[This blog entry was originally part of a piece from January 2011.]
I thought Winter’s Bone was the best movie I saw all year. It won the 2010 Sundance Grand Jury Prize. I’m kind of partial to Southern, hillbilly noir, or “country noir.” Read the book, Winter’s Bone recently, too. Thought it was great stuff. Raw, lean prose, as they say. A new voice in literature you’ve never heard of, Daniel Woodrell, from the Missouri Ozarks. I look forward to the re-release of his hard to find novels in April. I hope the movie does well at the Academy Awards this year. I loved the uncle character, Teardrop. People tended to give him wide berth. He’s like the crazy-assed country boy who grew up around guns and is not afraid to bust some caps. I’ve known a few. Like a quiet, subdued, country folk equivalent of some psychotic, Joe Pesci character in a Martin Scorsese mob movie.
I watched Howl and thought it was great. It brought back a lot of memories of my youth when I wanted so badly to be a poet like Arthur Rimbaud, Allen Ginsberg… or a Richard Brautigan or Patti Smith… or Bob Dylan, the demigod.
I liked The Killer Inside Me, though I thought it was really creepy, as intended, I guess. It worked. It was difficult to watch at times because of the graphic violence toward women. Read up on Jim Thompson, too. Didn’t know he was a local Ft. Worth boy, though an Okie. Read his bio, Savage Art, by Robert Polito. More hillbilly noir, I suppose, created back in the 1940’s and 1950’s at the dawn of the whole film noir movement. There were some crazy tidbits of information about Texas and Oklahoma characters from the Great Depression era and ensuing years.
Didn’t get to see as many movies as I would have liked in 2010. Scant time available for such luxuries. Hope to see more in 2011. Looking under rocks for some seed money. Jonesing to make another movie. I have to have one more movie in me before I die. Jacksboro Highway? Dead or in Huntsville? A Girl and a Gun? Warboots? Knock on wood….
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Heaven or Hell - Woody Harrelson in Rampart
Woody Harrelson smokes a lot of cigarettes in Rampart. From opening scene to closing scene he has a fag in his mouth. Enough so that it made me want a cigarette as I recently watched the Blu-ray disc, and I haven’t smoked in six years. Rampart is Woody Harrelson at his finest as he portrays Vietnam veteran, Dave “Date Rape” Brown, a tough LA cop in the Rampart division during its historically checkered past, with a bad reputation for smoking the bad guys. Did he or did he not kill the date rapist, thereby earning himself the moniker, Date Rape Dave? Internal Affairs would like to know. So would his two young daughters, who are aware of their dad’s soiled reputation and the ubiquitous media coverage of video footage showing him giving a severe beating to a black, hit-and-run driver trying to flee the scene, after having the misfortune of accidentally smashing into Date Rape Dave’s car.
His youngest daughter also has to ask Dad about her confusing genealogy. He explains to her that her older sister is both her half-sister and first cousin. Seems Woody Harrelson’s character married two sisters in sequential order. Anne Heche plays his ex, while Cynthia Nixon portrays his next. Date Rape sired a daughter by each, and they all share the same house: Date Rape, the two sisters and two daughters, all sharing the same home as one big dysfunctional family, though he is supposed to have moved out already. His older teenage daughter is mad at him. The Anne Heche character hates him and tries to give him the boot but he keeps showing up unannounced. He slips into bed with the other sister later, and she too tells him he needs to pack his bags.
Dave gets a lot of trim in this movie. From the hot black chick who digs cops that he picks up in a bar and later gives a visually stunning toe job to in a motel room, to the mysterious defense attorney played well by Robin Wright whom he also hooks up with in a bar, and who later explains herself thusly with the immortal lines, “And I like to suck cock, so sue me.” Did I mention that master scribe James Ellroy wrote the screenplay?
While watching Rampart it felt as if Abel Ferrara’s coked-up Bad Lieutenant from New York City, played so well by Harvey Keitel twenty years ago, had stumbled into a Hawaiian-shirted, James Ellroy version of a Los Angeles cop movie. I realized I was watching a noir version of Bad Lieutenant, and not a bad version at that. Though director Oren Moverman evidently made a lot of changes to the Ellroy script and ended up sharing screenwriting credit with Ellroy, who is arguably one of the greatest American writers ever with his hugely popular and uniquely stylistic series of crime novels: the USA Underworld Trilogy and his LA Quartet, the most famous of which is LA Confidential. The fact alone that Ellroy wrote the script was enough to get me out of the house and into the theater when Rampart first premiered in 2011. One also learns from the director’s and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski’s co-commentary that there were no rehearsals and the actors were encouraged to improvise.
And it has a great supporting cast. Ned Beatty as the old school, retired, father-figure cop who gives Date Rape a tip on an illegal card game that’s going to get robbed, so Date Rape can show up and save the day by busting some caps in pursuit of the card game thieves. Sigourney Weaver portrays the IA bigwig who wants Date Rape to retire and make the “shitstorm” of his recent media coverage and sordid career go away. Ben Foster, who was also given producer credit, Steve Buscemi and Ice Cube also have small roles. But it is Woody Harrelson as Ellroy’s misogynistic, racist, homophobic, chauvinistic, priapic cop who steals the show as only Woody Harrelson can. He threatens the maître D at a posh hotel with busting him for the hookers in his lobby if he doesn’t hook him up with a free room and a bottle of Scotch. Later he extorts lorazepam and phenobarbital from a pharmacist whose boyfriend just got busted by saying he can make the charges go away. Later he extorts the same pharmacist again, telling him to give him something to “Take me up this time and something to keep it hard.” He goes to some sort of kinky sex club and after wandering around awhile in a drunken and/or drugged stupor, he gorges himself at a buffet table like a pig, eating with his hands as he gormandizes, shoving more and more food down his throat, until graphically vomiting in the bathroom. When leaving the club in the middle of the night, he stumbles and falls down on the sidewalk as onlookers look on impassively; but being the super-stud cop that he is, he manages to get back up and leave.
As the movie progresses, Date Rape becomes more obscured and in the background, and in shadows, and in reflections; like a specter, according to the cinematographer’s comments. I thought it was extremely well done in that respect. I thought the dark, shadowy scenes and intermittent use of natural lighting was all brilliantly done by Bobby Bukowski. Kudos is also due to David Wasco for his skills as production designer. Oren Moverman uses a lot of close ups in his direction, which I also thought was well done, highlighting Woody’s character’s rough exterior and facial features, and also bringing out the character’s inner pain, or lack thereof. You just can’t go wrong with Woody Harrelson playing the lead role in a James Ellroy cop script. That’s a match made in heaven – or hell. If you are a fan of Woody Harrelson, James Ellroy, or film noir, Rampart is a movie not to be missed.
His youngest daughter also has to ask Dad about her confusing genealogy. He explains to her that her older sister is both her half-sister and first cousin. Seems Woody Harrelson’s character married two sisters in sequential order. Anne Heche plays his ex, while Cynthia Nixon portrays his next. Date Rape sired a daughter by each, and they all share the same house: Date Rape, the two sisters and two daughters, all sharing the same home as one big dysfunctional family, though he is supposed to have moved out already. His older teenage daughter is mad at him. The Anne Heche character hates him and tries to give him the boot but he keeps showing up unannounced. He slips into bed with the other sister later, and she too tells him he needs to pack his bags.
Dave gets a lot of trim in this movie. From the hot black chick who digs cops that he picks up in a bar and later gives a visually stunning toe job to in a motel room, to the mysterious defense attorney played well by Robin Wright whom he also hooks up with in a bar, and who later explains herself thusly with the immortal lines, “And I like to suck cock, so sue me.” Did I mention that master scribe James Ellroy wrote the screenplay?
While watching Rampart it felt as if Abel Ferrara’s coked-up Bad Lieutenant from New York City, played so well by Harvey Keitel twenty years ago, had stumbled into a Hawaiian-shirted, James Ellroy version of a Los Angeles cop movie. I realized I was watching a noir version of Bad Lieutenant, and not a bad version at that. Though director Oren Moverman evidently made a lot of changes to the Ellroy script and ended up sharing screenwriting credit with Ellroy, who is arguably one of the greatest American writers ever with his hugely popular and uniquely stylistic series of crime novels: the USA Underworld Trilogy and his LA Quartet, the most famous of which is LA Confidential. The fact alone that Ellroy wrote the script was enough to get me out of the house and into the theater when Rampart first premiered in 2011. One also learns from the director’s and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski’s co-commentary that there were no rehearsals and the actors were encouraged to improvise.
And it has a great supporting cast. Ned Beatty as the old school, retired, father-figure cop who gives Date Rape a tip on an illegal card game that’s going to get robbed, so Date Rape can show up and save the day by busting some caps in pursuit of the card game thieves. Sigourney Weaver portrays the IA bigwig who wants Date Rape to retire and make the “shitstorm” of his recent media coverage and sordid career go away. Ben Foster, who was also given producer credit, Steve Buscemi and Ice Cube also have small roles. But it is Woody Harrelson as Ellroy’s misogynistic, racist, homophobic, chauvinistic, priapic cop who steals the show as only Woody Harrelson can. He threatens the maître D at a posh hotel with busting him for the hookers in his lobby if he doesn’t hook him up with a free room and a bottle of Scotch. Later he extorts lorazepam and phenobarbital from a pharmacist whose boyfriend just got busted by saying he can make the charges go away. Later he extorts the same pharmacist again, telling him to give him something to “Take me up this time and something to keep it hard.” He goes to some sort of kinky sex club and after wandering around awhile in a drunken and/or drugged stupor, he gorges himself at a buffet table like a pig, eating with his hands as he gormandizes, shoving more and more food down his throat, until graphically vomiting in the bathroom. When leaving the club in the middle of the night, he stumbles and falls down on the sidewalk as onlookers look on impassively; but being the super-stud cop that he is, he manages to get back up and leave.
As the movie progresses, Date Rape becomes more obscured and in the background, and in shadows, and in reflections; like a specter, according to the cinematographer’s comments. I thought it was extremely well done in that respect. I thought the dark, shadowy scenes and intermittent use of natural lighting was all brilliantly done by Bobby Bukowski. Kudos is also due to David Wasco for his skills as production designer. Oren Moverman uses a lot of close ups in his direction, which I also thought was well done, highlighting Woody’s character’s rough exterior and facial features, and also bringing out the character’s inner pain, or lack thereof. You just can’t go wrong with Woody Harrelson playing the lead role in a James Ellroy cop script. That’s a match made in heaven – or hell. If you are a fan of Woody Harrelson, James Ellroy, or film noir, Rampart is a movie not to be missed.
Monday, October 15, 2012
My screenplay, JUNKYARD DOG. The First Ten Pages
The following is the first ten pages of my science fiction screenplay, Junkyard Dog. It's about a baby that is abandoned in a junkyard in Los Angeles and is raised by urban coyotes, and grows up to be a vigilante crime fighter with a souped-up hybrid car made from spare junkyard parts. It did not transfer quite right from Word, but hopefully the gist of it is there.
FADE IN:
EXT. LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRY – SLUMS – NIGHT
ALBERTO GUZMAN, a young laborer wearing work clothes and in his mid-twenties hastily makes his way down the crowded street, occasionally looking over his shoulder to make sure no one is following him.
INT. CINDER BLOCK SHANTY – NIGHT
Inside the small, one-room, dirt-floor shack, ANGELICA GUZMAN, early twenties, cooks tortillas on an old gas stove. The room is small and cramped, with little more than a table, four chairs, a small shelf with a few groceries and a bed.
On the bed an infant child, JUAN GUZMAN, cries.
Two other children, HECTOR GUZMAN, nine, and HELENA GUZMAN, five, sit on the floor beside the bed, playing.
Alberto enters the room with a look of desperation and speaks to his wife with a note of urgency.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
We must go now, Angelica.
Angelica looks desperately at her husband. She doesn’t want to believe it.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
What happened?
Alberto reaches behind the shelf and removes a paper bag taped to the back. He opens the bag and removes a small stack of dollars.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
They found the union meeting. They know
Where we live.
Angelica is very disappointed in her husband.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
Alberto, why?
Alberto pulls a duffel bag from under the bed.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
(angrily)
Get the children and get ready, now.
ANGELICA
El Norte?
Alberto begins stuffing clothes into the bag.
ALBERTO
Si.
EXT. SLUMS – NIGHT
A beaten up, older model car drives by slowly through the narrow streets.
Inside the car three rough looking characters in civilian clothes, DEATH SQUAD MEMBERS, ride in silence, looking for an address.
On the front seat between the driver and the passenger is an M16 assault rifle.
The Man seated in back of the car clutches an old .32 caliber automatic pistol.
INT. CINDER BLOCK SHANTY – NIGHT
Alberto and Angelica stand by the door, looking at their small home one last time. They both wear small backpacks, and Alberto holds the duffel bag in one hand, and five-year old Helena in his arm.
Angelica cries as she holds the baby who is now quiet and content in his mother’s arms. Nine year-old Hector stands at his mother’s side.
EXT. SLUMS – ALLEY – NIGHT
Alberto and Angelica walk hurriedly through the alleyway, passing winos, prostitutes, gang members and other street people.
Hector struggles to keep up, holding on to his mother’s skirt.
INT. CINDER BLOCK SHANTY – NIGHT
The door is kicked in and the three Death Squad Members rush in, weapons at the ready.
EXT. ALLEY – NIGHT
The Guzman family makes their way through the shadows, carrying their worldly possessions.
EXT. ROADSIDE – DAY
The Guzman family sits under a stand of trees away from the road, where they have spent the night.
Angelica breast-feeds Juan while Alberto, Hector and Helena sit nearby and eat burritos for breakfast.
