Building the Iceberg

Congrats to Canadian indie film Moon Point

2012-02-09T19:00:00.000-08:00

Just saw Moon Point during it's first week - now extended for another week! - at the AMC Dundas Square cinema. Nice little indie film with the usual killer soundtrack that helps to carry over some of the bumps in the talky script.

I wasn't a big fan of the story, such as it is, a kind of shaggy dog road trip via wheelchair and it was stuck in the trendy indie film world of slacker 20 somethings dealing with the kind of problems most of the world would kill to have. It's the Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, 500 Days of Summer universe.

But I really liked the secondary characters, a veritable who's who of Canada's supreme comedic acting talent. The wonderful Jayne Eastwood practically french-kissing her budgie and a wacky Art Hindle in a banana suit are worth the price of admission. It's not really in the service of a story that mattered much to me, but who cares? This little film got made for 12 and a half cents, I believe, and what's even more amazing, got distributed in theatres! (Thanks to renegade film distribution company IndieCan Entertainment. I hope they can give the big boys a run for their money getting English Canadian movies into real live cinemas.)

Good for them.

Another Earth doesn't work

2012-01-13T17:57:00.000-08:00

I was really disappointed in this film, given all the hoopla surrounding it out of Sundance.

It makes the cardinal sin of having not enough story to fill up its length. So the director has to shoot interminable shots of his leading lady doing nothing and jazzes it up with some admittedly effective music. But it didn't stop me from being bored.

It's a shame actually because the premise, while not original, is intriguing. Lifted from a great science fiction film called Journey To the Far Side of the Sun, in which an exact duplicate of Earth is discovered orbiting the sun exactly opposite to our Earth, Another Earth takes that premise and plants the new Earth in our orbit.

A lot of critics have rightly pointed out that the film breaks the cardinal rule of science fiction by messing with basic science. The other Earth in this film appears to have had no effect on our earth's gravity despite getting closer and closer until it's five times the size of the moon by the film's end. This new planet doesn't appear to affect the tides or much of anything. Even when contact is established with what appears to be an exact duplicate of a scientist, nothing much seems to matter to people on this planet, particularly the dull and uninteresting lead character, other than entering a contest to be on the first rocket to travel to this other earth.

Meanwhile, the character who killed the other leading character's wife and child while driving drunk the first night the new earth appeared in the sky, attempts to apologize to him after her release from jail, only to lose her nerve and decides to clean his house instead. Huh?

Eventually, they become lovers. Huh??

And then she wins the contest and decides that now she can tell him she's his wife and child's killer. To make up for this, she gives him her ticket so he can go to the planet and perhaps find a duplicate wife and child waiting for him. Huh???

This almost sounds interesting, except that other than these plot points, NOTHING HAPPENS. The screenwriters who were also the director and leading lady could use a few basic storytelling for film classes. Though, given the success of this film for reasons that I don't get, I suspect they will have started believing their own reviews and stand little chance of improving their skill set next time out. But based on this effort, I won't be lining up any time soon for their next.

What's the Story spec?

2012-01-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

We all know what a story is. My six year old nephew knows what a story is. But I know that when I ask my script writing students to tell me what it is, they have a tough time nailing it down to something that isn't vague, or open to interpretation.

Today, while teaching my first scriptwriting class of the new semester, it occurred to me that what we really need is a spec for a story.

If my class was car design, first we'd have to agree on what a car IS before we can make one.

So we have to agree what a story is, before we can make one.

The "spec" for a car is an engine, wheels, a steering wheel, brakes and a way for an operator to manoeuvre it. That's I think, the bare minimum requirements to define the spec for a car. It doesn't specify what a table or a carrot is. It's a car. No debate, no opinion. That spec could lead to a Ferrari or a Toyota or any other car. And we could argue about the quality of the final car, but we shouldn't be able to argue about whether it is a car.

In the same we, we need something that is clear, specific and non-debatable as a spec for a story.

It seems to me that any analysis of good stories, particularly movies leads to the story template that I've blogged about on here in the past: Character/Action/Goal/Adversary. Those are the minimum requirements for a story. They're the steering wheel, engine, brakes and wheels equivalent.

And of course there's a relationship implicit between those four elements: Character DOES the action FOR the goal OPPOSED by the adversary.

That's our spec. With that spec, you know what you have to make. There's no way of knowing whether it will be a good story or a bad story, but it will be a story.

100 Essential Films

2011-12-24T00:39:00.000-08:00

Everyone has their list. Here's mine in no particular order. All are essential viewing. I recommend reading the screenplays as well.

Citizen Kane
Metropolis
Petulia
Badlands
Days of Heaven
Breathless (original Godard)
The 400 Blows
Wild Strawberries
The Seventh Seal
Nights in Cabiria
La Dolce Vita
8 1/2
The World of Apu
Ikuru
Tokyo Story
Seven Samurai
Ugetsu Monegatare
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Kes
Night Mail
The Lady Vanishes
The Thief of Bagdad
Olivier's Richard III, Hamlet, Henry V
The Third Man
Brief Encounter
Black Narcissus
A Taste of Honey
Blowup
Repulsion
If....
The Ipcress File
Paths of Glory
Lawrence of Arabia
Lolita
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
Barry Lyndon
The Go-Between
Frenzy
Local Hero
The Long Good Friday
Brazil
A Fish Called Wanda
My Beautiful Laundrette
The Crying Game
Trainspotting
La Belle et La Bête
Children of Paradise
The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Don't Look Now
Black Orpheus
Diabolique
Wages of Fear
The French Connection
Godfather I and II
Apocalypse Now
The Wild Bunch
Shock Corridor
The Parallax View
Taxi Driver
The Searchers
Stagecoach
High Noon
Some Like It Hot
The Apartment
The Fortune Cookie
Sunset Boulevard
They Drive By Night
Casablanca
Sweet Smell of Success
The Graduate
On the Waterfront
Singin' In the Rain
The African Queen
Psycho
Chinatown
The Maltese Falcon
Raging Bull
Dr. Strangelove
Bonnie and Clyde
Annie Hall
Midnight Cowboy
North by Northwest
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Philadelphia Story
Rebel Without a Cause
Vertigo
City Lights
Modern Times
Duck Soup
A Place in the Sun
Three Colours: Red, White, Blue
Kieszlowski's The Decalogue
Talk to Her
Law of Desire
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

In order to achieve even a modest level of film literacy, you need to have seen these.

I envy anyone watching them for the first time.

Simple, but not easy

2011-12-19T20:33:00.000-08:00

I just turned in the first draft of a script I've been commissioned to write for the University of Toronto's internationally trained lawyer's program. It will be a drama that's used for teaching purposes. Hopefully, it will help lawyers in the program be better prepared for what they will face in the Canadian legal workplace.

I love turning in drafts because it means I get paid. But it also means I have written. I hate writing, love having written.

Perhaps hate is too strong a word, but writing is hard. I keep trying to explain to my scriptwriting students that it isn't cut and dried or an exact science. However, what you have to do is actually simple. Keep an audience engaged for the length of the story. And there are certain storytelling principles that were first defined by Aristotle that have not been disproved since that you can use to make your story effective. So, it is simple.

Simple, but not easy.

Kind of like e=mc squared. It's a simple formula, but to understand it really takes some knowledge and to apply it takes even more knowledge.

Simple, but not easy. I think that applies to pretty much anything done well.

A couple of reviews: Midnight in Paris and Crazy, Stupid, Love.

2011-11-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

Screened Midnight in Paris and Crazy, Stupid, Love. on the plasma last night.

Midnight in Paris is part of Woody Allen's shift away from New York and filming in Europe chapter in his body of work. The glorious part of the movie comes from turning the camera on in Paris. Just as with New York, Woody Allen and his DOP's are able to make these cities look glorious. Every shot in the opening is a post card to the city and of course evokes the magnificent images of New York in Allen's film Manhattan, which remains a favourite of mine. In Midnight in Paris, Allen shoots Paris cityscapes as if painted by Monet.

But the remarkableness drains away quickly once the story begins to unfold and the characters appear. If Allen hadn't made Zelig, Purple Rose of Cairo and Bullets over Broadway, perhaps Midnight in Paris would feel original. A hack screenwriter who hates himself - yet another Woody Allen avatar played by Owen Wilson this time but at least he doesn't do an outright imitation - visits Paris with his shrewish fiancee played by a vacuous Rachel McAdams - I've never understood her appeal and she doesn't explain it to me in this performance - and dreams of living here in the 30's and writing his artistic novel. One night - at midnight - he encounters a time traveling car that takes him back then where he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and the other Americans in Paris. Gertrude Stein reads his novel and encourages him to be an artist. Meanwhile, his wife and her parents become increasingly weary of him and his mysterious disappearances. Finally, he decides to break up with his fiancee and stay in Paris, conveniently hooking up with a fetching Parisian shop girl.

But Woody's done this all before. He wrote this first as a short story, "The Kugelmass Episode", published in The New Yorker in 1977. And he's done variations of it in at least 3 of his films mentioned earlier. It's a lovely idea, but tired. Midnight in Paris becomes an exercise in identifying the personalities - Oh, THAT's Zelda Fitzgerald! Ooh, Salvador Dali - an admittedly cute turn by Adrian Brody, "I am DA-LI!"

Been there done that Woody. A disappointment.

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (That's the punctuation used on imdb, though it isn't on screen.) is a nice romantic comedy-drama about the manning up of Steve Carrell after his wife of 25 years, Julianne Moore, dumps him. He meets rakish ladies man, Ryan Gosling, in a bar. Gosling takes him under his wing, teaches him everything he knows and Carrell begins to get laid eventually sleeping with a hilarious ex-alcoholic teacher played by Marissa Tomei. Meanwhile, a sharp young lawyer, Emma Stone, captures Gosling's heart and brings his days as a rouee to a close. It turns out Emma is Carrell's oldest daughter and all hell breaks loose the day she brings Gosling home to meet her parents.

This film has something rare in today's cinema: an actual story populated by actual characters. I may not have appreciated it so much except I've been so hungry for a story and a movie with a story gets major props from me. There's one scene in the middle of the film when Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling spend the night in bed talking that is worth the price of admission. Funny, humane, deliciously sexy without any kissing or sex and beautifully acted and directed. Ryan Gosling has terrific screen presence evoking a post-modern Cary Grant - too cool for school and vulnerable when someone gets under his skin. Carrell has played the everyman schlub so often that he's close to phoning it in, but since his character gets to actually grow, the transformation from passive to active male feels earned. The rest of the casting is quite off-beat, especially with the kid actors who play Carrell's son and his babysitter who's infatuated with Carrell - lovely actors who the camera doesn't appear to like at first, but who blossom into their cameragenicness by the end.

I enjoyed this one and give it a thumbs up.

Hitting marks

2011-11-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

I was in New Brunswick last week to shoot a scene from the CBC TV movie "The Phantoms", playing my 30th doctor. (I think when I reach 35, I should be getting my honorary medical degree from ACTRA.)

Working with a nice cast and crew on location is a great joy. You become part of an instant working family for the time you're there.

But while I was there, I was reminded about something that I take for granted but that can really slow the process and make all performances suffer.

Actors have to be able to hit their marks.

Working with an inexperienced, (I assume) performer from the Maritimes who couldn't hit marks just makes it harder to actually do the acting part for everyone. Actors probably don't realize how critical it is for camera to hit marks, especially if they are inexperienced with film work or if they spend most of their time working on stage. Film is a game of millimetres. Shifting your weight can make the difference from being seen or not. And if you're not seen by the camera, the editor will use a shot of an actor who is seen.

At one point, I missed my mark because the other performer kept missing hers and so the camera assistant put black tape on top of her coloured tape so she couldn't miss it. Except no one told me and my mark was made with black tape as well, so I ended up entering the scene and hitting HER mark.

After doing 30 doctors on camera, as well as a few more credits (75 films and TV episodes so far), hitting marks is almost intuitive for me. To learn how to do it, requires an awareness of your surroundings, peripheral vision and respect for the craft. It means that you have to take hitting the mark seriously. But it doesn't mean you'll stop acting. Only bad actors can't do both.

To give an example of the dichotomy between the technical and the emotive that must come together in film performance, I remember a story my mentor Daniel Petrie, Sr. told us at the Canadian Film Centre. He was directing Jane Fonda in a very emotional scene where she was using a hammer and chisel to chip away at a block of stone, tears streaming down her face. But the shot was so tight that she needed to be told if she was in frame or not - while she was acting. So Dan Sr. told her as the shot rolled, and tears rolled down her face. I think she won an Emmy for that performance. I know so many actors who would be unable to develop the emotional resonance needed for a shot like that AND listen to the director telling her to move her eyes left or right, while the scene was shot. But that's the craft.

As is hitting marks.

Doing the LEAST amount

2011-10-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

Writing is hard. Sorry to disillusion anyone, especially those who make script gurus like Syd Field et al rich, buying their books. It's easy to explain what goes into a good screenplay. It's hard to write one.

But it's not going to get easier, if all you do is the least amount possible. Fulfilling one of the script guru's structural plans for a good script, doesn't mean you've written a good script.

I see this in my screenwriting courses. Most of the students I've taught initially believe that all they need to do is write the least amount possible and they've done the job.

For example, one of the first assignments I give beginning students is to read one of my favourite Star Trek: TNG episodes, ("Darmok") and deconstruct it into beginning, middle and end. The assignment calls for students to use no more than 3 sentences for each part and to encompass all pertinent story points.

This is harder than it looks.

But students tend to think it's an easy task and usually turn in something that looks like it took them as long to write it as it would to type it.

If you DO the least amount possible to get through whatever you're trying to learn, I suspect you also LEARN the least amount possible.

Fraggle Rock

2011-10-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

I received this email a while ago - a long while ago - from a fan of the series, Fraggle Rock, which I wrote for when I began my career.

It was the greatest gig I ever had and I'd have been content to work for my boss Jerry Juhl, the 3rd Muppet who wrote everything Miss Piggy and Kermit had to say, for ever. Unfortunately, Jim Henson, who directed one of my Fraggle Rock episodes, died shortly after the series wrapped and Jerry retired. The company was taken over by Jim's children and I don't think any of the writers who worked on their shows were used again.

Here's the email:

Hi Mr. Varughese,

   While doing some online Fraggle Rock research I came across a "Blogger" web page for you with links to your blog "Building the Iceberg", and your web site. I was so glad to find those, and find a couple of contact emails for you.

   I have loved Jim Henson's Muppets ever since I was a little boy watching Sesame Street in the early '80s. Unfortunately I rarely got to see Fraggle Rock, since we didn't have cable in my childhood (I grew up out in the country). My grandparents did get a satellite dish so I got to see the first several episodes of Fraggle Rock, but then HBO got scrambled. After that I wouldn't get to see it unless I happened to be at someone's house at the right time of day, and if no one else was watching anything. So my Fraggle viewings became rare and treasured!
   Then in college I was tickled to get to see many more episodes on the Odyssey network, and now of course I'm thrilled to have the entire series on DVD. It's amazing how crisp and clear the quality is on the discs, even down to the characters actually sounding like they're in a large cave.

   I love doing creative writing, and I know I would have had a blast writing episodes for Fraggle Rock. Your own scripts for the show are so interesting and entertaining. Here are some notes I wanted to share with you on some of your scripts:

Sir Hubris and the Gorgs --- I love how in the series we occasionally get these little insights into the history of the gorgs, such as hearing Ma Gorg tell of "King Gorgus the Great" here, even with a picture of him. It's also nice how you wrote Gobo having some compassion for the gorgs in this episode,

Doomsday Soup --- What a great adventure to see the fraggles accidentally discover the power of invisibility! Boober's struggle to "take it back" from his worry of impending doom provides a great conflict. The special effects of that episode were really great, too.

Home is Where the Trash Is --- How fascinating to see Gunge and Philo get this starring vehicle for hemselves. That was a terrific and original idea of wanting to explore their origins and their ambition to want to "return to their roots". Of course, we fans love seeing them realize they're happiest with Marjory. :-)

The Great Radish Caper --- I have to give you special props for this episode, since Mokey is my favorite character in the series. Because Mokey is the most tender-hearted of the "Fraggle Five", it's natural for her to get some understanding into Junior Gorg and have some compassion for his love for Geraldine the Radish. She knows it's odd, but she's so caring that she can't bear to see him lose the one thing that means so much to him. Seeing her pitted against her friends over the radish's fate makes for a great climax to the story. I was especially tickled to see you use this episode as an example on "Building the Iceberg" in response to someone's question of theme vs plot.

