trailer for Ghostkeeper, which will be released January 2012 as well as beginning to edit a longer video on Georgie Collins, who played the part of the "Old Woman" in Ghostkeeper. The short version can be found here on Materials and I had enough material for a half hour so am going to cut it for television in Canada.

Georgie, now 86, is the grand dame in Alberta and I thought she'd really like the idea of leaving a legacy behind. I'll get photos and other materials as well to cut into the video.

Presence and who has it... and who might have it.

2011-10-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

It's been told that Marilyn Monroe could go unnoticed a party but put her in front of a camera and something happened. You couldn't take your eyes off her.

Presence is one of those things that you can't really define, either it's there or it's not Cary Grant had it both on and off the screen, when he walked into a room, everyone turned around.

Last night I watched an old western with Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin and a load of character actors that filled the screen. Stewart and Martin had presence, but so did the supporting cast including George Kennedy and regulars like Dub Taylor, Andrew Prine, Will Geer and Denver Pyle. Did I mention Raquel Welch? Even she had my attention. Forget Reese Witherspoon, give me a real woman like Raquel.

The story was a classic chase plot, but shot on great locations and with a cast like that, I didn't speed my TiVo at all. Which I do with a lot of movies now. But it wasn't the story that kept me interested. It was the actors.

You watched them.

They had presence, they looked like they had lived life, not growing up in the suburbs and hanging out at the mall.

I also watched the new Hawaii 5-0 finally, or at least 10 minutes of it. The lead actor is completely devoid of any presence at all, given that the original actor Jack Lord, just oozed presence. And he looked like a tough guy. The new version has Scott Caan, son of James Caan, who's left to offer some presence. He's not as good as his old man, but he tries his best and manages a bit of presence.

There's a lot of complaints about actors under 40, mostly that they don't seem to have much presence. One of the reasons is that the studio system has been gone for over 40 years. Studios carefully picked who would be a star, and it wasn't always because of talent. They would shoot tests of every kind until they found that actor who stood out on film.

Consider that today many actors have very little training and often none, given these reality shows. There are exceptions; Matt Damon has it, Ben Affleck doesn't. I don't get Ryan Gosling at all, and Edward Norton and a dozen others. They all look the same, "the little lesbians" as a feminist quoted a few years ago.

Now consider this; the studios are re-doing every movie older than 10 years ago in the hopes that lightning can strike again. The Fog came and went, so did Captain America and the Green Hornet, and I still didn't understand The Green Lantern with another actor, Ryan Reynolds who has the presence of a wall.

George Clooney has presence on screen and off, I saw him once briefly and you can't help but look at him. But he's 50. Johnny Depp is one of those inbetween guys, but he still looks like a kid. And I still think Leonardo looks like he's dressed in his dad's clothes.

So let's assume that there aren't any great actors anymore, just mediocre ones. The studios are redoing old movies so what is next?

What about putting an old face on a new body?

If you remember Brad Pitt in the movie Benjamin Button, you'd remember how he aged from baby to old man. It worked well.

So what if you could create Jimmy Stewart again, or Cary Grant or even Bogart. After all they were "stars" in the true description. What if you just added Bogart's face. Or Marilyn's?

Al Pacino starred in a movie called Simone, about a digitally created woman who rebels against her creator.

A week ago a friend of mine said that he knew an actor who was called to a studio for some tests. They were "tests" being made by two of the biggest directors in Hollywood. That's all he would say. Sort of. He couldn't say anymore except that it could change the business.

What if they created the old actors again with the amazing technology from Avatar, we could have movies again featuring a young Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Kirk Douglas, Joan Crawford and of course... Marilyn. Maybe she gets to finish her last movie after all. Imagine Sean Connery's young face on the next James Bond film.

Think it's crazy?

Those avatars looked pretty damn good. And that was almost 3 years ago. Imagine what they can do now. Or tomorrow?

Why do you think the Screen Actor's Guild wasn't happy with Avatar?

At least they can't create a software that can write screenplays.

Or can they?

Awards and awards...

2011-10-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

So what's a parking lot got to do with this blog?

The LA Times carried a story yesterday about an awards ceremony for location managers who find locations for movies.

My first reaction was; more awards shows? And this time for location managers? The Academy awards are already losing the audience and no doubt part of it are the dozen or so awards that precede the Oscars.

You have the Foreign Critics awards, the SAG awards, the DGA awards, the Spirit Awards and least noticeable, the WGA awards. Toss in a few others and there's just too many award shows that by the time the Oscars roll by, you've been beaten into the ground by hundreds of acceptance speeches.

All of the Academy awards are creative, be that writing, directing, filming, sound, etc. You know the categories. Each of them features a person or persons who create something, be it words, sound, CGI, music, whatever. But the key word here is create.

Location managers find locations. You need a house that looks spooky, it's the location manager, you need a street blocked off, that's the location manager. They look for locations that both the screenplay and the director dictate.

Is the job creative? Well, the definition of creativity in Websters is this:

"To cause to come into being".

A writer creates a script, a director creates a movie, an actor creates a part. And so on.

So does finding a warehouse to film in a creative job? One can certainly argue that by finding a location the location manager is creative. But once the location is arranged a whole team of designers roll in and create whatever the location is supposed to be; a warehouse or a bad guy's laboratory or even Mars, as what the production designer did for a screenplay I rewrote called Escape from Mars.

You know what the most important thing is to a location manager? More important than even the location sometimes?

Parking.

A friend of mine who does locations in Vancouver on big movies says he salivates everytime he passes an empty parking lot. Why? Because a location with no parking is no good. Not only do you have trucks and vans and big semi's, but you also have crew vehicles, people drive to the location and need parking.

How do I know this?

Because I was location manager on a feature a few years ago. I was helping out a friend who was producing a movie and I said I'd help out. After all, how hard is finding a location?

It wasn't long before I realized that not only did I have to find the right location, I had to find parking close enough that it wouldn't take away filming time by having to transport crew back and forth from a mile away.

Now you'd think parking lots are everywhere. But they're not and it took me a week to figure out the best places:

Schools and churches.

Churches are better because they're only used on week-ends and they can use the extra money. Schools are harder and more expensive because they belong to the city.

A parking lot at a church could go for $500 too $1000 if you plead with them, school parking is upwards of thousands of dollars because you need $2 million insurance policies. And if you want to film at a city school... well, get ready to shell out a lot of money.

I spent as much time looking for parking lots as I did for locations and you learn to deal with people as everyone out there thinks movies have tons of money to spend.

So, back to the awards.

The location manager's awards ceremony was helped by the location representatives for the city and state and even other states as a reward of sorts for the location managers finding locations for their movies. These government agencies depend on location managers finding locations in their district, city, state or country. So the awards are slightly biased in that each side needs the other.

And there are other film categories that want to be included in awards, especially the oscars. That's the casting agencies who cast actors for movies. Again it's a somewhat unclear category, a good actor comes to a casting agent who casts them but is it a creative thing? Ultimately the final choice is made by the director and producers.

I guess that these points can be argued back and forth but I'm reminded of something a friend of mine once said;

All you really need to make a movie are three things; a script, an actor and a camera.

Sure, you have a 10-person crew or a two hundred person crew, but the only ones really making the movie are the writer, the actor and the cameraman. Okay and maybe the director but even there, the director can also shoot the movie.

BTW the winner of the Location Manager awards was a woman who was about to lose a location because of safety reasons and she managed to get a crew to clean it up and pass the city ordinances so the movie could be filmed there.

Are movies relative anymore Pt 2

2011-10-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

After long consideration, Disney has decided to go with a western movie with Johnny Depp for $215 million. The original budget was $275 million and Disney was worried, but now that it's only $215 million, all is well.

The movie is based on a 1950's TV series and 3 movies and it was called The Lone Ranger. The Ranger traveled the west with his trusty Indian friend, Tonto, dealing out justice to bad guys. I used to watch the series all the time and still find one of the feature-length movies on TCM.

In hindsight, they were pretty simple stories of morality, good guys win, bad guys lose. They were okay for a kid like I was, but now, older, I realized they weren't that great even for their time period.

But back to the question of movies and whether they matter. The previous blog dealt with the business end and this blog is about the content. At the beginning of the digital age a saying came into place; "the good news is that everyone can make a movie, the bad news is that everyone can make a movie".

And there have been a lot of bad movies lately. Some well-meaning, but simply not very memorable. And it's worth it to remind you that there were always bad movies. But what is happening is that the good ones really aren't great.

There's a theory about people who watch a movie a couple of times over a period of time. It basically suggests that what you remember is not really the movie, it's the memory of the movie, what you remember about that evening as much as what you saw.

I do this with Easy Rider, sometimes I watch it and it's great, other times it feels dated and sometimes just corny. But then, there's The Searchers, one of my alltime favorites and what's interesting about this one is that I still enjoy watching it.

Okay, I remember going to Easy Rider with a date who wore a mini-skirt just after they all came out in around 1967 or so. And it was a mini that could take on any clothes of today.

And I remember The Searchers, seeing it as a kid of 10 in a small town theater. Yet every time I watch it, and I've seen it at least 30 times, it's always new, there's always something in it that I didn't catch before.

So what's the difference?

It's a better-made movie. Directed by John Ford, who won 6 Oscars in his career and who had a way to make the movie better. Ford had a way of putting little idiosyncrenicities into his characters and scenes, little bits as actors call them, the way someone rolled their cigarette or rode a horse or just spoke. Little things that made them human. And usually things that producers hate because few producers really understand the subtleties of life.

And knowing those subtleties means you have lived life.

But there was something that all the movies had up to the 1990's. They were the event. You would talk about going to see the latest movie on Fridays, there was no iPhones or iPads or tweets, just the movies. And TV of course, but TV didn't spend the money that movies did, movies were truly bigger and wider and louder and more exciting.

TV was related to doctor shows and cop shows and lawyer shows. Ironically the same as now. But then there came the CSI shows which pushed the envelope in terms of filming like a movie. This new way to shoot TV dramas started some time ago, the X-Files was one of the first to shoot dark images and shadows.

With digital cameras they can now give TV shows the look of a movie, any CSI episode that show you that.

That hit the movies hard, not to mention that a whole new generation of writers who were raised in relatively easy lives that gave them little inspiration beyond writing shows that copied the TV shows they saw as kids.

The great writers came from WWII, they either served or they were kids and many of them were outsiders, guys mostly, who came back from the horror of war or hitchhiked across the country, riding trains, working in fields, living life. And they usually wrote great scripts although mixed in with a few bad ones here and there.