EXT. COUNTRY ROAD – DAY
The Guzman family makes their way down the road, the children lagging behind.
Little Juan cries in his mother arms.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
The baby is sick, Alberto.
EXT. FRUIT STAND – DAY
The Guzman family follows a TRUCK DRIVER behind the fruit stand where a semi tractor-trailer is parked.
Alberto hands the Truck Driver several dollar bills.
The Truck Driver leads the Guzmans to the rear of the trailer.
Inside the trailer many ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS are loaded, waiting to be taken to El Norte.
Little Juan cries as the Guzmans are loaded into the trailer.
INT. TRACTOR TRAILER – DAY
The Guzmans sit in the cramped trailer amongst the other Immigrants who look solemnly as Angelica tries to comfort the crying Juan.
EXT. INTERNATIONAL BORDER CROSSING – DAY
The tractor-trailer waits in a line of traffic to cross the border.
There are long lines of cars waiting to go through the numerous traffic lanes.
BORDER PATROL GUARDS at an adjacent lane search the cars with drug-sniffing dogs.
INT. TRAILER – DAY
Everyone sits quietly with a worrisome look on their faces.
Angelica holds Juan close to her bosom, trying to muffle the sound of his cries.
One of the illegal Immigrants hisses under his breath at her.
IMMIGRANT (IN SPANISH)
Shut that kid up before we all
get caught.
EXT. BORDER CROSSING – DAY
The semi pulls up to the guard booth.
The Truck Driver smiles and waves at the Guard.
The Guard seems to recognize the Driver, and waves him through.
EXT. COLLINS SALVAGE YARD – DAY
A sign out front reads “Collins Salvage Yard - Largest Salvage Yard West of the Pecos.” It is a massive salvage yard, filled with junk cars of every make and model imaginable: old cars, pickup trucks, old rusted school buses, panel trucks of every size and shape.
As far as the eye can see are acres of old automobiles, with dirt roads snaking in between the piles of rusted relics of the past and present. Patches of trees dot the massive acreage. A tall, chain link fence topped with razor wire surrounds the area.
In front of the property is an office with a large parking lot and a gate leading to the salvaged autos.
Behind the office is the Collins family residence. It is a large, two-story, wood framed house. The house itself is a relic of the past, restored and picturesque, with a wrap around front porch and a porch swing.
INT: COLLINS HOME – DEN - DAY
GEORGE COLLINS, a burly man in his early thirties sits at a table going over paperwork. His head is shaved bald, and he sports a large, handlebar moustache. His arms are covered in tattoos, and his biceps look strong enough to crack a walnut in the fold of his arm.
His wife, DORIS COLLINS, a pretty, petite woman a few years younger than her husband, sits in a nearby chair watching over their two year-old daughter, ANNIE COLLINS, who plays with a picture book on the carpet nearby.
George gets up from the table, grabs his car keys, and kisses Doris.
GEORGE
I have go mend the fence, baby,
where the coyotes are getting in.
George picks up Annie and raises her above his head. She smiles and giggles. He kisses her cheek before setting her back down on the carpet.
GEORGE
Got to go, little ‘un. Daddy will
See you later.
INT. TRAILER – DAY
The Illegal Immigrants are drenched in sweat. They sit in anticipation at the end of their long journey.
The door opens wide, letting in sunlight, temporarily blinding the occupants.
EXT. BACKROAD – DAY
The trailer is parked on a little access road by the side of a bridge, on the outskirts of town.
In the distant background are the back acres of the Collins Salvage Yard with its multitude of junk autos.
The Guzman family exits with the rest of the Immigrants, happy to be out in the sunshine and in El Norte.
The Truck Driver is impatient.
TRUCK DRIVER (IN SPANISH)
Hurry up. Hurry, hurry.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – EVENING
It is just a few hours before dark. The sun is slowly sinking on the horizon. All seems quiet except for an occasional bird chirping in a nearby tree, and the sounds of traffic on a highway nearby.
An old faded and rusted panel truck that used to hawk automotive tools sits under a nearby tree. Its tires are missing and the back door is slightly ajar.
Suddenly a baby cries.
INT. PANEL TRUCK – EVENING
Alberto, Hector and Helena sit in the back of the truck, eating cold flour tortillas and drinking from plastic water bottles.
Angelica tries to soothe the crying Juan. Juan finally stops crying. Angelica turns her sad stare to Alberto.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
Our baby is so sick, Alberto.
I don’t know what is wrong.
How are we going to take care
of him on the road? With no
place to go and no food to eat?
A worried looking Alberto has no answer.
ALBERTO
I don’t know, Angelica.
From outside the panel truck comes the sound of children’s voices.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – EVENING
A fancy Mercedes Benz bearing a RICH FAMILY drives by slowly. A young BOY and GIRL hang out the windows of the car, gazing at the junk cars.
A RICH MAN and his RICH WIFE ride in the front seat.
The car stops not far from the panel truck.
INT. PANEL TRUCK - EVENING
Alberto and his family peek through the door of the panel truck. Angelica clutches the silent Juan close to her bosom, in hopes he will not cry out.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – EVENING
The Rich Family gets out of the car. The Rich Man holds a couple of tools and a flashlight in his hands.
RICH MAN
The owner said that Chevy was
right behind these cars.
The kids begin running around, playing.
The Rich Wife calls out to her children.
RICH WIFE
Sidney, Chase, come on now.
We have to go help Daddy get
his car part before it gets
too dark.
INT. PANEL TRUCK – EVENING
Alberto watches through the door of the panel truck as the Rich Family disappear from sight into the mass of junk cars.
Alberto turns to Angelica with a resolute look on his face.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
Give me Juan.
Angelica looks at him puzzled.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
Why?
Alberto takes Juan from her arms and holds him close.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
We can’t provide for this baby,
but that family can.
Angelica realizes what he is about to do.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
Alberto, no!
Little Hector and Helena look up in astonishment at their parents.
Alberto places Juan, wrapped in a blanket and sleeping, in a small cardboard box.
Alberto steps out of the truck with little Juan in the box.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – EVENING
Alberto creeps up to the car and places the box on the trunk of the Mercedes.
He runs back to the panel truck.
INT. PANEL TRUCK – EVENING
Angelica, Hector and Helena sob together as Alberto enters the panel truck and begins gathering their belongings.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
Get your things, we must go.
Hector, tears streaming, looks up at his father sobbing.
HECTOR (IN SPANISH)
Papa, don’t give them Juan Diego.
Alberto chokes back tears.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
He’ll have a better life, mijo.
EXT. CREEK BED – EVENING
Alberto, Angelica, Hector and Helena walk through a creek bed.
Angelica looks back toward the salvage yard, tears streaming down her face. Her children sob as they walk beside her.
Alberto looks at his family beside him as the sun goes down in the distance. He too can no longer hold back the tears.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – NIGHT
It is dark and poor little Juan Diego sleeps peacefully in the cardboard box atop the trunk of the Mercedes.
A flashlight in the distance reveals the Rich Family making their way back to the car. They have stayed longer than they intended.
The Rich Man holds the flashlight, tools and an automotive part wrapped in oil rags as they approach the car.
RICH MAN
Watch your step.
They all climb into the car, not noticing the box on the trunk.
The Rich Man starts the engine, puts the car in gear, and drives off, causing the cardboard box to tumble into the dirt, where it tips over and Juan Diego spills out, crying.
The Mercedes disappears down the dirt road.
EXT. UNDER A BRIDGE – NIGHT
Alberto, Angelica, Hector and Helena settle in for the night under the bridge.
They eat tortillas as they sit in silence. Alberto finally breaks the silence.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
We should be happy for Juan Diego.
He will have opportunities we
could never give him. Maybe
someday we’ll see him again.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – NIGHT
It is pitch dark as little Juan cries into the night, and there is no one to hear him in the silent, vast junkyard.
Suddenly a MAMA COYOTE appears from behind a junked car.
She hears the crying and sees Juan lying in the dirt beside the cardboard box.
She raises her nose and sniffs the air for intruders.
FADE IN:
EXT. LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRY – SLUMS – NIGHT
ALBERTO GUZMAN, a young laborer wearing work clothes and in his mid-twenties hastily makes his way down the crowded street, occasionally looking over his shoulder to make sure no one is following him.
INT. CINDER BLOCK SHANTY – NIGHT
Inside the small, one-room, dirt-floor shack, ANGELICA GUZMAN, early twenties, cooks tortillas on an old gas stove. The room is small and cramped, with little more than a table, four chairs, a small shelf with a few groceries and a bed.
On the bed an infant child, JUAN GUZMAN, cries.
Two other children, HECTOR GUZMAN, nine, and HELENA GUZMAN, five, sit on the floor beside the bed, playing.
Alberto enters the room with a look of desperation and speaks to his wife with a note of urgency.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
We must go now, Angelica.
Angelica looks desperately at her husband. She doesn’t want to believe it.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
What happened?
Alberto reaches behind the shelf and removes a paper bag taped to the back. He opens the bag and removes a small stack of dollars.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
They found the union meeting. They know
Where we live.
Angelica is very disappointed in her husband.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
Alberto, why?
Alberto pulls a duffel bag from under the bed.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
(angrily)
Get the children and get ready, now.
ANGELICA
El Norte?
Alberto begins stuffing clothes into the bag.
ALBERTO
Si.
EXT. SLUMS – NIGHT
A beaten up, older model car drives by slowly through the narrow streets.
Inside the car three rough looking characters in civilian clothes, DEATH SQUAD MEMBERS, ride in silence, looking for an address.
On the front seat between the driver and the passenger is an M16 assault rifle.
The Man seated in back of the car clutches an old .32 caliber automatic pistol.
INT. CINDER BLOCK SHANTY – NIGHT
Alberto and Angelica stand by the door, looking at their small home one last time. They both wear small backpacks, and Alberto holds the duffel bag in one hand, and five-year old Helena in his arm.
Angelica cries as she holds the baby who is now quiet and content in his mother’s arms. Nine year-old Hector stands at his mother’s side.
EXT. SLUMS – ALLEY – NIGHT
Alberto and Angelica walk hurriedly through the alleyway, passing winos, prostitutes, gang members and other street people.
Hector struggles to keep up, holding on to his mother’s skirt.
INT. CINDER BLOCK SHANTY – NIGHT
The door is kicked in and the three Death Squad Members rush in, weapons at the ready.
EXT. ALLEY – NIGHT
The Guzman family makes their way through the shadows, carrying their worldly possessions.
EXT. ROADSIDE – DAY
The Guzman family sits under a stand of trees away from the road, where they have spent the night.
Angelica breast-feeds Juan while Alberto, Hector and Helena sit nearby and eat burritos for breakfast.
EXT. COUNTRY ROAD – DAY
The Guzman family makes their way down the road, the children lagging behind.
Little Juan cries in his mother arms.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
The baby is sick, Alberto.
EXT. FRUIT STAND – DAY
The Guzman family follows a TRUCK DRIVER behind the fruit stand where a semi tractor-trailer is parked.
Alberto hands the Truck Driver several dollar bills.
The Truck Driver leads the Guzmans to the rear of the trailer.
Inside the trailer many ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS are loaded, waiting to be taken to El Norte.
Little Juan cries as the Guzmans are loaded into the trailer.
INT. TRACTOR TRAILER – DAY
The Guzmans sit in the cramped trailer amongst the other Immigrants who look solemnly as Angelica tries to comfort the crying Juan.
EXT. INTERNATIONAL BORDER CROSSING – DAY
The tractor-trailer waits in a line of traffic to cross the border.
There are long lines of cars waiting to go through the numerous traffic lanes.
BORDER PATROL GUARDS at an adjacent lane search the cars with drug-sniffing dogs.
INT. TRAILER – DAY
Everyone sits quietly with a worrisome look on their faces.
Angelica holds Juan close to her bosom, trying to muffle the sound of his cries.
One of the illegal Immigrants hisses under his breath at her.
IMMIGRANT (IN SPANISH)
Shut that kid up before we all
get caught.
EXT. BORDER CROSSING – DAY
The semi pulls up to the guard booth.
The Truck Driver smiles and waves at the Guard.
The Guard seems to recognize the Driver, and waves him through.
EXT. COLLINS SALVAGE YARD – DAY
A sign out front reads “Collins Salvage Yard - Largest Salvage Yard West of the Pecos.” It is a massive salvage yard, filled with junk cars of every make and model imaginable: old cars, pickup trucks, old rusted school buses, panel trucks of every size and shape.
As far as the eye can see are acres of old automobiles, with dirt roads snaking in between the piles of rusted relics of the past and present. Patches of trees dot the massive acreage. A tall, chain link fence topped with razor wire surrounds the area.
In front of the property is an office with a large parking lot and a gate leading to the salvaged autos.
Behind the office is the Collins family residence. It is a large, two-story, wood framed house. The house itself is a relic of the past, restored and picturesque, with a wrap around front porch and a porch swing.
INT: COLLINS HOME – DEN - DAY
GEORGE COLLINS, a burly man in his early thirties sits at a table going over paperwork. His head is shaved bald, and he sports a large, handlebar moustache. His arms are covered in tattoos, and his biceps look strong enough to crack a walnut in the fold of his arm.
His wife, DORIS COLLINS, a pretty, petite woman a few years younger than her husband, sits in a nearby chair watching over their two year-old daughter, ANNIE COLLINS, who plays with a picture book on the carpet nearby.
George gets up from the table, grabs his car keys, and kisses Doris.
GEORGE
I have go mend the fence, baby,
where the coyotes are getting in.
George picks up Annie and raises her above his head. She smiles and giggles. He kisses her cheek before setting her back down on the carpet.
GEORGE
Got to go, little ‘un. Daddy will
See you later.
INT. TRAILER – DAY
The Illegal Immigrants are drenched in sweat. They sit in anticipation at the end of their long journey.
