New Interview - The Collective Podcast

While working on a story about finding meaning in a finite existence, I am struck by a brief moment in Prometheus. It's in the midst of the climax, so it passes almost without notice, but it's remarkable.
The captain, Janek, offers to pilot the ship himself, suggesting that his two crew mates could live for up to two years on the lifeboat. They choose not to live, implying that they would find such an existence pointless. It's a poignant moment in a story about a man's quest for immortality.

I've read the Glass Key and a handful of Hammett's short stories based on your recommendation Peter. I greatly enjoy the shorts especially (and not just because one of the chase scenes takes them on my street and literally right past my current apartment!), and I'm seeing part of what you're getting at. There's no puzzling over why such and such is happening, except to the extent that there's usually an overall mystery. Similarly, there's a short clip of Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park) that became "famous" where they say essentially that all of your key story beats/scenes/sequences/whatever should be connected by a "THEREFORE" or a "BUT", and not an "AND THEN..." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGUNqq3jVLg).

I've taken all of this into account while writing a screenplay - it's fascinating to say "no wait a minute, this wouldn't be happening - why would the character do this?" and then either figure out why the character would do it or change/cut the scene.

It's also improved how I watch films. On Friday I saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off again for the first time in well over a decade (maybe two), and was highly critical of it for the first 2/3rds. Besides Bueller being a jerk, there are bad motivation, character, and story problems. Their Chicago trip is a series of short episodes largely there just to deliver little gags. Later on the motivations get articulated better, the final third is strong with purpose and momentum, and in retrospect you can forgive the earlier lack of clarity. But I can't help but think that with a couple of weeks of script work it could have been even better. It could be as simple as re-shuffling where and when you expand on the motivations, and connecting the city trip with a few extra lines - have the maitre'd at the fancy restaurant offer them complimentary baseball tickets, for example, or have the infamous school dean character (Jeffrey Jones) more actively on their tails rather than setting him up for one mistaken identity gag.

The reason The Glass Key had the impact it did was because I'd first read Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon and The Dain Curse. All of which are more "classical" narratives. The Maltese Falcon has been so influential over the years that you have to imagine being a reader at the time it was published to truly appreciate it as the source of so much that has since become standard narrative strategy. Since you have read The Glass Key, watch Miller's Crossing, one of the best film adaptations of a novel I can think of.

I can't argue that Stone and Parker have found a way to be very prolific and successful by following their path. I have personally never watched anything they've done.
I suppose that for me, the greatest realization I've had is that it isn't the story that matters so much as how you tell it.

Thanks for sticking around. I am (honest!) going to be making a major announcement here soon.

The biggest hurdle I have found in getting colleagues and students to understand cinematic storytelling (or drama) is that it must be approached on two levels simultaneously. It isn't enough to convey the story. That is the big picture. At the same time, the story must be embodied in scenes that are engaging on their own, regardless of the plot they serve. It is the attention a director pays to constructing scenes that is crucial to engaging an audience.
The scene must serve the story. That is understood by any director. What many do not grasp is that the story also exists to provide a pretext for a good scene. This is a big part of my complaint about Oshii's GITS.

Conventional wisdom is that general audiences watch films or TV for the story. But that is really only half of the film's task. Generally unspoken is the audience's desire to witness well directed scenes.
A script exists to provide a director with something to direct. If the directing is masterful, an audience will be satisfied, though they may not fully understand why.
It's like the question of whether the brain's purpose is to serve the stomach, or is it the stomach's purpose to serve the brain?
Is the director's job to serve the script, or is it the script's job to serve the director? It is both at once.

It's dismaying to see major productions in which the director has made no effort to crafting engaging scenes. Somehow they think that the job need consist of no more than having characters sit around and deliver expositional dialogue. Some recent examples come to mind. David Yates' Harry Potter movies, Francis Lawrence's Hunger Games sequels, animated DVD features of DC comics characters, most Japanese animated features, especially CG films like Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV and Captain Harlock.

Heh, I'm glad you made these two follow-up posts, as I wanted to ask exactly what you answered.

For a long time I was on the side of "the story is just BS, the in-between is what's interesting", but I've come around to the value and importance of both.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/aeon-flux/

Another recent interview, which was intended as a process-centered discussion on the title sequence. I ended up spouting off a lot of what I've been posting here one these boards.
Drew Neumann also goes into a lot of detail about his working methods. Thanks, Drew.

All of this discussion in work done so long ago would be sad - but....!

;-)

Looking forward to reading that later, had been wondering about Drew as well recently.

Two questions, not particularly interesting ones:

1) Is a Blu-Ray of the AF series in the cards anytime soon or should I just go ahead and get the DVDs, which I never owned?

2) I haven't seen The Demiurge in 10+ years and remember almost nothing about it. Read the script you've posted first, or rewatch and then read?

1) Get the DVDs, then buy the Blu-Ray if it ever gets made. There are no current plans for it, but it could happen, though not for years.

2) Read the script first. When I wrote it with Steve DeJarnatt, I pictured a very different film than what resulted. Of all the episodes, this is the one I'd love to go back and totally redo. Howard Baker worked hard on it, but, there were censorship restrictions that prevented it from being as intense as it should have been. Especially act one.