What they wrote about were issues, disguised as entertainment. There was always a bigger picture than the story. Take Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, about migrant workers in the 30's. The book caused a stir in America, Republican politicians condemned it. And John Ford made the movie in 1939 and Republican politicians threatened to have it pulled from theaters.

Most of the great movies have messages that stir the heart and mind, and most people don't get them, but that doesn't matter, the message is still there. Of the movies now, I would say Avatar had that, it was essentially a 1970's script with 21st century CGI. This year's Woody Allan movie also has a bigger message, that the past isn't always as great as you think, it's just the past.

One of the best younger writers around now, although way past 40 is Alan Sorkin, and if you want to read the hell he went through just in his personal life with drugs, you can see why he's good. He's been there.

Each week in LA there are 5 to 10 new movies released, most of them independent movies where the distributor rents a theater for 2 weeks to say the movie played "theatrical", which enhances it for DVD distribution (and now streaming). And most of them are not very good, some weeks they're all really mediocre.

So what do studios do? You know that, bigger and better.

Remember the Lone Ranger? On TV it was a fairly inexpensive show, but with Johnny Depp, it's going to be $215 million. We're talking about a couple of horses, some wide open spaces and some gunfights. $215 million?

How can a western cost that much? Well, Johnny gets his piece. But after that, where is the money going to be spent? Cowboys and Aliens wasn't a success, considered a flop even with Harrison Ford although Harrison is getting long in the tooth. And it didn't cost as much, even with massive CGI effects.

And the best part is this; they're re-arranging the movie just slightly. Instead of the Lone Ranger being the lead --- Tonto, his faithful Indian companion is the lead. So it's The Lone Ranger, but the Ranger plays second fiddle. In a genre that only anyone over 45 can relate to. And they stay home to watch CSI.

At least in the series, Tonto was played by Jay Silverheels, a real Indian from Canada.

Now to see The Lone Ranger from the 1950's go to Materials and click on LONE RANGER.

Are movies relative anymore Pt 1

2011-10-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

There is a great amount of debating going on now in the movie industry. In short, it comes down to that famous and overused saying from William Goldman.

Nobody knows anything.

Movies have changed dramatically in the last 5 years. DVD sales have slumped as people prefer to rent from Netflix and Redbox and that approaching gorilla, streaming video. And if the studios are wondering why they're beginning to see sales of movies go flat, they just have to look in the mirror.

First let's look at the business end.

Studios made a lot of money on VHS movies, both for sale and for rent in both corporate video houses like Blockbuster and mom&pop shops. It was a whole new way to get money from their vast libraries of movies. They discovered that not only new movies were sought, but also old ones too.

It was good times.

Then DVD entered the picture, and it was even better as they realized that customers would not only buy the new DVD movies but also would buy the old movies they already had on VHS but wanted the superior pictures of digital video. This also happened when people began to buy CD's to replace cassettes and vinyl records.

It was good times again.

And then the studios got greedy and said "let's sell movies everywhere!"And DVDs began showing up in your local supermarket by the movie magazines at the checkout. They were everywhere, the pharmacies, gas stations, liquor stores and finally -- the Red Box.

The Red box, usually at supermarkets but now in other stores, was simple, like buying a chocolate bar. Simply slide in your credit card and get a movie for $1. Yes, one dollar.

But some other people did not like this at all. Who?

The theater owners, that's who. Movies were coming out too fast from the studios. And networks began to show their old shows on the internet. For free.

So who was losing money here? The theater owners who depend on movies playing at their theaters for as long as possible. That's how they make money. And releasing movies too soon takes money away from them.

And that's where we are now.

This week, a movie called Tower Heist with Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller was set to open Nov. 4 and then be released 3 weeks later via VOD (video on demand) to 2 sample cities, Portland and Atlanta where people could pay $59 to see it at home.

Do you see something wrong here?

Without debating the worth of that particular movie, except to say Eddie Murphy movies have flopped for the last 10 years, the thing here is this: The theater owners were afraid that could cut into their ticket sales. Most big movies last at least 3 weeks in theaters.

And would you be willing to pay $59 for any movie 3 weeks after it's released rather than wait for a few more weeks to buy it at $9.95?

So the studios now have backed off and everyone is still unhappy because sales are dropping steadily. And studios wonder how they can bring back those heady days of VHS again, this time with the internet being another big gorilla in the room.

There are two things that I can see; first the studios oversold their movies and in doing so made movies less important. Up until the mid 90's movies were still a big-ticket item, they were special and you would go to see movies in theaters.

By putting movies into any store that had a counter, I think that it made movies less special. You can buy a movie and corn flakes at the same store. And Red Box was renting the for $1. And movies lost their magic.

And secondly, we have a generation that's used to getting things for free (except anything from Apple whose mark-up is outrageous) and that includes movies.

What's the solution? Need I say it again? "nobody knows....

But there's another side to the movie problem... but that's for the next blog.

How great is great?

2011-10-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

A relatively unknown man named Ralph Steinman died from pancreatic cancer three days before he could receive the Nobel Prize for medicine, shared with two partners. Coincidentally he was Canadian. The irony is that he never learned that he would be receiving the Nobel Prize.

What he did is discover the dendritic cell which his fellow scientists say has greatly enhanced how the body's immune system works and has paved the way for cancer treatments and other diseases. Not a cure, but something that will bring a cure closer.

A few days later, Steve Jobs also died of pancreatric cancer and the world watched endless hours of tributes and millions of tweets from the man who gave us the MacIntosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad and how much he contributed to the world.

No, I'm not going to trash Jobs, he did not deserve to die so young and he was one of a kind. But I think that now, in the next week or so, we'll begin to see editorials and letters about his failings and I guess it's inevitable that such a huge reaction will be followed by those who will bring out his almost draconian corporate rules, his revenge against those who opposed him and the poor condition of the Chinese factory workers, 10 of them who leapt to their death because of harsh work conditions.

But I found it interesting how pancreatic cancer involved both of them, the scientist who was and trying to find a cure and one of the innovators of the personal computer who created products to entertain us.

So yes, I just got tired of the constant coverage of Jobs, yes, he was brilliant. But so was Steinman and he got a quarter of a page for one day.

The interesting thing about Steinman, is that after he got pancreatic cancer, he chose to become a test tube for any kind of treatment that was available for study. Since he was dying, he figured he'd continue his study of immunity as far as his body would let him. He was also named co-recipient of the $500,00 Albany Medical Center Prize, the largest award in medicine in the U.S.

Watching the Jobs coverage I wonder where our values are now. What's more important; a cure for cancer or an iPod that plays 15,000 songs. I guess it depends on one's values.

Jobs was responsible for opening up the world to some extent for the blind and deaf, but he wasn't the innovator nor the only computer manufacturer to do so. And as far as the iPod, Sony came out with the Walkman in 1980 and it was a major change in that one could carry a small portable cassette player with them all the time. With earphones too.

So why all the attention for Jobs?

Well, first of all we now have more media coverage of everything than ever in the history of the world. Something happens in Uzbekastan and we hear about it immediately, that is if it has a good hook. As the old news saying goes, "if it bleeds, it leads". When I worked in TV news, both as writer, cameraman and soundman, I learned early that news was when something bad happened to someone.

But we now have, thanks to Jobs and Gates and all the others, the ability to instantly tell the world what we feel. And it's infectious; one starts and then another and then millions and pretty soon it's a movement and everyone wants to be included.

And so what Jobs helped create was also the reason that the outpouring of tributes and messages in the millions took place. Remember that Americans in the west didn't know that Abraham Lincoln was president for almost 2 months.

When Michael Jackson died, his family and the world mourned the "greatest entertainer ever". Was he the greatest? Nobody really knows as most of our perceptions are based on the values we have now, the world is a little smaller and to some, everything's been done. All we're doing is refining it.

Did Michael change the world? Not as much the Beatles did. They literally changed the world, people began to dress like them, more bands than ever in history were formed by teenagers, including me and long hair... well it's still a style today.

But the world again rained tributes and messages to them and to each other. A celebration of being part of something big.

So consider that the media, mostly TV and internet and newspapers, now run 24 hours and thus need content. So when someone important, or mildly important dies, they jump on it and try to find family, friends or anyone who they can interview in their "breaking news". Jobs was a natural, a California boy and he did change his world, primarily that of how to listen to music and extending the idea of a laptop into the iPad.

Steinman got a short mention as did his 2 partners, for their research. They didn't appear on CNN or MSNBC or ABC or any of the news shows. CNN seemed to run almost 24 hours of Jobs and in the LA Times today an article talks about "a world without Jobs".

So who's the guy above with lightning in his hands?

Nikola Tesla was arguably the 20th century's greatest genius and most people have never heard of him. Among his amazing inventions was invented A/C power, you know, that outlet on the wall that you plug your computer and your TV and your radio and your refrigerator into. Where would Jobs be without Tesla. Or us?

The LA Times had a headline Saturday that read "What will the world do now that Steve Jobs is gone?"

Well, it will continue. Genius is unique, and he had that. But genius isn't all that uncommon. When Alexander Bell was developing the telephone there were at least a dozen others who were working on their telephone at the same time. Bell never patented his telephone until his father-in-law actually went to the patent office and had it patented.

Two hours later another inventor came in to patent his phone, similar to Bell's. But it was too late. Had Bell not got his phone patented, he would never had the recognition he has to this day. Bell is a common word now.

Genius comes and goes, and there's always someone else out there who has the next great idea and there's also some scientist who sits for hours in a cramped lab somewhere who will also come up with one more advance in medicine, influenced by Steinman and probably listening to his iPod.

For the record, I have 4 computers, 2 Dell laptops and 2 Mac's (although one is ancient). And an iPod.

My oldest student

2011-10-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

I met Morrie Ludwig when he took a screenwriting class I taught at UCLA extension back around 2003-04. My classes were online rather than classroom and I found this method far better than giving a lecture and then having a student read some of their pages in a 2-hour frame.

While it meant more work, which ultimately was the reason I left after nearly 3 years as it began to interfere with my projects and at $180 week hardly covered the hours I spent. One of the differences between classroom and online was that online I was always available to the students, 24/7 as they say. Classroom instructors interacted with their students 2 hours a week.

I spent a lot of time talking to students through email almost every day and had the habit of writing a lot of notes and comments, which I would post on my course page. Students would also post their work for me and for other students to comment on. I still feel this method is much better than classroom in spite of the workload.

