Also, Carrie Fisher: STFU. kthxbye.
OK, so here is the major problem with On the Lot: it sucks. I watched it last night - and God knows why, because it wasn't like I didn't have anything better to watch, with The Wire beckoning seductively from the DVD player.
So first? Carrie Fisher needs to go away, now. I don't watch American Idol so I can't make any Carrie-Paula comparisons, but something tells me such a comparison would be apt. Could she be any more vapid and unhelpful? No. No, she could not.
Take her remarks to Shira-Lee. She begins by saying, "The title of that film could have been 'Slut Mom'." Now, it's a well-documented fact that I have an aversion to the word "slut" - an aversion of such strength, in fact, that had the TV been within arm's reach I would have put my fist through it. (This is why you should always sit well back from your television set, kids!) The rest of her remarks - I should have written them down, but I was too busy trying not to let my apoplectic rage cripple me for the rest of the night - were basically: You made a sexy movie last time. This movie also mentions sex. I hope that's not autobiographical. In sum: are you a whore? (I do have to acknowledge the brilliance of Shira-Lee's response: "Who has the time?" Note-perfect, Shira-Lee. Someone should bottle you.) Nothing at all about the film itself, Carrie? You're supposed to be a screenwriter, aren't you? Do you want to comment on the writing? How about the acting? Music? Camerawork? Editing? No? Just a weird, veiled inquiry into the director's sexual mores? Okay then.
I don't know why I'm still watching, because she irritates me more and more every week. No, wait, I do know why I kept watching - I harbor a tiny, pie-in-the-sky hope that this show could somehow provide an enlightening window into the inner workings of Hollywood and/or the business and art of making a movie. (Just like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition offers a window into the glorious fields of interior design and architecture. Right. How do I not know better by now?) And I must also admit to indulging in the fantasy that maybe, when faced with a series of short films and asked to choose a favorite, the citizenry would ultimately favor something intelligent, clever, beautiful, original - hell, just plain good. And yet, which short got the most applause from the audience last night? "Dance With the Devil," which a) has a terribly prosaic title, and the related line of dialogue in the movie ("If you're going to dance with the devil, you'd better be able to stand the heat") is some kind of bizarre malapropism twisting the old can't stand the heat/get out of the kitchen saying, and the parallel structure of the dance/heat line doesn't work, and it's really a complete mess, just like this sentence is already becoming; b) featured not one single original thread in a startlingly spare plot - I mean, you have 150 seconds, no one is expecting Crime and Punishment, but if you're already mangling a cliche for your title/dialogue, maybe you could try to avoid using yet another cliche for the plot; c) if you are going to trot out a threadbare plot, maybe try to get a few new tricks out of that old pony rather than just shooting it in the head and calling that your movie; d) if you're just going to go ahead and shoot your cliche plot pony in the head (this is where the metaphor breaks down, clearly) then at least do it well, by which I mean that maybe the audience should care a little about your characters, same-old ciphers though they may be; e) quasi-subtitling a quarter of the dialogue in variable-sized type is not a good way to provide emphasis or heighten suspense, nor does it do anything to improve the lame dialogue; and f) that font sucks!
The judges had it absolutely right (even Carrie Fisher - shocker! - though she certainly didn't articulate it well at all) when they characterized "Dance With the Devil" as a triumph of style over substance; and of course they were resoundingly booed for it. There go my illusions of a moviegoing public that won't automatically gulp down whatever pabulum is spooned out for them, provided the screen is big and the surround sound loud. Marty Martin (also: get a new name, because that's only cute if you're actually good, and you're not, so stop it; and also, shut up) makes lovely, glossy trailers - but you know what? Making a trailer is not that difficult, y'all. It's just a brief precis and a collection of high points. Comedy or tragedy, heist or chick flick - just write a few good jokes/dramatic lines and cut 'em all together with some atmospheric, crescendoing music. Done and done. It's easy to write the line that caps the scene - in my experience, at least, the easiest thing is the beginning and the end. What's tough is the road between - how you get to that mot juste; how you soften up your audience so that last sentence will jerk plenty of tears. A beginning, and an ending, and you can't get there from here; but good writing proves that you can.