The door opens wide, letting in sunlight, temporarily blinding the occupants.
EXT. BACKROAD – DAY
The trailer is parked on a little access road by the side of a bridge, on the outskirts of town.
In the distant background are the back acres of the Collins Salvage Yard with its multitude of junk autos.
The Guzman family exits with the rest of the Immigrants, happy to be out in the sunshine and in El Norte.
The Truck Driver is impatient.
TRUCK DRIVER (IN SPANISH)
Hurry up. Hurry, hurry.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – EVENING
It is just a few hours before dark. The sun is slowly sinking on the horizon. All seems quiet except for an occasional bird chirping in a nearby tree, and the sounds of traffic on a highway nearby.
An old faded and rusted panel truck that used to hawk automotive tools sits under a nearby tree. Its tires are missing and the back door is slightly ajar.
Suddenly a baby cries.
INT. PANEL TRUCK – EVENING
Alberto, Hector and Helena sit in the back of the truck, eating cold flour tortillas and drinking from plastic water bottles.
Angelica tries to soothe the crying Juan. Juan finally stops crying. Angelica turns her sad stare to Alberto.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
Our baby is so sick, Alberto.
I don’t know what is wrong.
How are we going to take care
of him on the road? With no
place to go and no food to eat?
A worried looking Alberto has no answer.
ALBERTO
I don’t know, Angelica.
From outside the panel truck comes the sound of children’s voices.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – EVENING
A fancy Mercedes Benz bearing a RICH FAMILY drives by slowly. A young BOY and GIRL hang out the windows of the car, gazing at the junk cars.
A RICH MAN and his RICH WIFE ride in the front seat.
The car stops not far from the panel truck.
INT. PANEL TRUCK - EVENING
Alberto and his family peek through the door of the panel truck. Angelica clutches the silent Juan close to her bosom, in hopes he will not cry out.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – EVENING
The Rich Family gets out of the car. The Rich Man holds a couple of tools and a flashlight in his hands.
RICH MAN
The owner said that Chevy was
right behind these cars.
The kids begin running around, playing.
The Rich Wife calls out to her children.
RICH WIFE
Sidney, Chase, come on now.
We have to go help Daddy get
his car part before it gets
too dark.
INT. PANEL TRUCK – EVENING
Alberto watches through the door of the panel truck as the Rich Family disappear from sight into the mass of junk cars.
Alberto turns to Angelica with a resolute look on his face.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
Give me Juan.
Angelica looks at him puzzled.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
Why?
Alberto takes Juan from her arms and holds him close.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
We can’t provide for this baby,
but that family can.
Angelica realizes what he is about to do.
ANGELICA (IN SPANISH)
Alberto, no!
Little Hector and Helena look up in astonishment at their parents.
Alberto places Juan, wrapped in a blanket and sleeping, in a small cardboard box.
Alberto steps out of the truck with little Juan in the box.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – EVENING
Alberto creeps up to the car and places the box on the trunk of the Mercedes.
He runs back to the panel truck.
INT. PANEL TRUCK – EVENING
Angelica, Hector and Helena sob together as Alberto enters the panel truck and begins gathering their belongings.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
Get your things, we must go.
Hector, tears streaming, looks up at his father sobbing.
HECTOR (IN SPANISH)
Papa, don’t give them Juan Diego.
Alberto chokes back tears.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
He’ll have a better life, mijo.
EXT. CREEK BED – EVENING
Alberto, Angelica, Hector and Helena walk through a creek bed.
Angelica looks back toward the salvage yard, tears streaming down her face. Her children sob as they walk beside her.
Alberto looks at his family beside him as the sun goes down in the distance. He too can no longer hold back the tears.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – NIGHT
It is dark and poor little Juan Diego sleeps peacefully in the cardboard box atop the trunk of the Mercedes.
A flashlight in the distance reveals the Rich Family making their way back to the car. They have stayed longer than they intended.
The Rich Man holds the flashlight, tools and an automotive part wrapped in oil rags as they approach the car.
RICH MAN
Watch your step.
They all climb into the car, not noticing the box on the trunk.
The Rich Man starts the engine, puts the car in gear, and drives off, causing the cardboard box to tumble into the dirt, where it tips over and Juan Diego spills out, crying.
The Mercedes disappears down the dirt road.
EXT. UNDER A BRIDGE – NIGHT
Alberto, Angelica, Hector and Helena settle in for the night under the bridge.
They eat tortillas as they sit in silence. Alberto finally breaks the silence.
ALBERTO (IN SPANISH)
We should be happy for Juan Diego.
He will have opportunities we
could never give him. Maybe
someday we’ll see him again.
EXT. SALVAGE YARD – NIGHT
It is pitch dark as little Juan cries into the night, and there is no one to hear him in the silent, vast junkyard.
Suddenly a MAMA COYOTE appears from behind a junked car.
She hears the crying and sees Juan lying in the dirt beside the cardboard box.
She raises her nose and sniffs the air for intruders.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Natural Born Killers Still A Favorite
I can never seem to get enough of Oliver Stone’s 1994 movie, Natural Born Killers. I re-watched the Director’s Cut several nights ago, along with the special features which include director’s commentary, deleted scenes and Chaos Rising; the behind-the-scenes, making-of piece, which has interviews with the actors, producers and crew, and which chronicles the filming and the controversy centered around the violent nature of the movie.
The original screenplay was penned by Quentin Tarantino, before he became “the” Quentin Tarantino. There was a big brouhaha in the press around the time of release about then neophyte producers Jane Hamsher and Don Murphy, JD Productions, optioning the screenplay from Tarantino, who in the meantime became quite famous from the success of Reservoir Dogs. Purportedly Tarantino hoped to get the script back after the year-option expired, so he could make the movie himself, and a big feud erupted between Tarantino and JD Productions, culminating in Don Murphy supposedly saying he would openly celebrate Tarantino’s death, and Tarantino slapping Murphy in the face at a famous LA restaurant.
After the movie was released, Jane Hamsher’s book, Killer Instincts: How Two Young Producers Took on Hollywood and Made the Most Controversial Film of the Decade was published. Killer Instincts is a great, gossipy read about the underbelly of making movies in Hollywood, and the excitement and unique craziness of making a movie with the legendary Oliver Stone.
As the story goes, just when JD Productions was about to lose the option, purportedly due to underhanded, behind the scene maneuvers of Tarantino, Oliver Stone stepped in as director to help Hamsher and Murphy make the movie. He also re-wrote the script, much to the chagrin of Tarantino, with the help of David Veloz and Richard Rutowski.
The whole sordid affair was fodder for the tabloids and gossip mills, and I ate up everything I could find on the movie, since I am one of the biggest Oliver Stone fans on the planet. And I must confess a big fan of Tarantino’s earlier work, as Tarantino was also a big influence on my own wannabe, screenwriting attempts. I snatched up and eagerly devoured every book, magazine and shred of press material I could find on both filmmakers at the time. I’m still a big fan of both auteurs, but Stone is by far the better and more serious filmmaker, and in that famous feud, I would still fall into Stone’s camp.
When I first saw Natural Born Killers on the big screen, I really didn’t like it. I much preferred the serious Stone films, and upon first viewing, I was disappointed. I thought Natural Born Killers was kind of silly and awkward, and even incongruously silly and horrific. It was shocking in places. It was creepy in places. I usually don’t like movies that mix violence and comedy, and I’m not much into satire. As a matter of fact, I didn’t like Natural Born Killers so much, that I ended up watching it ten times on the big screen! And yes, I still have all my chromosomes. By the second and third viewings, I liked it a lot and recognized it as a work of genius: a psychedelic, satirical, no-holds-barred, violent love story. And I must confess, I do love violent love stories. (The Tarantino penned, True Romance, for instance, is a great, violent love story.) By the fourth through the tenth big screen viewings, I took along as many friends as I could and watched it to study camera angles, sets, props, acting skills, etc. I studied that movie intensely, as a devoted, armchair student of film and all things Oliver Stone.
Of course, more controversy eventually erupted over the movie as copycat killings and violent crimes began to occur and be attributed to the movie. Mystery writer and attorney John Grisham even went so far as to help bring a lawsuit against Oliver Stone and Time Warner on behalf of one of the victims. (I have since boycotted all things John Grisham.) According to newspaper accounts at the time, one of the copycat killings even happened on the roof of a convenient store on the NW corner of Midway and Rosemeade, about a stone’s throw from the apartment where I lived in Dallas for many years and made my own movie. The Grisham lawsuit was unsuccessful, thankfully, and no precedent was set which would make filmmaker’s and artists responsible for the actions of a few lunatics and lost souls who might act upon movies, plays, books, poems or other art forms or media created by artists whose soul intent is to move, enlighten or entertain an audience. Tragic indeed when life imitates art in such a way as to cause a murder, and my heart does go out to the victims and their families. But one cannot prosecute Martin Scorcese or Paul Schrader because John Hinckley shot President Reagan purportedly due to an infatuation with the Jodie Foster teen prostitute character, Iris, in the movie Taxi Driver.
It was Aristotle who said, “Art imitates life,” and Oscar Wilde who countered centuries later, “Life imitates art.” I remember reading John Lennon’s Playboy magazine interview in 1980 in which he mentioned he was subsisting on Hershey’s with Almonds candy bars and Gauloise cigarettes. I rushed out and purchased and consumed both of those items simply to experience what John Lennon experienced. Life imitating art, one might say. I couldn’t very well sue John Lennon or Playboy magazine if I developed lung cancer or a tooth cavity, though eating Hershey’s with Almonds and smoking French cigarettes was my way of imitating the artist, John Lennon; silly though it may have been.
Nowadays in film, product placement has become the evil twin of life imitating art. Movie production companies now include brand name, consumer products in their movies in order to raise production funds from corporations that market the products. It’s an art-compromising way to subliminally include commercials into movies to make a buck. When famed filmmaker, David Lynch was asked what he thought about product placement in movies, he replied emphatically, “Bullshit, total fucking bullshit.”
One of the things that struck me as I watched the opening scene of Natural Born Killers is the inclusion by Oliver Stone of various “natural born killers” and inhabitants of the desert: such as the coyote, the rattlesnake, the hawk, the scorpion and the rednecks with the dead deer on the roof of the truck; all killers in their own right, yet all a part of the natural order of the planet. As Mickey Knox says in the nationally televised, prison interview on Super Bowl Sunday that comes later in the movie, “It’s just murder… all God’s creatures do it… the wolf doesn’t know why he’s a wolf - the deer doesn’t know why he’s a deer. God just made it that way.” He goes on to say: “The media is like the weather, except it’s manmade.” Those may be wise observations from a demented mind about the cruelty of nature, but still rather chilling statements to a viewer in a civilized society.
The movie is chocked full of oblique angles, jump cuts, black and white footage and every conceivable angle and film format known to mankind. It is a visual onslaught that never lets up throughout the whole movie: a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic, drug-induced romp through every conceivable manipulation ever dedicated to film. According to Hamsher’s book and interviews included in the Director’s Cut, she and Oliver Stone and others ate hallucinogenic mushrooms while scouting film locations in the desert. The movie itself tries to imitate a psychedelic trip, and successfully does so in my humble opinion.
One of the film’s most disturbing scenes to me is the backstory of Juliette Lewis’s character, Mallory, and her life at home with her abusive father, Jack, eerily played by Rodney Dangerfield. As the scene unfolds and it is made apparent that Jack has physically and sexually abused his daughter, the scene is nonetheless shot as a sitcom, complete with a laugh track included at the most sinister moments. The incongruity of that juxtaposition of a very creepy scene with a laugh track layered in was quite troubling to me, and difficult to watch. It is also at that juncture where Tarantino, during his first viewing of Natural Born Killers, supposedly walked out of the movie theater and said he would, “Watch it on cable someday.” Evidently he did not approve of the rewrites or Stone’s interpretation of his original script. Tarantino had even insisted that he be given screen credit for the “story’’ only, when he was made aware of the numerous changes to his original script.
The cast of Natural Born Killers did a great job. Stone said one reason he cast Woody Harrelson was because Woody’s father, hit man Charles Harrelson, infamously assassinated a federal judge in Texas in 1979, and Stone thought there was something in Woody’s genetic makeup that would bring out something extra in the Mickey Knox character. Juliette Lewis was dedicated to the role of Mallory Knox, and it shows in her flawless performance. Robert Downey, Jr. almost steals the show as the TV journalist, Wayne Gale. Tommy Lee Jones gives a rare performance as the cruel, nose-picking prison warden with his crude, instruments of torture. Tom Sizemore rounded out the cast very well playing the famous, memoir-writing lawman that is hired to track down the psychotic, murderous lovers. As we find out, he too is a killer who strangles a prostitute in a motel as he searches for Mickey and Mallory.
There are no heroes it seems in Natural Born Killers. According to Oliver Stone, “Once [Mickey and Mallory] kill, they’ve entered into this world of breaking all the rules. It’s fitting that the filmmaker is also breaking the rules, with them.”
Maybe to some, Natural Born Killers is a sick, controversial movie, unrealistically portraying a sick world. But, as Tommy Lee Jones says in the interview in Chaos Rising, “You don’t have to be a very sophisticated person to know that this is not an exploitation film. This is an art film.”
The original screenplay was penned by Quentin Tarantino, before he became “the” Quentin Tarantino. There was a big brouhaha in the press around the time of release about then neophyte producers Jane Hamsher and Don Murphy, JD Productions, optioning the screenplay from Tarantino, who in the meantime became quite famous from the success of Reservoir Dogs. Purportedly Tarantino hoped to get the script back after the year-option expired, so he could make the movie himself, and a big feud erupted between Tarantino and JD Productions, culminating in Don Murphy supposedly saying he would openly celebrate Tarantino’s death, and Tarantino slapping Murphy in the face at a famous LA restaurant.