Eventually the workload became too much, especially after one semester where I had 15 completed screenplays anywhere from 70 to 130 pages in length. As I tended to give initial notes of anywhere from 4 to 8 pages, it took me a full week to write those notes and taking entire days. It just wasn't worth it anymore.

But back to Morrie.

He first emailed me that he was having trouble with the online application. It wouldn't accept his birthdate. I wasn't sure what he meant but was surprised to find out the reason.

Morrie was born in 1912 and the computerized application refused to acknowledge the date.

He was 91 years old.

We exchanged emails several times during the first week of the course and then I found out something else about Morrie. He was born in Manitoba within about a hundred and fifty miles from where I was born.

Both of us left Manitoba at the age of 12 as well. I moved with my family to Southern Ontario and Morrie left for San Francisco. Our emails began to talk about our lives, me in my early 50's and he at 91. I found out his wife had passed away and he had always wanted to write a screenplay so he took my course.

Morrie had already written a screenplay on his own, a golf story. And it was pretty good. My course was about writing a new screenplay and he was ready. As the months passed, Morrie moved to Los Angeles to be with some family as he was alone up north. That's when we decided to meet.

I chose the perfect restaurant, Musso and Frank's, which opened in 1919. Known for the movie stars, writers and other celebrities over the years, the restaurant still hangs on to it's traditions and going there is stepping back into history.

We hit it off perfectly, each told stories about our upbringing and started a friendship that would carry on for 3 years. He took one more class and then decided that was enough but by then he moved to a senior development where he bought a very nice 2-bedroom home overlooking an open green space.

I would drive to Palm Desert every two months or so and we would make dinner for his brother and his wife as well as his 75-year old niece who begged him not to reveal her age to her 70-year old former bandleader.

For me it was a time of listening to stories about big bands, adventures and old friends as I sat and listened. Morrie had maculer degeneration in his eyes but he could still fire off a handful of golfballs to within a few feet of the hole from 20 feet away. "It's the feel, not the eyes", he would tell me.

And he wasn't above flirting with a lovely barmaid in Palm Springs, or any woman for that matter. And as I was by far the youngest person around, I got a lot of attention from the ladies in their 80's and 90's. One even showed me her nude painting done when she was thirty.

On one of my trips to my home town in Manitoba, I took a side trip to where Murray grew up to the age of 12. It was an empty field and a stone monument stood near the gravel road. No cars passed and only a few cows watched me for a moment or two.

This was Bender Hamlet where he was born. It was founded in 1906 and a small group of Jewish settlers attempted to work the land. Unfortunately the land was very poor and rocky and they struggled until many left for Winnipeg. There was no real indication that anyone had every lived there now, just the wind and the rushing sound of poplar tree leaves.

Morrie had funded the plaque back in the 1970's and it still stood there in perfect condition. I had taken a Sears catalog I found and took a handful of popular leaves as well as some prairie flowers and pressed them in the thick catalog.

Months after I gave the leaves and flowers to Morrie and tears began to fall. He hugged me and said "thank-you". Poplar trees are in the aspen family and their leaves have a distinctive sound that anyone who grew up on the prairies immediately recognized. It may sound kind of dorky, but it's real.

Later my brother visited Morrie with his family and Morrie again was the gracious host. He even had an "affair" with a lovely woman in her 70's, which he described to me in detail.

As things happen, I went home to Canada for Christmas and when I returned and called Morrie, his phone number was gone. He had passed away at the age of 93, peacefully in his sleep.

Last year, I visited Bender Hamlet again and walked the empty fields while the popular leaves shimmered and sparkled and remembered my friend. A car drove off the road and onto the field, it was a young couple and not knowing I knew who put the plaque up, told me the story that people heard, about a man who paid for the plaque because he was born there. They thought he was famous, because he came from California and they liked that he was born around here.

Then they drove off and left me alone, only the cows watched.

As we get older, things that didn't mean much when we were young seem to matter more now and the passing of friends and even the sound of leaves seem to be more important than they used to be. I miss Morrie but have a treasure of stories to remember.

You can see a very short video of Morrie by going to Materials and clicking on "Morrie".

Or try this link; http://www.youtube.com/user/jmak2268#p/u

Re-inventing boomers or like anyone under 30 needs to hear this

2011-10-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I dropped by a restaurant here in Sherman Oaks called Corky's. It's one of those classic 60's places like Norm's, huge meals for decent prices and photos of the valley on the wall going back to the 1930's.

I was there to hear a friend of mine sing in the bar which itself was classic. There were a handful of people there, a guy at the bar and definitely a 60's or 70's feel to it. You'd almost expect Jim Garner as Rockford enter to get info from a con man.

My friend was also the lead actress in Ghostkeeper way back in 1980. She never really sang until last year, never even imagined singing. Even her ex-husband was surprised. Like most of us she had her ups and downs and managed to raise her daughter and send her through school after the divorce. She also teaches yoga.

In her late 50's, she would qualify for that almost new word reinvention that's being used more and more as boomers age. Just to qualify it, boomers are that age group born from 1946 to 1964, meaning the oldest ones are 65 and the youngest are around 47.

So what about writers?

I posted this question on the WGA writer's website, not the official one, but a separate website only accessed if you're WGA. I got 3 replies.

Out of at least several hundred writers.

Three.

Does that mean 99% of WGA writers are under 46? No, it means either they don't care or they don't want to bring it up. More writers than you think have short careers, some with one screenplay to their credit. How does one reinvent themselves when all they do is write.

I've often said that much of my survival in this business was due to the fact I was experienced in making films, filming, editing, sound and other aspects. I'm still doing this and at present have a pilot for a half-hour travel series unlike anything out there so far.

I did the pilot myself, along with a friend, filming in Nevada and then editing it. You've probably seen the 5 minute trailer for it, it's on the list on the left side of this blog. I've also just finished the novelization of Emperor of Mars and hope to have it on Amazon in the next few weeks.

And I'm considering a book on screenwriting. Isn't that what you do when you don't have a real job? Like we need another book on screenwriting?

Why not?

Mine would be based on my UCLA lectures as well as probably some of this blog that deals with writers and writing. And it wasn't my idea, okay, so don't start on the ego thing, this is more the practical thing.

Reinvention.

Nobody's buying my screenplays right now, Christmas Carole is on hold until probably next year as 3 companies say they want to make it, the trouble is that Hallmark has it's quota of Christmas scripts this year with deal from Larry Levinson, who brings movies in cheaper than anyone else.

The only other markets have specific topics; Lifetime only wants true woman-in-jeopardy stories, ABC Family wants family stories featuring the next Hannah Montana.

But it gets better and worse. Better for boomers and worse for under 30's. Several studies show that a significant amount of under 30's are found to be unreliable and not much interested in jobs. Not all of them, okay, but a significant amount.

As a young comedian said on Letterman when he found difficulty in finding a job, "it was obvious that my parents hadn't told the world how brilliant I was".

Bummer, huh?

I remember my grandfather, who at 67 spent his days staring out the window until he finally died. Boomers seem to want to hang onto youth no matter what it takes. Employers find they can use retired boomers for less money and can count on them doing the job.

And then there's Andy Rooney from 60 Minutes who finally retired last night from his weekly short clips. He was 92 and wasn't stopping writing, just quitting the show.

So I guess I'm still a bit away from being a Walmart greeter, but I'm practicing the smile just in case.

A Buyers Market

2011-09-29T06:51:00.000-07:00

I caught a TV movie a few nights ago directed by a friend of mine starring an actress who was a teen idol in the 80's. She was great as a troubled teen but now pushing late 40's. The movie was one of those made by a local producer who specializes in cheap movies for TV which are becoming the norm.

This movie cost about $750,000 and looked it, shot on a 20 day schedule in which everyone, the actors, the crew and the director worked for basic rates. One director I know had a job that paid $25,000 which sounds like a lot, but consider that 20 years ago he would have been paid $75-$100,000.

That was when TV movies were made for $2.5 million to $3.5 million. But those days are gone. I attended a party around 2005 at the Roosevelt Hotel across from Mann's Chinese theater which was referred to as "The Death of TV Movies" party.

Almost all my credits were TV movies, a genre that began in the late 60's and I caught the end of them around 2005. Survivor, the reality TV happened, cheaper to make and it got ratings. What was left was Hallmark, Lifetime, ABC Family and Sci-Fi Channel.

They discovered that it was truly a buyer's market and it wasn't long before budgets dropped and fewer writers worked. My last movie, the Christmas story, was made for under $1 million and shot in 12 days. In an odd way, the price reflected the episodic series of the late 1950's in which half-hour episodes were made for even less than now and in 5 days.

Screenplays now are pretty much up for grabs, if you go to InkTip, Mandy or even Craigslist, you get producers looking for completed screenplays with themes like the following:

A Christmas story with a dog
Limited horror location stories
A script with elements of Fargo, Psycho, American Horror and Lars and the Real Girl
High concept script with characters that don't get killed off in unique ways.
Serial killer scripts
Feature length Christmas story for a budget of $300,000.
Scripts with fairies as the main characters
Horror creature story set in the old west
Female martial arts
Scripts with good coverage

Some of those scripts offer a deferred salary or payments of $1500 and more if the movie gets made. And if you think these ads are by small-time producers, one of them is from Universal Studios.

And these guys get hundreds of screenplays to read, most of which aren't very good and made with actors who were supporting actors in series 20 years ago because that's all the producers can afford on the budgets that the companies I mentioned earlier are demanding.

And they really are demanding, paying as little as $500,000 for a TV movie. And that's why many end up in Canada or Louisiana where tax credits can supply another $250,000 or more and maybe a sale to Canada and Great Britain. Most European countries don't buy American TV movies as much anymore, they make their own.

But what bothers me most about those themes/genres above is that all these producers want is something like the latest hit movie in whatever genre. Nobody's asking writers for a story that they wrote with all their heart or even a story they had to tell. Granted, that might not make money, but yet, that's what writing is about. Spec scripts should be anything that a writer has passion for (yeah, that over-used expression) because passion is what a good script is about.

It's not about copying the latest $100 million movie that some producer thinks he can match on a budget of $300,00. And I'm not dumping on genre films, write what you want to write and hopefully what you need to write. I've got a stack of spec scripts that have never been made and probably won't get made, but that doesn't stop me from writing a new one because I truly love writing.

Ironically the tale of screenwriters seems to be following the economy, wherein at least 27 million Americans are out of work with no real hope of finding work. And remember, I'm talking about the TV movie, not episodic nor tentpole blockbuster movies made from comic books. Those genres have their own problems, the least of which is originality and freshness.

