Athens Round-up: Day Three - Narrative to follow when I ain't so dang tired

Writing oneself into a corner can still be profitable some times

Man, I've been stuck on a Bronze Age Sky God story called "Spec-Ops Delight" for a while now. As the name suggests, it's the third in a trilogy (EVERYTHING HAS TO BE) with "Aircraft Carrier Delight" and "War Room Delight". But I think I'm going to break the rules and leave it at a duel...ogy....for now. Naming the country was perhaps a fool mistake and though sending a half dozen Clint Coltrane types into the palace of The Foreigners leader may seem like a recipe for komedy laffs, I'm finding it isn't!

But one good thing came out of the scraps. I'll just paste it in here.

"They were the top fighters of the U.S. army, men who made Clint Coltrane look like a collection of fast food condiment packets festering in the backseat of a station wagon with no air condition on a summer’s day, while you write overwrought metaphors and keep wondering why the publisher hasn’t called back...It's important to note that the U.S. special forces spoke in English, but only technically. Military shorthand, urban slang, spanglish, codenames, film quotes, redneck slang and other sub-genuses of that great beast - American English - all mixed and matched within our heroes lexicons. "

Trying to figure out how they would sound when speaking this hyper bastardized version of English was the hardest and most enjoyable part of brainstorming for this short story. Hopefully I can find some way of working it into future projects.

Meanwhile, brainstorming for the short film sub project proceeds apace, with some serious light bulbs going off while riding the train into work today. While chucking down some dialogue I remembered something my collaborator (Myspace Man) said to me when we first met to discuss what would become Momentum. He mentioned how a lot of the writers he'd turned down couldn't' seem to realize that writing a film is different from writing a play.

Now I have tried very hard to view plays as I view any medium of story telling and I'd say that by now I do in fact feel this way. But I must admit that for years I have had to fight down a bias against them, which made any play have to work twice as hard for me to enjoy it as much as a movie, television show, book or comic. It's tricky to sum up, but I guess there was just a certain smugness and winking to the audience in a lot of the first plays I was exposed to which smelled to me of a big circle-jerk between those who made plays and those who regularly patronized them.

For reasons I have yet to nail down into precise explanations, romantic comedies can be the absolute worst for coming off as poorly adapted plays. A very good, recent example of this would be a British film I saw recently that is called Scenes of a Sexual Nature.

It tells little stories of seven pairs of people all enjoying a sunny day in Hampstead Heath park. Every single one of these stories is ether contrived, old hat or both and made all the more grating by having a kind of swagger to their telling which is there to tell you that they are totally real vignettes of things that happen all the time in real life yet are fresh and ca-razy. The dialogue always sounds unnatural and is delivered in the manner of an amateur play actor who isn't quite sure about the difference between projecting your voice to the back rows and shouting. From the incredible "Man gets caught looking at attractive woman by his less attractive wife, then fails to lie his way out of it" scenario to the "Pair of gay guys discuss things that you wouldn't expect from two gay guys, like wanting kids or being monogomous, as if they're real people or someting" scenario....the whole thing just screamed "Crappy amateur play!" at me.

SO to come back to the point, when I was tossing down dialogue this morning and thinking back both to my collaborators remarks...I tried to use that crappy movie as a benchmark against which to measure my own words. Put a gun to my ahead and ask for a short itemized list (this happens all the time) of what makes a film script that reads too much like a play and I'd give you this:

1) Smug self awareness.

2) Far too little communicated by what is seen as opposed to what is said. Basically an overabundance of exposition.

3) Very specific situational happenings being put out as universal truths.

But I'm open to input on the matter!

Fwaaah

Just a little doodle - more Athens and Athens notes to come when I'm not feeling so burnt out on computers at the end of the day. But I thought I'd mention that the script I've been developing for MySpace Man has gotten to a draft which warrents going into pre-production! So hey hey, that ball is starting to seriously roll and though scripts tend to need continuous attention in the form of minor tweakings, the majority of my work on that is done and I can now focus on new things.

Since there are stunts and CGI involved, the pre-production will be lengthier than for most 20 minute shorts. Not wanting to lose inertia, my collaborator has asked me if I want to make a simple (I.E., two or three characters, mostly out side so lighting is easy) five to ten minute short in the meantime. So I'm brainstorming away and scraping my notebooks to try and have a synopsis of something fun and easy to make...

Also, I got my tax refund today and by golly it is pretty okay! I definitely feel better about what I spent on Athens now, that's for sure.

Athens: Straddling the Aegean

I guess dog mess is a pretty serious threat to the human race

Sheesh!

It feels weird....

....not being in Canada on its birthday.

Though, thanks to Mum and my Aunt Sheila, I do have a fat wedge of chocolate cake wrapped in a small Canadian flag!

HAVE FUN GETTING DRUNK IN THE STREETS EVERYBODY.

I

I'll be doing my laundry.

Hopefully nobody pees on the War Memorial on Elgin St. this year!

Addendum: Though not nearly as big a deal as a national birthday, England is having a rather special day today as well. The national smoking ban has finally come into effect. It's kind of funny to read about, having seen all the usual pro and anti arguments having played out in Canada years ago. Some of my coworkers were theorizing about how this might "ruin pubs and bars" just as I remember various pundits doing on CJOH news. I reckon it'll be just the same as it was in Canada, a lot of meaningless whinging for the first three months and then acceptance.

The best part about a smoking ban is that, touch wood, I honestly do not think it could ever end up being reversed. Can those of you in Ottawa or Toronto honestly imagine it happening?