After the movie was released, Jane Hamsher’s book, Killer Instincts: How Two Young Producers Took on Hollywood and Made the Most Controversial Film of the Decade was published. Killer Instincts is a great, gossipy read about the underbelly of making movies in Hollywood, and the excitement and unique craziness of making a movie with the legendary Oliver Stone.
As the story goes, just when JD Productions was about to lose the option, purportedly due to underhanded, behind the scene maneuvers of Tarantino, Oliver Stone stepped in as director to help Hamsher and Murphy make the movie. He also re-wrote the script, much to the chagrin of Tarantino, with the help of David Veloz and Richard Rutowski.
The whole sordid affair was fodder for the tabloids and gossip mills, and I ate up everything I could find on the movie, since I am one of the biggest Oliver Stone fans on the planet. And I must confess a big fan of Tarantino’s earlier work, as Tarantino was also a big influence on my own wannabe, screenwriting attempts. I snatched up and eagerly devoured every book, magazine and shred of press material I could find on both filmmakers at the time. I’m still a big fan of both auteurs, but Stone is by far the better and more serious filmmaker, and in that famous feud, I would still fall into Stone’s camp.
When I first saw Natural Born Killers on the big screen, I really didn’t like it. I much preferred the serious Stone films, and upon first viewing, I was disappointed. I thought Natural Born Killers was kind of silly and awkward, and even incongruously silly and horrific. It was shocking in places. It was creepy in places. I usually don’t like movies that mix violence and comedy, and I’m not much into satire. As a matter of fact, I didn’t like Natural Born Killers so much, that I ended up watching it ten times on the big screen! And yes, I still have all my chromosomes. By the second and third viewings, I liked it a lot and recognized it as a work of genius: a psychedelic, satirical, no-holds-barred, violent love story. And I must confess, I do love violent love stories. (The Tarantino penned, True Romance, for instance, is a great, violent love story.) By the fourth through the tenth big screen viewings, I took along as many friends as I could and watched it to study camera angles, sets, props, acting skills, etc. I studied that movie intensely, as a devoted, armchair student of film and all things Oliver Stone.
Of course, more controversy eventually erupted over the movie as copycat killings and violent crimes began to occur and be attributed to the movie. Mystery writer and attorney John Grisham even went so far as to help bring a lawsuit against Oliver Stone and Time Warner on behalf of one of the victims. (I have since boycotted all things John Grisham.) According to newspaper accounts at the time, one of the copycat killings even happened on the roof of a convenient store on the NW corner of Midway and Rosemeade, about a stone’s throw from the apartment where I lived in Dallas for many years and made my own movie. The Grisham lawsuit was unsuccessful, thankfully, and no precedent was set which would make filmmaker’s and artists responsible for the actions of a few lunatics and lost souls who might act upon movies, plays, books, poems or other art forms or media created by artists whose soul intent is to move, enlighten or entertain an audience. Tragic indeed when life imitates art in such a way as to cause a murder, and my heart does go out to the victims and their families. But one cannot prosecute Martin Scorcese or Paul Schrader because John Hinckley shot President Reagan purportedly due to an infatuation with the Jodie Foster teen prostitute character, Iris, in the movie Taxi Driver.
It was Aristotle who said, “Art imitates life,” and Oscar Wilde who countered centuries later, “Life imitates art.” I remember reading John Lennon’s Playboy magazine interview in 1980 in which he mentioned he was subsisting on Hershey’s with Almonds candy bars and Gauloise cigarettes. I rushed out and purchased and consumed both of those items simply to experience what John Lennon experienced. Life imitating art, one might say. I couldn’t very well sue John Lennon or Playboy magazine if I developed lung cancer or a tooth cavity, though eating Hershey’s with Almonds and smoking French cigarettes was my way of imitating the artist, John Lennon; silly though it may have been.
Nowadays in film, product placement has become the evil twin of life imitating art. Movie production companies now include brand name, consumer products in their movies in order to raise production funds from corporations that market the products. It’s an art-compromising way to subliminally include commercials into movies to make a buck. When famed filmmaker, David Lynch was asked what he thought about product placement in movies, he replied emphatically, “Bullshit, total fucking bullshit.”
One of the things that struck me as I watched the opening scene of Natural Born Killers is the inclusion by Oliver Stone of various “natural born killers” and inhabitants of the desert: such as the coyote, the rattlesnake, the hawk, the scorpion and the rednecks with the dead deer on the roof of the truck; all killers in their own right, yet all a part of the natural order of the planet. As Mickey Knox says in the nationally televised, prison interview on Super Bowl Sunday that comes later in the movie, “It’s just murder… all God’s creatures do it… the wolf doesn’t know why he’s a wolf - the deer doesn’t know why he’s a deer. God just made it that way.” He goes on to say: “The media is like the weather, except it’s manmade.” Those may be wise observations from a demented mind about the cruelty of nature, but still rather chilling statements to a viewer in a civilized society.
The movie is chocked full of oblique angles, jump cuts, black and white footage and every conceivable angle and film format known to mankind. It is a visual onslaught that never lets up throughout the whole movie: a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic, drug-induced romp through every conceivable manipulation ever dedicated to film. According to Hamsher’s book and interviews included in the Director’s Cut, she and Oliver Stone and others ate hallucinogenic mushrooms while scouting film locations in the desert. The movie itself tries to imitate a psychedelic trip, and successfully does so in my humble opinion.
One of the film’s most disturbing scenes to me is the backstory of Juliette Lewis’s character, Mallory, and her life at home with her abusive father, Jack, eerily played by Rodney Dangerfield. As the scene unfolds and it is made apparent that Jack has physically and sexually abused his daughter, the scene is nonetheless shot as a sitcom, complete with a laugh track included at the most sinister moments. The incongruity of that juxtaposition of a very creepy scene with a laugh track layered in was quite troubling to me, and difficult to watch. It is also at that juncture where Tarantino, during his first viewing of Natural Born Killers, supposedly walked out of the movie theater and said he would, “Watch it on cable someday.” Evidently he did not approve of the rewrites or Stone’s interpretation of his original script. Tarantino had even insisted that he be given screen credit for the “story’’ only, when he was made aware of the numerous changes to his original script.
The cast of Natural Born Killers did a great job. Stone said one reason he cast Woody Harrelson was because Woody’s father, hit man Charles Harrelson, infamously assassinated a federal judge in Texas in 1979, and Stone thought there was something in Woody’s genetic makeup that would bring out something extra in the Mickey Knox character. Juliette Lewis was dedicated to the role of Mallory Knox, and it shows in her flawless performance. Robert Downey, Jr. almost steals the show as the TV journalist, Wayne Gale. Tommy Lee Jones gives a rare performance as the cruel, nose-picking prison warden with his crude, instruments of torture. Tom Sizemore rounded out the cast very well playing the famous, memoir-writing lawman that is hired to track down the psychotic, murderous lovers. As we find out, he too is a killer who strangles a prostitute in a motel as he searches for Mickey and Mallory.
There are no heroes it seems in Natural Born Killers. According to Oliver Stone, “Once [Mickey and Mallory] kill, they’ve entered into this world of breaking all the rules. It’s fitting that the filmmaker is also breaking the rules, with them.”
Maybe to some, Natural Born Killers is a sick, controversial movie, unrealistically portraying a sick world. But, as Tommy Lee Jones says in the interview in Chaos Rising, “You don’t have to be a very sophisticated person to know that this is not an exploitation film. This is an art film.”
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Having My Baby Wins Most Ambitious Film Award, or, Four Years of Snowballing Karma
The Blog lives on. We’re on a roll. Having My Baby won the award for Most Ambitious Film at the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival (formerly known as the Washougal International Film Festival) in Vancouver, Washington. Many thanks to the lovely and talented festival founder and director, Breven Angaelica Warren, and her trusted sidekick, Festival Captain, Wes Parker. They treated us very kindly during our stay in their fair city, and we really appreciate it.
Most Ambitious Film, Having My Baby. It has a nice little ring to it. I like it. I suppose I should get an award for Most Megalomaniacal Director, truth be known. I can proudly says, “It’s over, Johnny.” Having My Baby is a tangible commodity. So, I’m living proof you can make an award-winning, feature-length, action-drama film for $80,000 while simultaneously working 40-hour weeks for The Man. However, such sleep deprivation, physical hardship, mental anguish and gravity of will is not recommended for one’s health. It turns you into a “mean man.” Someone who is driven. Someone who will not take “no” for an answer. Like the Terminator, “It will not die!” “Ugh, must make movie, get out of way.” One friend in a polite way told me I was just stupid enough to think I could do it, and ended up doing it. After four years of seat-of-the-pants filmmaking making Having My Baby, I would have to say, I agree.
In the end, I’m proud of Having My Baby. It’s a cool little flick if the story interests you. One thing that has puzzled me however, is that people think Having My Baby is a Christian movie, however, I contend, it only has a fundamentalist Christian character. Sophie is proudly agnostic. As the creator of Blaine and Sophie, I never chose between them or took a side. As the omnipotent creator/writer, I must be totally neutral so that the audience may choose for themselves. Just the facts, ma’am. Having My Baby is an action-drama, human interest, love story. I guess. What do I know? The squares love it. The civilians love it. I love it, though some of it does still make me cringe. Too much karma still. Four years of snowballing karma wasn’t vanquished in a day.
Most Ambitious Film, Having My Baby. It has a nice little ring to it. I like it. I suppose I should get an award for Most Megalomaniacal Director, truth be known. I can proudly says, “It’s over, Johnny.” Having My Baby is a tangible commodity. So, I’m living proof you can make an award-winning, feature-length, action-drama film for $80,000 while simultaneously working 40-hour weeks for The Man. However, such sleep deprivation, physical hardship, mental anguish and gravity of will is not recommended for one’s health. It turns you into a “mean man.” Someone who is driven. Someone who will not take “no” for an answer. Like the Terminator, “It will not die!” “Ugh, must make movie, get out of way.” One friend in a polite way told me I was just stupid enough to think I could do it, and ended up doing it. After four years of seat-of-the-pants filmmaking making Having My Baby, I would have to say, I agree.
In the end, I’m proud of Having My Baby. It’s a cool little flick if the story interests you. One thing that has puzzled me however, is that people think Having My Baby is a Christian movie, however, I contend, it only has a fundamentalist Christian character. Sophie is proudly agnostic. As the creator of Blaine and Sophie, I never chose between them or took a side. As the omnipotent creator/writer, I must be totally neutral so that the audience may choose for themselves. Just the facts, ma’am. Having My Baby is an action-drama, human interest, love story. I guess. What do I know? The squares love it. The civilians love it. I love it, though some of it does still make me cringe. Too much karma still. Four years of snowballing karma wasn’t vanquished in a day.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Watching Hud with My Dad
My pop died of emphysema several years ago, and I've always wished I'd had more time to visit with him. He wasn't around much when I was a youngster. My mom always said, "Your daddy worked hard, but he also played hard." And if you'll pardon my language, my dad was a cross between Archie Bunker and Brando's description of his father in Last Tango in Paris: "He was a super masculine, whore fucker, bar fighter."
My dad was from Tennessee. His name was Hugh L., and the L. was only an initial and didn't stand for anything. Having a middle initial as a substitute for an actual name was evidently a custom in the hills of Tennessee where my dad grew up in the 1930's. There is a common joke there that the people are so poor they can't even afford a full name, and could only afford a middle initial. My dad eventually told everyone the L. stood for Larry, just to get them to shut up about it, I guess. Larry is what my mom called him until his dying day.
My dad was a kind, compassionate man, but he had a rough exterior and was an unrepentant womanizer. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960's, on the very few, rare occasions my dad was home and not working or playing, I was actually able to watch TV with my dad. We couldn't watch any comedies. If I turned it to Get Smart or Hogan's Heroes, he'd say, "Get that shit off there." So I'd have to turn it to Gunsmoke, The Rifleman or Wanted Dead or Alive. Testosterone city. Needless to say I was a bit deficient in the sense of humor department as a child and later in life. What my Dad did like was: he liked beer, he liked women, he liked baseball and he liked country food; food like biscuits and gravy, and wilted mustard greens soaked in bacon bits and hot grease. Cracklings, even, whatever the heck that is. And he liked a good western, too.
The only time he really busted my ass when I was a kid was when I took too long to water the pigs during the heat of the day in the burning hell of a Texas summer, and when I went swimming in a stock tank without permission near a place called Hippie Ridge in Wise County, Texas. But he was always busting my balls about something later in life, in my early twenties especially, when I was a shiftless, lazy, college dropout, Rimbaud wannabe. But, short story long, when I knew the old fucker only had a few years left to live, I loaded the car up with VHS movie cassettes and drove up to Roane County, Tennessee to see him. I tried to take a variety of movies for him to see. Some movies I took I knew he would like, like the Clint Eastwood western, The Unforgiven. (I always get choked up at the end when those prostitutes come out in the rain to see Clint Eastwood ride out of town.) And some movies I took just to mess with his head, like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. When the little dwarf in the red room sucks up the corn from a silver spoon in an extreme closeup while the soundtrack plays in reverse, that's about the time my dad said, "Sheeeit, son, get that shit off there." Leave it to David Lynch to blow my dad's mind. That's about the time I hit the eject button and I popped in Hud.