And the baby-boomers have no great need to let go of their hold of this country, around 70 million, meaning that it is harder for the younger ones to grasp a piece of the pie are who are left trying to find their piece, be it movies, airline pilots, business or whatever. As a boomer, I plan on hanging around because I happen to like writing and making documentaries.

What does work?

A good story, of course. And how do you get a good story? You write and write and write. Like I always say, writers don't need a job to write, they just need an idea. And there's lots of ideas around. It should be about something, not just a copy of a film you liked. Remember that William Faulkner wrote all his books in his little town in the south, remarking that every story there was, was in his home town. You don't have to travel to Paris to write a screenplay, you just have to look around.

You might even have a Chinese action-driven script ready.

The real writer's world.

2011-09-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

Hopefully some of you have stuck around. I was gone on a bit of a holiday and had little access to emails. Regardless of that, I'm finally back in LA.

As some of you know, this blog started in August of 2009, which begat a whole lot of blogs, starting with 3 new blogs every week and now only two. I've repeated myself a few times, have had a few disagreements with some of you and find myself still here.

You've also seen at least 3 projects I've started in the last 2 years and two of them failed to start up. The first was Travel Day, which the entire blog is titled. It fell apart after major financing fell through in Canada. Shirley, whom you remember is still active and we are still talking about making a film together.

Then came the TV series which caused a few disagreements between myself and a mystery person who seemed to have their life goal to see me discredited. Believe me, there are better things to do with their spare time. I have exceeded all expectations that anyone had of me so I have little to worry about when someone wants to prove me wrong.

Nobody knows anything anyway, as William Goldman once said.

That followed by the reading of Casualties of Love, the no-budget film I hoped to make last year. However, after filming the reading, I found I didn't like the screenplay and set it aside until such time I would address it again and hopefully discover what is wrong with it.

And finally Ghostkeeper re-appeared in my life. After 31 years, my first feature film, both written and directed by myself, reared it's head and found a new life. I've finished the "extras" including a great interview with 86-year old Georgie Collins and the DVD release will happen in early January.

Even as the DVD market is slowly giving way to streaming video.

And then there was Ghostkeeper 2, which I wrote in the hopes that I could finance it to film this November. As of now, it seems it might be late winter 2012.

So what is this re-assessment all about?

I've given you a really good look at a writer's life from every angle, and always honest and truthful. Maybe I mixed up some dates but at my age, that's allowed. What you've read is what most writers go through for their entire lives.

It's all about continuing no matter what and the truth is that you never really get to make all the movies you want. I have a list of around 35 screenplays on the "shelf" as they say. In other words 35 screenplays that have never been made. Some were close, some were never even considered.

So when a new writer comes to me with their first screenplay, expecting that it should be made, it's hard for me to offer suggestions. Especially if the screenplay isn't very good.

What's good and what isn't?

It is subjective to an extent, you can always find someone to agree or disagree with your choices. But ultimately there is something else and the only way I could describe it is "street creds" as the gangbangers say.

Until you have actually had a screenplay made and shown somewhere, theaters, TV, wherever, you aren't a writer. Same goes for jet pilots, bakers, whomever. Once you see your words said and your scenes work, you really don't know anything. And all you can do, or should do -- is to continue to write. And write.

Rejections are plenty in this business, only actors are rejected more than writers, and you learn to live with that. And as you can see in my part of this world, that sometimes I get a film made, and most of the time I don't.

But the ideas continue to flow and the projects continue to emerge. Besides what else could I do.

So it's back to the grind after my little Parisian moments and forward and onward.

Hope you stick around.

Still out of the loop

2011-09-23T08:04:00.001-07:00

Back on Monday, did some travel.

Out of town

2011-09-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

I'm out of town for a week more, doing some business with Ghostkeeper which I'll elaborate once it's clear, all good. Will try to post over the wk-end.

Canadian eh?

2011-09-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

I grew up with a great generation of Canadian actors,all of whom achieved success in the US. How about these names for a start:

Donald Sutherland
Keifer Sutherland
Raymond Burr (Perry Mason series)
Raymond Massey (who portrayed Lincoln)
Leslie Nielson
William Shatner
Keanu Reeves
John Candy
Michael J. Fox
Christopher Plummer
Jim Carrey

Then there's also movie mogul Jack Warner who started Warner Brothers, and Mack Sennett who did silents and Norman Jewison who directed Fiddler on the Roof among a dozen other great movies. And director David Cronenberg also.

And even the gorilla in the room; James Cameron.

All of the performers were solid actors, okay maybe Keanu doesn't do Shakespeare, but he has presence.

So who does the new generation have?

Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling.

Generally acknowledged as nowhere near the abilities nor the presence of the actors named before them. But what they do reflect is the fickleness of the audience. Reynolds is the Canadian Ben Affleck, or as my director friend says, "a hold in the screen". Like Ben, whose acting career careened after several flops, Reynolds is now facing the same fate, his 2 big box movies this year failed and he's only a star when he's in a movie with Sandra Bullock.

And like Ben, who realized he could change a career by directing films and being tight with Harvey Weinstein, Ryan now is directing.

Both Ryans are TV actors at best, one Ryan got an Academy Award nomination which defies all logic. One of the best performances ever was Donald Sutherland in Redford's Ordinary People, in which the two other stars got nominations for "chewing the scenery" as the saying goes.

There are also at least a dozen young Canadian actors who seem to populate WB shows and of course, Ellen Page, also nominated, and actually a good actress. But her biggest problem is that she looks 14. Think Patty Duke.

But the situation with American actors is pretty much the same, take for example the remake of Hawaii 5-0, where the entire cast walks over the lead actor, who has the presence of a wet rag.

So where are the great actors? Where are the new Cary Grants (maybe Clooney, but he's in the older category now), or the Robert Mitchums, John Waynes, Gary Coopers, Jimmy Stewarts, Jack Nicholsons, Warren Beattys, and so many others.

A feminist writer once referred to the new actors like Depp, Edward Norton, Toby MacGuire and others as "little lesbians" in that they were cute boys that seemed to be more feminine than masculine. And I still seem to think Leonardo is dressed in his dad's clothes.

Of course, competing with old stars like Mitchum and Wayne was no contest, they screamed masculinity, not that it's all that great either. But all of the older actors came out of hard times and wars, Steve McQueen and James Dean had difficult periods of growing up as did many more.

And I'm not even talking about Brando, there is nobody like him at all, or Montgomery Clift,who influenced an era of actors.

But like all things; the times change and in a time of mediocrity (see last week's blogs) it creates mediocre actors. Little lesbians and all.

At least this lack of presence and great talent seems to not be restricted to Canadians. I look forward to the new Sutherlands, or Massey's or even Carrey's.
"
Even Mary Pickford, a Canadian, was a star in her day. Because she had "it".

Where are the actors out there who "have it"? Judging from TV shows, it seems the leader of many shows (CSI etc) is usually an aging baby boomer for the boomer audience, and one who has some presence (Mark Harmon, Ted Danson, Tom Selleck) but the rest of the cast seems interchangeable with any actor on another series, you can't tell them apart.

But then I do like Jennifer Garner and Jessica Biel.

And they're not even Canadian, eh?

My Other Job

2011-09-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

I never really wanted to do anything in life.

At least that's what I think. On the first day of school in my little village of 500 people, my mom dropped me off at school and walked home. Shortly afterwards she heard me playing with my toys outside. I told her that I had tried school for awhile and didn't really want to do that.

But I managed to make my way through school, even getting a few jobs along the line that made me feel even stronger against doing work... of any kind. I failed Grade 10 because I didn't "apply myself" as the report card stated. No kidding.

But I was a natural for 2 subjects; History and English. Of those two I could not get enough. And one other thing; movies and TV. I list them as one as they were both equal partners. As I've said before in this blog, I could watch TV and see movies any day, any time.

I also worked on "the line" at Chysler, assembling Plymouth cars. My job was to jump in the car as it moved along the assembly line and hammer in trim around the ceiling. It took me 5 minutes to learn the job. Later I stepped in for workers taking their breaks. None of these jobs required serious training.

One job I stepped in for was done by a man who had worked there for nearly 20 years. It was at that point that I said I would never work in a factory again. But in a factory town, summer jobs were essentially factory jobs.

And then a miracle happened. At least it seemed like that.

I got a job at the local TV station and never looked back. July 9, 1969.

But this blog is about the "other job" isn't it. There is another job which I would be happy at if it's all I ever did. It matches the intensity of movies and TV and isn't related to them, sort of.

I am one of the best tour guides you'll ever meet. My tours are as simple as my home town and as complicated as driving 1200 miles in 4 days. And everything in between.

I've taken friends on my LA tours, based on what I think they would like to see and what I think they would never have discovered on their own. And if they want to go to Universal Tours or Disneyland I'll be happy to drop them off and pick them up at the end of the day.

I have ethnic tours of LA, tours where celebrities or gangsters died, tours of Pacific Coast Hwy and Malibu that you'd never discover yourself, including a Catholic retreat that has the best view of Malibu ever.

I've taken my brother to both Roswell and Area 51, have taken friends to Monument Valley and Grand Canyon, Yosemite NP, wineries in Tehachapi, Edwards Air Force Base where the shuttle would land now and then.

Tour Guide Jimmy.

I will show people Southern California as they've never seen it, deserted mining towns in the Mojave, Joshua trees as old as 600 years, creosote at least 1000 years old and the ugliest town in America (at least as far as I think, their football team plays on dirt, not grass).

I can take you to Canada via Montana and Utah and show you cafes and truckstops that aren't franchises or chains.

And this is where movies come in, I am still editing my documentary on Highway 50, dubbed the loneliest highway in America. That's the photo at the top of this blog. I also am going to do another doc on another "forgotten highway" as a potential pilot for a series on highways that were bypassed with interstate highways.

That and my insatiable curiosity are the best things I was given, and while I would suffocate in an office job, I am damn lucky that I was able to find a way to make money with my two interests; movies and travel.

I say this because a friend of mine, in his early 30's, is finding it difficult to chase his passion. He knows so much about cars but can't find a way to make money from it. His knowledge of this world is amazing. And I think most people go to work without that passion, most people fall into jobs, rather than plan for one.

But the thing that scares the hell out of me always lurks somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind.

What if I didn't walk into that employment office on that day, at that hour and talk to that employment advisor who had 3 different jobs to offer me. You know what the last one was.

Was it luck or was it something else?

But that's another blog.

Character writers?