A Dark and Stormy Night --- I've always loved ghost stories, spooky-type things, and stormy nights, so this episode was right up my alley!

Sprocket's Big Adventure --- Getting Sprocket into Fraggle Rock itself...what a brilliant idea! It's so fun to see him get to explore their world, and discover what it's like. He finally gets some relief about these strange creatures he's been trying to catch for years, and it's sweet how he comes to a friendly understanding about them.

Boober Gorg --- How funny to see a fraggle think he's a gorg, especially Boober, the most fearful of the fraggles. Plus, we get another glimpse of gorgish lore, with the mention of the very fun-named "Encyclopedia of Gorgish Myth and Wisdom".

Ring Around the Rock --- Again, some more interesting insight into the history and tradition of the Gorgs, with Ma and Pa having to get re-wed on their 513th wedding anniversary. It's also fun seeing the Gorg Ring go from character to character to character throughout the episode.

   One thing I was curious about was whether you writers ever interacted with the Muppeteers at all (I assume you interacted with Jim Henson some, since you mention him in your blog). Also, I wondered if you wrote in notes for where any songs would appear in your scripts, or if the songwriters did that on their own, or if you worked together?

   By the way, I've enjoyed looking at your blog, and your web site looks great and is very interesting and fun to explore. And it's great to see how well your career is going these days!

   Well Mr. Varughese, I just wanted to take a few moments to tell you how much your scripts forFraggle Rock have meant to me. Those are some highlight episodes of the series, and are greatly enjoyable. Thanks so much for sharing those talents of yours through this series. You're an inspiration to people like me who find joy in creative writing.

First, I don't want to use this person's name to protect their privacy, but I do have their permission to reprint their email. (Finally! My apologies for neglecting to respond to their query until now!)

Second, I don't know if I can answer well, after so many years, but I'll give it my best shot.

"Sir Hubris and the Gorgs" - this was a fast write. The show runner and creative guru of Fraggle, Jerry Juhl and the executive story editor, Jocelyn Stephenson and the producer, Larry Mirkin had been impressed with the 2nd episode I'd written and for reasons I can't recall, there was a hole in the schedule that needed a script quickly. They asked me to come up with something and as much collectively, (sitting in Larry's office spitballing with him and Jerry and Jocelyn), this idea emerged. I have no idea where it came from, other than me wanting to write a Gorg show - which I grew to enjoy doing - and I remember Larry came up with the name of the legendary knight, Sir Hubris. I think it was 3 or 4 weeks from a standing start to shooting this one.

"Doomsday Soup" was my attempt to write a show about the dangers of modern technology and in particular nuclear power. Dave Goelz, who performed Boober, said one of his favourite lines from the series was in this one: "We've reached a new level of anxiety here!"

"Home is Where the Trash Is" is perhaps my personal favourite. It's actually a tribute to the plays of Samuel Beckett, in particular "Waiting for Godot" if you can believe it. I was very proud of the dialogue in this episode. I'm also proud of Wander McMooch and how he was used in the story. Bob Stutt was promoted from background puppeteer to perform Wander McMooch.

"The Great Radish Caper" was another of my Gorg episodes. I took a special interest in writing Gorg shows and this one was an attempt to get beyond the surface of Junior and also to see how his relationship with the radishes stemmed from his own personal loneliness. And Mokey was going to be the Fraggle who'd understand that. Kathryn Mullen who played Mokey was very pro-active in any Mokey episodes - perhaps to a fault - but in the end, her notes were dead on and she knew the character best. I learned to listen to the actor in writing for their character!

"A Dark And Stormy Night" was again, a Gorg show. Just loved writing Gorg shows, I guess.

"Sprocket's Big Adventure" began what would be our final season and I just pitched it to Jerry and Larry as "it's time to send Sprocket into Fraggle Rock." And they agreed.

"Boober Gorg" and "Ring Around the Rock" What can I say? Gorg shows again. I remember trying to soak up every moment during the production of Ring because it was going to be my last episode. Still gives me chills thinking about it.

In response to your question about how much we interacted with the puppeteers, I hope you can see that it was a very good relationship with them, but they ranged. Jerry Nelson was very laid back and seemed content to do his stuff without much feedback. Steve Whitmire and Dave Goelz were very helpful and positive. Karen Prell who played Red was really supportive and Kathryn Mullen was perhaps the most demanding of the cast but always right when it came to Mokey. As the writer, I was expected to attend not just script readthrus - we had two prior to production - but to be on set during production. If anything came up, it was the writer who had the vision of the episode in mind. The directors had to worry about the scene, but could often forget that doing something in a scene would affect scenes that hadn't been shot. Writers had to keep that in mind and rewrite accordingly on the fly.

One of the toughest jobs was as shows got shot and timed, you'd learn that you were either running long or short - but it was really always long - and something would have to be cut out of the scenes that had yet to be shot. The edited length of the episode has to be exact and was predetermined by the network so regardless of how great your line of dialogue might be, it could be excised in order to keep the show to time. That's the tyranny of television. But an interesting writing challenge.

Responding to your question about songs, the writers always wrote where songs would go in the scripts and what the songs would be about in terms of moving the story forward. The kind of song and the lyrics were of course left to the brilliant Phil and Dennis who always made my suggestion better than I could have imagined. And they always respected the story requirement that was called for by me or another writer.

I hope I've answered - finally - your questions. Thanks so much for writing and being a fan of the show.

You can't make stuff up

2011-09-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

I'm writing another script for a sponsored film. As TV writing becomes more difficult to obtain as our industry contracts, I'm happy to be writing drama for non-broadcast. My current project is about foreign-trained lawyers trying to get qualified to practice law in Canada.

The most interesting part of the work is actually the research. I meet with as many "stakeholders" - foreign-trained lawyers, Bay Street law firms, government lawyers, law profs - involved in this topic and listen to their stories.

Research is such an important part of the writing process because unless you know what you're talking about, your script will not be authentic. Especially when working on scripts for targeted audiences, who usually will see themselves portrayed in the story, you have to tell the truth.

There's always an educational purpose to these kinds of films, but typically "training videos" turn people off. They're usually prescriptive, hokey and false. Rather than try and be prescriptive about behaviours, I try and convince the people who hire me that video is lousy with things that lectures, workshops and textbooks can do better. What video does well is show behaviour. And audiences then put two and two together when they recognize what they see.

So I try and get the participants in the story to tell me their stories, which I then use as springboards to drama.

When I find someone who will tell me their story, I always get something far more interesting than anything I could have made up.

Approaching the rewrite cont'd

2011-08-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

Notes people give you after a table read or after reading your draft are important. Not because they will tell you what to do, but because the FLAG ISSUES. It's important not to take dictation when incorporating notes, but to use them as clues to the deeper problems.

The real difficulty in rewriting is that it's too easy to make cosmetic changes to your work, rather than "reweave the tapestry." Making cosmetic changes only results in what looks and reads like a patch job. The script has to look like it was meant to be the way you want it to be. And that means the underlying issue that a note flags must be addressed. And that may involve a little or probably a lot of rewriting, or really rethinking. In fact, resolving the underlying issue may result in just a little change on the surface of the script. It's just that you MUST attack the issue from the root.

That's why I highly recommend restating your story for yourself and then comparing it to what you wanted to write.

Once you've flagged issues, it's time to do a scene by scene analysis of your draft.

Check each scene is inherently dramatic by distilling it to it's components. Is there a character acting for a goal opposed by an adversary, either explicitly or implicitly in every scene? If not, there better be a good reason why not.

Have you told your story visually first? Or have you just planted characters in a place and started them talking?

Go through each intro and exit of your characters. Do they enter the story IN CHARACTER doing something that defines who they are? Are their first and last lines of dialogue signature statements? Recall the famous first and last lines of Bogart in Casablanca. His entire character arc can be defined with his first and last line of dialogue. Can you say the same for your characters?

Do a dialogue pass and eliminate any unnecessary lines? It's likely 1/3 to 1/2 of your dialogue - if you've done the steps above first - will now be unnecessary. Also, now's the time to change all your on point, on-the-nose, subtext-less dialogue to off-point, subtext-laden dialogue.

Give yourself a rewrite plan before you dive in and you'll have a better chance of doing a successful rewrite by the end.

Approaching the rewrite

2011-08-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

Once you have some feedback on your first draft, either from your creative collaborators or from a table read, it's time to figure out how you're going to approach a rewrite.

BTW, I highly recommend table reads - but not with actors - of your first draft. By having non-actors read your script you have a better chance of "hearing" it. Good actors can mask writing flaws like a bad line of dialogue and you actually want to hear the flaws. As you're listening, don't do anything except mark a Check mark where something works, an X where something didn't, and a ? where you don't know but something needed to be flagged. That's all you're getting from the table read - and it's a lot - flag the issues.

But once you've got the feedback, what are you going to do to tackle the rewrite? Where do you begin? I recommend rewriting a story template - the character/action/goal/adversary - definitions that I've blogged about - and a story grid - the five questions, but now BASED ON THE FIRST DRAFT. You hopefully wrote story templates and grids as you were prepping to write your first draft but now it's time to check back in with what you've actually written.

More to come.

Rewrites are FUN

2011-08-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

I begin to teach something tomorrow I haven't had a chance to so far, and that is what it means to rewrite scripts.

Every scriptwriting course I've taught so far, with the exception of a rewrite workshop I gave at the Toronto Public Library when I was appointed screenwriter-in-residence, has focused on banging out a first draft.

Most writing students think that's all there is to it. But I finally get to teach a course of students who delivered their first drafts half-way through the semester and can now go through the heaven and hell that is rewriting.

I enjoy rewriting because the grunt work is done. I recall one of my bosses on the Henson series "Fraggle Rock" used to talk about writing a "shit draft." How liberating to see a draft as a way of just getting through to the next draft, rather than the be all and end all of the writing process! Most students I teach are very precious about their writing, however.

Screenwriters can't afford to be precious about their work. It's a collaborative medium, after all. If you didn't want to get notes, be a novelist. But you're going to get all sorts of people, producers, show runners, directors, actors and most powerfully, network executives giving you notes.

You need to deal with the notes so that everyone feels they were listened to, but not write to order and ruin the creative integrity of your script.

The important thing I feel about notes is that they flag an issue. Usually any solution offered should be ignored, but the problem the note flags can't be. Something written isn't working. That's why I tell beginning writers when they read their scripts or especially when they HEAR them read, just follow along and mark an X where something didn't work and a check mark where something did. The only other mark to make is a question mark.

Then track where all those marks occur because those are the signposts for what's working and not working in the script.

That's the lesson for tomorrow. More to come.

Geminis lose their credibility yet again

2011-08-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

I had not one but two entries in the Gemini Awards this year in the category Best Original Program or Series produced for Digital Media - Fiction. On Tuesday morning, the nominees were announced and I dutifully downloaded the Gemini nominee list, which goes on for pages, searching for the category.

And searched.

And searched backwards.

It's NOT there.

So I email the Gemini co-ordinator at the Academy and she blithely replies that the jury decided not to make an award in that category this year.

REALLY?

Did the jury or the Academy think it might have been nice to let the entrants know BEFORE they announced the nominees?

I guess not. The jury must have been so proud of themselves coming to that decision that they forgot to think how the entrants would feel not to see the category listed. Or they didn't care.

Clearly the Academy doesn't care.

In fact, I only got "official" notice that the category had been dropped two days later. And even then when I pointed out it would have been nice to have notified me before the nominations came out did the Academy spokesperson agree.

Disappointing and pathetic performance by the Academy and the jury of my peers, yet again.

Something's got to change because spending hundreds of dollars on entry fees plus maintaining a membership in the Academy is becoming really hard to justify given their behaviour.

And they wonder why nobody cares?

Being true to the story

2011-07-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

One of the things I emphasize to my screenwriting students is that once you determine the basic building blocks of your story:

Character / Action / Goal / Adversary

that is, if you have a MOTIVATED Character STRUGGLING to do an Action in order to achieve a LIFE or DEATH Goal opposed by a WORTHY Adversary, you have the minimum requirements for a story.

However, the trick is to make sure that your Character's Action is a. a verb and b. applies to the ENTIRE story. Also, your character's Goal must be a noun and also apply to the ENTIRE story.

This is harder than it appears. Often I find students' attempts at this story template results in a confusion between goal and action. For example, not being rigorous about the grammar, as pedantic as it might appear, can get you into trouble. Deciding that a character's goal is "to succeed" rather than "success" can confuse you when you try and determine what he's going to do to succeed. Because the goal "to succeed" is a verb, rather than a noun. Being rigorous about the grammar forces you to ensure you actually have actions and goals in place.

The other difficulty is making sure that the actions and goals chosen actually apply to the entire story. Often instead of a dramatic action that applies to the entire story, student writers often pick what I call activities that the character may do during the course of the plot. But they haven't distilled all the different activities into a fundamental dramatic action.

Why is that important and in the writer's interest? Because by distilling the various ideas for activities into a fundamental dramatic action, the writer now has a guidepost by which he or she can determine the validity of any other idea they might have as they write the script. Can they draw a line from the idea they have for a cool scene back to the fundamental action and therefore the story's underlying template? (Which my students now just call CAGA.) If so, then the idea might work. If not, then either the idea has to be discarded or at least altered OR the underlying story template must be in order to accommodate it.

By being rigorous about your character's underlying action and goal in particular, you give yourself a better chance of writing a story that remains dramatically consistent. Lack of consistency with the underlying template of your story runs it off the rails.

Dany Boy trailer

2011-06-17T22:12:00.000-07:00

The trailer for the movie I'd like to make, Dany Boy, can be seen here.

Or here:

Dany Boy trailer complete!

2011-06-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Erin Carroll at PPD, the Dany Boy preview trailer is complete. I edited the footage on a Mac using Final Cut Express and thanks to Erin and Mike, they were able to bring the project into the AVID system, (though not without hiccups which they solved through sheer will power.)

She then colour corrected the entire trailer using Symphony and the project now looks dazzling. This morning she then did a full audio mix, and even added an effects track. The images now have a dense soundscape propelling them.

A big thank you to Al Mitchell of PPD for letting me bring this project to his shop. I've been going there to do my post on corporate videos I have produced and directed and it's a thrill to bring this project there.

The trailer's going to be used to raise financing for the film and you can be sure I'll be taking the film to PPD.

The Post Office closes Saturday

2011-06-01T00:09:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last month performing on stage in Pleiades Theatre's production of Tagore's most famous play The Post Office. A very Indian drama, performed by a multi-racial cast, enhanced by live music and a remarkable design, it's been humbling to have been part of it.

But also frustrating. Frankly, the houses weren't what I'd hoped. We've played to audiences of 20 and up to 100. Or packed houses of school kids.

The adult audiences have a muted response to the play.

The best audience was a theatre full of 2nd graders, who hooted and clapped throughout this play - which is about death.

The biggest disappointment has been with the Indo-Canadian community who have not supported the play, despite it being by Tagore, the poet-laureate of India and with a production that included seasoned Indo-Canadian theatre, music, dance and costume artists. It's frustrating to see empty seats because the production was a once in a life time opportunity to see a play never before performed professionally in Canada. However, I have to say that the Indo-Canadian community has not been great supporters of the arts in Canada. Sports, business, academe all have tremendous support from the community, but you don't see names of prominent Indo-Canadian philanthropists in theater programs or on the walls of museums.

In sharp contrast to the Indo-Canadian community, is the Jewish community whose numbers match ours, but whose influence and support of the arts exponentially dwarfs their actual size. If the Jews could do it, why couldn't we? Clearly, a lack of interest in the arts, at least in this country must be the cause. Is it even worse? Could the wealthy actually wonder what's in it for them before they support the arts? And without an actual ROI, they're not interested? I fear that's the case.

It's been a brave and noble experience performing in this play. I feel we failed to reach the audience who needed and should have seen this play and if anyone knows what we did wrong, please let me know.

Acting instead

2011-05-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

Last year at this time I attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time. This year, I'm acting in Pleiades Theatre's production of Tagore's The Post Office so I'm unable to attend, obviously.

But the reports of films coming from Cannes are tantalizing. Here's hoping that I can attend next year, perhaps with Dany Boy complete. Wouldn't that be marvelous!