Maybe it's not fair for me to be judging all these contestants on their writing; after all, they're directors, not screenwriters. But damn, man - if the look of a film is a tapestry, you've gotta have a wall to hang it on. (Another metaphor doomed to fail. Do me a favor and hit yourself in the head right now; just kill the brain cells that're retaining that last sentence.) If they're not going to provide these directors with decent scripts -
Oh! Brainstorm! They should give every director the same script. Obviously it'd have to be a little different from a traditional screenplay - you'd want something bare-bones, without many specifics other than Ext. or Int. - maybe not even those - so the directors would have plety of room to interpret. E.g. Mamet's "Cold," a very brief scene we had to prepare for an acting class, and of which I can find no trace anywhere - sad. It's two people standing on a subway platform, talking. No stage directions, just the stripped-down dialogue. About two minutes. I remember one line: "You ever notice how when it's really cold you feel wet?" The whole class was split up into pairs and asked to prepare the scene, and when we all performed in class - I mean the sheer range of the results was pretty amazing. Some groups made it more comedic, others more serious; one group got this weird stalker-vibe going. (I ended up paired with our only male classmate, so we crammed as much sexual tension into the scene as possible - which was quite a bit, all these long sizing-up looks and glances from beneath the lashes and a crushingly dismissive brush-off.) Since the scene was just a skeleton, you absolutely had to flesh it out as much as possible - I stream-of-consciousnessed four pages of journal prep on my character, who I decided was a mid-twenties New Yorker living in a too-small apartment in a too-big city and working an ultimately unsatisfactory job, claiming to do the Sunday Times crossword in pen but in truth only able to manage Tuesday's, too lonely to be happy and too intimidated to change that; a character that a less self-assured woman would be tempted to say predicted my current situation with an uncanny degree of accuracy. (Well, except the part about the crossword. Hee.) It's like I said above: you get the beginning and the ending - that's the text of the scene. But the middle is the how and why - the subtext that draws the map from curtain to curtain. That's where the magic is.
Anyway wouldn't that be a better show? That way we'd be judging the mini-directors on their merit as a director, rather than their merit as a director/screenwriter/producer/everything else.
I guess the upshot of the show, terrible as it is, is that it's given me a newfound appreciation for even the comedian-in-a-fat-suit dreck churned out by H'wood. Because damn some of these contestants' films are just terrible.
Oh and also. Kenny: You have a great smile, but I will punch you in the face if you don't stop being so insufferable. All the editing and cinematography prowess in the world can't make up for the fact that you exhibit multiple warning signs of being a genuine, 100% asshole.
(Note to self: position couch a minimum of 6 feet from tv.)
Ah, hell, I don't know why I even bother. I'm just going to run back to the ever-loving arms of So You Think You Can Dance. Oh, baby.
In other news, WTF? What websites are accessible only between 9 pm and 4 am? Oh, no, wait, I get it now, it's based on the time on your computer. That makes a little more sense. I was like, "So, if I'm in Britain, and it's a US website, then for me it's only accessible between, like, 3 am and 10 am? And how do they do that, anyway - does some poor schlub just sit in a closet somewhere and unplug the server when the sun rises?" And also: yeah, because racy movie trailers are the worst thing waiting for unsuspecting minors who wander out into the internets.
PS I read a fabulous (well, many, actually; but I'm thinking of one in particular at the moment) story in my newest SF anthology: "Another Word for Map is Faith" by Christopher Rowe. Aside from having one of the hands-down best titles (seriously - I need to steal that title and write something, because it's too evocative not to) in recent memory, it's just - the introductory blurb describes it as "quirky," and maybe I've been reading too much Slacktivist lately [No such thing! - Ed.] but for me it's less quirky and more terrifying in its implications as a parable. Anyway I should write more on this anthology, because aside from an uncharacteristic misstep (by Neil Gaiman of all people - what's with that?) I think it's one of the better anthologies out there right now.