2011-09-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about actors was always the character actors. Think of actors like Strother Martin, Dub Taylor, Walter Brennan and women like Cloris Leachman (still working), Agnes Moorehead and so many others.

These weren't the stars, they were the supporting cast. And they sure supported the stars, some of whom weren't really great actors in the first place. In short, a star was famous, a character actor was what made the movies enjoyable.

One of the best lines of dialog ever came from Strother Martin, who could forget "What we got here is a failure to communicate" from Cool Hand Luke.

There's another thing about character actors, good ones always worked. Whereas Hollywood is filled with almost stars, fallen stars and aspiring stars, those stars often dimmed. But a character actor would always find a job.

I worked once with Stuart Margolin, who played Angel on the 80's series Rockford Files. He was the co-star of a series I worked on. It was amazing how he could get the attention of the viewer simply by doing a little "business" as they say, a look, a twitch, an expression. That's all it took to get the viewer to focus on him.

Character actors never got the attention that the stars did, but they worked a lot more often.

So how does this relate to writers?

I suppose every writer has always hoped of making the big time and had dreams of climbing the stairs at Academy award time. But few do. Remember, there are around 10,000 screenwriters in the WGA, although it's hard to really get an exact number.

But every now and then, one of the lucky ones gets to climb those stairs. And the rest of us watch and dream.

I can divide writers into 3 categories; the famous ones, the one-hit wonders and the ones who somehow manage to work most of the time. The character actors of the writer's world. There are those who became famous; Robert Towne, William Goldman, Joe Eszterhas and Shane Black and a handful of others.

And then there's the rest of us. I always wanted to write a biography entitled "Working My Way to the Middle". Well, I never really was serious, besides I didn't have time, I was working a lot. And I still am.

I know two writers who sold one screenplay and have never sold anything else again even though they try and try. Nobody knows why, it's just the god or goddess of writers who decides and he or she isn't telling why or how.

I've had a good run with 18 movies, some of which were rewrites, all of which were "Page 1's" as the term is used. Meaning a rewrite that started at page 1, and going through the entire screenplay. I've been rewritten twice on movies, more on series.

And now, as a aging screenwriter, I continue to write and have plans to write at least 2 specs this fall and winter as well as continue to look for funding for Ghostkeeper 2 and Emperor of Mars. I'm also considering a "crowdfunding picture", wherein funds are solicited online. It's an interesting format, I might do a blog on that whole premise.

So there it is, some writers get an assignment a couple of times in their career, others become stars, but some of us are lucky enough to find continuous work, not as highly paid as the star writers but working more often than not.

Mediocrity

2011-08-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

Mediocre - of only ordinary or moderate quality; barely adequate.

-Websters Dictionary

The subject of mediocrity recently rose it's mediocre head while I was driving in L.A. I was noticing all of the late model cars, SUV's, Crossovers etc. etc. I was daydreaming slightly, wondering what kind of vehicle I would buy if I decided to trade in the old Ford Explorer with over 200,000 miles on it. I came to a conclusion after a few blocks.

All the cars look the same. All the SUVs look the same. All the cross-overs look the same.

When I was around 8 or 9 years old, my dad used to play a game with me when we were driving. Since I didn't have an iPod or DVD player, this being the late 50's, I had only my imagination. Our game was simply "what kind of car is that coming up to us?"

The first one to identify an oncoming car was the winner. One of us had to shout out "Ford", or "Chevy" and so on. At this point I'm sure half of you have left my blog to check your apps, but hang around. The thing was that every car had it's own distinctive shape and design and they had bright colors. Look around today, sometimes it seems every car is white, black, gray or silver.

The point of this in today's language is that you can't really identify most vehicles approaching because they do look the same. My friends ask me when I will let the Explorer go but I plan to keep it. My inspiration is a man from the eastcoast who bought a Volvo in 1961 and has accumulated 2.1 million miles on it and is still driving.

At 201,200 miles I have a way to go.

And that 1968 Fastback Mustang above was my 2nd car.

But mediocrity isn't just about cars. I began to realize it's around us in almost everyway. Apple launches the iPad and within a year every other company capable has an imitation that looks the same.

Clothing now for twenty-somethings doesn't reflect anything but a lack of imagination for a specific look, rather a collection of mediocrity. The 1920's had a radical change, as did the 1940's, the 1950's and certainly the 1960's. Give a mention to disco days and after that styles seemed to get mixed up with each other.

One of the creators of 100 channel cable and satellite services (now up to 200 channels or so) said that when he and his partners were creating the superchannel lineup at a time when most people had maybe 5 to 20 channels, they felt they were creating a radical new medium.

But after 10 years he realized what they really did create. In his own words; mediocrity.

Music is another example. In the mid 60's a whole new generation came of age (yeah, me too), much of the music was pure, meaning it wasn't really a copy of anything. In the book Laurel Canyon, by Michael Walker he brings up the point that people like Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Steve Stills, Neil Young, John Phillips and many others were singing a completely new style of music. Their own.

Nash says that they would just write songs and release them and some worked, some didn't. Today when one singer has a hit song, the record companies immediately send out scouts to find a dozen other singers who look like, and sing like the one with a hit song.

I still think most of the younger female singers all sound like Maria Carey.

And going back to cable TV, while the creators hoped for exciting and brilliant broadcasting and niche audiences, what resulted was the showing of older TV shows over and over again. At one time you could watch 4 or 4 Seinfelds on the same night.

One could argue that this was going on during the 60's and 70's but with 5 channels in Detroit/Windsor nobody played repeats because they didn't have any. You could see I Love Lucy however, which is still playing.

And of course, getting back to movies, all you have to do is to see the remakes Hollywood has put out, some successful like Rise of the Apes and some flops like the new Conan. With Knocked Up, came another series of copycats, some good, some bad. And titles seemed derivative or at the best, lame.

So what's the answer? Are we living in mediocrity?

You can take your lead by reading about The Singularity, which relates to quantum physics and the rapid development of computers and, ultimately robots as smart or smarter than us. It's a theory that suggests technology is moving faster and faster and teens today will be left behind by technology by their early 30's and even their kids won't be able to catch up.

Quantum physicists like Miciho Kaku suggests there are three consequences of The Singularity; one is that robots take over like Terminator and destroy us, secondly the world will be a perfect dream place where all is wonderful for humans, and the third is that everything stays the same as now.

So there you go - identifying cars to Terminator. And here's my favorite car, it was a 1968 Ford Mustang that I bought for $1700 in 1969.

What "they" are looking for among other things

2011-08-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

There are now at least a dozen websites that can help the aspiring screenwriter write a box-office blockbuster. All that is needed is either Screenwriter or Final Draft softwares. Oh, and the guidance of sure-fire screenwriting gurus to guide you.

For a fee, of course.

How about this one: 21 Steps to a Powerful Rewrite.

With these steps you can:

1. Triple the quality of your screenplay.
2. Cause you to win contests.
3. Attract producers to your writing.

With promises like that, especially implying that this will happen, who wouldn't attend. And there's no charge* (asterick as written in the ad). But it's limited to only 100 callers. All you pay is long distance fees.

Yes, this is a "tele-seminar".

As you remember, I actually did teach screenwriting for UCLA extension classes for just over 2 years. Eventually I left because it was taking too much of my time for very little money as well as I was burned out from the amount of work I did for the students. I taught an on-line course with people from all over the USA, Canada and even Europe.

The biggest difference between onsite (which I did once) and online, is that the online teacher is always accessible. Day or night. It become more than a part-time job to me as I seriously cared about what I taught and how it was received.

And the one thing I learned from it all was this; I can show you how to write a screenplay but I can't show you how to write a great screenplay. For one good reason.

That part has to come from you.

And most aspiring writers don't have it. And they likely never will. There is no shortcut to writing, you have to write. And write and write. You wouldn't believe the amount of students I had whose dream was to write one blockbuster then go off to be a dentist or supermarket manager. Really.

Am I bursting someone's dream?

Maybe, but I'm being real. Writers write, simple as that.

I took a week-end course once with Robert McKee, arguably the most noted screenplay guru along with Syd Field. He was very entertaining and had just enough rough edges that made the audience swoon. Everything he said made sense, it seemed so logical. As I left, everyone was buzzing about how brilliant he was and how it all seemed so easy.

But on Monday, all alone in my home office, it all dissolved into two things; me and that damn screen. An empty screen waiting for words to appear. And all the advice from McKee seemed to feel like a great movie you watched and after a few days, made you smile. It wasn't instruction - it was entertainment. And he's brilliant at it.

But it didn't help me write.

I had to resort to the usual thing; feel guilt until I forced myself to write. And since I had been doing this for years, I knew that I would do it even if it was guilt that forced me to write.

I'm sure these gurus can help some people, but it's ironic that almost all of them have never sold a screenplay. Isn't that like someone teaching you to fly who never has flown alone themselves?

One thing I did notice was that when I taught at UCLA, the majority of students signed up for my class because I had a dozen or more credits in features and episodic. And again, if you look at the instructors at UCLA, you will find very few who are still working, someone said you should never put a UCLA extension credit on your resume, it suggests your career is over. My agent even refused to put the credit on my credit list.

And of course, I mean this in the nicest way.

The last time I did a course at UCLA it was for "the Rewrite" and I had 15 students with screenplays anywhere from 70 to 150 pages. Try writing 5-8 pages of notes for that many people in a week!

I did that. And it was soon apparent this was a full-time job. All for $180 wk. And when I and a few other writers suggested the school cut the numbers back they said that was a great idea but not possible. Just remind the students to take the next class next semester.

If you're contemplating one of those screenwriter guru's course, by all means take it. You might learn a few things and you might not. But I'm sure they're all fun, lots of jokes, lots of fundamentalist-type speeches that might even inspire you.

Just keep in mind that when you write, you won't be in a crowd enjoying some entertainment a little bit of inspiration. If you get that much, it'll be worth it.

And I don't know what a "tele-seminar" is.

The digital state of things - what you want or what they want.

2011-08-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

I missed my Thursday blog due to the ongoing conflicts between my Mac computer and Final Cut Pro, an editing software that cost around $1200 and was intended as an upstart "affordable" software to do battle with the gorilla in the room, namely Avid, which has been a standard in digital editing for years.

I started editing on FCP about ten years ago and it took me a good 2 years to really become comfortable with it. You might ask why film editing for a writer and sometimes director and/or producer?

I started out in editing, got a job at a TV station and I cut in 16mm commercials into the late movies for the station. In addition I worked in TV news, first as a soundman and then later as a news cameraman on the streets. I also edited news stories.