An intriguing trailer about a new documentary about the death of Diana that will premiere at Cannes caught my attention.

CTV Diverse Screenwriting Immersion ROCKED!

2011-05-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

The first week of April saw me herd 8 emerging screenwriters of diverse backgrounds - defined as race, sexual orientation or disability - into a window less room at the Hilton Garden Inn and bombard them with everything I know - or the expert colleagues I brought in know - about writing series TV.

After leaving the issue of diversity at the door, we broke the week down into 5 days:

Day 1 - Story, structure and the writing room
Day 2 - Pitching
Day 3 - Drama and comedy specs, and a success case study, "Flashpoint"
Day 4 - Pitching specs, kids/animation
Day 5 - Writing room simulations

At lunch, every day we had another expert colleague come in to provide personal insight into a show they created. Or we had my agent and another agent discuss the writer-agent relationship.

It was an incredible week for me and I know that the friends and colleagues I leaned on to come in enjoyed themselves. Most importantly, the 8 participants from around the country blossomed from being naive and a bit precious about their writing on day 1 to being really capable of delivering at a professional level.

After the immersion the 8 will writing specs and polish their series pilot/pitch under the guidance of Writers Guild of Canada member mentor - some of the best writers in the business - and one will be receive a paid internship in the writing room of a CTV show.

I'm so proud of the program, I wish I could have taken it! The 8 participants have a lot of opportunities that have been given them as a result of making it this far and I know they're all going places. (Just hope they remember to hire me when they get there!)

The 8 participants plus program co-ordinator Elke Town and myself

Day 2 of the Dany Boy trailer done

2011-03-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

Lightning struck twice and the day 2 footage looks fantastic. We had a bright cold day, so lighting inside was easy. Arthur Cooper did some lovely things with available light, giving soft shadows and deep texture to some intimate closeups of the leads, Kate Todd and Karan Oberoi.

We also reproduced a mosque in the party room of the condo we were filming in, thanks to some high walls and a tasty angle on the extras we had come out. Add the voice of an imam, slightly echoing and the illusion will be complete.

The most fun was filming with the car. Not having a vast crew or tons of light, I decided to film a fight scene in front of a car, using the car headlights as the sole lighting source. It was really effective--proving again that sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective. Coming out wide gave the moment a real scary feel, rather than using typical hand held close shots to mask the stage combat. The fake blood Karan spit out of his mouth when Saad Siddiqui appeared to punch him, sprang gloriously forth, lit through by the headlight, virtually glowing in the night.

The Canon 60D enabled Arthur to get a 3shot of the actors in the car just by holding the camera against the windshield and aimed backwards. Impossible if the camera was larger.

Can hardly wait to see how it looks cut together and with some music.

Day 1 of the Dany Boy trailer is IN THE CAN

2011-03-15T21:01:00.000-07:00

What a joy film making can be.

On Sunday I got together with a few old pros and some of my students from Toronto Film School to film part of a trailer for the film Dany Boy, which I'm trying to finance with a view to directing.

Everyone donated their time, including the incredible cast who were working under an ACTRA co-op arrangement. We didn't have catering, but I bought everyone Swiss Chalet for lunch.

We shot on a Canon 60D DSLR, which shoots HD video. It's a slick camera with a nice image, though it's still camera shape doesn't make it easy to move if you want to. (We couldn't borrow a shoulder brace which would have helped.) But it's still going to look fantastic.

Day 2 is scheduled for the last Sunday in March. Keep watching this space, I'll post the finished trailer here when it's done!

Why is it either Bollywood or Hollywood?

2011-03-04T22:31:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I was appointed the first screenwriter-in-residence to the Toronto Public Library where I discovered Dany Boy, a screenplay by an unproduced writer, Imthiyaz Hameed. We worked on rewriting the script through several drafts and last summer I optioned it with a view to directing it.

It's a terrific script, a thriller about incest, shame and redemption set in the Tamil Muslim community of Toronto. I really wanted to make this because it would also do something I've tried to do my entire career, not be invisible.

As a South Asian Canadian, and a pioneer in the Canadian film and TV industry, I really wanted to do what all writers and directors and actors want to do--tell our stories. But in Canada, Indo-Canadians are either denizens of Bollywood or of the Sub-continent--Canadian films like Amal and Water, made by Canadians and financed by Canadians but which tell the story of Indians in India. And in the theatre, the lovely work of Toronto playwright Anusree Roy who writes plays set in India, we do have a strong Indian cultural expression coming out of Canada. But it doesn't reflect my story, which is that of a racially Indian, culturally Canadian person.

Trying to get my films financed which are all coming out of THAT experience is extremely difficult. There are no movie stars to fulfill financiers demands for the parts. I can't paint Howie Mandel brown, though my very first TV movie script for CBC back in the early 80's, had the CBC contemplating that casting choice. I finally had to beg for an audition for my own movie and thankfully, won the part.

Canadian film makers struggle, no question. Finding B level stars to cast films - affordable names - is one of the only ways to get a Canadian movie off the ground. But that tactic isn't open to me.

Or I give up trying to tell my stories, and do an M. Knight. Don't think I haven't tried, but lately I still have hopes for Dany Boy.

That's because I raised some money to film a trailer for the movie, in the hopes that it will showcase the story, the on-screen and off-screen talent well enough to get financiers and producers to even read the screenplay.

(Most people respond to the pitch by saying, it's nothing we can pre-sell.) It isn't Bollywood and it isn't Hollywood. It's Tollywood? (Toronto?) Collywood? (Canada?) (Isn' the 'ollywood thing getting a bit much? Apparently, Nigeria's booming film industry is called Nollywood.)

Prepping the trailer shoot over the last little while has made me happier than I've been in months. Finding locations, meeting with the AD, rehearsing with the actors, it's such a joy to bring cast and crew together, make a little instant family for a day or two and do some creative work that we'd all pay to do if we didn't get paid to do it. In fact, I'm asking everyone to work for free in order to get this trailer made and they've all agreed. That is a testament to their belief in this story.

Now we just have to reach the audience - that I KNOW is out there. It's just that the regular channels don't know how to sell to them. What's worked - Bollywood and Hollywod - they understand. But this is something new. Using classic good storytelling and movie making to tell a story that could only be about us. I'd pay money to see that. I don't think I'm the only one.

I'm lead trainer for the CTV Diverse Screenwriting Program

2011-02-24T22:31:00.000-08:00

The Writers Guild of Canada scored a victory for screenwriting when they were able to have the CTV Diverse Screenwriters Program included as part of the Benefits package Bell is required to pay in order to take over CTV. This program will bring together 8 talented emerging screenwriters of diverse backgrounds for a week of intense training followed by 9 weeks of writing and mentoring by some of Canada's best screenwriters culminating in 1 of the 8 being hired to work on a CTV series. I'm honoured to have been asked to lead the week long workshop.

The 8 participants were chosen from 120 applicants from around the country and come highly recommended by the jury that chose them. I'm really looking forward to being their guide through the world of telling stories on TV and we'll be bringing in a host of high-powered guest screenwriters to conduct sessions with the participants during the week.

There are literally only a few minority members of the Writers Guild of Canada, (the guild of professional screenwriters), and with this program, our ranks are going to grow as our membership finally reflects the population of the country at large.

Lots of exciting plans in the works for the workshop week!

Article about my play in The Weekly Voice

2011-02-11T22:14:00.000-08:00

If you don't read Toronto's South Asian weeklies, here's a link to an article about my new play "The Fate of Mewa Singh" in this week's The Weekly Voice, available for free in the GTA at most Indian groceries and shops.

Just an error correction: the article refers to the character of Mewa Singh as a passenger on the Komagata Maru vessel. He is not in the play, nor was he historically.

Roundtable rocks!

2011-02-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

An interesting phenomenon at the roundtable reading for my play "The Fate of Mewa Singh" a couple of nights ago, where mostly non-actors did cold readings of my script. I actually could hear the script because I wasn't getting distracted by performances. And the script held up quite well, if I do say so myself.

Thanks to Sally Jones of Rasik Arts who organizes these monthly roundtables of new scripts that focus on South Asian theater. And thanks to all those, many of whom are friends, who braved a cold night out to attend and lend their voice to speaking my words.

Now, I just need a production...

Roundtable reading coming up

2011-02-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

I've been rewriting an old, unproduced screenplay and then hour long radio play into a stage play. I sent it to several respected colleagues, who all were less than enthusiastic about it. However, Sally Jones of Rasik Arts, a Toronto company that specializes in South Asian theatre, has embraced the script, "The Fate of Mewa Singh" and scheduled it for one of the group's monthly roundtable readings. They are casual affairs where attendees are pressed into service reading parts from the play. It's been a real jolt of confidence after some of the rejections and I'm really grateful.

Who knows what will happen to the piece once it's read? I'm just curious to see how interested people respond. Maybe it is a movie on stage and that's a bad thing--the feedback I've received so far. Or maybe it's a movie on stage--and that's a good thing for those who attend. Or maybe it actually is a play. Or not.

That's the thing about sending your work out there in any form. The risk is real and the writer could end up throwing themselves off a bridge afterwards, rather than face the reality that what they've worked so hard on wasn't worth it. I'm hoping that the verdict won't be that bad.

If you're interested, the roundtable will be at the Wychwood Library, 1431 Bathurst Street in Toronto, (that's Bathurst and St. Clair), Thursday February 3 at 6PM. It's a very casual affair and I'll be there with fingers crossed.

We lose another great one

2011-01-09T00:25:00.000-08:00

Peter Donaldson has left set.

I worked with Peter a number of years ago when he acted in a radio play I wrote, called Entry Denied, playing a bumptious prick. He was anything but. He came in from Stratford at the last minute because the actor who was originally cast was suddenly unavailable. He did a lovely turn.

More recently, I got to work with him in an episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie where he played a ebullient archbishop. Probably a bit of a stretch for him, but not as much. He just gave a nice, clean performance for an episode that got nominated for a Gemini Award, due in part no doubt, to his contribution.

He was married to one of the series regulars on Little Mosque, Sheila McCarthy, who I also worked with teaching acting at a local college. After a long battle with cancer, Peter died today.

There have been so many from Toronto's arts community who've succumbed this past year and I'd hoped the new year was going to see an end to all this, but I'm glad for his family and friends, Peter got to stay through New Year's. My condolences to them all.

Shooting a trailer to raise financing

2011-01-07T11:29:00.000-08:00

My feature project, Dany Boy, written by Imthiyaz Hameed, is a tough slog to get financing, though what indie feature isn't?

I raised some funds from the crowdfunding site indiegogo.com to shoot a trailer that I will then use to entice financiers and producers into reading the fantastic screenplay and pull out their chequebooks.

Unlike trailers for movies, this is really a promotional item for the script. So I don't have any footage to work from. In a way, it's harder than cutting a trailer for a film because you have to imagine the film and then cut a trailer from that, that you can then shoot to look like there is an entire movie that's been shot.

Which there hasn't.

It took me several drafts to write a script for the trailer, along with a few passes by the writer of the screenplay. Distilling the script into something coherent over a 2-3 minute span -- without giving away the story proved difficult, but I think it's finally been cracked.

Here is the latest draft. Comments and questions are especially welcome!

A BLANK PAGE OF A NOTEBOOK:

A pencil quickly scrawls over a page, revealing a banal, yet mysteriously appealing penmanship.

DAN (V.O.)

The rational is a realm that exists only
amongst matters outside the heart...

INT. LAYLA’S APARTMENT - NIGHT

Dan, 20’s, Sri Lankan Tamil, and Layla, late 20’s, white, attractive, vigourously make out.

Layla suddenly stops, pulls herself away.

LAYLA

Dan, when is your wedding again?

Dan flinches, guilt-ridden. Layla smiles sadly.

DAN (V.O.)

   ... lust...
JUMP CUT TO:

Layla pulls on her shirt. She takes Dan’s face in her hands.

   LAYLA
   Dany Boy, you can do anything you
   want with this life. You just have
   to make up your mind.

INT. PRAYER HALL, MOSQUE - DAY

A congregation in the midst of their Friday prayer. Everyone coordinated together, following an IMAM.

Dan and his father Tahir sit next to each other on their knees. Their heads turn one way to one shoulder then to the other shoulder. Everyone at just about the same time.

Dan looks at Tahir, Tahir stands up and walks away.

   DAN (V.O.)
   Jealousy...

INT. NADIA’S ROOM, OMAIR HOME - DAY

Nadia, South Asian, 20’s, wearing a red sari, stands across from Dan, her eyes burning into him.

   DAN
   I can’t marry you, Nadia.

   NADIA
   Who is she?

Nadia quivers, she starts to cry into her sari material. Her voice breaks as she speaks.

   NADIA (CONT’D)
   What is she?

Dan looks on, a bit confused by the question.

   NADIA (CONT’D)
   The colour of her skin Dan. What’s
   the colour of her skin?

   DAN (V.O.)
   -- revenge...

INT. NADIA’S ROOM, OMAIR HOME

Khalid, 50’s, handsome, sits beside Nadia, whose eyes are red from crying.

   KHALID
   Daniyal’s a mess of a man.
   I feel for him. I feel for his
   father. Family is everything.
   Right, mahal?

Nadia sits on the bed. Khalid sits next to her.

   NADIA
   I think I want this to stop.
   I don’t feel comfortable.

Khalid leans forward and puts his head down.

   KHALID
   I’m your father. You should always
   feel comfortable and safe around me.

Nadia eyes the open door, then Khalid. She squeezes the edge of the mattress.

Nadia inches off the bed, trying to not grab his attention.

One slow movement up and then she sprints for the door.

Khalid jumps off the bed. He grabs her arm tight.

INT. HALLWAY, OMAIR HOME - CONTINUOUS

Aida, 14, watches as Khalid gently closes the door of Nadia’s room.

   DAN (V.O.)
   ... truth...

EXT. HILLSIDE HIGH SCHOOL - NIGHT

Dan takes Aida’s shoulders, pulls her in and holds her tight.

   DAN
   I promise you. I won’t let him
   hurt you.

Aida relents into Dan’s chest.

   DAN (CONT’D)
   ... love ...

INT. LIVING ROOM, OMAIR HOME - NIGHT

Khalid pulls open a cabinet and unlocks a gun safe.

   DAN (V.O.)
   ... We lose everything to jealousy,
   lust and revenge.

   KHALID
   If he gives you any trouble, let me know.

Khalid reveals a handgun to Riaz.

EXT. AUDITORIUM, HILLSIDE HIGH SCHOOL - NIGHT

Riaz pistol whips Dan as Aida screams.

   DAN (V.O.)
   Leaving us with only the hope that
   truth and love can bring us back.

EXT. RIAZ’ CAR - NIGHT

Traveling along a country road. Dan, bloodied, in the back seat with Aida. Riaz driving, waving gun.

   DAN (V.O.)
   Still. It’s all fucking irrational.

Through the windshield, ahead Khalid by the side of the road. Waiting.

Farewell to Gina

2011-01-02T10:36:00.000-08:00

As the year came to a close a couple of days ago, I logged in to Facebook and found out that a friend, a colleague and one of the most effervescent women I've ever known had died. It's been a tough year for losing friends and mentors and I hate that it had to end with yet another.

Gina Wilkinson and I shared acting agents and I wrote a part in a short film I directed for her, which she graciously agreed to do gratis in order to help me try and get a directing career going. She was funny and sexy in person and that's what she brought to the part in my film Tongue Tied. Just a short day's shooting. I remember that her co-star, Stewart Francis was a little nervous about the shoot because he had to make out with Gina for much of it. Apparently he hadn't shaved perhaps thinking it made him look a bit more of a playa which was great for the part. But after a day of making out with him, poor Gina's face was raw. She regaled our agent with this story, but never mentioned it to me on the day. She was a pro.

I'm fed up with all the loss 2010 brought and heartbroken Gina had to leave us, but I'm grateful I knew her and got to work with her at least once. I just never dreamed it would be the only time.

Risk-taking actors on TV?

2010-12-16T16:46:00.000-08:00

I can't recall the number of times I've heard or read interviews from producers and casting directors who claim they love when an actor takes a "risk." Yet, my experience at an audition for small part in an episode of a network TV series reminded me that this is more propaganda than reality.

