Thesis work begins again

So I'm starting on the thesis once again with the full intention of shooting in late April/early May. This means a hell of a lot of work between now and then.

For the record, here's what the thesis is about:

"A young woman on the run from her past finds her life collides with that of a mysterious serial killer and a more mysterious, possibly even more deadly force."

That's the logline. The tagline?

"Running from your past doesn't mean you can get away."

"Urban Gothic" is meant to be a 20-minute short that explores a female character in Alcoholics Anonymous, on the run from an abusive boyfriend, who finds herself in a situation that is more dangerous than the one she left.

The idea is to explore certain aspects of the works of H.P. Lovecraft (Gothic horror, mysterious creatures, a sense of hopelessness or lack of escape) while setting in a modern milieu. It's certainly not a wholly original concept (Stephen King's been doing it for decades), but it's one I enjoy, the juxtaposing of the classic with a modern sensibility.

So to get started by April there's a lot to be done, not the least of which is casting. Since I'd like to have as much time as possible for rehearsal, I need to start setting up auditions as early as possible. I'm hoping if I generate some mock-up posters, conceptual ideas to get across what I'm hoping to do with "Urban Gothic," I might stir up some renewed interest in casting. I had everything cast last year, but was forced to take a break when my female lead had to quit due to some personal circumstances. It was disappointing but I feel like I can get this going again.

I've only directed one other short, and it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. However, I'm hoping to pull in some crew who I know are truly sharp and dedicated individuals. Also, I feel like my vision on this is focused enough to create a really good product.

I'll be working on some posters to show on here in the next fews days, as well as some discussion of pre-production.

Birth of a new blog

My wife, God love her, convinced me to start up a new blog to satiate the need to discuss pop culture I have outside of the realm of my thesis work. There's been far too little thesis discussion on this blog, so I'm going to move some of my obsessions over to the new blog.

http://planetallstar.blogspot.com/

There's a new post there and everything.

Let The Right One In

Oh I swear there'll be thesis discussion and talk of actual screenwriting at some point, but I so need to put this up.

Check it: Swedish underage vampires.



"Let The Right One In" is based off the novel of the same name, about a bullied 12 year old who meets a mysterious girl who is actually a vampire.
All I've seen in the trailer, though the fine folks at CHUD have pimped this movie an incredible amount, and all I've seen is the above trailer. That said, after the brilliance of Kirstin Dunst in "Interview with the Vampire," it's amazing that no one has really gone this route before now.

The joy that is Shane Black ...

To know me is to know I have a mancrush on Shane Black. (My wife ... yes, I said wife ... knows I have many. It's a sad thing, but we're moving on.) If you need to know why, here it is:



Shane Black, with three scripts ("Lethal Weapon," "The Last Boy Scout" and "The Long Kiss Goodnight") forever altered the American action film. The modern action movie, with a pair of unlikely partners, a sadistic villain, quippy dialogue, and elaborate torture scenes, owes a debt to Black that probably can't be repaid (though those million-dollar paychecks Black was getting probably helps salve the wound).

When he vanished after "Long Kiss" flopped, Hollywood assumed they had heard the last of Black. After all, he was rich, still young, and had his choice of young rising starlets. But instead, Black admits that he didn't disappear on purpose; rather, he had writer's block. And he turned to, of all people, James Brooks (for the record, there's never been a gun fight in ANY James Brooks production) for inspiration. Brooks gave him an office to work out of, and Black came back with the script for "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." Black went on to make his directorial debut with "Kiss Kiss," giving both a pre-"Iron Man" Robert Downey Jr. and pre-anything decent in a hell of a long time Val Kilmer their best roles up to that point in years.

If you haven't seen "Kiss Kiss," stop reading this blog and go now and watch it.

I'll wait.

Done? Pretty damn cool, wasn't it?

Downey OWNS that movie, and Kilmer throws off the dialogue like he was born to play a macho gay private eye. The mystery almost doesn't matter as Downey, Kilmer and Michelle Monoghan play through witty dialogue and astute observations about aging, love, relationships, family and Los Angeles. When the plot finally does show up, though, it's a stunner, and it works because you are invested in these characters by this point. It's a treat of a movie, and just a joy to behold.

And what did the studio do with a movie this good? They DUMPED it in limited release, and then let it develop a cult status on DVD.

Black showed a sharp directorial eye, combining character and gunplay into a fun mix of a film with seriously dark undertones, but I worried he'd not get to direct again. Happily, he's going to be back in the director's chair with "Cold Warrior," about a retired spy who is teamed up with a younger agent on a new threat.

Let's just skip the foreplay and cast Bruce Willis and Shia LeBeouf and call it good.

Anyway, the whole concept plays to the classic Black formula, and it can't get here soon enough.

Movie posters ...

This isn't the complete poster post I plan on writing, but this poster is too good to ignore.



Dear God, the sheer simplicity of this makes it a thing of beauty. Thank you, boys at CHUD, for the 411 on this. You know, because Kevin Smith was definite chronicler of the romantic travails of the beta male before Apatow made it hip.

Just a small break ...