Somewhere afterwards I began to write, produce and direct commercials and corporate films and finally filmed, along with my partner Phil Borsos, a short film called Cooperage, about a barrel factory that won several international awards and was a finalist for the 1976 Academy Awards.

Then came my first feature, Ghostkeeper, followed by my moving to USA in 1990 and a reasonably good list of screenwriting credits.

And then, with digital video, came home editing and this changed my life once again. I didn't care for the amateur systems and since I got comp classes at UCLA while I taught extension classes there, I took several FCP classes with DV (digital video).

What it gave me was a whole new world of creativity, because now I could shoot and edit a complete documentary or short film all by myself. Gone were film costs, lab costs, post production costs. I could do it all on a Mac. (Incidentally 90% of what I do is on PC). As I write this I am finishing a documentary I shot on Highway 50 in Nevada, dubbed the "loneliest highway in America". In fact the highway image at the top of the blog is a still from my Hwy 50 doc.

I also shot and edited a 45 minute doc on my home town's 100th anniversary and sold over 200 copies at $20 each.

Then came High Definition.

I held out for years but in the last 3 weeks, I was dragged into the HD world whether I wanted to or not. Which brings me to the title of this blog.

The digital world gives sharp and clear pictures. But getting something finished isn't always easy. It's a world of codecs and formats and conflicts between the edit system and the information found in HD. There are a hell of a lot more 1's & O's than DV and a lot more problems.

Going back to flatbed film edit systems, all that you needed to know was that you flipped a switch ahead or back and the film would go in that direction. The only technical part came if the machines broke down. Which they rarely if ever did.

Not so with digital. I am finishing the "extras" for the Ghostkeeper 1980 re-release and had footage from two places, Calgary and Vancouver, with interviews of one of the actresses and the DP.

The actress footage, about 47 minutes, was done with the Canon 5D slr, in other words a still camera that has suddenly become hot for filmmakers as it's chip is equal to the size of a 35mm film frame. That means a better picture.

However the sound was done on a separate recorder. Which meant that I had to sync up the sound with the picture. In film it was done with the help of a tuning fork in both the film camera and the recording player. Now you would think that would be easy in digital as film is so "analog".

But no, you sync digital video and audio manually with a slate or "Hand Clap". Why digital doesn't have a more sophisticated system is a mystery. Film cameras had it for maybe 50 years or so.

Problems started at the outset, and continued, the colors were wrong, the sync wouldn't sync and on and on. And the other footage wasn't very sharp and had dropouts. Now remember this is all the wonderful digital age system.

Thankfully, I had Shirley. You remember her from Travel Day, the film that Shirley and I attempted to make, and the title of my entire blog. Not only is she a genius at FCP, she also knows codecs and all that stuff.

But another sync problem happened over the wk-end and I'm back, to some point, at the beginning. I spoke to the distributor Friday and he's okay with it but will contact the dvd duplicator later this week.

So I have another 48 hours or so, and I still have to edit the now fixed-up footage of the DP.

This is why I go on mini-vacations.

And yeah, that guy with the hair and the beard is me a million years ago.

5 Things to do in LA if you're a writer

2011-08-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a writer friend of mine who is now heading up a film course at a Vancouver school asked me if I could recommend 5 places that every aspiring writer should either do or visit if they came to L.A. for a few weeks.

I spent some time thinking and ruling out the obvious; Universal Tour, Disneyland and that stuff. I figured that it should relate to writing or for that matter acting as actors and writers share the same dreams much more than the other crafts. There are more of them than any of the crafts as well, considering there are well over 125,000 SAG actors and 10,000 writers in WGA and God knows how many who aren't in either guild.

After all isn't everyone in America writing a screenplay?

So here goes, and in no particular order.

The Academy Library is a must. This is where everything you ever wanted to know about the movies going back to 1881! There are screenplays, photographs, production materials, notes, biographies as well as any single topic associated with motion pictures. And the building is classic southern California.

One pointer, the staff regard this museum as though it was Fort Knox, the security is equal to airport inspection, but it's all free and you can spend hours, even days in it. You need ID.

Hollywood Heritage Museum is just opposite the Hollywood Bowl and is one of the earliest studios built in Hollywood. Cecil B. DeMille and Jessie Lasky converted the barn to a studio and you can examine the early filmmakers through photos, letters and a lot of old cameras and gear.

Studio tours at Warner's and Paramount are also great to see if you've never been in one. I still get excited like a kid when I get to go to a meeting or screening at any of the "lots". Universal's tour is ok, but much of it is about the rides. Paramount and Warner's take you onto the working lot. It never fails to inspire me.

Formosa is a restaurant and bar on Santa Monica next to the Samuel Goldwyn Studios (formerly Pickford-Fairbanks Studios. The Formosa is filled with history starting in 1925 and was host to almost every big star there was, Bogart, Warren Beatty, Brando, Bacall, James Dean, Judy Garland, Grace Kelly and so many others including Brittany Spears and even Paris Hilton. Order a dry vodka martini and sit back and imagine the scene 60 years ago and ask about the scandals even up to Shannon Dougherty's brush with the law.

Then there's the writer's best movie, Sunset Boulevard from 1950 with William Holden playing a down and out screenwriter who becomes a lover to an aging silent star, played to perfection by Gloria Swanson, herself a silent movie star. Joe Gillis (Holden's role) lives in a grand apartment building at 1851 N. Ivar just a few blocks from Hollywood Blvd. The building is still there and worth a look either before or after watching the movie.

And that's it for now. Let me know if you like this, I can drag out a lot more.

No blog today, editing

2011-08-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

Can't do blog today, I'm slowly going crazy with my editing of extras for Ghostkeeper. One of the cameramen in Canada decided to do 2 soundtracks, ambient sound and the sound on a lavalier mic on Georgie Collins.

What this means is lots of extra work for me, usually all I need is a single audio track from one mic, but no, it can't be that easy. I'm going from my Mac to my PC, where I find videos on Youtube and articles on how to sync different tracks.

It all seems so easy until I try it. Then nothing works.

I'm also not a particular tech editor, I can edit well enough but more from the creative side than the mechanical side. I can drive my car great but don't ask me to replace the engine or find out what's wrong with the transmission.

That's about the way I feel right now.

The Language of Writing

2011-08-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

"Writing is language. The use of language. The language to

create image, the language to create drama. It requires a

skill of learning how to use language."

- John Milius

There's the old argument that says writers are born to which some people suggest anybody can write. I know this; it took me a long time to learn how to write well, those who have followed this blog from the beginning probably remember the number of times I've said that.

Several years ago I taught screenwriting at UCLA extension classes and had about 250 or so students over the course of a little over 2 years. And of those 250 or so, I thought maybe 4 or so could become screenwriters.

Depending if they could live in L.A., constantly write, make contacts and know somebody who is working, be it writer, director, secretary, grip, anyone who can introduce you to someone who then can introduce you to someone else. And so on.

I wrote my first story in Grade 4, at least as far as I can remember. And it was about a young boy who wanted a bike. Obviously a self portrait. I did get the bike. I wrote a few stories in Grades 5 & 6, inspired by a young, beautiful teacher who took a liking to me. She continued to be an influence through the years and only recently passed away.

On the other hand I was not nurtured and primed by my parents, my dad was a mechanic who worked in a garage and my mom was my mom. My dad went to school as far as Grade 11, my mom had to drop out at Grade 8 to work for her father, a farmer. My father also played the violin professionally, something he loved more than anything else.

So there's a bit of talent in the family.

And then there were the movies. In a small farmland town of around 500 people, we had one theater and played one movie for three days and another for another three days. Sundays they were closed.

I quickly began to see every movie I could and from 5 yrs old to 12 yrs old, movies were my inspiration. I learned to read the credits, names of writers, actors, directors and even cameramen and someone called Edith Head who seemed to be on every movie.

Later as a teen in a big city I took a "Famous Writers" course, advertised in the back of comic books. But it didn't work out, more of a scam to take money than how to write. I wrote some stories in high school and college but nothing of any significance.

It wasn't until I got a job at a local TV station that I wrote professionally, and that was as a news writer. From there I never looked back.

The language of writing, when it's great, is not apparent. And that's the hardest part to teach, that is to write something that nobody notices. Bad writing is easily noticed, same as bad acting.

As Milius says, one has to learn the language of screenplays. You can also probably say that one should also learn how to read the language. So many studio and network readers now have no real idea how to tell a good screenplay from a bad one. They focus instead on the twists or the premise.

And far more people think all you need to become a writer is to buy Screenwriter or Final Draft, the pro softwares for all screenwriters.

And there's no shortage of "experts" ready and willing to help the aspiring screenwriter make their screenplay a blockbuster. The fact that most of these experts have probably never had a movie made or even never have written a screenplay defies any kind of logic.

Who would you rather have climbing a mountain with you on your first time; an expert climber or someone who's read a book about climbing?

And that's not an exaggeration.

The language in a good screenplay takes you into the story without you even knowing it, you feel, taste, smell the story, it takes you into a world of visuals. You can picture the movie fromo good language.

It took me a long time to learn these things, and it followed a typical formula, at first I copied screenplays. Literally. I rewrote The Deerhunter on my IBM typewriter twice. I copied the styles of Shane Black and Joe Eszterhas and even William Goldman and many others.

I began to notice in the last dozen years, writing flowed easily and that once I had the characters nailed down, I could write a screenplay in a few weeks. And the language did flow with the story.

But ultimately, there's one element that nobody can guess. The writing can be great, but the story can be bad.

And nobody can foresee that. Let's end with another Milius quote.

"You're either born a writer, a storyteller, or you're not. "

The Chemistry Test

2011-08-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been hearing about something called the "chemistry test". Naturally I thought it had to do with chemistry, as in bunsen burners and bubbling glass containers. But no, it's not that at all, it's something more abstract.

It's about actors.

Apparently the producers and studios want to be absolutely sure that the lead actors have chemistry, otherwise known as attraction, compatibility, comfort and any other vague quality that might translate to the movie.

Basically it's about how two actors relate to each other.

Bogart and Bacall had it. Astaire and Rogers had it. Hope and Crosby had it. Sean Connery and Candice Bergen had it. And lately Owen Wilson and Marion Coitillard had it.

Harrison Ford and Karen Allen had it in the first Raiders of the Lost Ark. But in the sequel with Kate Capshaw didn't have it.

Chemistry with actors is difficult to define, and there are probably as many theories as there are actors. Simply put, it means that the two actors, usually leads, seem to fit like a perfect glove.