Since parts like this come with just the pages, or sides, required but not a whole script or any explanation of who the character is, other than a short sentence that sums up if they are looking for any particular physical traits, they tend to be open to interpretation. In other words, they're just looking for an actor who can breathe life into the part, but not try and steal the scene from the series regulars. Often I'll audition for parts like this against a woman and a white male actor, so it's clearly not about the acting but what type they think will be right.

Sometimes there's not much you can do with parts like this, other than be real. But yesterday, I decided to take a risk and play the part against the stereotype, against the expectation. Why? Well, in fact when I read the sides, my risk was actually what I thought when I read it. I didn't actually think it was a risk, it was just a possible interpretation given I had nothing but a page of dialogue to work from.

When it came time to audition, I did what was admittedly an off-beat take on the part. The director acted very positively - as if it had never occurred to him to consider that the character might be gay, (the risk I took in the audition), but it was "really great." The casting director, however, was clearly upset and immediately asked if the director wanted me to do it normally. But he didn't. Clearly, the casting director was not happy that I'd not given the straight and obvious take on the character.

And if TV was art, then I'd be right. But it isn't. It's really about delivering a commodity to an audience who know what they want and they don't want their expectations confounded. They want what they got in last week's episode with a slight variation on the plot but with the appropriate buttons pushed. It's important for actors to remember this because taking the risk should also be followed up immediately with an acknowledgement by the actor that they knew it was a risk but they'd be happy to do an alternate , more conventional version. Don't want for the casting director to ask the director to make you do that like I did. Because it doesn't respect their needs, it just makes you look precious.

Sometimes you have to take a risk to learn a lesson. Lesson learned.

The Black List 2010 released

2010-12-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

A number of years ago, a development executive named Franklin Leonard published a list of Hollywood's best liked unproduced screenplays and cheekily called it The Black List. (Leonard is black.) I met Leonard at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. He's a smart, young guy who recently left Universal to go to work for Will Smith's company. But he's continued to produce The Black List and this year's was just released.

The loglines for the scripts are interesting reading. Many, if not most are based on true stories. Very few comedies. Almost all are in development with a studio. All are represented by an agent.

Last year's list included Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network, so this is not a list of unproduced writers, just screenplays.

Writing the spec

2010-12-14T09:17:00.000-08:00

Specs, or scripts written on speculation, are a screenwriter's calling card these days, especially for TV. I have a number of spec feature scripts that I've written, hoping to sell or get financed. But I recently finished writing my first spec TV script, an episode of the ABC mystery series, "Castle." My agent can now use this in order to get me meetings, hopefully, for TV writing jobs.

In the olden days, (ten years ago or more), specs were hardly necessary. What producers wanted to read were episodes of TV series you'd written that were produced. However, particularly when those series are Canadian and carry no clout, even among Canadian producers and networks, in the past decade the importance of having a spec episode of a US prime time series in your portfolio has become important.

So, being a fan of Castle, and hoping that there aren't a lot of spec Castle scripts floating around, I decided to write one. For one-hour dramas, Dexter is probably the most popular spec to write, (which is why I didn't - too many comparisons might be leading to reader fatigue), and the idea I had was more in line with a Castle anyway. I suspect that in that genre, The Mentalist and Castle are two of the best shows to write specs for, but who knows? Besides, not working on the show, it's impossible to know it better than those who do. That's what makes writing specs tricky.

It's unlikely that a producer on Castle will read my script. In fact, I hope they don't because there is no way it can be as close to a Castle script as one written in house. It will only annoy a Castle producer. However, producers who work on other shows will be familiar with Castle but not from the inside out. And they will hopefully take to my script as being a good Castle - and therefore, I might be someone who can buy into their own show as well.

If you want to write a spec, it helps if you use Final Draft or Screenwriter, as they both come with templates of shows, (though neither has Castle.) Also, make sure to READ scripts of the show you want to write a spec for. And make sure they are scripts, not transcripts.

TV screenwriting is not about personal voice so much as being able to execute someone else's vision. The individual writer's goal is to come up with a story that works for the series and then execute the characters consistently with the show. I think I've done that enough to pass muster by anyone except perhaps the showrunner for Castle, and now my agent has another sample of my work with which to get me up for paying work.

John Katz RIP

2010-12-06T06:47:00.000-08:00

When I was a graduate film student at York University, Professor John Katz taught documentary film studies, (appreciation, not production). The years I was there, the remarkable documentary Best Boy became the sensation of the Toronto Film Festival and John took it upon himself to become the Canadian distributor for the film.

As a grad student, I had access to a Steenbeck editing machine - these were the days when film was edited on film - and John came in to ask me to check the one 16 mm print of Best Boy he had that would be circulating the country. So we sat down and watched the film together, scanning at some points as we'd both seen it, (I was in the premiere audience at the festival that year--I remember TVOntario film buff Elwy Yost sitting next to be and in tears at the end). I remember still John's excitement at having found the wherewithal to distribute the film. He had an infectious enthusiasm for this new foray outside of academe.

John Katz passed away from kidney failure November 28. RIP.

Still writing like a screenwriter

2010-11-22T15:53:00.000-08:00

The feedback on my attempt to write a stage play based on a radio drama I wrote, (see previous post), has not been great. Regardless of the merit of the subject or the theme, my inability to actually write for the medium - the stage - has been called out.

Fair enough.

It's a learning experience and it's a process. Or, as I keep telling myself, it's a marathon, not a sprint.

So back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, I'm writing as spec US TV episode. The theatre will have to wait a little longer.

Adapting a screenplay to a radio play to the stage

2010-11-11T10:45:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I was commissioned to write a screenplay about the arrival of the Komagata Maru in Vancouver harbour in 1914. I wrote the script, which I was very proud of.

My approach was to tell the story from the point of view of the Sikh who assassinated the Canadian immigration officer responsible for preventing the boat of Indian immigrants from disembarking. I did a lot of research and discovered that fascinating characters among both the Canadians and Indian immigrants at the time and discovered the story that only I could write about these events.

At one point, Hollywood director John Irvin, (Dogs of War, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) was attached. He told me that he liked the "architecture" of my script. (Love the Brits!)

But the producer never raised the financing and eventually went out of business. The rights reverted back to me after seven years as per WGC rules and I was then asked to adapt the screenplay into an hour-long radio drama for CBC, which I did. It was called Entry Denied and was broadcast internationally as part of the WorldPlay festival of radio dramas. One of the great breakthroughs was figuring out how to replace all the big visuals of the screenplay with some kind of audio equivalent device. What I came up with was to have a narrator read newspaper accounts from the time and thankfully, the CBC hired a researcher to dig them out of the Vancouver Province's archives and send them to me.

Realizing that it's unlikely the screenplay will ever get produced, I recently spent some time converting my radio play into a theatre piece called "The Fate of Mewa Singh." It's essentially a combination of the original screenplay, (which suffered a dramatic reduction for radio due to the tyranny of the time slot), and the audio devices I came up with for the radio version. It's my first attempt to write for the stage and would require a nimble cast to play multiple roles and a good director to stage the many scenes in a fluid manner, but I think it could be done and be quite theatrical despite it's roots as a screenplay and then radio drama.

Art versus Entertainment

2010-11-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

Recently, I attended 2 "drama" events which brought into sharp relief the great divide between using creativity for entertainment purposes as opposed to artistic purposes.

Working primarily in television, I've typically been faced with the goal of entertaining. But when I saw the play "Blasted" by Sarah Kane and "Miscreants of Taliwood" a documentary film by George Gittoes, I left both events not entertained, but devastated. Hardly entertained, in fact, but deeply affected.

"Blasted" is Beckett on steroids. A hotel room in Leeds appears to be the setting for a sleazy assignation between a middle-aged journalist and a naive young woman. After raping her, the story takes a turn for the worse, so to speak, when war appears to break out and a soldier enters the room, raping the journalist before killing himself. As life in the room and outside the room deteriorates, the journalist is reduced to the basest parts of being human.

I left the theatre reminded of the power of real theatre, the theatre that began with the Greeks 2500 years ago. This is what catharsis must have felt like to the Greeks when they watched Oedipus blind himself. (Kane uses a similar event in her play in fact.)

Hardly a Neil Simon comedy. (And I worship Neil Simon.) But this theatre is not pleasant.

"Miscreants of Taliwood" takes us into Peshawar, Pakistan and behind the scenes of the indigenous low-rent genre movie industry where features are made for $4000 and sold by the producers one DVD at a time. But the Taliban is threatened by the appeal of these movies and blow up DVD stores and threaten the film makers with death in order to eliminate them from influencing the populace. Artists are the enemy of religious zealotry. The imagined baseness of human behaviour in "Blasted" is real in the world of Taliwood, (Taliban plus Bollywood), with beheadings and bombings an everyday occurrence. It showed that the world Kane imagined in "Blasted" is actually the world we live in, at least the people in Pakistan live in.

Don't misunderstand me. Both works are entertaining. They're just much more than that. Both are works of art. Both use creativity and artistry to reach into the audience's soul. You can choose to do that, if you have something to say, or you can remain at the level of entertaining. Nothing wrong with that, but when an artist takes you beyond entertainment, it affects you forever.

I was humbled and inspired by this work.

Dany Boy update and next steps

2010-10-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

As you can see by the widget on the previous post, Dany Boy's fundraising campaign is over. We reached almost HALF our goal! Now the decision is how best to use these funds.

Our goal of $5000 was to be put towards casting costs for the film. With less than half that amount, we can still do some casting work, but it's also possible to use the funds we did raise towards shooting a trailer for the film.

The crowdfunding site, indiegogo.com will let us start a new campaign so that might be the way to raise money for the trailer, while we use the funds we got for casting for casting.

But I'm open to suggestions on the next step, so please comment if you have one!

Crowdfunding for Dany Boy

2010-10-14T20:58:00.000-07:00

Dany Boy is a low budget indie feature I want to direct from a terrific script by Imthiyaz Hameed. I read his first draft when I was appointed screenwriter-in-residence to the Toronto Public Library in 2008 and since then he and I have worked through 5 more drafts and I'm now trying to finance the movie.

It's a gripping domestic thriller about abuse and incest in a Tamil Muslim family in Toronto. As I say in the video backgrounder on the crowdfunding page at indiegogo.com (click on the widget above!), if there were zombies or vampires in the movie, we probably wouldn't need to seek public support for the movie. But this story has a real monster, an abusive father and it's about how keeping secrets continues the abuse. The hero of the story is a young aspiring writer who tries to save the younger sister of his fiancee who committed suicide due to her father's abuse from facing the same fate. He finds his own kind of redemption in forcing the father to face himself.

We've been raising funds on indiegogo and have collected almost half our goal, but there are only a few days left in our fundraising campaign. Click on the link to learn more and contribute to our development costs.

Fewer positive portrayals

2010-10-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

For years when I got an audition or cast in film or TV, it was usually in a part known to be a "positive portrayal". Doctors are usually such roles. Telling the star why his wife has cancer and not knowing that she'd actually been poisoned by her husband. To date I've done 29 doctors. I could cut a reel of my doctors to the stars.

But in the last few weeks, a new phenomenon has emerged from the casting swamp. I've been getting auditions for rather unlikeable characters. A pedophile, an upper class git, a righteous prick on a cop series - I recently played a wannabe gangster on an episode of HBO Canada's "Living In Your Car". I really hope this is the start of a trend!

Stanley Colbert, R.I.P.

2010-10-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

Every TV writer has a story about how they broke into the business. This is mine. Having no idea how to get into the film business, I wrote a film script and used it as a sample to get into graduate film programs. I ended up attending York University, where Stanley Colbert taught screenwriting. His day job was executive producer in the drama department of CBC TV. I gave him my little sample to read and he liked it so much that he invited me to pitch an idea for an episode of a TV series he was producing called The Phoenix Team. I went to the CBC TV drama HQ, was put in a little room with a TV monitor and shown the pilot. While waiting for Stanley and the other producers to return, I came up with an idea for an episode which I ended up being commissioned to write and which was produced.

Stanley went on to join his wife Nancy running her literary agency, where I was a client. Stan could be infuriating and in fact, I left the agency under a cloud after a disagreement over commissions.

Stan eventually joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina, but I ran into him a couple of years ago at the WGC Christmas party. He had moved back to Toronto where I guess he felt at home.

But I owe my career to Stan.

A lot of people do. His influence was enormous. He started his career producing the TV series Flipper. He represented Jack Kerouac. He brought the Muppets to Canada to produce Fraggle Rock, (which I also wrote.)

Every year at the WGC Awards, another of his protogees, Keith Ross Leckie and I always say we need to nominate Stan for a WGC mentorship award. We just never got around to it.

Stan passed away Tuesday.

Damn.

FILMI opens!

2010-09-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

Eleven years ago Dinesh Sachdev founded FILMI, a South Asian film festival in Toronto. Tonight, actor Ajay Naidu (Office Space, The West Wing) premiered his poetic and lyrical directorial debut Ashes to an enthusiastic audience.

It shows South Asians in a light we haven't seen in films before, dealing drugs and coping with mental illness. During the Q and A afterwards, Naidu informed the audience that the genesis of the story comes from his own life. He made the film for his sister who lost her life to mental illness when Naidu was young.

It's not a commercial film, but it's a passion project that deserves to find the kind of audience who came tonight. It premieres in Chicago this Saturday.

Good luck, Ajay Naidu and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

FILMI continues through Sunday.

On the Living In Your Car set

2010-09-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

Today was the first on set doing a guest spot in an episode of HBO Canada's quirky series Living In Your Car. I'd caught a few episodes from last season and saw that George F. Walker was one of the showrunners, which explained the dialogue-heavy scenes and eccentric characters, or at least why they remain prominent. It seems like a specialty for him. (I did an episode of his CBC series This Is Wonderland a few seasons ago and the script was similarly dialogue-rich, somewhat of a TV rarity outside 3 camera sitcom.)

Today was a chance to be reunited with director Shawn Thompson who helmed most of the episodes of a late, and hopefully lamented series I was a regular on for CBC a few years ago, An American in Canada. Woot-woot. And got to meet a few crew members I'd worked with in shows past as well. A jolly time, doing what one would pay to do for money. No complaints.

The experience reminds me how small our industry is in terms of everyone eventually works with each other. It reminded me how professionals who are fun to work with tend to get rehired and that was a message I tried to transmit to students when I taught, though I fear it fell on deaf young ears. Stardom was their presumption for their careers. But what I got to have today was the joy of being a professional working with professionals--with no stars in sight. Maybe that's the way it should be even in Hollywood, but that IS the way it is in this country.

Dany Boy is crowdfunding on indiegogo

2010-09-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

I've placed my feature in development "Dany Boy" on indiegogo.com to raise funds for casting costs. You can check out the page here and consider contributing. And forward the link to your network!

In addition, a video backgrounder is up on vimeo.com, linked to the indiegogo site but you can see it here.

Dany Boy fundraising backgrounder from Sugith Varughese on Vimeo.

Tiff: Was it worth it?

2010-09-17T10:20:00.000-07:00

Now that Tiff, aka the Toronto International Film Festival, is winding down, time to take stock and see if springing for an industry networking pass which got me into everything BUT movies, was actually worth it.

My goal in attending this year was to find an executive producer for an indie feature I want to direct and to promote myself as a filmmaker. I'd say that my score on the EP is a C and I got a solid B+ on self-promotion. (Walking down the street for the Bell Lightbox opening, I ran into an old colleague who I've worked with in the past and who had executive produced a film that is in the festival who seemed open to considering my project. So that's a C - contact made, but deal not closed.)

Attending the panels was an interesting exercise. There were a lot of attendees whose sole purpose was to make themselves known to the panelists and attendees by asking a question, (introducing themselves and pitching their product as part of the question) and then scampering up to the panelists afterwards, trying to get them to take their leave behinds, (sell sheets, business cards, whatever.) I admired their enthusiasm, though a few didn't really appear to have any selectivity to who they buttonholed. And anyone with a script or even a sell sheet for a script was usually politely declined. No one's going to accept a script without signing a release first.) I was a bit more selective in my networking and tried to introduce myself to the people who could actually help me. Hence my self-score of a B+.

But as always, the best meetings were with people you could never choose to meet, but which happened serendipitously. Proximity makes the best bedfellows. And then you actually meet someone you LIKE, who also just happens to be someone who might be of help.

Now, I'm scanning all the business cards I collected and following up with a few emails. Back to business.