I knew my dad would probably get a stiffy watching Hud, because he was Hud, in so many ways. Ruggedly handsome like Newman, with chiseled features and a confident swagger. I never once heard my dad laugh in his life... seriously... never! I heard him chuckle once or twice, either watching a John Wayne movie or some other western movie that had a brief moment of comedy between scenes of killing dark-skinned people. But, by golly, he sure liked watching Hud! Hud, the drunken, womanizing cowboy. He came pretty darn close to laughing a time or two, especially when Hud was extricating himself from the clutches of a jealous husband. My dad told me of a few such close calls in his life. When my dad was sober he wouldn't have two words to say, but when he was drinking, he was a hillbilly raconteur who would get on a drunken binge and couldn't shut up. I'll withhold some of the scandalous details since there might be women and children about. I think you get the picture.
Hud was adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel, Horseman, Pass By. Hud's younger brother is played by Brandon de Wilde, the kid from Shane as a young man. Larry McMurtry is a life long native of the Wichita Falls area, where my mom and dad and our family lived a time or two. There are some good chapters on the making of Hud in Larry McMurty's book, In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas. Released in 1962, Hud is a great movie and a great nostalgia trip for anyone who grew up in Texas. Academy awards went to Patricia Neal and Melvyn Douglas, and to James Wong Howe for his brilliant cinematography.
I was glad my dad and I got the chance to watch Hud together one of the last times I saw him. It was one of the very few times we ever bonded, as they say. If you could call it that. That's when my dad told me that I was named after a character from the Zane Grey western novel, The Lone Star Ranger, and General Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project. My mom, who eventually divorced him, had always told me I was named after some of my dad's Air Force buddies. I know my dad wasn't much of a role model, but he was my dad. We don't get to pick them. It's like the genetic lottery. I guess I could have done a lot worse. He was a good man most of the time, except when it came to married women and booze. He never was there for me as a kid, but he always put food on the table. Now I suppose he's up on that great big barstool in the sky.
My dad was from Tennessee. His name was Hugh L., and the L. was only an initial and didn't stand for anything. Having a middle initial as a substitute for an actual name was evidently a custom in the hills of Tennessee where my dad grew up in the 1930's. There is a common joke there that the people are so poor they can't even afford a full name, and could only afford a middle initial. My dad eventually told everyone the L. stood for Larry, just to get them to shut up about it, I guess. Larry is what my mom called him until his dying day.
My dad was a kind, compassionate man, but he had a rough exterior and was an unrepentant womanizer. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960's, on the very few, rare occasions my dad was home and not working or playing, I was actually able to watch TV with my dad. We couldn't watch any comedies. If I turned it to Get Smart or Hogan's Heroes, he'd say, "Get that shit off there." So I'd have to turn it to Gunsmoke, The Rifleman or Wanted Dead or Alive. Testosterone city. Needless to say I was a bit deficient in the sense of humor department as a child and later in life. What my Dad did like was: he liked beer, he liked women, he liked baseball and he liked country food; food like biscuits and gravy, and wilted mustard greens soaked in bacon bits and hot grease. Cracklings, even, whatever the heck that is. And he liked a good western, too.
The only time he really busted my ass when I was a kid was when I took too long to water the pigs during the heat of the day in the burning hell of a Texas summer, and when I went swimming in a stock tank without permission near a place called Hippie Ridge in Wise County, Texas. But he was always busting my balls about something later in life, in my early twenties especially, when I was a shiftless, lazy, college dropout, Rimbaud wannabe. But, short story long, when I knew the old fucker only had a few years left to live, I loaded the car up with VHS movie cassettes and drove up to Roane County, Tennessee to see him. I tried to take a variety of movies for him to see. Some movies I took I knew he would like, like the Clint Eastwood western, The Unforgiven. (I always get choked up at the end when those prostitutes come out in the rain to see Clint Eastwood ride out of town.) And some movies I took just to mess with his head, like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. When the little dwarf in the red room sucks up the corn from a silver spoon in an extreme closeup while the soundtrack plays in reverse, that's about the time my dad said, "Sheeeit, son, get that shit off there." Leave it to David Lynch to blow my dad's mind. That's about the time I hit the eject button and I popped in Hud.
I knew my dad would probably get a stiffy watching Hud, because he was Hud, in so many ways. Ruggedly handsome like Newman, with chiseled features and a confident swagger. I never once heard my dad laugh in his life... seriously... never! I heard him chuckle once or twice, either watching a John Wayne movie or some other western movie that had a brief moment of comedy between scenes of killing dark-skinned people. But, by golly, he sure liked watching Hud! Hud, the drunken, womanizing cowboy. He came pretty darn close to laughing a time or two, especially when Hud was extricating himself from the clutches of a jealous husband. My dad told me of a few such close calls in his life. When my dad was sober he wouldn't have two words to say, but when he was drinking, he was a hillbilly raconteur who would get on a drunken binge and couldn't shut up. I'll withhold some of the scandalous details since there might be women and children about. I think you get the picture.
Hud was adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel, Horseman, Pass By. Hud's younger brother is played by Brandon de Wilde, the kid from Shane as a young man. Larry McMurtry is a life long native of the Wichita Falls area, where my mom and dad and our family lived a time or two. There are some good chapters on the making of Hud in Larry McMurty's book, In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas. Released in 1962, Hud is a great movie and a great nostalgia trip for anyone who grew up in Texas. Academy awards went to Patricia Neal and Melvyn Douglas, and to James Wong Howe for his brilliant cinematography.
I was glad my dad and I got the chance to watch Hud together one of the last times I saw him. It was one of the very few times we ever bonded, as they say. If you could call it that. That's when my dad told me that I was named after a character from the Zane Grey western novel, The Lone Star Ranger, and General Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project. My mom, who eventually divorced him, had always told me I was named after some of my dad's Air Force buddies. I know my dad wasn't much of a role model, but he was my dad. We don't get to pick them. It's like the genetic lottery. I guess I could have done a lot worse. He was a good man most of the time, except when it came to married women and booze. He never was there for me as a kid, but he always put food on the table. Now I suppose he's up on that great big barstool in the sky.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Movie Jonesing and DVD Buying Escapades
I've been busier than a one-armed paper hanger (no offense to one-armed paper hangers) and haven't had time to do this blog up proper, as they might say. I haven't had time to work on my screenplay in progress, Jacksboro Highway. I haven't had time to write some freelance stuff I've had notes on for some time (one about Depression era babies, the other about international arms trafficking regulations), and I haven't had much time for anything except working for The Man.
But I have squeezed in some movie watching time, and this is purportedly a movie blog, or so I've been lead to believe. What's the use of having a blog if one doesn't record inane ruminations in it, right? So this will be a recent update in which I write about the DVDs I've been lucky enough to purchase and find the time to watch. Bored already, right?
I watched the special edition DVD of Alan Parker's, Angel Heart. It had some great extras, including interviews with Mickey Rourke. The movie is one of the greatest gumshoe whodunits ever put to cellulose, and a terrific period piece. I love the scenes in New Orleans. It is easily Mickey Rourke's finest performance, playing alongside a champ like De Niro. Good stuff! I thought Lisa Bonet did a great job, too.
On to Raging Bull, the 2-Disc DVD Collector's Set. True cinema at its finest. Another period piece that will knock your block off. The boxing movie that changed my mind about boxing movies. And who knew? Cathy Moriarty was only sixteen when she was cast alongside Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. This Collector's Set is so great. Three audio commentaries with Scorcese, Schoonmaker, Irwin Winkler and Jake La Motta. Lots of featurettes about the making-of. For just pure filmmaking savvy, this is Scorcese's best movie ever, hands down, and Robert De Niro's finest performance ever. Absolutely brilliant, all of it!
Scarface... the 2-Disc Platinum Edition... oodles and oodles of extras, but unfortunately no director's or other commentary. Just featurettes, interviews, making-of extras and delected scenes.
The script for the 80's Scarface remake was written by Oliver Stone in France, while he kicked a coke habit. In Miami and Latin America, he hung out with drug lords and law enforcement personnel as he researched the illicit drug trade. It's a great, violent movie, with lots of bullets and lots of babes, and a true, gangster classic. The Platinum Edition has great interviews with Oliver Stone, director, Brian De Palma, and producer, Martin Bregman. Scarface is a masterpiece and cult classic in every sense of the word. The movie was dedicated to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht who directed and wrote the original 1932 Scarface.
I watched to 2008 released 30th Anniversity Edition of Midnight Express, the movie for which Oliver Stone won his first academy award for best adapted screenplay, and also another Alan Parker movie. (One of my all time favorite movies by Alan Parker is Pink Floyd, The Wall.) This edition has lots of extras, including a great commentary by Alan Parker and interviews with Oliver Stone. Midnight Express is a great prison movie, though painful to watch at times. Actor Brad Davis is amazingly believable as the young American with a hankering for some hashish.
So, that's been some of my DVD buying escapades and movie watching pleasure. I love the director's commentaries and featurettes on anniversary and special edition DVDs. Making movies can be such a weird adventure! Hearing the anecdotal stories behind the scenes is lots of fun for aspiring filmmakers and civilians alike.
But I have squeezed in some movie watching time, and this is purportedly a movie blog, or so I've been lead to believe. What's the use of having a blog if one doesn't record inane ruminations in it, right? So this will be a recent update in which I write about the DVDs I've been lucky enough to purchase and find the time to watch. Bored already, right?
I watched the special edition DVD of Alan Parker's, Angel Heart. It had some great extras, including interviews with Mickey Rourke. The movie is one of the greatest gumshoe whodunits ever put to cellulose, and a terrific period piece. I love the scenes in New Orleans. It is easily Mickey Rourke's finest performance, playing alongside a champ like De Niro. Good stuff! I thought Lisa Bonet did a great job, too.
On to Raging Bull, the 2-Disc DVD Collector's Set. True cinema at its finest. Another period piece that will knock your block off. The boxing movie that changed my mind about boxing movies. And who knew? Cathy Moriarty was only sixteen when she was cast alongside Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. This Collector's Set is so great. Three audio commentaries with Scorcese, Schoonmaker, Irwin Winkler and Jake La Motta. Lots of featurettes about the making-of. For just pure filmmaking savvy, this is Scorcese's best movie ever, hands down, and Robert De Niro's finest performance ever. Absolutely brilliant, all of it!
Scarface... the 2-Disc Platinum Edition... oodles and oodles of extras, but unfortunately no director's or other commentary. Just featurettes, interviews, making-of extras and delected scenes.
The script for the 80's Scarface remake was written by Oliver Stone in France, while he kicked a coke habit. In Miami and Latin America, he hung out with drug lords and law enforcement personnel as he researched the illicit drug trade. It's a great, violent movie, with lots of bullets and lots of babes, and a true, gangster classic. The Platinum Edition has great interviews with Oliver Stone, director, Brian De Palma, and producer, Martin Bregman. Scarface is a masterpiece and cult classic in every sense of the word. The movie was dedicated to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht who directed and wrote the original 1932 Scarface.
I watched to 2008 released 30th Anniversity Edition of Midnight Express, the movie for which Oliver Stone won his first academy award for best adapted screenplay, and also another Alan Parker movie. (One of my all time favorite movies by Alan Parker is Pink Floyd, The Wall.) This edition has lots of extras, including a great commentary by Alan Parker and interviews with Oliver Stone. Midnight Express is a great prison movie, though painful to watch at times. Actor Brad Davis is amazingly believable as the young American with a hankering for some hashish.
So, that's been some of my DVD buying escapades and movie watching pleasure. I love the director's commentaries and featurettes on anniversary and special edition DVDs. Making movies can be such a weird adventure! Hearing the anecdotal stories behind the scenes is lots of fun for aspiring filmmakers and civilians alike.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
HAVING MY BABY Now Available on DVD
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Hollywood Love Fest - The 82nd Annual Academy Awards
It was fun to watch the 82nd Academy Awards and once again see all the beautiful people kick up their heels and throw their annual shindig. I thought Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a great job co-hosting, and for me, it was fun to see a Hollywood sacred cow like good old democratic socialist Ed Asner in the crowd, as well as an old timer like Christopher Plummer there as a nominee, even if he did not get his due. Christoph Waltz was a difficult actor to beat, I suppose.
I love the work of cinematographer, Robert Richardson, especially when he was working with Oliver Stone. He was hard to miss tonight sitting behind Quentin Tarantino with his trademark long hair and beard, now snow white, looking like a character in a kung fu movie, the old man from the mountain. He was nominated for best cinematographer for Inglourious Basterds. (I have to get the spelling right on Inglourious and Basterds!)
I was happy to see a young, acoustic guitar-strumming song writer like Ryan Bingham win the Oscar for Best Song for the theme song from Crazy Heart. He went from rodeo cowboy breaking bones riding bulls and living in his pickup truck to Oscar winner in a few short years. He paid his dues and came up the hard way. I bet his life story would make a great movie.
Quentin Tarantino did not look too happy when Mark Boal won for Best Original Screenplay. QT’s script was definitely original, but too silly, I think, to win the top screenwriting honor, and had too much white space.
There is no way any director other than James Cameron should have won for Best Director. The dedication, innovation and persistence behind Avatar cannot be equaled for a long time to come. I guess The Academy thought the time had come for a woman to win Best Director. So be it. I loved Strange Days and Point Break, by the way, both directed by Kathryn Bigelow, but no way The Hurt Locker was better directed than Avatar.
And The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture? There is like no way! James Cameron was robbed, probably by the military industrial complex and the necessary glorification of the war. I actually fell asleep at the theater watching the last twenty minutes of The Hurt Locker, but I was wide awake at the climactic ending of Avatar. The Hurt Locker was a propaganda snooze fest compared to Avatar. I know a lot of film purists and Cameron haters didn’t want to see a special effects-heavy production like Avatar win, but the movie is way too grand and magnificent to be overlooked. What a travesty! Plus it has almost grossed a billion dollars domestically! Let’s face it, it’s entertaining. Oh well, it’s not the first time a movie or director has been robbed at the Oscars. I’m sure it won’t be the last. Just look at Martin Scorsese and Raging Bull. Movies are so much fun to watch when they are good, and good is such a relative term when it comes to cinema and the Academy of Motion Pictures. An audience is a fickle thing.