One of the best examples is the Thin Man series with Nick and Nora, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy, who were probably one of the first couples that looked and felt like they really were in love with each other. It's also fun to count the number of cocktails they could down in the course of an 80 minute movie.

So now there is a chemistry test.

They take two actors, usually one is a big star and one is lessor, although it's not a rule. It's hard enough to learn lines but now to see if you get along and what's more, you can't really fake it. Chemistry is real, either it's there or it's not.

Johnny Depp and Angelina had no chemistry in The Tourist, just read the reviews. Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise had none, but Cameron and Jim Carrey had. And I'm sure Johnny and Angelina didn't test, they're too big. What it comes down to for you is this:

You enjoy watching them.

It's a magic of sorts that works sometimes, sometimes not. And the irony is that it has always been going on in Hollywood. They would test every actor together within the studio system, nobody was too big to not test, at least not for them. When a big star was tested, it was more likely for the actor who would play with them.

Testing seemed to disappear after the studios lost their actor talent to independent agents but it seems it is back.

Unfortunately, we don't have the caliber of actors we had in the 30's right through to the 80's. Watching most of the young "stars" now is less than exciting. Put Ryan Reynolds with Emma Stone and you have zero chemistry.

I'm sure there will be some who disagree but the movies show it. Some of the last few romcoms, Friends with Benefits and Crazy Stupid Love for example, took steep dives even with alleged "star power" of people like Ashton Kutcher and Steve Carrell whom some reviewers even remarked on the lack of chemistry between him and his female lead.

But the king of chemistry is probably Jack Nicholson, who seemed to work with all the actresses he worked with, Diane Keaton especially. He's one of those guys you always like to watch.

But there are fewer of them.

A weekend with ideas.

2011-08-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

I get asked often how I get my ideas. I've done a blog or two on this before but thought I'd update it a little more. First of all, I can't speak for all writers, probably even most of them as everyone would say something different.

But in the end it's all about one thing; a good story. Hopefully a good story.

Most of my screenplays are based on real events, either happening to me or to someone else. I learned a long time ago that real stories and real people are far more interesting than making them up, as some screenwriting books suggest.

I could never make up the stories I hear.

In June I went to visit my 98-year old aunt in Michigan. While there I visited my ex-wife, whom I hadn't seen in 26 years and we had a great evening talking about the good times we had. I realized afterwards that a lot of us boomers are at that age now when spouses are beginning to pass away, and I think we're going to see a lot of movies about that.

I even used it in my Christmas Carole script, which is being considered by two prodcos.

I also saw a cousin who, at 71, still doesn't know who her father was. Her mother died 6 days after she was born and that bit of closure, knowing who her father was, remains open,even though he would be long gone. That little bit of mystery remains.

This week-end I went to San Francisco to see a friend of mine who wrote a good book on how movies are made. She and her daughter who's 12, are going to Shanghai for a year, maybe too as her daughter is genius level and experts suggested she learn languages to slow her down a bit so she wouldn't end up in University at 15 or 16.

Her daughter now speaks fluent Chinese and both are looking forward to the adventure, and an adventure it is, my friend will also be teaching English for Chinese students.

Later in the day I drove west of San Francisco to Half Moon Bay in search of the legendary "Maverick" surf site, known for it's breath-taking and dangerous breaks. There were two aged wood crosses there, surfers who lost their lives. There already is a movie in the works.

The irony of "looking" at Maverick is that it's 2 miles offshore. So the only way an audience can see it is with binoculars or telescopes.

After that I had asked locals for a good breakfast cafe and was given bad directions but ended up at a little cafe on the side of the road. Several people were inside the tiny cafe and Stephanie, the owner, came out smiling, immediately I began asking about her place and she was only too happy to talk. That's her place above.

Turns out this is her 3rd restaurant, having left another cafe further south for her ex-husband and some family. Her smile and determination was contagious, I felt she could weather any storm, rain or life.

Later that same day I ended up at Clint Eastwood's Mission Ranch a hotel of sorts with several houses and a bed & breakfast feeling. At the bar I met a corporate pilot who was the same age as me, divorced and enjoying his lifetime job. The bar overlooks a pasture where sheep graze.

He began talking about living in Nashville and having musical friends, some of whom had encounters with fame and some who still searched for it. His stories didn't dwell with flying but rather with the demands of musical artists and the goals and failures.

So right there are a handful of stories, from my cousin to a pilot in Clint's bar (where, occasionally he comes in to play the piano now and then). Each of those stories could, with the right writer, or even me, be developed into a full screenplay.

The thing with it is, you need to be responsive to people, some pseudo writers sit in cafes in the corner working at a screenplay (I call that performance art) and shutting out the world. You never get a good story by shutting out the world.

If there was a secret to writing, it's that you watch and listen. Does this mean you're stealing ideas? Maybe. I like to think it's borrowing, it isn't their whole life, maybe just a piece of it. William Faulkner said he found all the characters in the world in his little Mississippi town, and his books translated all over that world.

One thing that is essential in this is that I am very unconfrontational, if that's a word, people feel at ease around me and that is something I worked on very hard. People tell me their stories and it all revolves around one thing;

I listen.

We all want the same things, the only difference I think is our point-of-view. I like this movie and you like that. Otherwise we reveal ourselves to everyone we come into contact with... especially writers.

Opie loses his job?

2011-07-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

It seems Ron Howard got passed by for the new Dan Brown film The Lost Symbol for a "hotter" director. It didn't matter that our Opie has made some of the most profitable films around and some even won awards.

No, Ronnie (I can't help calling him that) is only going to be a producer and that's the kind of job where he drops by now and then to have lunch. It almost sounds like retirement.

And then he lost the new Bourne movie to Brit Paul Greenglass.

Now I'm not particularly worried about Ronnie, he's not Nicholas Ray who eventually had to sleep at friend's homes and run up phone bills. This from the director of Rebel Without a Cause.

Or Orson Welles who ended up doing wine commercials and anything else he could find. And even John Huston had to move to Mexico where living was more affordable than California.

But the best one, or at least potential best one was Allan Dwan, who started in silents and made millions of dollars before income taxes were introduced. Again, living with friends as so many Hollywood directors seemed to do, Dwan barely survived. When asked why he lost all his money his alleged answer was simple:

"I must have made, in my life, $50 million in my career, but I spent $75 million."

I always wondered why it was directors who seemed to end up broke, not actors or writers. At least not in such big numbers. From the books I've read one thing many directors did back in the old days was drink, gamble, drink, gamble and buy race horses. Dwan, in 1913, was making $1500 a week.

And of course, being of retirement age myself, I again bring out the one thing that writers have over everybody; they can write till they die. I'm going to post that question on WritersAction, a website for WGA writers, many of whom are "older".

As you know, I seem to have a fountain of youth in terms of ideas, working on at least 5 or 6 things at the same time, and I see nothing that would convince me to quit doing it because I don't know how to quit.

I'm curious about this; I'll let you know what other writers think.

And something else, I'd like to let you tell me what you think. Are we baby boomers gonna hog everything until the last one is gone? Or is there room for all of us?

After all, all any writer needs is one thing; a good screenplay.

Does a writer matter?

2011-07-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

" You'll never work in this town again...

or at least until we need you."

Those were the exact words my favorite agent Frank told me once after a prodco exec told him that they would have a "sour taste" for me after I asked for money that was due me. Luckily WGA was also behind me and I did get paid. If you read my blogs you know the story.

And the Snow Leopard above, I bought that for $1000 (it's a Bateman for those who are curious) and I bought it for one reason. I saw it years ago when I was broke (a common situation I might add) and it really spoke to me in that artistic way. But not because of how good it is.

No, it was because I immediately identified with the snow leopard, that might as well have been me on that ledge with the wind-blown snow whirling around. Because that was me in the film business. Alone, cold, hungry, looking for a job and nobody to help me. And when I got some money I bought it as quickly as I could and I look at it every morning to remind me of one singular thing in this life...

Nobody cares.

Writers are arguably the most disposable in the entire film industry. Who else gets replaced on a film by anywhere from one to a dozen or more? There's an old story that goes like this; A producer gets a screenplay and his first words are, "This screenplay is amazing, fantastic, one-of-a-kind." The he pauses and adds: "Who can we get to rewrite it?"

Then there's the joke, "Did you hear about the Polish actress? She slept with the writer."

Why do they get replaced? There are lots of different answers but I think it all falls down to a couple of things:

The producer has a writer friend who needs a job.

The producer doesn't like the original writer.

The producer and his flunkies don't really know if it's a good script or not and the best way to "make it better" is to hire someone else. And maybe someone else after that to "punch it up". And maybe a few more writers to make it even better.

And the producer may have a secretary or assistant who wants to be a writer.

And I know at least four people who became screenwriters because of one or two of the above.

I fall in between the lines on those situations, I've rewritten a half-dozen screenplays and in each case, a full page 1 rewrite, meaning I began rewriting on page 1. At least 3 times the producer and even the continuity person wondered why the original writer's name was on it as my drafts were completely different.

That was the deal I made. They brought me in and paid me to do this work and take various credits like Creative Consultant, story editor and a few others. Meaning I didn't get a "written by" credit. But I got to live in Europe, Mexico and Canada for several months and it was a lot of fun.

And I was rewritten once.

By the same producer who said he had a "sour taste" for me. And it was his friend who did the rewrite.

And there's another reason why writers are replaced.

Because there's always another writer willing to step in and take over. We are whores sometimes, don't like me, get someone else, and so on.

So do we matter at all? Does anyone care about who writes what? Sometimes the screenplay does need work. Mostly it's adding bits, like better dialog and some character "stuff" as they say. Some writers are better than others in certain areas. My worst area is plot, I do lousy plots but good characters. And I write well for women's roles. Really good.

When you sell a screenplay, they love you. You get expensive lunches, joke with the producer who tells you how great the screenplay is and lets you sit at his desk at the studio when he's gone and even park in a special spot.

Until you're replaced and all of a sudden, calls to him go unreturned. It's like you don't exist.

Until they need you again.

And that does happen.

There's another story about this business, supposedly told by Peter Hyams and it goes like this;

"Being in the film business is like being married to a beautiful woman but she cheats on you and you know it. But sometimes when she dresses up and you go to dinner and you look across the table at her, you decide it's all worth it."

And I admit to have thought that many, many times.

At least I'm not the guy who cleans up after the elephants who when asked why he does that awful job, answers; "what, and give up show business?"