Tiff 2 days in

2010-09-11T22:39:00.000-07:00

I think most local filmmakers have a love-hate relationship with Tiff, aka the Toronto International Film Festival. I know I do.

I hate it when I experience all the hype around film and filmmakers and I'm not part of it, (and so far, I've never been a part of it by having a film in the festival.) But I love that one of the world's largest and most successful film festivals is in my town.

This year I decided to embrace the festival by forking over the least amount of money for an industry networking pass which gets me into everything BUT movies. What's the point of that, I can hear, from the bleachers. Well, it IS about cost, for one thing. But for another, most of the films worth seeing usually get released shortly after the festival and you can then see them without standing in line and paying 20 bucks. Also, when I have bought a pass that included films, I then felt obligated to try and see as many movies as I could to make the pass worth my while and frankly, despite the hype, (and I know this is heresy), most of the film just aren't worth it. Not that the festival films are bad, (though that does happen), but they are also rarely better than Sunset Boulevard or Lawrence of Arabia, despite what's written in the BIG BOOK about them. (For those who haven't attended Tiff, the big book lists all the films, devoting an entire page to each one. It's a nice souvenir, but not something you want to carry around.)

So I've been spending my time at the filmmaker's lounge attending panel discussions and have found the first two days quite fruitful. One big message is that it's important, as Marguerite Pigott, who works for one of Canada's pay TV channels told me, to "know where the puck's going, not where it's been." The big message is that traditional forms of distribution are really dead to most indie film makers and we need to see them akin to winning the lottery. Yes, buy a ticket, but don't depend on it to pay the rent. Instead, we have to assume we're going to self-distribute.

Here's the problem for CANADIAN independent filmmakers: the business model that our funding system, (since we don't have studios or a recognized means of private equity investment), which means Telefilm Canada and/or provincial funding agencies for feature films requires a distributor be attached. Yet these dinosaurs aren't going to be doing much for our films as the online space expands and audiences see their films on computers, streaming to their flat screens or on on their phones. That revenue stream can't be used to support a funding application to the government-based funding agencies, which are our de facto studios.

Does this mean that as the rest of the indie film world finds the new way to reach their audiences via self-distribution, Canadian independent film makers are going to be forced to support an outmoded distribution model that frankly, has never worked in English Canada anyway?

Little Mosque gets 3 Gemini noms

2010-08-31T13:13:00.000-07:00

For a show that's been around as long as it has, (we just wrapped production on season 5), CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairie has been noticeably absent from Gemini nominations, (these are the Canadian TV awards, our attempt at the Emmys). I'm not sure why, but having sat on many Gemini juries in the past, I know that a lot can happen in the jury room to sway votes. For some reason, the show has never been nominated for a Gemini in the years I've been on it, but this year is a breakthrough.

Not only did Little Mosque get a nomination for best comedy series, two of our directors, Mike Kennedy and Jim Allodi got nominated for episodes, (that I happened to be in, though I'm not taking credit for their nominations!).

All I can say is, IT'S ABOUT TIME. The show is currently seen in 63 countries and has lasted as long as most Canadian sitcoms. I'm not saying it should win, but being shut out of Gemini nominations for so long smacked of professional jealousy. So I'm really pleased for the producers and directors for their nominations and I want to let them know they've got my vote.

Quality versus Popularity

2010-08-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a recent headline about how popular Jersey Shore is in Canada. And here's a review about a popular movie in Japan.

It's what I love about Japan. Having been there three times, I can understand why culturally, quality and popularity don't have to be at odds. As the population in the west becomes dumbed down, (in my opinion, through a lowering of academic standards in order to appease parents who want their kids to have lots of self-esteem, even if they can't read or write!), cultures in Asia are ramping up. With high academic standards, India, China, Japan and other Asian nations have a populace that's growing smarter. (Not that any of these countries are perfect, but on academics and education, they run rings around the public education system of Ontario, and probably the rest of Canada.

It's a dilemma for artists attempting to use popular culture, like TV to reach audiences. Kurasawa was a living national treasure in Japan, (which is a honorific bestowed upon that nation's greatest artists.) Ours are lucky to get a star on Blue Jay's Way, and really it's only those who've LEFT Canada and become famous in the Hollywood system that gets those stars.

Film financing in the internet age

2010-08-24T05:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I put up Dany Boy - the film on indiegogo.com, a crowdfunding site. Crowdfunding, (who gets to coin these new words anyway?), is the latest way to finance worthy projects from interested participants. It's an extension of social media in that you're presenting your project to the world and anyone who's interested and into supporting causes of some kind, can find yours and decide whether they want to kick in a few bucks to get it off the ground.

Almost more importantly, those who support your project probably represent 100 to 1000 times the number of people in the potential audience for the film, in this case.

Within hours of putting it up, Dany Boy - the film received a $100 donation which goes towards casting costs. The supporter will receive a few perks, like an autographed DVD and one sheet of the film.

I'm amazed and gratified by this kind of support and it's given me a real confidence boost as I push forward into the financing phase of the film.

Hope you check it out and consider helping us!

Dany Boy gets a reading

2010-08-20T13:59:00.000-07:00

Last night, a group of talented actors performed the latest draft of Dany Boy for an invited audience.

This is a script I've been developing since I read the first draft during my time as screenwriter-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library 2 years ago. Since then, I've worked with the talented writer, Imthiyaz Hameed, through 6 more drafts. The collaboration has been one of those good ones where you don't have to spend a lot of time trying to communicate, but where each of us takes off where the other one left.

I'm thrilled with how well the reading went - especially as it was essentially a cold read by the actors. But they're all pros and I just want to thank them publicly for donating their time. Thank you, Sarena Parmar, Lisa Norton, Sanjay Talwar, Karan Oberoi and Pragna Desai!

The reading was a great launch into the financing phase.

Despicable Me is one of the best scripts of the summer

2010-08-13T21:20:00.001-07:00

It's a treat to watch a film with a great screenplay. In fact, we don't see the screenplay, we just get caught up in the story and characters, but it's to the credit of the screenplay FIRST (not to denigrate any other department's contribution to a film's success, but until the writer does his/her job, no one else even has a one), that this even happens.

Despicable Me is worth some study because it both conforms to the best kind of screenwriting structure AND transcends it.

In Gru we have what appears to be a paradoxical hero - someone who aspires to be a villain. Most screenwriting dictum claims the hero should be likeable, yet needing to change. Yet, the necessity for that change makes it difficult to make a likeable hero. If he's so likeable, why does he need to change?

The screenplay achieves this difficult combination by making Gru's villainy understandable so we relate to it. He's not a villain because he's "bad". He's just trying to get his mother to love him. Unimpressed with him as a child, his mother MOTIVATES him to want to be the greatest evil genius in the world. It's the motivation that's clearly dramatized in the script that makes us actually care about Gru. In the end, his mother doesn't actually love him anymore than at the start, but by then Gru (and we) have discovered that by loving, Gru gets the love he desperately needed.

The screenplay is highly inventive in how it executes, but highly classical in what it's trying to do. A perfect combination. And in the end, it truly is a script that makes you laugh, and amazingly, makes you cry.

Inception lacks stakes

2010-08-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

Despite the impressive effects and decent acting, Christopher Nolan's script for Inception lacks a fundamental requirement: what's at stake?

Watching the film, I couldn't help thinking that he'd been told this, so he lathered on some dialogue to justify Sato's desire to break up his rival's company - "they'll control the world's energy!" and more dialogue to motivate Dobb - "you'll get to go home". But this is the clumsiest and least effective way of achieving something so basic and important to screenplays. I never believe what a character says. It's what a character DOES that matters. So injecting stakes by dialogue doesn't convince.

Ultimately, the concept of entering dreams is interesting and impressively achieved, thanks to the effects, but I never stopped wondering why are we bothering? Why do we care? In the end, I didn't.

Maury wasn't acting

2010-07-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

My second professional film acting job was playing a reporter in a sci-fi drama. I had to ask the great Canadian actor, Maury Chaykin, a question.

When I did my take, Maury turned to me like I was slime and did something totally unexpected. He repeated his line. And the second time he said it, I totally reacted not as I'd planned to, as an actor, but as I had to, as a person. He made me stop acting and start reacting.

It was a great lesson.

Maury Chaykin passed away yesterday at the age of 61.

Sometimes you got to have a life

2010-07-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

I got an audition for today for a guest spot on a US series that shoots here. Great!

Then I checked the breakdown and noticed that a vacation I'd booked to visit my family fell right in the middle of the outside dates of the shoot. (Outside dates are the start and end date for the shoot.) The part involved 1 scene - a nice scene - so it was worth going for - but would I get boned or bone the production if the shoot date coincided with my vacation?

So I checked with my agent's assistant who checked with the AD on the production who told her that the shoot for that scene was scheduled for 1 of 2 days that fell on my vacation. Would I consider cutting short my trip in order to do the role?

Ah....

This is the existential dilemma actors always face. In a world where work is not guaranteed, (I haven't had an audition for a while so why does one have to fall on a vacation day??), do you take the work and postpone your life?

Everyone has to make their own decision but for me, I always choose to have a life. Seeing family is more important to me than a day's work. But it's not the right choice for everyone. It's just my choice.

Fighting mosquitos and wayward guns

2010-07-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

Outside Indian Head, Saskatchewan about an hour after my pick up at 5:10 AM - ugh, I had to wake up before 5 AM to go to work on CBC TV's sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie. (And of course I woke up every hour on the hour, nervous that I'd sleep through the 4:45 alarm.

Now without giving away the plot of this episode, let's just say that paintball guns are involved. That's all you really need to know.

It must be some kind of first. How many sitcoms start their shoot day with a safety speech?

The mosquitos are the size of VW's at 6 AM here in the conservation area near the town of Indian Head which gets transformed into the fictional burg of Mercy every summer when our show comes to town. It's quite something for they change signage in the town and erect a full size church exterior that's really a false front just like on the Universal Studio's tour. The crew have donned full body suit nets to combat the bugs, but the cast can only rely on makeup mixed with Deet to ward off the critters.

Having never played paintball, I'm astonished to discover that the weapons used in paintball fire rather painful pellets of paint and can cause serious injury or death, according to the warning sticker on the compressed air powered guns we're wielding. The stills photographer takes a shot of us posing like the Muslim-Anglican version of Stallone's upcoming movie The Expendables.

At one point, I deliver my line, cock my rifle and am dismayed when it starts firing into the dirt indiscriminately like an AK-47. That's one for the gag reel.

When it's my turn to get shot, they suit me up with a padded undershirt under my wardrobe. The only problem was that the paintball didn't land on any part of my wardrobe that covered the padding, but smack dab in the center of my neck. Ow.

By mid-day, the crew who were fighting mosquitos must now contend with a tornado watch and we're terribly behind. In fact, I'm sent back to the hotel after lunch because they know they won't get to my last scene today as planned.

But it's going to be hilarious. You just wait.

Can you throw in an accent?

2010-07-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

Today I had an audition for a Canadian sitcom for the part of a terrorist. All I had to go on were two script pages, which had 3 short speeches, (really 3 lines), for my character. And there was nothing in the script that suggested they wanted something other than the stereotypical middle Eastern terrorist type.

So I'm faced with an existential dilemma. Do I perpetuate a stereotype in order to get a gig, or do I take some kind of stand?

I face this dilemma almost every time I get an audition because as a minority, I am seldom offered parts that weren't expressly written as a minority. (Unless it's as a doctor. I've done 29 doctors. I could cut a reel of my doctors to the stars. No stereotyping there!) In an earlier post on this blog, I noted how Canadian shows usually want me to have an accent - I guess in the interests of multiculturalism - and American shows usually do not - the American audience can't abide accents, I guess.

In trying to figure out what to do for this latest audition, I contemplated doing it with a Canadian accent - we do have home grown terrorists, after all - or maybe another unexpected accent, upper class Brit or Parisian, perhaps. Anything to not be party to perpetuating a stereotype, and yet being available for work - and not being labeled a troublemaker and being blackballed like other actors have been when they took a stand against stereotypes. (The great Canadian actor Tony Nardi became famous for refusing to audition for Italian mobster parts.)

But I also need the gig. That's just the reality of my career. I can't afford to turn down work - or worse, alienate a network for being "difficult."

When I arrived at the audition, my suspicions were immediately proved right, when the casting director told all the actors waiting to audition for the part to please "throw in an accent." We all knew what she meant, but I just couldn't help myself from confirming what we were being asked to do. So I asked "What kind?"

Silence from the casting director. Then, "uh, Arab?"

Now I really can't help myself and laugh and say, "Any reason this part isn't a stereotype then?"

The casting director now glares at me. I realize it's not her fault, this is what the producers and network have told her to find. I'm just a hassle at the end of her long day.

I was gratified when the actor who went in before me thanked me for saying what I said.

But this is my CAREER! My life! I am the one who would be on TV, not the producers, network executives or writers. The actor takes the hit from the public. (I often get asked in interviews how I choose my roles. As if actors had a choice. Maybe Tom Cruise, but most of us choose our roles when the network chooses us.)

So I did the audition avec accent, (East Indian sitcom). The casting director didn't want another take, which I suspect was her way of telling me, "Yeah, you won't be on the final selects we send the network. Have a nice day."

I really wish TV writers and networks could find a way to be funny without perpetuating racial and cultural stereotypes, but it looks like we're not there yet.

Another day in the life of a minority actor.

Updated my website

2010-07-15T12:03:00.000-07:00

I just added sell sheets for some of my film projects at my website.

Accents make you more employable

2010-07-08T15:52:00.000-07:00

I've used an accent in approximately half of the roles I've played, usually Indo-Pakistani. As a minority performer, I'm often called upon to play foreign or immigrant characters who would naturally have an accent. And as long as the part is not demeaning or stereotyped, I'd rather do it than not.

But more often than not, the accent is required for a part in a Canadian show and unrequested for American!

I once got cast as an air traffic controller from Mauritius in May Day, a hugely successful show that recreates air disasters. My character was a Mauritian, in Mauritius. Mauritius is in the Indian Ocean and their citizens speak English with a very distinctive accent that is a combination of Indian languages and French. Very interesting and challenging to pull off. Shortly around the time I got the part, I bought some pants from a store salesman from Mauritius. So I worked hard to remember the music of his accent and apply it to my part.

Luckily, a friend of mine was the AD on the show and I eagerly mentioned that I was working on the accent and would have it down by the shoot day. Then he called me and said that the word came down, NO accent. The show was seen on science type channel in the US and their audience wouldn't tolerate things like accents or subtitles. So my Mauritian air traffic controller spoke like a guy from Toronto. Oh well.

On the other hand, I find that on Canadian shows, I'm expected to have an accent in the interest of multiculturalism, I guess. Not sure why this is, but having surveyed my resume, it boils down to Canadian shows prefer the accent, American shows do not.

Regardless, being able to pull off an accent makes me more employable. It's absolutely essential for me to make a living, but I daresay Anglo actors who can do accents are also more employable.

College: where the customer is king

2010-06-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

I recently decided not to return to teaching college. I've taught script analysis to film and TV acting students at one college for a number of years and more recently I taught screenwriting to film and broadcasting students at another. I loved it. But the students didn't love me.

I never knew they didn't love me until the end of semester evaluations. These are the only evaluation of an instructor in the system and they are based on the students' opinion of the instructor. I never did well. Generally, my classes were polarized. A small group found me excellent, a larger group found me unacceptable and the largest group never bothered to fill out the evaluation.

However, the administrators of the colleges I taught at take these evaluations very seriously. And they make their decisions as to who to bring back to teach, (as a part time instructor, I had no job security or could even dream of tenure), each semester. It's worse than working as an actor in a TV series, not knowing whether you'll be picked up. I'd been warned that if I couldn't "relate" to students, the content I provided wasn't going to matter.

While my fate as a college instructor is irrelevant, the value placed on student evaluations needs to be well, re-evaluated by college administrators. As long as they feel it's the instructor's job to keep the student, and presumably the parent paying the tuition, happy, the instructor is placed in an impossible situation.

How can we evaluate someone who's going to turn around and evaluate us? If colleges insist on this kind of system, then they have to remove the obligation of the instructor to evaluate the student. Yet, it doesn't seem to occur to administrators that possibly a disgruntled student may be using the evaluation to get back at the instructor or that perhaps someone other than a student should be included in the jury.