So first? Carrie Fisher needs to go away, now. I don't watch American Idol so I can't make any Carrie-Paula comparisons, but something tells me such a comparison would be apt. Could she be any more vapid and unhelpful? No. No, she could not.
Take her remarks to Shira-Lee. She begins by saying, "The title of that film could have been 'Slut Mom'." Now, it's a well-documented fact that I have an aversion to the word "slut" - an aversion of such strength, in fact, that had the TV been within arm's reach I would have put my fist through it. (This is why you should always sit well back from your television set, kids!) The rest of her remarks - I should have written them down, but I was too busy trying not to let my apoplectic rage cripple me for the rest of the night - were basically: You made a sexy movie last time. This movie also mentions sex. I hope that's not autobiographical. In sum: are you a whore? (I do have to acknowledge the brilliance of Shira-Lee's response: "Who has the time?" Note-perfect, Shira-Lee. Someone should bottle you.) Nothing at all about the film itself, Carrie? You're supposed to be a screenwriter, aren't you? Do you want to comment on the writing? How about the acting? Music? Camerawork? Editing? No? Just a weird, veiled inquiry into the director's sexual mores? Okay then.
I don't know why I'm still watching, because she irritates me more and more every week. No, wait, I do know why I kept watching - I harbor a tiny, pie-in-the-sky hope that this show could somehow provide an enlightening window into the inner workings of Hollywood and/or the business and art of making a movie. (Just like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition offers a window into the glorious fields of interior design and architecture. Right. How do I not know better by now?) And I must also admit to indulging in the fantasy that maybe, when faced with a series of short films and asked to choose a favorite, the citizenry would ultimately favor something intelligent, clever, beautiful, original - hell, just plain good. And yet, which short got the most applause from the audience last night? "Dance With the Devil," which a) has a terribly prosaic title, and the related line of dialogue in the movie ("If you're going to dance with the devil, you'd better be able to stand the heat") is some kind of bizarre malapropism twisting the old can't stand the heat/get out of the kitchen saying, and the parallel structure of the dance/heat line doesn't work, and it's really a complete mess, just like this sentence is already becoming; b) featured not one single original thread in a startlingly spare plot - I mean, you have 150 seconds, no one is expecting Crime and Punishment, but if you're already mangling a cliche for your title/dialogue, maybe you could try to avoid using yet another cliche for the plot; c) if you are going to trot out a threadbare plot, maybe try to get a few new tricks out of that old pony rather than just shooting it in the head and calling that your movie; d) if you're just going to go ahead and shoot your cliche plot pony in the head (this is where the metaphor breaks down, clearly) then at least do it well, by which I mean that maybe the audience should care a little about your characters, same-old ciphers though they may be; e) quasi-subtitling a quarter of the dialogue in variable-sized type is not a good way to provide emphasis or heighten suspense, nor does it do anything to improve the lame dialogue; and f) that font sucks!
The judges had it absolutely right (even Carrie Fisher - shocker! - though she certainly didn't articulate it well at all) when they characterized "Dance With the Devil" as a triumph of style over substance; and of course they were resoundingly booed for it. There go my illusions of a moviegoing public that won't automatically gulp down whatever pabulum is spooned out for them, provided the screen is big and the surround sound loud. Marty Martin (also: get a new name, because that's only cute if you're actually good, and you're not, so stop it; and also, shut up) makes lovely, glossy trailers - but you know what? Making a trailer is not that difficult, y'all. It's just a brief precis and a collection of high points. Comedy or tragedy, heist or chick flick - just write a few good jokes/dramatic lines and cut 'em all together with some atmospheric, crescendoing music. Done and done. It's easy to write the line that caps the scene - in my experience, at least, the easiest thing is the beginning and the end. What's tough is the road between - how you get to that mot juste; how you soften up your audience so that last sentence will jerk plenty of tears. A beginning, and an ending, and you can't get there from here; but good writing proves that you can.