The Mystery Producer

2011-07-21T08:49:00.000-07:00

This past Monday, in my desperation, I put an ad on Craigslist for a producer who can raise at least 50% of the budget for Ghostkeeper. Counting today, Thursday, I have had only one possibility.

Someone with an odd name. Wat.

At first I dismissed it, but after a few days of nobody else coming in, I replied to him/her. Wat responded, wanted to see more, so I sent Wa the detailed proposal which includes the top sheet budget.

Wa said he/she would make some calls.

So do I think this is real. Who knows? My initial feeling is no, but stranger things have happened and so I figure why not go with it. At the same time, I'm moving forward to contact every distributor that's ever made a horror/suspense/sci-fi/supernatural film.

I'm not going to the majors, ie: Paramount, etc, because they really don't handle low budget films, that is unless I have a great movie that's already been made. They make money from $100 million movies, not $1.8 million.

Once in a while they take a plunge into the Blair Witch Project genre, Blair cost about $15,000 and made well over $100,000. But as I've said in the past, that's a "non-recurring phenomenon". The sequel to Blair didn't do as well.

To my advantage, I have a film that is a sequel of sorts to an older film, this gives me a bit of leverage as the original has been made and is getting some attention. Well, a little bit of attention. Got 306 viewers on Youtube and add about 10-15 each week.

And the new screenplay is a lot better than the original, I'm a better writer than I was in 1980. And I have half of the cast back and the DP who did such a great job.

And I'm more experienced in every aspect of filmmaking over the past 30 years. All of this has to be at the very least, interesting to examine for a distrib.

On the other hand, as of now, I have no money raised. And that's the tough one. If nobody has put in money, then nobody else wants to for one simple reason;

Nobody wants to be the first in.

Kind of like who dives off the cliff first.

You see lots of deals where one party gets half and the other gets the other half. But usually this means that the original party has no money in yet. And these deals often have neither party wanting to go in first.

The reason, mostly, is that each party really isn't that confident about the other party, "you got half and I got half" is the most often abused expression in the business. Kind of like playing blackjack in Vegas, the house shows its cards last.

You might not think that it would be an advantage, but it is.

There are as many deals as there are movies made and one that works for me might not work for anyone else. Bottom line is that I have to find the "first money" and this could also be a distributor.

How much first money? Not necessarily a lot. $50,000 is a good start. It could get $50,000 from another investor or two. They add up. Once around $200,000 of the budget is raised it gets easier. Those who don't have full confidence now see that this movie could actually get made.

There's another old saying in Hollywood, it's easier to raise $30 million than $500,000. And this is usually due to the fact that for $30 million you can get name actors, director and a studio behind you. For $500,000 you barely have enough to cover non-union crews and actors lower on the totem pole.

So at $1.8 million we're in a level that is harder to define, can't afford the big guys, can't really afford union crews like IATSE and DGA. And we get breaks from SAG and WGA.

Wonder how much Wat will bring in.

(Mon: Name cast or not)

The Survivor's Guide to Screenwriting

2011-07-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I decided to get a cat. I like cats and had a few of them. I like the idea of a fellow creature whom I didn't have to pick up it's waste with a plastic bag. And of course, it's aloofness which I admire because I don't have any.

My best one was Dweazel, seen above, whom I appropriately named after one of Frank Zappa's kids, who as it turned out, spells their name differently. Dweazel was born at the base of a TV station where I worked as a writer/producer so it was meant to be. She traveled with me everywhere, loved long drives and even flying. But that was years ago.

I finally gathered the courage needed to entertain a life change and went to a veterinarian office on Ventura Blvd., which had several cats in the window, ready for adoption. I was greeted by a somewhat cold and suspicious woman who looked at me with narrow eyes.

"I'm thinking of adopting a cat, maybe a kitten".

She studied me like a customs agent and then said: "Cats can live up to 20 years."

Ouch.

In other words, the cat would most likely outlive me, considering the average life span in America is around 75.

So where is this going?

I've been writing for at least most of my life, professionally since 1985. I had written commercials before that and documentaries but don't include them.

And now, at the ripe old age of 64, I have no intention of quitting. Novelist Dean Koontz recently said that he will stop when his head falls on the desk. I've often said that I'll stop when my face hits the keyboard.

And then, I want my laptop buried with me because I might just get a good idea. You never know.

If you are truly a writer, there is no end in sight, you will write until you can't anymore. And even then you will imagine.

I have never been as active as I am right now, I had the Christmas movie last year, now have a new Christmas screenplay with 2 producers and am working at the Ghostkeeper sequel which I hope to do in December. Also I'm starting to develop 2 series, one based on spies and the other on a former TV star who now is raising a daughter.

And there are other ideas I'm working on, including two new screenplays which I have yet to start and a documentary I'm editing on Highway 50 in Nevada, dubbed "the loneliest highway in America", with footage shot over the last 5 years.

The key word here of course, is survival. I know writers in WGA who have written one screenplay and never were able to write another, and of course, others who have written more than I have.

People have asked me what the secret is to stay so long in a business when you're presumed finished at 40?

All I know is this; I never quite writing screenplays or coming up with ideas. It was difficult at the beginning, in fact it took me a good 4 or 5 years to really write something that was reasonably ok. I now have about 35 spec screenplays on my shelf, and am adding at least two more by the year's end.

And I show my screenplays to anyone who wants to read them. You never know where a contact can come from. I get so tired of new writers who are afraid someone will steal their idea. I have learned this; every time I get a fantastic idea I know that at least 4 other writers have that idea, two are considering writing it, one is in development and one has already had their script made.

One thing is true, writers write. No matter if you have a job or not. You've heard me say this often, and it begs repeating; the best thing about being a writer is that you don't have to have a job to write a spec, you just have to have an idea.

Everyone else in the business needs to be hired. Everyone. But writers can write anytime and anywhere. I wrote the Christmas screenplay as a spec in 2007 and it hung around until 2010 until it was made.

Am I worried about taking away jobs from younger writers? Not at all, I don't write like them and they don't write like me, and nothing really counts except the story.

Because it's not about age, it's about a compelling story that holds the reader and the audience and no one writer has a monopoly on that.

Even William Goldman doesn't win every time.

(Thurs: An ad for producers)

Are there any new stories?

2011-07-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

One of the common things my film friends and I talk about are about the lack of new, fresh stories for movies. I rarely go to a movie theater anymore, preferring to wait till the DVD release or getting a screening copy.

I should add that most of my friends are film people, directors, DP's and some writers. To balance it a bit, I have regular friends also, business people, Dan who works the newsstand near me and neighbors.

One thing in common with all of them is this; there's not a lot of good movies out there anymore. It seems that studios are sticking to the safe method of choosing projects; that means repeating whatever has a big opening. If Fast and Furious makes a ton of money, it's guaranteed that a sequel will do reasonably okay, and a sequel on a sequel will make enough money too.

(Incidently, I could not post "Fast and Furious" in the labels box as it's not allowed)?

And repeating the same plotline for romantic comedies works sometimes but more often than not, unless it has Steve Carrell in it, who seems to always attract an audience. But Seth Rogan is beginning to wear thin on audiences. And Jennifer Aniston, who reportedly made $28 million last year for movies very few go to see, is the luckiest woman on the planet, having no talent whatsoever.

So what's the problem?

I've always thought that having lived as long as I have, and my peers, we've seen almost every storyline, plot, twist, idea, concept and treatment that exists. When you've been on the planet as long as I have, you've seen a lot of movies. And I started at 4 years old.

So it must get harder to come up with a fresh idea that we boomers haven't seen. But the odd thing is that I hear this from kids too so maybe there is a lack of good ideas out there, or at least ideas that a studio wants to take a chance on.

I watched a movie last night called Skyline, which was directed by two brothers who worked on James Cameron's Titanic and Avatar. The CGI was incredible, but there was no real story and no real ending, it just stopped. It had a group of B-level actors hired more for their looks than their acting ability who ran around a condo in the Marina being chased by world class CGI aliens.

It was just like Battle - Los Angeles. And a dozen other movies.

While the special effects were spectacular, you would have thought the two brothers who did Skyline would have asked Jim Cameron for some tips on story. Apparently not.

And guess what, Skyline 2 is already in the works.

One of the creators of the 100-plus cable/satellite channels was interviewed recently and said that their hope for the 170 or so channels was that it would create work and new ideas for niche audiences and would be a wonderful thing.

But what happened instead is that a lot of these channels filled schedules with old TV shows and anything to do with Hitler and of course, more reality TV shows, some of which last a few episodes before they're cut.

In his words, what he felt he and others created was not a new age of ideas and stories, but rather what they created was mediocrity. His words.

Then I saw Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen.

I enjoyed Woody's earlier movies, didn't mind the middle ones and passed on some of the recent ones. Until Paris.

Midnight in Paris was the kind of movie I used to see a few dozen times a year back in the 1970's and 1980's.

It entertained me. I didn't want it to end, I wanted to stay with Owen Wilson (arguably the best stand-in for Woody ever) and I wanted to go to Travelocity and book my flight to Paris immediately.

And I wasn't the only one. In fact anyone I spoke to who saw it had the same reaction. In fact it looks like it might make the most money of all Woody's movies. It was everything, fresh, inventive and charming.

And Woody's 76 years old.

And he had to get European financing because nobody in the U.S. wants to fund his movies.

The LA Times had an article that told how Sony execs "sold" Woody's movie, how they tested and tracked and did all that stuff that shows how smart they are.

But they're wrong. Midnight in Paris is successful because everyone who saw it told everyone else. Word of mouth. The oldest and cheapest promotion you can get. Real people.

And I saw another film I liked, Super 8, which was interesting because when I saw it the audience was almost all between 30 and 40. Granted it was a matinee but the theater was a third full even though the film has played for several weeks.

Then I realized why; it was the exact remake/duplicate of Spielberg's 80's movies, very similar to ET and Close Encounters. Shot for shot directed by JJ Abrams and exec produced by Spielberg.

It was a throwback to the past, thus the audience who were probably kids when ET came out. Now in their 30's and 40's they recognized the nostalgia factor as well. And it was a pretty good movie.

Are there new stories out there. I'm sure there are, but they're harder to get made. InkTip is a website where producers hunt for new material but from what I've seen they want cheap copies of whatever is big now. One producer posted a line that read "Idea must sell us in one sentence and if you can't do that, don't bother".

Do they really think they'll get that great idea with that posting? You don't get the new Midnight in Paris by demanding that it has to sell in one sentence.

All I want is to be thrilled and excited again, to walk out of a movie with the feeling that I had a good time, and that it made me feel better.

More Transformers doesn't do it for me.