This recent alter-net article explains it very cogently.

My own evaluations were similar, down to the student comments, which almost sound like quotes from mine. I'm pleased with the course content I designed and I also enjoyed teaching it. But when faced with an untenable situation, I could no longer reconcile having to evaluate people who could then turn around and evaluate me--effectively deciding whether I would keep my job.

I admire those people who can evaluate college students honestly and fairly and yet keep most of them happy enough to give them a positive evaluation. But in my experience, the college system had too much evaluation and not enough actual learning to make it worth the effort.

Diversification versus Niche

2010-06-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

The reality of being in Canada is that I must be diversified - I act, write, direct and teach - in order to make a living. The advantage of diversification means that I survive the cyclical nature of being in the arts. Artists usually see a feast or famine income curve and often when acting is down, writing is up and vice versa for me. Of course, there are times when everything is down and others when everything is up! (I NEVER complain about being too busy, though.)

I struggle in raising financing for directing projects because of my diverse background, for example.

Being diversified means the industry doesn't quite know what to make of you. We prefer to typecast. Consequently, I am perhaps seen as a jack of all trades - and master of none. I admire and respect those who have been able to focus on just one career and make a go of it. (Congratulations, for example, to Atom Egoyan who made his first first film about the same time I wrote my first long form drama for television was produced.)

The reality is that it's better to be someone who's perceived to do something really well. Of course, I like to think that being able to make a living means that when I do get a job, it's because I am the best person for the job, but it can be drawback in terms of overall career path.

You play the cards you're dealt.

Returning to a series is like returning to the golf course

2010-05-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

In the space of a couple of days I returned to the set of Little Mosque to begin shooting the 5th season as the recurring character "Faisal" and I returned to the golf course after a winter layoff. A lot of things in common!

It's like re-exercising unused muscles, whether physical in the case of my wretched golf game or creative in the case of my hopefully not wretched performance on set. It's all about relearning and resuming. Getting back into the rhythm of on set work and bringing your A game to the party. Ultimately, it's always about preparation, which thankfully I find easier to do on set than on the golf course - less money at stake in my golf game.

But preparation is everything in golf and acting, I think. That, and concentration. Everything else is window dressing, serendipity and technique.

Cannes day 54

2010-05-17T17:30:00.000-07:00

It feels like it at least. Standing on your feet or walking and holding a glass is the required posture for all non-movie going hours spent at Festival de Cannes I have discovered.

But the angry complaints my toes have been filing with my central nervous system disappeared tonight after I attended a premiere of Carancho from Argentinian director Pablo Trapero, who also co-wrote the script and directed his wife, Martina Gusman in the lead role. The film charts the story of an ambulance chasing lawyer, ("carancho" is Spanish slang for birds of prey and refers to such lawyers), who falls for a drug-addicted doctor while trying to manage various scams and avoid the mob. This doesn't do justice to the visceral power of the story especially as car accidents are the chief cause of death to those under 35 in Argentina. You don't need to understand Spanish to get caught up in the film, or even the trailer:

It blew me away through dead true performances and astonishing single take scenes that started with a conversation, became a full blown fight--how they got the blood to bleed later in the shot as it would in real life is beyond me--culminating in a driver's side view of a horrific car accident. Impossible to duplicate. What if you need to do take 2? Audacious film making that reminded me what cinema can be in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.

I'm humbled and inspired.

Cannes day 3: Lessons in Trans-Media

2010-05-15T01:49:00.000-07:00

I had originally thought trans-media was a buzzword for online content, but over VERY expensive drinks at the Martinez Hotel bar in Cannes, ($27 for a martini? Incroyable!), I got a lesson from producers I met from South Africa and Brooklyn. It's not merely something that's suitable for movies that come from or will become video games.

Zaheer Goodman-Bhyat from Cape Town, who's produced a new version of Athol Fugard's masterpiece "Master Harold and the Boys" explained to me that trans-media expands the content of a film so that an audience becomes more engaged with it. In the case of his film, the trans-media content will be historical and political context, since the play is set in apartheid South Africa. It's not just for shoot'em up games on Facebook. Though, he pointed out that the most popular online game now is not a first person shooter but Farmville on Facebook played by 80 million Facebook users. Trans-media's an element of storytelling on film that can't be ignored, but it's actually being invented right now. We're really making it up as we go along.

Five people connect from five countries at Cannes

2010-05-13T18:10:00.000-07:00

The amazing experience that is Cannes came through today as the following sequence of events took place.

First I attended the opening of the Indian pavilion. While listening to the numerous and somewhat tedious speeches from various Indian dignitaries, I started chatting with a fellow standing next to me who turned out to be an Indian producer based in New York named Nabeel.

Later that day I ran into Nabeel again and introduced him to Kirk Cooper from Film Market Access. In turn, he introduced Kirk to Sydney, a programmer from the Chungmuro International Film Festival in Seoul.

Cut to the evening when Kirk took me to one of Cannes’ top watering holes for indie film makers to meet his friend Selvaggia who programs the River to River Festival of Indian films in Florence.

When we arrive, the bar is packed, people spilling out into the street. And who’s sitting next to Selvaggia, but Nabeel! The fellow gets around. He’s also sitting with another friend of Kirk’s from South Africa, a film producer named Zaheer. All unknown to each other before this day started, now 5 people, including Kirk and myself are all connected from four different countries.

That’s the experience of Cannes, which is one of the largest festivals in the world, yet seems akin to attending an exquisite party where everyone eventually meets everyone else. I’ve only had a like experience at a cozy fest like Edinburgh Film Festival – well, Edinburgh eat your heart out.

Cannes - day 2

2010-05-13T04:04:00.001-07:00

Saw a buyers' screening of a new Kristen Scott-Thomas film in French called Love Crime last night. While she's great, as usual, the film itself is somewhat limp and weakly written. Set in the Paris offices of some kind of underwritten multinational, nothing rang true. Having spent the last several months writing films set in offices, I know that you can't just throw some generic office jargon on screen and expect the audience to suspend their disbelief. And at least I, and I suspect many in the audience, did not. But that's the kind of film you can see at Cannes - the ones looking for an audience.

Just returned from the opening festivities of the Indian pavilion where there were numerous speeches of Indian officials and producers actually trying to speak to each other, rather than speaking to the world who'd gathered. Made somewhat enjoyable with the inclusion of lots of lovely women in attendance, including Bollywood starlet Malika Sharwat (seen seated in the middle of this photo I took with my iPhone), who is making her Hollywood debut in a couple of upcoming releases.

Off to the opening of the Russian pavilion.

Festival de Cannes - day 1

2010-05-12T04:38:00.000-07:00

Even volcanic ash can't stop Cannes.

But it did keep me from making my connection in Frankfurt and forced me to fly to Zurich and spend a few hours there before flying to Nice. I made good use of my stay in Switzerland to buy some chocolate.

Arriving in Nice after 11 means that there's no way to get to Cannes except by taxi, which can cost upwards of 100 Euros - $150 Canadian. Ouch.

At least I met a sales rep for the country of Taiwan's film industry at the bus stop and we agreed to share the cost of the cab fare. Upon arriving at the Villa Maupassant apartment hotel in La Bocca, near Cannes, where I was staying, the night clerk had no record of my reservation. It took about 45 minutes of discussing Indian culture before he found my name on a list and handed me a key. I had been up, aside from a few moments nodding off on various plane rides, for 36 hours straight.

But after a sleep and a shower, I joined Kirk Cooper of Film Market Access who guided me on a tour of the festival's venues today. It's all very grand and we've seen these theatres in movies but to see it all up close is akin to watching the Oscar set up. The festival is unlike most, including Toronto's in that only industry are able to attend. There are no tickets available to the public.

A bonus of attending Cannes as a registered member of the Canadian contingent means that the Canadian pavilion welcomes you with a VIP pass to hang with your Marche badge and even provides a locker for your use! This comes in handy because the bag that's filled with festival catalogues must literally weigh as much as both Toronto phone books.

So after obtaining a French cell phone, my pass and enough market reading material for many trips to the bathroom, I finish this blog entry staring out on the Cote d'Azur from the lovely Canadian pavilion and flip the bird to volcanos.

Off to Cannes

2010-05-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

My trip to Cannes film market and festival has encountered volcanic ash, which delayed my flight from Toronto to Frankfurt causing me to miss my connection to Nice, (nearest airport to Cannes.)

So I've been diverted to Zurich, where we circled the airport for 45 minutes waiting for the severe thunderstorms to break. Got a fleeting glimpse of the Alps, before turbulence rocked the plane. Safely on Swiss airport soil now, but really, what's next? Plagues of locusts?

Now hoping to reach Cannes about 12 hours after I had originally planned to.

Is a picture really worth a thousand words?

2010-04-14T23:55:00.001-07:00

That's what they say.

I'm attending the Cannes Film Festival this year, the second week of May, hawking my wares. I have several feature screenplays that I'd like to push towards production and so while I've done the usual, posted them on inktip.com, entered several contests, I think it's time I head to the south of France where anyone who actually does want to make movies and even some who have the means to do so converge this time of year.

I've whipped up sell sheets for each project using Apple's Pages app. Here they are.

In case you can't read them, the taglines are,

The Wild Swans: "An evil stepmother is just the beginning."

Perfect Arrangement: "He wants a wife. So does she."

Dead Wrong: "Suicide is a deadly way to fall in love."

I actually like these tag lines a lot, but then, I've read the screenplays. But maybe the picture isn't the only thing worth a thousand words. Maybe the tag line is worth a few pictures?

These mockups use temp images as possibles so I can get feedback from my colleagues - like you. If you have anything to say, click the comment button!

Best of luck, Mr. Landesberg

2010-04-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

I LOVE the story of a Hollywood writer who decides to finally do it his way. And best of all, he gave opportunity to all the talented folks over 50 who suffer ageism in this business and can't find work doing what they do, better than the 20 and 30 somethings who do work.

Radio Canada International interview

2010-04-08T11:04:00.001-07:00

I was interviewed by Radio Canada International yesterday. You can listen to the interview here.

Sugithvarughese.com updated

2010-03-31T22:09:00.000-07:00

I just updated my web site sugithvarughese.com which you may want to check out.

Reading the pitch to an audience

2010-03-25T22:26:00.000-07:00

My agent sent me a spec for a call from a company seeking MOW's (in an era where MOW's are dead, this was welcome news!) with very particular specs. (Family comedy suitable for a Disney Channel made for a girl audience and their parents who wouldn't mind watching as well.)

I actually had a spec script written already, (The Wild Swans based on a Hans Christian Anderson tale) which would fit the bill if the company didn't mind fantasy. My agent checked. No go. Strictly present day.

So I had a couple of days to come up with a new pitch in between delivering a 2nd draft on an industrial video I had to turn in on Monday.

By Tuesday I had a 2 page pitch about a budding young archaeologist from the far off, and fictional country of Chandistan, who steals a priceless artifact to protect it from destruction by radicals who think art is unholy.

I read it out loud to my screenwriting students today as an example of a pitch - and they LOVED it. And they're not even the target audience. But, as they pointed out to me, it was written like I try and get them to write--focusing on WHAT HAPPENS. How it happens can wait until you're writing the outline or the script itself. My agent also liked it.

So now it's up to see whether the market will.

Thanks to the writers of Little Mosque on the Prairie on CBC TV

2010-03-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks folks.

Thanks for bringing my character, Faisal, into the show so fully this season, (which just ended tonight). I always try and make even an eye twitch work for you, but when you give me great lines and funny stuff to do, well, then I don't have to act. With this character, all I need to do is put on my great wardrobe, (thanks Risa!), and most importantly, those wacky white shoes that nobody sees, and have your great dialogue to say and I become this guy Faisal.

I know that there were some significant changes made to the show this year, like bringing in a new character. How you guys manage to twirl all those plates amazes me. I'm just glad you brought me back and gave me even more to do this season.

Whatever success the show has, and being seen in 63 countries counts as success to me, it always comes down to the writing. Doing your job gave me a job and I had a blast doing it.

Can we do it again?

Preparing to Pitch

2010-03-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

I just got back from Whitehorse where I taught a workshop on pitching to some very hard-working participants who had both TV series and feature projects under their arm.

I had a full two days planned and could probably have used another half day to get through everything. It's like when I was in school. I was an A student - not because I was smart, but because I decided I could ace tests if I just made sure that any question the teacher could ask I could answer. I think you need to take the same approach preparing to pitch.

As I said to the workshop students, you're pitching to someone who is looking for ANY reason to say no. Your job is not to give them a reason.

That means your concept has to be rock solid. It may not be what they want, but you don't want them to fault you on quality, just on taste. It's like you're building cars. There's no way you can sell your car to someone who's looking to buy a sink. But you must make your car a Mercedes, not a Yugo, so that when you get a chance to sell to someone who wants a car, they can't fault you on quality.

You also need to make sure your concept has a strong enough franchise, especially if it's a TV series, for them to "get" it and see what it can be week to week.

Know yourself, who the audience for your show will be. Not in demographic-speak but in terms of interest. "My show appeals to people who care about the environment and who like mysteries." I think that's a legitimate description of an audience, regardless of whether that's women 18-35.

Make sure the characters fulfill the audience's need for archetypes. It doesn't mean you have to slavishly provide the same old archetypes with your characters, but figure out what archetypal roles your characters provide.

Be sure you know whether your show has legs to provide enough story potential to create multiple episodes. Have at least half a dozen episode ideas going into your pitch session.

And work out whether your show has enough potential for at least a first season arc.

Having all of this in your arsenal means that they can't ask you something you don't know. Just like my high school teachers couldn't. It's a lot of work, but it's what it takes to buy a ticket to the lottery.

Tips for scripts

2010-03-05T22:44:00.000-08:00

A list I compiled after reading my screenwriting class' assignments, which was to write a one minute screenplay that tells a story but doesn't use dialogue. Not in any order of importance and some of this is probably self-evident, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded:

1. Miming is not visual storytelling. Visual storytelling means figuring out HOW to tell a story using images, not just removing dialogue.

2. Real time is not the only possible time in film. Screenwriters can use the power of edits to tell story instead of everything happening in a continuous real time.

3. Avoid describing action in a sentence, that could take a few seconds on screen. You need to figure out how to lay out a scene on the page so that the page length matches 1 page/minute of screen time.

4. Remember each scene must stand on its own for production. Don’t need something in a scene you don’t make explicit reference to in the scene.

5. If something can be misinterpreted, it will be.

6. Location and int or ext depends on where you want the camera. Eg. An EXT scene with a tree with a bird in it, but seen from someone inside’s POV, would really be INT. Seen through the window…

7. Most stories lack conflict and rising action because of a passive hero. Need to see hero struggle. Need to FORCE character into action quickly.

8. AVOID PASSIVE VOICE

9. You need to make your script a good read. Be vivid, not technical in describing what we see.

10. Avoid paragraphs longer than 4 lines. Keep each paragraph only as long as a shot, both in length and content. Even if you think it will be one continuous shot, don’t make it hard on reader. Use lots of white space on the page.

11. Don’t use scene numbers until script is in production.

12. Unless there’s some important reason not to, NAME your characters.

What green screen means

2010-02-26T14:25:00.000-08:00

I don't mean to define green screen, but really to remind myself what the technology means for writers and actors.

Take a look at this promotional video for a green screen company:

Their remarkable work reminded me that you can't trust anything you see on prime time TV. Some of the clips are from shows like Ugly Betty which is not known for being special effects dependent. But it obviously is!

What this means for writers is that nothing should restrict your imagination, especially budget. You don't really know what it will cost. If it makes story sense, write it and let the production manager make you change it.

What this means for actors is that your use of imagination becomes that much more important. All those acting exercises actually become on-set requirements since you won't necessarily have the real location to inspire you or evoke feelings for you.

When I did the movie Mission to Mars,
I was astonished at how realistic the space station set was. Every button worked and made some light go on. The galley set was stocked with real NASA astronaut food. They could have used packets of cat treats because no one would ever know--except the actors. Naturally it enhanced my feeling of being on a space station--and hopefully helped the performance.

But they probably don't need to go to the trouble of constructing something as elaborate ten years later, so the onus would now be on me to imagine all the stuff that they built when we shot that film.

Which comes first, theme or plot?