So I've got another movie poster post coming, but first I wanted to steer ANYONE reading this blog toward a great article on John Carpenter that I found on the Museum of the Moving Image Web site.

I point the article out because I'm a fan of Carpenter, and his themes were a huge influence on a script I wrote a few years ago with Danny Boyd about a down-and-out wrestler who takes on a corrupt politician and a band of zombies (personally I thought the idea -- from Danny and an associate of his -- was great, and the script was funny, but I digress). The last decade-plus hasn't been that kind to one of the more acclaimed alumni of Western Kentucky University, however, though Carpenter's never exactly been a director in sync with the attitudes of the time.

An old-school sort of filmmaker, one who modeled himself not out of esoteric French filmmakers or Hollywood darlings like Hitchcock, but rather workmanlike directors such as Howard Hawks or John Ford, Carpenter has always been someone who, as the Museum of the Moving Image article points out, melded his own ideas into what might otherwise have been rather impersonal studio works-for-hire.

Carpenter's never been interested in fancy camera work or endless tracking shots like de Palma, nor has his work ever been infused with the anarchic sensibility of Dante, but rather he works with an antiauthoritarian theme, that concept of men doing their job for no other reason than personal responsibility and an internal moral code. His entire work could be summed up with a line of dialogue from "Assault on Precinct 13": "There are no heroes anymore, Bishop. Just men who follow orders."

The Museum of the Moving Image article focuses on the works that most strongly symbolize Carpenter's themes, from 1978's "Halloween" to the woefully underappreciated "They Live," really one of the great satires of Reagan-era politics. Carpenter's a fierce individualist, and his work shows a strong sense of rebellion, of free thought, that was at odds with the unified thought process that ran through the 1980s.

Carpenter's work suffered through the 1990s and into the new millenium, though occasional works like the feature "Vampires," with a kick-ass performance by James Woods, shows that he can still pull off a horror film that's really just a blood-soaked Western (his remake of "The Thing" is just "Rio Lobo" with exploding stomachs). I have hope for his next feature, a prison riot movie called "Scared Straight," featuring Nicholas Cage. Carpenter works best in small places where men are called upon to be more than they thought they were, and Cage can still be an interesting actor with a decent script and a director focused more on performance and less on flashy camera action and quick edits.

Movie posters

A very wise professor of mine (I'm looking at you, Danny) told me once that a lot about a movie can be said with a good poster. I've found myself thinking about this as I'm rebooting work on "Urban Gothic."

I'm going to be working on a few posters to showcase some themes and elements in "Urban Gothic," which is ultimately a horror/serial killer/monster/12-step recovery film (I believe I've created my own genre with that). That said, I started looking through some posters online, looking for ones that struck me as some particular. The one on the left is from "The Man with the Golden Arm," a brilliant Otto Preminger film that showcases the fact that yeah, Frank Sinatra could act, you know, when not doing crappy movies and hanging out with showgirls and the Mob (I'm so gonna end up with a horse's head in my bed for that one.).

The poster, however, was designed by the amazing Saul Bass, who's really best known for his title sequences to several Hitchcock films, most specifically "Vertigo." (For a laugh, check out the Saul Bass-inspired "Star Wars" credits.) Bass' work in poster design can't be ignored, however, and I thought of this as I was thinking of the image I wanted for my first poster for "Urban Gothic," which is really meant mostly to begin attracting actors. Bass really emphasized almost a simplicity, especially in comparison to today's tendency toward overblown Photoshop and floating heads.

Now remember this is my own preference. I think posters should reflect a certain tone for their films. I don't know that that tone is always best captured by Photoshopping in the various and sundry leads and supporting players of a film, tossing in a lot of feathering and a soft color filter, and calling it good. I opted to use the posters for "My Best Friend's Girl" and "The Haunting of Molly Hartley" as just two examples of this. I'm pretty sure you could find other examples rather easily, though you have to admit, when Dane Cook, who's STARRING IN THE FILM and is, really, sort of a douchebag, admits the poster sucks, you may want to reconsider what you're paying the promotion company. The propensity towards generic is incredibly disheartening when you weigh the product that's produced throughout Hollywood. I guess it shouldn't be a shock that studios are willing to been tens of millions of dollars on a movie that really little more than celluloid processed ham spread, but good God, people, at least create an image that entices us into the theater a little more than the umpteeth thousandth version of "heads askew and the graphic elements that love them." I even LIKE the trailer for "Eagle Eye" (I didn't get that memo that men are supposed to hate Shia LeBeouf), but the poster looks like yet another Bruckheimer-esque explode-a-thon with little more in its head than blasting powder and some CGI.

Even a movie like "The Spirit," where the trailers make me nervous since I love the source material so much, knows that a good poster has to think a little outside the box. Possibly because the director, Frank Miller, is an acclaimed graphic novelist, or maybe because it might be that rarest of all things (a really great film), but I just love the style of this poster. It says that at least in how the studio opts to promote this film, there's something different, something that doesn't just promote the same tired retreads of a hundred thousand alleged entertainments gone by.

Oh, and as for my own poster ... well, here it is. They'll be a posting in another day or so with a brief explanation about the poster and my hopes and intentions in how to use it, and possibly another poster.