We place actors on such pedestals, and make them into demi-gods, yet they are for the most part normal people who just happen to have a cool job. Just for an instant tonight watching the Academy Awards I thought I was watching an homage to great statesmen or perhaps the scientist who invented the cure for polio, not a bunch of people playing house and cowboys and Indians. I have to admit, I loved every minute of it. As an industry, cinema has only been around for a little over one hundred years. That’s the blink of an eye in historic terms. I hope I’m around long enough to see many more movies and many more innovations.
I love the work of cinematographer, Robert Richardson, especially when he was working with Oliver Stone. He was hard to miss tonight sitting behind Quentin Tarantino with his trademark long hair and beard, now snow white, looking like a character in a kung fu movie, the old man from the mountain. He was nominated for best cinematographer for Inglourious Basterds. (I have to get the spelling right on Inglourious and Basterds!)
I was happy to see a young, acoustic guitar-strumming song writer like Ryan Bingham win the Oscar for Best Song for the theme song from Crazy Heart. He went from rodeo cowboy breaking bones riding bulls and living in his pickup truck to Oscar winner in a few short years. He paid his dues and came up the hard way. I bet his life story would make a great movie.
Quentin Tarantino did not look too happy when Mark Boal won for Best Original Screenplay. QT’s script was definitely original, but too silly, I think, to win the top screenwriting honor, and had too much white space.
There is no way any director other than James Cameron should have won for Best Director. The dedication, innovation and persistence behind Avatar cannot be equaled for a long time to come. I guess The Academy thought the time had come for a woman to win Best Director. So be it. I loved Strange Days and Point Break, by the way, both directed by Kathryn Bigelow, but no way The Hurt Locker was better directed than Avatar.
And The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture? There is like no way! James Cameron was robbed, probably by the military industrial complex and the necessary glorification of the war. I actually fell asleep at the theater watching the last twenty minutes of The Hurt Locker, but I was wide awake at the climactic ending of Avatar. The Hurt Locker was a propaganda snooze fest compared to Avatar. I know a lot of film purists and Cameron haters didn’t want to see a special effects-heavy production like Avatar win, but the movie is way too grand and magnificent to be overlooked. What a travesty! Plus it has almost grossed a billion dollars domestically! Let’s face it, it’s entertaining. Oh well, it’s not the first time a movie or director has been robbed at the Oscars. I’m sure it won’t be the last. Just look at Martin Scorsese and Raging Bull. Movies are so much fun to watch when they are good, and good is such a relative term when it comes to cinema and the Academy of Motion Pictures. An audience is a fickle thing.
We place actors on such pedestals, and make them into demi-gods, yet they are for the most part normal people who just happen to have a cool job. Just for an instant tonight watching the Academy Awards I thought I was watching an homage to great statesmen or perhaps the scientist who invented the cure for polio, not a bunch of people playing house and cowboys and Indians. I have to admit, I loved every minute of it. As an industry, cinema has only been around for a little over one hundred years. That’s the blink of an eye in historic terms. I hope I’m around long enough to see many more movies and many more innovations.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Blind Pigs and the Paris, Texas Criterion Collection
I have been asked to write a script for a new film project. A new acquaintance, who is a cinematographer and fellow collaborator on the new project, recommended that I watch the Wim Wender’s Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner, Paris, Texas. He recommended that I watch it for inspiration, I suppose, before attempting to write the new script; as Wim Wenders is one of his favorite directors. As fate would have it, the Criterion Collection of Paris, Texas was due for release on January 26, 2010.
I had watched Paris, Texas years ago but basically had no recollection of it, due to the fact it was 1984 when it was released, and also due to the fact that was too many “inebriated” years ago. I just remember Harry Dean Stanton wandering in the desert, and I believe I tuned out after that. I had never watched a Wim Wenders movie, and being a college dropout and autodidact, I was not well versed in foreign films or movies in general. For years in the Seventies and early Eighties I avoided television like the plague, and found very little time for movies. To this day I’ve never seen an episode of the television show, Dallas, and many other hit shows of that era. I have blank spaces like an amnesiac for whole swatches of that era. I had always fancied myself a poet, which was probably a bit of a stretch, since teenage doggerel and mind-altered verse does not necessarily amount to poetry. So this is not so much a review of the movie Paris, Texas (I’m not worthy) as it is the ramblings of a film auteur wannabe.
One pleasant surprise I discovered was that the screenplay for Paris, Texas was written by Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose play Tooth of Crime inspired me to become a playwright and write my first play, Warboots. (Warboots received a somewhat nice review by critic Lawson Taitte of The Dallas Morning News when it premiered on the stage in Deep Ellum in 1993.) Paris, Texas is based loosely on Shepard’s book, Motel Chronicles. The screenplay was adapted further by Dallas screenwriter, L.M. “Kit” Carson. Carson’s son by actress Karen Black, Hunter Carson, plays the son named Hunter in the film, and did a superb job. (I’ve always loved Karen Black, especially in Day of the Locusts and Easy Rider.) I was surprised when I looked up Hunter Carson’s name on IMDb to discover that he has done very little acting since. He was very good in Paris, Texas as the young boy abandoned by his parents and left to be raised by relatives.
I must admit that while watching the Criterion Collection of Paris, Texas I kept waiting for something to happen. I like movies where something happens. I like movies with a linear plot and sequence of events that keep me interested. I was left thinking, maybe something is happening and I’m just not an astute enough observer to “see” it. I must confess, I just don’t get most “European” movies. They’re way too subtle for my tastes. The three “foreign” movies I can say I did like are Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Costa Gavras’ Z and the Chinese erotic movie, Sex and Zen. There are a few others, but I won’t bother listing them all.
The movie obviously deals with mental illness. Travis, Harry Dean Stanton’s character, is obviously mentally ill, probably paranoid schizophrenic. Why else would he be walking through the desert, mute and detached from reality? It would take more than just a broken heart to compel such wandering for four years. (I knew a guy like that who used to walk all the time on the highway. He never wore socks and wore big, thick boots. He wasn’t schizophrenic, but he had a slight speech impediment and it was rumored that he had dropped too much acid in the Sixties and Seventies. He told me he once saw ZZ Top when they were a garage band in Ft. Worth. He had a lot of old war stories from growing up in Ft. Worth in the Fifties and Sixties. He was actually a nice guy, just misunderstood and the object of much bullying.) One of my favorite scenes of the movie is the mentally ill guy screaming a monologue of apocalyptic content on the highway overpass as rush hour traffic rushes by below. I thought that was pretty brilliant to have that turn up out of nowhere. I’ve been around a lot of mentally ill people, and that scene was spot on.
I finally “got” Paris, Texas after watching all the extras and listening to the director’s commentary by Wim Wenders. That’s when I discovered that the movie was for the most part made up as they went along, a pastiche of scenes stuck together like a celluloid poem, a “poetic” movie if you will. I guess the film purists “got it” all along, or were satisfied if they didn’t “get it” right away. I’m afraid my attention span isn’t the best for European movies or sentiments.
My heartstrings were touched the most when French actress Aurore Clement, who plays Hunter’s aunt Anne, pleads on the phone for Hunter to come home. That was a sad and touching moment. (Aurore Clement is stunningly beautiful, especially in the French plantation scene in Apocalypse Now Redux.) Dean Stockwell is also great as Walt, the brother of the wandering Travis, and the beautiful Nastassja Kinski did a great job with her Southern accent and portraying Jane, the long lost mother eventually found working in a peep show in Houston. The movie actually didn’t have an ending until Sam Shepard dictated the ending over the phone to Wenders, because by that time Sam Shepard had other obligations as an actor on another movie set, and fax machines did not yet exist.
Robby Muller’s cinematography is superb. I loved the big, blue skies of Texas and the Southwest, the clouds, the trains, the colors, and the grandeur of the opening scenes in the desert area around Big Bend National Park, near Terlingua, Texas. Equally unique and nostalgic are the many shots of motels, stores and cafes (inevitable I suppose in any “road movie”), which Wim Wenders mentions in the commentary as being homage to the photography of Walker Evans.
The Criterion Collection also has great extras other than the director’s commentary: an interview of Wenders by German journalist, Roger Willemsen; excerpts from a 1990 documentary on Wenders featuring interviews with Wenders, Robby Muller, composer Ry Cooder, Harry Dean Stanton, Dennis Hopper, Peter Falk, Hans Zischler, novelist Patricia Highsmith and director Samuel Fuller. It also has new video interviews with filmmakers Allison Anders, who was a young production assistant on the movie, and Claire Denis, who was assistant director.
The Criterion Collection has many other extras too numerous to list here. The film did provide much inspiration, but most of the inspiration came from watching the extras. Just getting the opportunity to listen to the director’s commentary alone was worth the price paid for the DVD. It was very interesting to learn about the many struggles of Wim Wenders to see the movie to completion, such as stealing shots on the Houston freeways, coming up with an ending midway through the film when there wasn’t a complete screenplay, and searching for some sort of central vision from a potpourri of ideas which weren’t totally worked out before filming began. Those are trying circumstances for any filmmaker. There is an old Russian saying, “Even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while.” Congratulations to Wim Wenders for his steadfastness in seeing his incomplete vision to the end, for winning the Palme d’Or and for making a beautiful, poetic movie in the process.
I had watched Paris, Texas years ago but basically had no recollection of it, due to the fact it was 1984 when it was released, and also due to the fact that was too many “inebriated” years ago. I just remember Harry Dean Stanton wandering in the desert, and I believe I tuned out after that. I had never watched a Wim Wenders movie, and being a college dropout and autodidact, I was not well versed in foreign films or movies in general. For years in the Seventies and early Eighties I avoided television like the plague, and found very little time for movies. To this day I’ve never seen an episode of the television show, Dallas, and many other hit shows of that era. I have blank spaces like an amnesiac for whole swatches of that era. I had always fancied myself a poet, which was probably a bit of a stretch, since teenage doggerel and mind-altered verse does not necessarily amount to poetry. So this is not so much a review of the movie Paris, Texas (I’m not worthy) as it is the ramblings of a film auteur wannabe.
One pleasant surprise I discovered was that the screenplay for Paris, Texas was written by Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose play Tooth of Crime inspired me to become a playwright and write my first play, Warboots. (Warboots received a somewhat nice review by critic Lawson Taitte of The Dallas Morning News when it premiered on the stage in Deep Ellum in 1993.) Paris, Texas is based loosely on Shepard’s book, Motel Chronicles. The screenplay was adapted further by Dallas screenwriter, L.M. “Kit” Carson. Carson’s son by actress Karen Black, Hunter Carson, plays the son named Hunter in the film, and did a superb job. (I’ve always loved Karen Black, especially in Day of the Locusts and Easy Rider.) I was surprised when I looked up Hunter Carson’s name on IMDb to discover that he has done very little acting since. He was very good in Paris, Texas as the young boy abandoned by his parents and left to be raised by relatives.
I must admit that while watching the Criterion Collection of Paris, Texas I kept waiting for something to happen. I like movies where something happens. I like movies with a linear plot and sequence of events that keep me interested. I was left thinking, maybe something is happening and I’m just not an astute enough observer to “see” it. I must confess, I just don’t get most “European” movies. They’re way too subtle for my tastes. The three “foreign” movies I can say I did like are Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Costa Gavras’ Z and the Chinese erotic movie, Sex and Zen. There are a few others, but I won’t bother listing them all.
The movie obviously deals with mental illness. Travis, Harry Dean Stanton’s character, is obviously mentally ill, probably paranoid schizophrenic. Why else would he be walking through the desert, mute and detached from reality? It would take more than just a broken heart to compel such wandering for four years. (I knew a guy like that who used to walk all the time on the highway. He never wore socks and wore big, thick boots. He wasn’t schizophrenic, but he had a slight speech impediment and it was rumored that he had dropped too much acid in the Sixties and Seventies. He told me he once saw ZZ Top when they were a garage band in Ft. Worth. He had a lot of old war stories from growing up in Ft. Worth in the Fifties and Sixties. He was actually a nice guy, just misunderstood and the object of much bullying.) One of my favorite scenes of the movie is the mentally ill guy screaming a monologue of apocalyptic content on the highway overpass as rush hour traffic rushes by below. I thought that was pretty brilliant to have that turn up out of nowhere. I’ve been around a lot of mentally ill people, and that scene was spot on.
I finally “got” Paris, Texas after watching all the extras and listening to the director’s commentary by Wim Wenders. That’s when I discovered that the movie was for the most part made up as they went along, a pastiche of scenes stuck together like a celluloid poem, a “poetic” movie if you will. I guess the film purists “got it” all along, or were satisfied if they didn’t “get it” right away. I’m afraid my attention span isn’t the best for European movies or sentiments.
My heartstrings were touched the most when French actress Aurore Clement, who plays Hunter’s aunt Anne, pleads on the phone for Hunter to come home. That was a sad and touching moment. (Aurore Clement is stunningly beautiful, especially in the French plantation scene in Apocalypse Now Redux.) Dean Stockwell is also great as Walt, the brother of the wandering Travis, and the beautiful Nastassja Kinski did a great job with her Southern accent and portraying Jane, the long lost mother eventually found working in a peep show in Houston. The movie actually didn’t have an ending until Sam Shepard dictated the ending over the phone to Wenders, because by that time Sam Shepard had other obligations as an actor on another movie set, and fax machines did not yet exist.
Robby Muller’s cinematography is superb. I loved the big, blue skies of Texas and the Southwest, the clouds, the trains, the colors, and the grandeur of the opening scenes in the desert area around Big Bend National Park, near Terlingua, Texas. Equally unique and nostalgic are the many shots of motels, stores and cafes (inevitable I suppose in any “road movie”), which Wim Wenders mentions in the commentary as being homage to the photography of Walker Evans.