2010-02-22T10:31:00.000-08:00

Dave is a fanatic fan of Fraggle Rock as you can see from his recent email to me: (quoted with his permission)

Hi Sugith,

Hope 2010 is treating you well thus far. I checked out your blog today and looked for a link to send questions (outside of comments); finding none, I decided to try here.

I watched one of your Fraggle Rock episodes today, "The Great Radish Caper", and got to thinking about where theme meets plot. One of the things I always admired about the show was how the writers would take abstract or highly specific concepts and build concrete stories from them, and I wondered if you might shed some light on this process on the blog?

It's the reason I watched so much FR while writing the last draft of my animated feature script; I was trying to craft the plot to reflect theme but found it difficult. My best friend, also an aspiring screenwriter, thought I was doing it backwards, and should let the theme grow naturally out of the story.

What are your thoughts on this 'chicken or the egg' question? Hope to hear back from you, and hope this provides fertile material for your blog. Take care.

Dave

Great question, though difficult to answer 20 years after the fact! (As an aside, I recently showed this episode to my screenwriting students who seemed to respect me for the first time once they realized I'd written a show they'd seen as kids.)

Okay Dave, here's my response --

After the first season of writing Fraggle Rock, Jim Henson requested that all of us write what I came to call a "story grid" on the first page of every script we wrote. This way, anyone working on the show would quickly understand what it was about regardless of whether they read it. The converse meant that writers had to make sure that what they wrote dealt with what Jim wanted to know.

Here is what he wanted to know:

1. Whose story is it? (This usually meant which character did this episode focus on, and it had to be one of the regulars, of course.)

2. What's their goal? (This was a concrete objective in the story. In the case of The Great Radish Caper, Dave, Mokey wanted to retrieve the greatest radish in the world from the Gorg's Garden.)

3. What's the obstacle? (Again, this was to be concrete. For that Fraggle episode, Junior Gorg's love for Geraldine, that special radish was the obstacle.)

4. What is at stake? (Whatever this was, it better be huge. Life and death was the best and if not life or death, then the equivalent.) So in this case, what was at stake was Mokey's life because Gorg's are dangerous, but also love, in that by stealing the radish, Mokey would remove love from Junior's life.) Huge stakes.

5. What do we learn? (What's the point of the story? Jim felt the audience should get something out of an episode beyond mere entertainment. Shakespeare agrees. What's good enough for Jim Henson was good enough for me. So in the case of this show, we learn that friendship is more important than self-satisfaction. Mokey helps Junior find a friend so he won't miss Geraldine, only to understand Junior better and begin to be a friend to him. So she and we learn that friendship is not based on what you think should be a friend, but where you find it.)

Now this story grid got rewritten as the script evolved. What I've written is the final version, as best as I can remember it. But I'm sure it didn't start out that way, just as none of the scripts shot were ever first drafts.

Getting to the chicken and egg issue about whether to start with theme or plot -- which is what I think your question boils down to -- I don't think it matters. They BOTH matter and as you develop your plot, you need to ask yourself what you're trying to say. And as you discover you have something to say, you need to figure out how to say it. The creative process is going to be different for every writer. It doesn't matter which is the chicken or the egg--and it may be different every time you write a script -- but if you know they both matter, then you can check each against the other as you write.

But Jim's tool is a great one to keep you on track from the start. You probably have to come up with something--an idea, a pitch, whatever--before you can write the story grid, but write it early in the process and then keep revising it as you discover the script that you're writing.

That's my answer, Dave. Hope it helps.

Thinking Visually

2010-02-19T15:29:00.000-08:00

One of the qualities that separates a screenwriter from other kinds of writers is that the screenwriter MUST be able to think visually.

I give my screenwriting students an assignment to write a treatment for a 1 minute silent film, (silent meaning no dialogue, but sync sounds are okay.) The point of the assignment is to get them to try and tell a story strictly in moving pictures. I think as we continue into a post-cinematic world, which is net-based, text-based, rather than visual, this quality will be harder to develop. I know that very few of my screenwriting students intuitively try and tell stories in pictures. It's an impulse they have to learn, whereas 30 years on into screenwriting, I have trouble NOT thinking in pictures. That's why I doubt I'll ever have the cojones to write prose. Writing posts for this blog is hard enough.

But thinking in pictures is fun.

Yesterday, one of my students complained that he couldn't figure out how to visually show someone at work being harassed by his boss or that his girlfriend was calling. In his treatment, he'd had both the boss and the girlfriend use the phone to call the harried worker character and then tried to be visual by showing their names on the phone's call display. He ran into real trouble when the worker answered the phone, because he couldn't even say hello and fulfill the requirements of my assignment.

Why not try to SHOW the girlfriend show up and plant a kiss on her boyfriend? The moving picture tells us who the characters are and what their relationship is. Or why a character carrying a stack of files doesn't dump them on the worker's desk and glare at him before walking away. We'd instantly know this was the worker's boss and what was at stake.

A lightbulb seemed to go off for the student when I suggested this. Using technology to reveal information - his use of the telephone and the call display - was where his visual head was at instead of trying to actually communicate visually. For screenwriters it's a must. You should be able to turn off the sound of a film and still know what's going on, because the roots of cinema are in the silent film and the mural. But if you turn off the picture and just listen to the sound of a movie, it might not be so easy to figure it out.

An interesting caveat to this is television. The roots of TV are in radio. Consequently, it's interesting to think of TV as radio with pictures. Turn the picture off and listen to TV and you'll often understand what's happening. Turn the sound off and just watch the picture and it's harder. But the best TV is still cinematic as far as I'm concerned.

Seeing how unintuitive thinking visually is for my screenwriting students makes me wonder if this impulse separates the generations.

Farewell Paul

2010-01-21T21:39:00.000-08:00

Most people will know writer, songwriter, screenwriter, and musician Paul Quarrington through his exceptional novels. I knew him as a fellow screenwriter--far more active and successful than me--but while I could never write a novel like he could I hoped I could be as good a screenwriter.

I'd read his novels but I first read his screenwriting work when I was on the WGC Council. We had to choose the winners of the Canadian Screenwriting Awards, or the WGC Top Ten as they were called then and I ended up championing a script Paul had written for a Canadian TV series. I also got to present his award at the ceremony held in Toronto which was a great pleasure.

He told me about acting in a TV show once and realizing that it was a great job for a writer. All the waiting around in your little trailer gave you time to write on someone else's dime.

Until a few years ago, I saw him often when we worked out at the Metro Central YMCA Men's Health Club in Toronto. I'd kid him at industry events when someone was in earshot about seeing him naked.

The last time I saw Paul was at the wrap party of the Reel Canada film series for high schools a couple of years ago. He'd just wrapped the TV series Moose TV which he scripted, he'd met a nice lady on the shoot and was enjoying being in his prime as a writer. I'm glad that's my last memory of him.

He left us today and I will miss him.

Thanks and Merry Christmas

2009-12-22T22:19:00.000-08:00

I've been putting out messages onto the internet for a while through this blog and I hope that you enjoy them. Thanks for reading them and have a Merry Christmas and joyous New Year.

Hans Rosling demos Story and Performance at TED India

2009-12-09T09:47:00.000-08:00

He didn't intend to, but medical researcher and speaker Hans Rosling electrified the audience at the TED India conference with this presentation. Writers take note about structure. Actors take note about performance.

Writing what you know works

2009-12-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

One of the most satisfying experiences for me as a screenwriting instructor took place last week when a student who'd been writing derivative, and ultimately dishonest Law and Order wannabe type scripts finally listened to me and instead of aping what others do better, wrote a short about something that happened to him--being racially profiled by a bunch of Toronto police. It was vivid, moving and totally honest and took me inside what it must have felt like for him.

When I returned it to him I told him that it was great and that I was glad he finally arrived. He knew what I meant.

Another appearance on Little Mosque

2009-11-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

I make another appearance on this season of CBC TV's Little Mosque on the Prairie on Monday November 28. It's usually on at 8 PM in most parts of Canada. But it looks like they're repeating a holiday special episode followed at 8:30 by the new one that I'm in.

After watching The Border

2009-11-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

It's always an interesting experience watching myself on TV or film. I can't help but recall how we shot the scene on the day and then how they ended up editing it.

So often, TV editors, especially, seldom use the actor's best performances, but rather focus on "getting the lines" and often let matching go out the window. (By matching, i mean that if one actor's head is tilted left in one angle, but tilted right in the other--it causes a jump cut, which makes me crazy because it kicks me out of getting caught up in the story.) Film editors are much more careful when it comes to this and usually have more takes of material to work with.

Last Thursday I watched myself on The Border and didn't cringe. The character is so far removed from who and how I am in real life, it was interesting to see if I could actually buy into believing it wasn't me. Well, I didn't of course, but it was fun trying. I sometimes wish I could redo a line or wish they'd used a better take, but the actor is powerless in what becomes an editor's medium. That's why I try to ensure that my takes are bulletproof as much as possible. Matching matters to me, so that it becomes easier for the editor to pick a good performance IF he's paying attention to matching.

Of course, it would have been nice to score a head credit for my guest star part, but CBC tends to be very arbitrary with credits for their non-star guest roles. Despite having more dialogue than anyone but the guest lead, I didn't score a head credit, while actors with less screen time did. Go figure. (I realize this might seem petty, but head credits are a way of raising profile for future work.)

I'm on The Border this Thursday

2009-11-17T20:23:00.001-08:00

Check me out in the trailer.

Annoyed at the fence sitting

2009-11-16T15:02:00.000-08:00

If you read today's editorial in Canada's self-styled national paper, I hope you get as annoyed as I did. Isn't an editorial supposed to be an opinion? I have no idea what the Globe's opinion on the "great TV debate" actually is. Could it be they are afraid to alienate BOTH the cable and satellite companies who have been purchasing full page ads in the Globe to trumpet their cause as well as the TV networks who have also been purchasing full page ads?

The editorial pays lip service to the concerns of the creative community, including the WGC who have been quietly, (we don't have the money to buy full page ads) complaining that all this is a big distraction from what really matters--getting Canadian airwaves to broadcast Canadian programs.

It's disappointing to see a respected paper like the Globe sell itself out like this. Check out my previous blog entry for the WGC's short video that clarifies the situation for the rest of us, (who aren't shareholders in BDU's or TV networks.)

Stop the whinging!

2009-11-14T10:03:00.001-08:00

Canada's cable and satellite companies have been fighting Canada's private TV networks for your money. If they spent the same amount of money supporting Canadian programming--because they clearly have the money to waste--entire channels worth of shows could have been made.

Instead, writers, actors and directors twist in the wind while the above's executives figure out what to put in their latest full page newspaper ads and hokey TV commercials.

For a fresh and refreshing perspective on all this nonsense, check out a new video from the Writers Guild of Canada, the guild of professional screenwriters.

There. Doesn't that make sense?

Structureless Films

2009-11-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

The writer I suggested do a beat sheet countered that a couple of fave movies, Lost in Translation and Sideways, didn't have stories so what's the big deal?

She HAD to love a couple of movies that I abhor for their lack of story and in the case of Lost in Translation, a film I also find racist, or at least a movie that yet again elevates the problems of white people in another culture, while turning the members of that culture into extras in their own country.

First, the lack of story in both Lost in Translation and Sideways is fashionable. My concern is with trying to learn screenwriting from those scripts. Lost In Translation cheats the audience out of the most important moment in the story, such as it is: what exactly did Bill Murray whisper to Scarlett Johansen? But seriously, who cares? Here's a movie that shows Japanese people as either ranting idiots--the Japanese commercial director--or prostitutes--the prostitute. Are there any other Japanese characters these self-absorbed white people ever meet, interact with, care about or know in their time in Tokyo? This is a movie where nothing happens, not even a romance between the leads, (as yucky as that probably would have been), and they don't even get out of the damn hotel long enough to discover anything about one of the most amazing cities in the world.

Sideways has great performances going for it and four really terrific characters, (that is good writing), but I don't think it has anything to teach about structure, especially given the completely unearned payoff at the end the Paul Giamatti character receives.

So if you love those films, you are NOT responding to strong structure. Indeed, Lost in Translation is a classic episodic plot. The episodes could be reordered in almost any fashion without any damage. Aristotle claimed audiences of drama didn't cotton on to episodic plots and I agree.

I guess the best I could say about both films, is that they are exceptions to screenwriting being fundamentally about structure. They may have many pleasure, like mood, dialogue, character, but structure is not their strong suit. So if the writer I attempted to counsel prefers those films to ones with a strong story, I understand. But it's not where I come from and from what I can tell, what most successful screenplays generally contain at their core, viz. a strong structure.

Sometimes it's not a screenplay

2009-10-31T11:47:00.000-07:00

I just read a short film script that's being submitted for a contest. The writer is an excellent writer with a nice personal take on the world that comes through very clearly in what she writes. And her piece had a nice payoff at the end.

But after reading it, I realized it would make a fantastic short story, instead of a script. The entire story basically took place in the lead character's head as she mused in voice over about her feelings staying in a New York hotel. All of which is nicely sarcastic and entertaining as far as it went.

What didn't happen was anything. In other words, nothing HAPPENED. And for me, screenplays need something to happen. Even in a short five minute piece, you still need a story and you need conflict and you need a climax and a resolution. Otherwise, you're left with mood, tone and attitude.

Directors LOVE that stuff, because it gives them a reason to wank with the camera.

But the screenwriter abdicates their position if that's the kind of script they write. The only person responsible for the STORY is the screenwriter. Lose the story, and the screenwriter is now a typist for the director.

Aristotle was right. If you want an audience to respond to your script, make sure something happens.

Lip Service to Screenwriters

2009-10-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

At the behest of the WGC, today I joined other screenwriters like Pete Mitchell (The Guard), Steve Lucas (Blue Murder), Peter Mohan (Blood Ties), Sarah Dodd (The Border) and Denis McGrath (The Border) to protect the interests of Canadian screenwriters in the wake of the amalgamation of the CTF and the Canadian New Media Fund into the catch all fund to finance TV and gaming (and other other online media) called the CMF or Canadian Media Fund.

What was billed as the Toronto focus group was really an unwieldy conference of at least 500 attendees in a cavernous subterranean hall in the Toronto convention centre. This "focus group" was the latest in a series of consultations across the country. (Though when the moderator announced that these consultations had had anywhere from 20 to 100 people attending in the past, I wonder how could 500 people in Toronto equal 20 people somewhere else. I guess that's what someone living in the 416 area code is worth to them?)

The whole experience reminded me why I'd rather be a writer. In fact, I wish I were home writing than attending this thing. But my ability to earn an income from screenwriting depends on how this fund gets implemented so I felt compelled to attend.

Most of the time was taken with the leaders of the fund explaining the new rules to the gathered throng in Orwellian language. Do these bureaucrats actually read what they write? They have labeled the two funding streams "Convergent" and "Experimental" but as far as I can tell the difference boils down to the first having a TV component and the second one not having a TV component. So why not call the streams, TV and Other? Or TV and Not TV? A good half an hour was spent explaining what they meant by convergent and experimental--and they admitted that experimental wasn't a good name!

Screenwriters must write so that their intentions CAN'T be misinterpreted because if it's possible to be misinterpreted, it will be. At least that's my modus operendi. And so the obfuscation in the language of todays consultation was headache inducing for me. Clarity is a screenwriter's currency but it's in short supply among bureacrats.

I'm concerned that this fund is going to get hijacked by the broadcasters/production companies who've made no secret of their desire to see public money like the CMF be siphoned off to foreign nationals to run their story departments and be the star of their show. In fact, a broadcaster went so far as to demand that at the session. And it was given as much credence as the numerous voices demanding public money support only 10 out of 10 productions, as it does currently--that is, fully Canadian on and off screen. But when the day was summarized, the multiple voices for 10 out of 10 equalled the single broadcaster demand for reducing Canadian content.

It felt like lip service was being paid to the attendees. We were pitted against each other by the CMF bureaucrats, who apparently just want us to all get along. Producers versus broadcasters versus screenwriters. Why put us all in a room and expect consensus? Why not meet with the various stakeholders separately and see what we have to say? I guess that would have been too considerate and responsible because today felt like the whole thing was a kiss off to consultation. They can say they consulted us and now do what they want.

Steve Lucas, Denis McGrath, Sarah Dodd, Peter Mohan--these writers are primarily responsible for hundreds of hours of successful television that's been exported and made money for the producers, (probably more than these writers made.) They spoke passionately and intelligently and yet were just placed on a lip service list at the end of the day.