Maybe it's not fair for me to be judging all these contestants on their writing; after all, they're directors, not screenwriters. But damn, man - if the look of a film is a tapestry, you've gotta have a wall to hang it on. (Another metaphor doomed to fail. Do me a favor and hit yourself in the head right now; just kill the brain cells that're retaining that last sentence.) If they're not going to provide these directors with decent scripts -
Oh! Brainstorm! They should give every director the same script. Obviously it'd have to be a little different from a traditional screenplay - you'd want something bare-bones, without many specifics other than Ext. or Int. - maybe not even those - so the directors would have plety of room to interpret. E.g. Mamet's "Cold," a very brief scene we had to prepare for an acting class, and of which I can find no trace anywhere - sad. It's two people standing on a subway platform, talking. No stage directions, just the stripped-down dialogue. About two minutes. I remember one line: "You ever notice how when it's really cold you feel wet?" The whole class was split up into pairs and asked to prepare the scene, and when we all performed in class - I mean the sheer range of the results was pretty amazing. Some groups made it more comedic, others more serious; one group got this weird stalker-vibe going. (I ended up paired with our only male classmate, so we crammed as much sexual tension into the scene as possible - which was quite a bit, all these long sizing-up looks and glances from beneath the lashes and a crushingly dismissive brush-off.) Since the scene was just a skeleton, you absolutely had to flesh it out as much as possible - I stream-of-consciousnessed four pages of journal prep on my character, who I decided was a mid-twenties New Yorker living in a too-small apartment in a too-big city and working an ultimately unsatisfactory job, claiming to do the Sunday Times crossword in pen but in truth only able to manage Tuesday's, too lonely to be happy and too intimidated to change that; a character that a less self-assured woman would be tempted to say predicted my current situation with an uncanny degree of accuracy. (Well, except the part about the crossword. Hee.) It's like I said above: you get the beginning and the ending - that's the text of the scene. But the middle is the how and why - the subtext that draws the map from curtain to curtain. That's where the magic is.
Anyway wouldn't that be a better show? That way we'd be judging the mini-directors on their merit as a director, rather than their merit as a director/screenwriter/producer/everything else.
I guess the upshot of the show, terrible as it is, is that it's given me a newfound appreciation for even the comedian-in-a-fat-suit dreck churned out by H'wood. Because damn some of these contestants' films are just terrible.
Oh and also. Kenny: You have a great smile, but I will punch you in the face if you don't stop being so insufferable. All the editing and cinematography prowess in the world can't make up for the fact that you exhibit multiple warning signs of being a genuine, 100% asshole.
(Note to self: position couch a minimum of 6 feet from tv.)
Ah, hell, I don't know why I even bother. I'm just going to run back to the ever-loving arms of So You Think You Can Dance. Oh, baby.
In other news, WTF? What websites are accessible only between 9 pm and 4 am? Oh, no, wait, I get it now, it's based on the time on your computer. That makes a little more sense. I was like, "So, if I'm in Britain, and it's a US website, then for me it's only accessible between, like, 3 am and 10 am? And how do they do that, anyway - does some poor schlub just sit in a closet somewhere and unplug the server when the sun rises?" And also: yeah, because racy movie trailers are the worst thing waiting for unsuspecting minors who wander out into the internets.
PS I read a fabulous (well, many, actually; but I'm thinking of one in particular at the moment) story in my newest SF anthology: "Another Word for Map is Faith" by Christopher Rowe. Aside from having one of the hands-down best titles (seriously - I need to steal that title and write something, because it's too evocative not to) in recent memory, it's just - the introductory blurb describes it as "quirky," and maybe I've been reading too much Slacktivist lately [No such thing! - Ed.] but for me it's less quirky and more terrifying in its implications as a parable. Anyway I should write more on this anthology, because aside from an uncharacteristic misstep (by Neil Gaiman of all people - what's with that?) I think it's one of the better anthologies out there right now.