The Criterion Collection also has great extras other than the director’s commentary: an interview of Wenders by German journalist, Roger Willemsen; excerpts from a 1990 documentary on Wenders featuring interviews with Wenders, Robby Muller, composer Ry Cooder, Harry Dean Stanton, Dennis Hopper, Peter Falk, Hans Zischler, novelist Patricia Highsmith and director Samuel Fuller. It also has new video interviews with filmmakers Allison Anders, who was a young production assistant on the movie, and Claire Denis, who was assistant director.
The Criterion Collection has many other extras too numerous to list here. The film did provide much inspiration, but most of the inspiration came from watching the extras. Just getting the opportunity to listen to the director’s commentary alone was worth the price paid for the DVD. It was very interesting to learn about the many struggles of Wim Wenders to see the movie to completion, such as stealing shots on the Houston freeways, coming up with an ending midway through the film when there wasn’t a complete screenplay, and searching for some sort of central vision from a potpourri of ideas which weren’t totally worked out before filming began. Those are trying circumstances for any filmmaker. There is an old Russian saying, “Even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while.” Congratulations to Wim Wenders for his steadfastness in seeing his incomplete vision to the end, for winning the Palme d’Or and for making a beautiful, poetic movie in the process.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Mob Hits - The Opening Scene of My Joey (Crazy Joe) Gallo Screenplay
The following is the opening scene of my 231-page screenplay, JOEY & JEFFIE, a love story with a mob backdrop, based on the stormy relationship of New York mobster Joey (Crazy Joe) Gallo and his Creole, showgirl wife, Jeffie Lee. It has been adapted from the biography, JOEY, by Donald Goddard.
Donald Goddard was a Londoner who lived in New York for 10 years, 8 of them as an editor in the Sunday Department of the New York Times. Before he died several years ago of pancreatic cancer and left me the screen rights to his biography of Joey Gallo, I asked him who he would like to cast in the lead roles. He said, "Tom Cruise, if you could get him to play against type" as Joey, and "Jennifer Lopez" as Jeffie Lee.
Those choices blew me away because I could see the genius in his choices. That was almost ten years ago. If I couldn't get Tom Cruise and Jennifer Lopez for the lead roles, my personal choices would be Colin Farrell and Michelle Rodriguez.
Below is the opening scene, which Donald Goddard helped me to rewrite, as he did the whole script. He coached me through two rewrites. He was adamant about how he wanted the story protrayed. Someday I'll share more of the story of how I came about writing the script, which took me four years on weekends and holidays, as I slaved away in the salt mines of the "real world." I originally adapted a portion of the book for the stage at the Swiss Avenue Theater center in Dallas in 1996, under the title, JOEY, as part of three, 20-minute shorts under the theme, 3 VIOLENT PLAYS.
The format of the opening scene below did not quite transfer right from Microsoft Word, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. (It is under copyright with the Library of Congress and the WGAw.)
FADE IN:
EXT. NEW YORK CITY – LOWER MANHATTAN – NIGHT
APRIL 7, 1972 – FOUR A.M.
A black Cadillac drives along a street downtown.
INSIDE THE CADILLAC
PETE THE GREEK is at the wheel. Next to him is his date, EDIE RUSSO, and on the passenger side is BOBBY DARROW.
In the back seat are SINA GALLO and her ten-year old daughter, LISA ESSARY, half-asleep against Sina’s shoulder, and JOEY (CRAZY JOE) GALLO and his sister, CARMELLA.
PETE THE GREEK
Some party, hey Joey?
Joey is morose and monosyllabic.
JOEY
Yeah.
BOBBY DARROW
Ten years since you been in the Copa and it’s like you never went away. Helluva place to celebrate your birthday.
SINA
Yes, I had a really good time, Joey. So did Lisa, didn’t you, honey?
Lisa nods sleepily at her mother.
EDIE RUSSO
Yeah, me too. They really rolled out the red carpet for us, didn’t they? Guess you don’t get to be forty-three every day. Right, Joey?
JOEY
Yeah.
CARMELLA
Joey, we need to take Lisa home.
JOEY
No, I’m hungry. She’ll be okay.
PETE THE GREEK
You know what time it is? It’s four a.m. There’s not going to be much open.
JOEY
Drive on down to Mulberry Street.
Pete looks nervous.
PETE THE GREEK
You kidding? Maybe that’s not such a good idea, Joey. Not with Colombo’s crew on the prod.
JOEY
Do like I tell you. I’m hungry. Drive on down to Mulberry Street.
EXT. MULBERRY STREET – UMBERTO’S CLAM HOUSE – NIGHT
Pete stops the Cadillac in front of the main entrance and turns off the engine.
Standing on the corner in front of Umberto’s are four men.
One of them is MATTY (THE HORSE) IANNIELLO. Matty the Horse recognizes Pete, walks up to the car and shakes Pete’s hand through the window.
MATTY THE HORSE
Hey, how are you, Pete? Been a long time.
PETE THE GREEK
Yeah, howya bin? Listen, I got Joey with me.
Matty steps back in shock, losing his tongue. Joey notices Matty’s reaction and is amused.
The other three men walk away and disappear around the corner as Joey and the others get out of the car.
INT. UMBERTO’S CLAM HOUSE – NIGHT
It is almost five a.m., but there are a few customers inside Umberto’s.
FOUR MEN IN WORK CLOTHES sit at one table, an ASIAN COUPLE at another, and a GIRL is seated at the counter.
The place is decorated with nets, floats and phony lifesavers. Joey chooses a table at the far end of the room, adjoining the side door onto Mulberry Street. Pete sits down on Joey’s left, and Carmella on his right.
Opposite them, with their backs to the wall, are Sina in the middle, Edie on her left, and Lisa on Sina’s other side by a coat stand. Joey thus has Pete between himself and the side door, and Carmella between himself and the main door.
JOEY
Jesus, what’s with these lights? It’s like Yankee fucking Stadium in here.
Matty the Horse comes in from the street and walks down the length of the counter and perches on a stool at the end and sits with his back to them.
A WAITER comes to take their order. Joey twists around in his chair, and jerks his thumb at Matty.
JOEY
Let him order for us. He knows what’s good. Right, Matty?
MATTY THE HORSE
(shrugging his shoulders)
Fix ‘em some boiled shrimp and scungilli salad.
INT. UMBERTO’S CLAM HOUSE – BASEMENT – JOEY
walks down the unusually extensive basement in search of the restroom. It is dimly lit and kind of scary. Joey walks down an angled stairwell to a dogleg corridor next to a huge dark cellar door. He passes a staff locker room, and a vaultlike door to a walk-in refrigerator. He finally sees the men’s & women’s rest rooms tucked away to the left. He hears WHISPERING but can’t tell where it is coming from. He goes into the men’s room and closes the door.
BACK AT JOEY’S TABLE
Carmella looks at the clock nervously.
CARMELLA
I wonder what happened to him?
SINA
(worried)
That’s what I’m wondering. What do you suppose he’s doing down there?
CARMELLA
Pete, why don’t you take a look? See if he’s okay.
PETE THE GREEK
Ah, come on ladies, leave him alone. Can’t a guy even go to the men’s room now, for Chrissake.
CARMELLA
But why would he take so long? I don’t like it, Pete. I think you should go down there.
PETE THE GREEK
Cam, I’m telling you, he’s okay. Leave him alone. I know what I’m doing.
At that moment Joey reappears, but it is a different Joey. No longer smiling, he appears taut and wary as an alley cat. It takes a moment or two before he seems to recognize them.
JOEY
Jesus, it’s spooky down there. Like a tomb. You could hide a whole lot of bodies down there. I heard noises down there that don’t make sense.
Pete stirs in his chair.
PETE
What kind of noises?
JOEY
I don’t know, Pops. Like rustling. And whispering.
There is an awkward silence. Carmella gives Joey a boisterous kiss on the cheek.
CARMELLA
Well, happy birthday, brother.
Suddenly, an ASSASSIN enters through the side door with gun in hand.
ASSASSIN
Motherfucker. You’re dead.
He begins firing at Joey.
Two ASSASSINS enter and fire at Joey also.
Joey is hit in the chest, but instantly rises and flinging out his arms, pushes Pete and Carmella out of the way. He then pushes the large table over onto Sina, Lisa and Edie in a tumbling avalanche of dishes, glassware, hot sauce, and condiments that carry them out of the line of fire.
Joey takes a few more bullets in the torso as he staggers forward. The ladies stay crouched on the floor, screaming.
Matty the Horse ducks into the kitchen.
The COOK and waiter dive behind the counter.
The other Patrons dive wildly for cover. The shooting stops and Joey staggers toward the front door.
Pete fumbles with his pistol which is caught in the lining of his coat. He accidentally shoots himself in the backside, but doesn’t even notice.
EXT. UMBERTO’S CLAM HOUSE – NIGHT
The Three Assassins run out of the side entrance of Umberto’s and head toward their car.
Pete the Greek appears at the door with gun drawn and begins firing at the fleeing assassins. They jump in their car unharmed, and speed off.
Joey stumbles out the front door, refusing to die. He lurches across the sidewalk and leans against Pete’s car for a moment, as if to gather his strength. Pushing himself off again, he stumbles around Pete’s car out into the middle of the intersection, folds gently at the knees, and rolls over onto his back.
BACK INSIDE UMBERTO’S – PETE THE GREEK
looks frantically for Joey, and finds Matty the Horse hiding in the kitchen.
He throws up the counter flap and storms in after him, stepping on the Cook’s hand in the process. Pete grabs Matty by the lapels and drags him out into the restaurant, slamming him against the counter.
PETE THE GREEK
I’ll blow your head off, you motherfucking son of a bitch. What do you know about this? I’ll kill you, goddamnit.
MATTY THE HORSE
(scared)
Nothing, Pete, honest. Jesus, in my own place? You gotta believe me.
Suddenly distracted by Carmella’s SCREAMING outside, Pete lets go of Matty and rushes outside.
OUTSIDE – INTERSECTION OF MULBERRY AND HESTER STREET
Joey lies dead in the very center of the intersection. He appears to be sleeping peacefully.
A phone RINGS.
INT. LOS ANGELES – NIGHT – JEFFIE’S APARTMENT
The same phone RINGS again.
JEFFIE GALLO is startled awake by the phone RINGING.
She is in bed where she has been sleeping, dreaming what we have just seen.
She is a Creole Marilyn Monroe, with wide eyes, the color of light jade, and a corn-crake voice from too much yelling and smoking.
She has Monroe’s luxurious figure, but near black hair, as glossy as molasses, and skin so dark that Sammy Davis, Jr. once accused her of passing.
She picks up the receiver by the bedside and places it to her ear.
JEFFIE
Hello?
GEORGE LLOYD (O.S.)
Jeffie, I’m sorry. Joey’s been killed.
Jeffie is speechless.
JEFFIE (V.O.)
George Lloyd called me from New York early one morning and woke me up to tell me my Joey had been killed. And as I lay there, hearing that, my life ended too.
TITLE SEQUENCE
Donald Goddard was a Londoner who lived in New York for 10 years, 8 of them as an editor in the Sunday Department of the New York Times. Before he died several years ago of pancreatic cancer and left me the screen rights to his biography of Joey Gallo, I asked him who he would like to cast in the lead roles. He said, "Tom Cruise, if you could get him to play against type" as Joey, and "Jennifer Lopez" as Jeffie Lee.
Those choices blew me away because I could see the genius in his choices. That was almost ten years ago. If I couldn't get Tom Cruise and Jennifer Lopez for the lead roles, my personal choices would be Colin Farrell and Michelle Rodriguez.
Below is the opening scene, which Donald Goddard helped me to rewrite, as he did the whole script. He coached me through two rewrites. He was adamant about how he wanted the story protrayed. Someday I'll share more of the story of how I came about writing the script, which took me four years on weekends and holidays, as I slaved away in the salt mines of the "real world." I originally adapted a portion of the book for the stage at the Swiss Avenue Theater center in Dallas in 1996, under the title, JOEY, as part of three, 20-minute shorts under the theme, 3 VIOLENT PLAYS.
The format of the opening scene below did not quite transfer right from Microsoft Word, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. (It is under copyright with the Library of Congress and the WGAw.)
FADE IN:
EXT. NEW YORK CITY – LOWER MANHATTAN – NIGHT
APRIL 7, 1972 – FOUR A.M.
A black Cadillac drives along a street downtown.
INSIDE THE CADILLAC
PETE THE GREEK is at the wheel. Next to him is his date, EDIE RUSSO, and on the passenger side is BOBBY DARROW.
In the back seat are SINA GALLO and her ten-year old daughter, LISA ESSARY, half-asleep against Sina’s shoulder, and JOEY (CRAZY JOE) GALLO and his sister, CARMELLA.
PETE THE GREEK
Some party, hey Joey?
Joey is morose and monosyllabic.
JOEY
Yeah.
BOBBY DARROW
Ten years since you been in the Copa and it’s like you never went away. Helluva place to celebrate your birthday.
SINA
Yes, I had a really good time, Joey. So did Lisa, didn’t you, honey?
Lisa nods sleepily at her mother.
EDIE RUSSO
Yeah, me too. They really rolled out the red carpet for us, didn’t they? Guess you don’t get to be forty-three every day. Right, Joey?
JOEY
Yeah.
CARMELLA
Joey, we need to take Lisa home.
JOEY
No, I’m hungry. She’ll be okay.
PETE THE GREEK
You know what time it is? It’s four a.m. There’s not going to be much open.
JOEY
Drive on down to Mulberry Street.