Another day in the life of a Canadian screenwriter. How long before that becomes a contradiction in terms?

Same story different script

2009-10-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

When struggling with a story's structure, I think it's important to realize that it's always possible for a story structure to be executed in different ways.

Witness, starring Harrison Ford, is a good example. If you watch the film, then read the screenplay you'll discover that while both have the same story, they are quite different in execution. For example, the climax in the screenplay is quite different from the film. In the script, John Book employs a mule who kicks in the head of the bad guy, for example. In the screenplay, he lets loose a silo full of grain on him.

Now some may think that makes these two different stories, since the endings are different. But structurally, the stories are the same. What happens? John Book defeats the bad guy using his newfound Amish knowledge of the farm.

It's only how it happens that is different.

"John Book defeats the bad guy using his newfound Amish knowledge of the farm." That is a mini-story. It has a character, performing a difficult action opposed by a fearsome adversary. It's not particularly interesting in this form, but it is a story.

The how in both the screenplay and the movie are equally valid executions of the story structure for an audience. However, I suspect the film is different because it's easier to find a silo full of grain to photograph, than to train a mule to kick on cue without killing the actor.

The film doesn't violate the story, though. If John Book pulled out an AK-47 he had hidden in the trunk of his car to defeat the bad guy, THAT would have been a different story. But in both the film and the script, Book uses his Amish knowledge to defeat the bad guy. It makes them the same story, despite being very different scripts.

Chicken or egg script analysis

2009-09-03T19:26:00.001-07:00

If you scroll down to my post "Why The Hangover Sucks" you can find a comment from someone denouncing my post in somewhat crude language. While I don't think I deserved the name calling for my opinion, he did make me remember why I felt the way I did. I think, parsing his profanity, that he felt I'd imposed a preconceived expectation on the film and because it didn't conform to my idea of what makes a good script, I didn't like it.

But that IS NOT what happens.

What happens when anyone, I think, but at least I, respond to a work of art, analysis is always after the fact. I can't help see something first and respond to it intuitively. Once I understand WHAT I feel, then I can begin to figure out WHY I feel that way.

With The Hangover, I was bored and unamused most of the time. That's my reaction. Now, because I've spent most of my adult life trying to understand how scripts work when they do work, then I apply my experience and opinion to my reaction in order to determine, if I can, why I was bored and unamused.

If you want to know why, you can reread my OP.

But I just am not schizophrenic enough to analyze first and react later. I don't think anyone is, even if they want to be. Sorry to disappoint the commentator of my earlier post, but it just doesn't work that way. Unlike the chicken and the egg conundrum, I definitely know what comes first--my reaction to a movie. WHY comes second. And only if the movie is interesting enough to be worth figuring that out. In the case of The Hangover, it's huge popularity demanded I try and figure out why I didn't conform to everyone else. But then, I'm usually swimming against the tide.

Living National Treasures

2009-08-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

I've been in Saskatchewan shooting exteriors for the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie, on which I have a fun recurring role as the fundamentalist wannabe "Faisal." (We shoot the interiors on sound stages in Toronto and all the exterior scenes are saved for a shoot in Saskatchewan at the end of each season's work.)

This season, Jayne Eastwood has been added to the cast who along with Deb McGrath, who plays the town's mayor, serve as incredible models of comedy brilliance for me. It was heartbreaking to me to see how much of Deb's comic bits in last season's climactic wedding episode were cut out, I guess for time. I hope they resurface as deleted scenes on the upcoming DVD release.

It's amazing to be on the same set as comediennes of their calibre and I frankly think they are as good as any who have ever been on TV. They are in the same league as Lucille Ball, Bea Arthur or Jean Stapleton.

Naturally, being Canadian, they don't have the same name recognition to audiences--BUT THEY SHOULD.

I suppose the best they can hope for is an Order of Canada, but frankly I wish we could be like Japan and declare our great artists Living National Treasures. As a country, if we acknowledge anyone, it's usually too late. I'd rather Jayne and Deb knew how valuable they are to our culture while they're still around to appreciate it. The Japanese understand this.

I've got my own list of who should be Canada's living national treasures. It's time someone in power did too.

Playing games with Peter and Vera on the set of Orphan

2009-08-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

I have a small role in the movie Orphan starring Peter Saarsgard and Vera Farmiga as the ICU doctor trying to save their little boy's life.

When I arrived on set in Montreal I reminded Peter that we'd acted together in a movie 9 years earlier, with me also playing a doctor. He didn't remember me--despite having lunch with him and Oscar-winner Estelle Parsons on set one day--but he thought it hilarious that I show up in his life 9 years later to play another doctor. Type casting. Sigh...

I told Peter and Vera about hearing a story from Liza Minelli at her appearance at the Canadian Film Centre years ago. Apparently on "New York, New York" whenever De Niro and she were doing a scene, and shooting her coverage, he would not feed her the next line until, as she put it, "he heard the truth." At first Peter was appalled at De Niro's apparent arrogance, but as we talked about it, we decided it might be kind of fun. So we proposed it to the director, an intense young Spanish whiz kid, who agreed to let us--well really them--do this and so that's how we played our scenes. We altered the game somewhat in that we weren't really waiting to "hear the truth" but just repeating lines so the other actor had another run at theirs. It was kind of fun and I really enjoyed being able to work on the same level as the stars of the movie. (I've found that once they are past the PR and the entourage, the star making machinery, stars are often like Peter and Vera, very willing to be actors, rather than movie stars with the day players like myself.)

Check out the movie and see if our acting game worked.

Thoughts on beats

2009-08-21T02:16:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to help a young screenwriter whose script I read while screenwriter-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library last year. At least I hope I'm helping him revise his script and I've recommended he revert to doing a beat sheet before proceeding to a new draft.

From an email I sent to him responding to his latest crack at a new beat sheet:

Beats are normally written BEFORE the script is written. It's important, in my view, not to try and write the script in the beat sheet, but to craft only the story. Each beat therefore, is created in order to ADVANCE the STORY from the previous beat to the next beat. That is the WHAT happens. A beat is the smallest piece of story. It may mean that a beat will take one scene to dramatize. It may mean it will take several scenes to dramatize, (chase sequences are good examples of this.) It may mean that it will only take part of a scene to dramatize. And those scenes whether written in outline or script form are HOW the WHAT happens happens.

For example, "Romeo professes love for Juliet" is a beat. We have no idea how this will happen. Shakespeare took that beat and turned it into one of the most famous scenes in dramatic literature. I or any other writer would have done something less glorious--but both scenes would tell the same story. The beat sheet is hardly a literary document. It is the story in it's most fundamental, but specific form. That beat sheet can be given to a dozen writers who will craft a dozen different scripts--all with the same story.

I think what you're tending to do because you're partially working backwards, is to try and distill what happened in a scene into your beat. But that isn't going far enough because theoretically you won't be working backwards from the script. You need to figure out what dramatic steps you need in order to tell your story and the smallest dramatic step equals one beat.

Don't get me wrong. What you've done is a great improvement, but in order to make the creative leap the next draft needs, you eventually have to write a beat sheet that feels like it was written before any scenes were ever written. You're inventing--or in this case reinventing--your story.

A lot of things you've already written may be retained, but you don't know that yet. What you must be loyal to is not what you've written, but what is the story you need to tell.

As I said when we met, I think the last half of your story is what works fantastically, but should be the middle act of the new draft. In order to draft a new first act, ask yourself what dramatic beats you need in order to get to that point in your story. Then add the beats that are working which are the middle scenes, by analyzing what is going on in them dramatically. Dramatically means mini-stories. Someone is doing something to someone else. And that someone is not necessarily your lead but it will most often be. Once that's done, then start asking yourself how far you as a writer can take this character and that will form the last third of the new beats.

Giving Criticism

2009-08-19T20:27:00.000-07:00

Recently a good friend and colleague asked me to write coverage, (see much earlier posts on this blog to learn what coverage is if you don't know already), for a script he had written. Usually I am happy to give a supportive scan, especially with writer colleagues who are much more talented than I am. I can often learn as much as I can offer by way of feedback.

But my friend was not a seasoned veteran writer, but a neophyte with grand ambitions. And his script did not have the weight or marketability to fulfill those ambitions. Unlike in the past, it took me several days to come to terms with what he had asked me to do and what I had to offer. He'd asked for a professional evaluation. And I knew my evaluation was that at this point, his script would get a failing grade. But I dreaded having to do this.

For a few days I thought about some kind of alternative. Not being honest, but just being vaguely supportive. Perhaps that's what my friend really wanted. Perhaps I should encourage him and let the marketplace decide whether his script had merit. After all, there's plenty of stuff on TV that I can't stand. Yet those shows are bringing in an audience and revenue to their creators. Who am I to be critical?

But finally I came to the conclusion that my own reputation as a story editor would be on the line as well. If I gave him a vaguely supportive opinion, he may use that to sell his show. And if I was right, but had soft-pedaled my concerns in the coverage, what would those who were then assessing his work think of mine? If I was wrong, they wouldn't care what I had to say.

So in the end, I decided to be as honest and even more complete than I would have been if the assignment was from a stranger. I decided not only to write extended coverage with a lot of backup for my view--unlike critical coverage others have written about my work!--I also went through the script and appended it with comments. Over and above what he'd requested. Perhaps he'll see this as overkill and professional jealousy on my part. I hope he's not that sensitive, but I know I take a real risk on our relationship in treating his request as professionally as possible.

I sent my response to him and as yet do not know how he reacted. I know how I feel.

Taking Criticism part 2

2009-08-03T19:21:00.000-07:00

I recently began taking golf lessons after spending my life as an enthusiastic, but entirely autodidactic golfer. What a revelation!

But it got me thinking about how my golf instructor Livingston is perfectly capable of being highly "judgmental" -- a cardinal sin for instructors in today's society in my experience -- because there's no subjectivity in the success of my golf shots. It's not his opinion that my shot sucked. I can see exactly how bad my golf shot is. So I can't debate Livingston's assessment of my swing.

Unfortunately, instructing in something totally subjective--writing and acting--doesn't have such clear results to gauge. It actually is my opinion about a student's performance or script that I can offer. And they may disagree, just as there are plenty of people who would disagree with my opinion about the movie, The Hangover, for example. (See my earlier blog on why it sucks, in my OPINION.)

However, instructors in subjective disciplines like mine, can only be gauged on their credibility. As I've been hired consistently for 25 years to work as an actor and a screenwriter, I believe I have some credibility.

I wish students could realize that when I'm judgmental, it is because I am getting them to strive for excellence. I wish I could inspire by nurturing, but it is, I guess, not my nature to be nurturing. My goal is to transmit my passion to anyone interested in receiving it and to push them to be the best they can be.

Teachers like myself are a throwback from modern teaching which has focused on boosting students' self-esteem and supporting them in their studies. I just don't know if that's enough to make aspiring actors or writers employable.

Taking criticism

2009-07-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

Talk is cheap. I'd rather get paid than get a compliment. Yet, most of the time when I attempt to teach I stumble up against a problem between students and myself. They find me judgmental.

Guilty as charged.

Of course I'm judgmental just as we all are. We pass judgment all the time and express that judgment most truthfully through what we are willing to pay for.

Yet when students pay me to judge them, seldom do they want the "truth"--whatever that is. All anyone can provide is an opinion and by definition opinion is subjective. Usually, evaluations of me by students are that I have much to offer by information, but I'm too judgmental of their efforts. I wish they didn't feel this way because I'm actually not trying to be judgmental. But obviously I can't prevent being judgmental because that is what every producer or director does when hiring an actor, or a screenwriter. (Acting and screenwriting are the two disciplines I have taught.) And the audience is the harshest judge of all.

But perhaps when students are paying to be judged, they actually expect not the truth, but praise. By receiving praise, they are then able to "learn." But do they? I wonder. Personally, I learn by study and taking risks and making mistakes. It is all the bad acting I've done that makes me a good actor, (if I am.) And it is all the unsold scripts I've written, that makes me a good writer.

When students, particularly acting students, complain that I'm too critical or too judgmental, I should offer to introduce them to a casting director who'll just say they're too fat. Or tall. Or black. That's the reality of the business. Screenwriters are even more harshly judged. But I actually DON'T want to crush their dreams, despite their belief that I do.

Acting and writing comprise two of the most competitive fields we have in our culture. Given how few actors or writers actually ever get hired to do this work, why don't students expect to be judged? Have we become so soft as a culture that any kind of criticism is regarded with anger? My opinion is just that, an opinion, given honestly in the hopes that it can be useful. But if it isn't, that's okay. Ignore it. (Something I reiterate to students time and again.)

It's their anger I can't get past. I can't help wonder whether our education system, which now bans failure has actually failed to ask the best of people. But we as a society only want to pay for the best. We don't like paying for a bad car, and we don't like paying for a bad actor. Or a bad story.

Yes, "good" and "bad" are subjective. Exactly. So why is it so hard for students to get past my "judgment" of them? If all someone wants is to be nurtured, then I'm probably not the best instructor for that kind of person. And perhaps there isn't a place in our culture for an instructor who doesn't intuitively nurture. I just wish I knew how to convey how my judgment comes from my passion for the work. (And that I am my own harshest critic, though I realize that doesn't matter, nor should it.)

I wish all students I've tried to teach, success in their pursuits. If I come off as judgmental, I apologize because that isn't my intention. I actually think I'm being consciously supportive of their effort. But my wife maintains that it isn't "what you say, it's how you say it" that matters in this world. Perhaps that's the most difficult lesson of all for me to learn.

Why The Hangover sucks

2009-07-02T19:49:00.000-07:00

Now that most of Canada has seen The Hangover, I don't think I'm going to ruin anyone's idea of a good time by critiquing this flat, unfunny, and structurally bankrupt movie. (Sorry Mom--even she went to see it and liked it I guess.)

I like to laugh just as much as anyone and I don't have art film tastes. My quarrel with The Hangover is that it doesn't even bother to pay lip service to a half-decent story. It's clearly a script that was made up by the writers as they went along.

Job one in a screenplay is to have a central character who engages us. We don't have to like them, but we need to give a damn about what happens to them. I defy anyone to tell me who the central character of this movie was. Was it the tight-assed hen-pecked dentist? The uber-cool playah? The groom? The groom's half-wit future brother-in-law? Beats me. And I do not believe for a second that any two of these characters could be friends with each other, let along be willing to spend a weekend in Las Vegas together. So, like that other fake premise movie The Usual Suspects, this one is bogus from the set up. (And why is The Usual Suspects just as bogus? Maybe if the police lineup actually looked like it was genuine, but as soon as I saw that lineup with 5 men who looked nothing like each other, I knew this whole thing was a set up. The rest of the movie was trying to figure out why the rest of the audience apparently forget every crime movie or episode of Law and Order they'd ever seen. Sigh...)

Back to The Hangover. Lacking a central character, I then hoped that one would eventually emerge as the character who undergoes some kind of demonstrable transformation through the experience of what happens to them. Character change has driven drama since Sophocles wrote Oedipus 2500 years ago. We crave it and that's what audiences love about a story after it's over. They may not be able to spell out why, but even a cursory analysis of what audiences have liked in dramatic storytelling over the past couple millenia, comes back to the same few principles, of which character transformation is in the top 3. The only character who undergoes any kind of change is the idiot dentist who finally has the cohones to dump his shrewish girlfriend, but who didn't know he'd do that after the first scene between them? And as far as transformations go, it doesn't even come close to what John Cleese becomes through his adventures in A Fish Called Wanda. (See, comedies don't have to be stupid to be funny.)

This movie traffics on surprise--the naked Chinese guy jumping out of the trunk, for example--but surprise is a cheap form of movie entertainment. It's the easiest thing for a film to do. Splatter films do it all the time. And that's all this screenplay does. Surprise and or shock for shock's sake--lest we forget the infamous flash frames from the tail credits. But how about a little set up and pay off? Something that doesn't just goose the audience, but actually entertain them with some kind of actual creative work on the part of the screenwriter?

I could go on and on, but it's like shouting off a cliff after the ship has sailed. The entire country went to see this movie. It's enough to make me weep.

Carradine didn't stop wrestling

2009-06-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

As the current news indicates David Carradine did not commit suicide, I should append my previous post. It appears he did not give up wrestling with his demons.

My condolences to his family for what must be a horrid way to lose a family member regardless.