Pete looks nervous.
PETE THE GREEK
You kidding? Maybe that’s not such a good idea, Joey. Not with Colombo’s crew on the prod.
JOEY
Do like I tell you. I’m hungry. Drive on down to Mulberry Street.
EXT. MULBERRY STREET – UMBERTO’S CLAM HOUSE – NIGHT
Pete stops the Cadillac in front of the main entrance and turns off the engine.
Standing on the corner in front of Umberto’s are four men.
One of them is MATTY (THE HORSE) IANNIELLO. Matty the Horse recognizes Pete, walks up to the car and shakes Pete’s hand through the window.
MATTY THE HORSE
Hey, how are you, Pete? Been a long time.
PETE THE GREEK
Yeah, howya bin? Listen, I got Joey with me.
Matty steps back in shock, losing his tongue. Joey notices Matty’s reaction and is amused.
The other three men walk away and disappear around the corner as Joey and the others get out of the car.
INT. UMBERTO’S CLAM HOUSE – NIGHT
It is almost five a.m., but there are a few customers inside Umberto’s.
FOUR MEN IN WORK CLOTHES sit at one table, an ASIAN COUPLE at another, and a GIRL is seated at the counter.
The place is decorated with nets, floats and phony lifesavers. Joey chooses a table at the far end of the room, adjoining the side door onto Mulberry Street. Pete sits down on Joey’s left, and Carmella on his right.
Opposite them, with their backs to the wall, are Sina in the middle, Edie on her left, and Lisa on Sina’s other side by a coat stand. Joey thus has Pete between himself and the side door, and Carmella between himself and the main door.
JOEY
Jesus, what’s with these lights? It’s like Yankee fucking Stadium in here.
Matty the Horse comes in from the street and walks down the length of the counter and perches on a stool at the end and sits with his back to them.
A WAITER comes to take their order. Joey twists around in his chair, and jerks his thumb at Matty.
JOEY
Let him order for us. He knows what’s good. Right, Matty?
MATTY THE HORSE
(shrugging his shoulders)
Fix ‘em some boiled shrimp and scungilli salad.
INT. UMBERTO’S CLAM HOUSE – BASEMENT – JOEY
walks down the unusually extensive basement in search of the restroom. It is dimly lit and kind of scary. Joey walks down an angled stairwell to a dogleg corridor next to a huge dark cellar door. He passes a staff locker room, and a vaultlike door to a walk-in refrigerator. He finally sees the men’s & women’s rest rooms tucked away to the left. He hears WHISPERING but can’t tell where it is coming from. He goes into the men’s room and closes the door.
BACK AT JOEY’S TABLE
Carmella looks at the clock nervously.
CARMELLA
I wonder what happened to him?
SINA
(worried)
That’s what I’m wondering. What do you suppose he’s doing down there?
CARMELLA
Pete, why don’t you take a look? See if he’s okay.
PETE THE GREEK
Ah, come on ladies, leave him alone. Can’t a guy even go to the men’s room now, for Chrissake.
CARMELLA
But why would he take so long? I don’t like it, Pete. I think you should go down there.
PETE THE GREEK
Cam, I’m telling you, he’s okay. Leave him alone. I know what I’m doing.
At that moment Joey reappears, but it is a different Joey. No longer smiling, he appears taut and wary as an alley cat. It takes a moment or two before he seems to recognize them.
JOEY
Jesus, it’s spooky down there. Like a tomb. You could hide a whole lot of bodies down there. I heard noises down there that don’t make sense.
Pete stirs in his chair.
PETE
What kind of noises?
JOEY
I don’t know, Pops. Like rustling. And whispering.
There is an awkward silence. Carmella gives Joey a boisterous kiss on the cheek.
CARMELLA
Well, happy birthday, brother.
Suddenly, an ASSASSIN enters through the side door with gun in hand.
ASSASSIN
Motherfucker. You’re dead.
He begins firing at Joey.
Two ASSASSINS enter and fire at Joey also.
Joey is hit in the chest, but instantly rises and flinging out his arms, pushes Pete and Carmella out of the way. He then pushes the large table over onto Sina, Lisa and Edie in a tumbling avalanche of dishes, glassware, hot sauce, and condiments that carry them out of the line of fire.
Joey takes a few more bullets in the torso as he staggers forward. The ladies stay crouched on the floor, screaming.
Matty the Horse ducks into the kitchen.
The COOK and waiter dive behind the counter.
The other Patrons dive wildly for cover. The shooting stops and Joey staggers toward the front door.
Pete fumbles with his pistol which is caught in the lining of his coat. He accidentally shoots himself in the backside, but doesn’t even notice.
EXT. UMBERTO’S CLAM HOUSE – NIGHT
The Three Assassins run out of the side entrance of Umberto’s and head toward their car.
Pete the Greek appears at the door with gun drawn and begins firing at the fleeing assassins. They jump in their car unharmed, and speed off.
Joey stumbles out the front door, refusing to die. He lurches across the sidewalk and leans against Pete’s car for a moment, as if to gather his strength. Pushing himself off again, he stumbles around Pete’s car out into the middle of the intersection, folds gently at the knees, and rolls over onto his back.
BACK INSIDE UMBERTO’S – PETE THE GREEK
looks frantically for Joey, and finds Matty the Horse hiding in the kitchen.
He throws up the counter flap and storms in after him, stepping on the Cook’s hand in the process. Pete grabs Matty by the lapels and drags him out into the restaurant, slamming him against the counter.
PETE THE GREEK
I’ll blow your head off, you motherfucking son of a bitch. What do you know about this? I’ll kill you, goddamnit.
MATTY THE HORSE
(scared)
Nothing, Pete, honest. Jesus, in my own place? You gotta believe me.
Suddenly distracted by Carmella’s SCREAMING outside, Pete lets go of Matty and rushes outside.
OUTSIDE – INTERSECTION OF MULBERRY AND HESTER STREET
Joey lies dead in the very center of the intersection. He appears to be sleeping peacefully.
A phone RINGS.
INT. LOS ANGELES – NIGHT – JEFFIE’S APARTMENT
The same phone RINGS again.
JEFFIE GALLO is startled awake by the phone RINGING.
She is in bed where she has been sleeping, dreaming what we have just seen.
She is a Creole Marilyn Monroe, with wide eyes, the color of light jade, and a corn-crake voice from too much yelling and smoking.
She has Monroe’s luxurious figure, but near black hair, as glossy as molasses, and skin so dark that Sammy Davis, Jr. once accused her of passing.
She picks up the receiver by the bedside and places it to her ear.
JEFFIE
Hello?
GEORGE LLOYD (O.S.)
Jeffie, I’m sorry. Joey’s been killed.
Jeffie is speechless.
JEFFIE (V.O.)
George Lloyd called me from New York early one morning and woke me up to tell me my Joey had been killed. And as I lay there, hearing that, my life ended too.
TITLE SEQUENCE
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
My Gonzo Take on the Golden Globes
Okay, I watched the 2010 Golden Globes. I really enjoyed the show. I thought the host, Ricky Gervais, did a great job while drinking his beer at the podium, getting an obvious buzz in a much more informal environment than the Oscars. As usual, I was jealous of all the beautiful people enjoying the limelight at the Beverly Hilton while I sat in my trailer park, glued to the screen, green with envy, and guzzling Budweiser.
It was fun to see Mickey Rourke kiss Mike Tyson… nice to see such macho guys show a little love. Seeing Colin Farrell as a presenter reinforced once again how much I wish I could cast him in my mobster script, Joey & Jeffie, as Joey (Crazy Joe) Gallo beside Michelle Rodriguez as Las Vegas showgirl, Jeffie Lee… maybe someday if I don’t get whacked first or if Harvey Weinstein doesn’t beat me to the punch.
I thought it was only fitting that James Cameron won Best Director and Avatar won Best Motion Picture. I mean, really folks, who can beat the four and a half year project, Avatar? I know all you film purists hate it, but you have to give the devil his due: Avatar is what movies are all about, i.e., it is entertaining. So suck it up - better luck next time.
And how about Quentin Tarantino? Suave… goddamn, he’s suave! I mean, I thought his movie Inglourious Basterds was an overrated version of a Hogan’s Heroes episode from a script with way too much white space, but what do I know? I still love the guy. I miss the days of True Romance and Reservoir Dogs. I’d give my left nut to be able to write scripts like that. And I just know that the misspelling of bastards must have been unintentional, but when called on it he must have said, “Fuck it” and left it at that. I mean, didn’t the guy drop out of school in the Eighth grade? And let’s not forget, this is a guy who said Oliver Stone is “an overrated Stanley Kramer.” He had the balls to say that about Oliver fucking Stone, man!
The fact is, none of Tarantino’s movies come even close to Platoon or Born on the 4th of July. Inglourious Basterds nominated for Best Motion Picture? Knee grow, please. As one astute observer at the Cannes put it, Inglorious Basterds is “…an action movie with no action.” But Tarantino was a huge influence on me, and is one of the reasons I decided to write scripts. I fell for the whole million dollar ad campaign paid for by the Weinstein’s of the video store clerk turned movie auteur. And I always go see everyone one of his flicks when they come out. I’m just jealous! Okay?
And the rest of the show? I didn’t see most of the shows that were nominated or that won. My cable TV got cut off almost three years ago when I sold my soul and spent every extra penny I had to make my own shitty little movie. But I’m happy for everyone, okay?
I’m happy for Jeff Bridges. I always liked his dad, Lloyd Bridges, in the television show, Sea Hunt, which aired back when Methuselah was a baby. I will eventually see Crazy Heart.
Meryl Streep? You can’t go wrong with the greatest living female actress on the planet. Unless maybe with Jessica Lange as a serious contender for that slot?
Robert Downey, Jr.? He’s like the new Brando, right? Or he’s at least in contention with Christian Bale for that title, right?
I would love to see Precious, but jeez, what a downer of a movie it must be… after watching the trailer I was reaching for my hanky and felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I will say, however, that the best golden globes at the 2010 Golden Globes were on Mariah Carey. I will see Precious someday, too.
Maybe this year I’ll get my cable hooked back up and have some extra bread to see some cable TV and some flicks, man. Hell, I might even get to make another flick myself… who knows what the future holds?
It was fun to see Mickey Rourke kiss Mike Tyson… nice to see such macho guys show a little love. Seeing Colin Farrell as a presenter reinforced once again how much I wish I could cast him in my mobster script, Joey & Jeffie, as Joey (Crazy Joe) Gallo beside Michelle Rodriguez as Las Vegas showgirl, Jeffie Lee… maybe someday if I don’t get whacked first or if Harvey Weinstein doesn’t beat me to the punch.
I thought it was only fitting that James Cameron won Best Director and Avatar won Best Motion Picture. I mean, really folks, who can beat the four and a half year project, Avatar? I know all you film purists hate it, but you have to give the devil his due: Avatar is what movies are all about, i.e., it is entertaining. So suck it up - better luck next time.
And how about Quentin Tarantino? Suave… goddamn, he’s suave! I mean, I thought his movie Inglourious Basterds was an overrated version of a Hogan’s Heroes episode from a script with way too much white space, but what do I know? I still love the guy. I miss the days of True Romance and Reservoir Dogs. I’d give my left nut to be able to write scripts like that. And I just know that the misspelling of bastards must have been unintentional, but when called on it he must have said, “Fuck it” and left it at that. I mean, didn’t the guy drop out of school in the Eighth grade? And let’s not forget, this is a guy who said Oliver Stone is “an overrated Stanley Kramer.” He had the balls to say that about Oliver fucking Stone, man!
The fact is, none of Tarantino’s movies come even close to Platoon or Born on the 4th of July. Inglourious Basterds nominated for Best Motion Picture? Knee grow, please. As one astute observer at the Cannes put it, Inglorious Basterds is “…an action movie with no action.” But Tarantino was a huge influence on me, and is one of the reasons I decided to write scripts. I fell for the whole million dollar ad campaign paid for by the Weinstein’s of the video store clerk turned movie auteur. And I always go see everyone one of his flicks when they come out. I’m just jealous! Okay?
And the rest of the show? I didn’t see most of the shows that were nominated or that won. My cable TV got cut off almost three years ago when I sold my soul and spent every extra penny I had to make my own shitty little movie. But I’m happy for everyone, okay?
I’m happy for Jeff Bridges. I always liked his dad, Lloyd Bridges, in the television show, Sea Hunt, which aired back when Methuselah was a baby. I will eventually see Crazy Heart.
Meryl Streep? You can’t go wrong with the greatest living female actress on the planet. Unless maybe with Jessica Lange as a serious contender for that slot?
Robert Downey, Jr.? He’s like the new Brando, right? Or he’s at least in contention with Christian Bale for that title, right?
I would love to see Precious, but jeez, what a downer of a movie it must be… after watching the trailer I was reaching for my hanky and felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I will say, however, that the best golden globes at the 2010 Golden Globes were on Mariah Carey. I will see Precious someday, too.
Maybe this year I’ll get my cable hooked back up and have some extra bread to see some cable TV and some flicks, man. Hell, I might even get to make another flick myself… who knows what the future holds?
Thursday, December 31, 2009
The Cinema Was My Babysitter
When I was a young boy, around 7 or 8 years old, my mom would take my older brother and sister and me to the theater in Chicago and drop us off around 1 PM and pick us back up at closing time, sometime after dark. It was a little theater called The Lyric and was in the small Chicago suburb of Blue Island.
That was in the mid-Sixties, around 1966 and 1967. Back then, you could purchase a ticket for 75 cents and stay all day. Usually they had two, sometimes three features that would show over and over again, all day long. I have very fond memories of hanging out and watching the movies again and again until closing time. My brother and sister and I would then hang out under the street lamp until my mom picked us up. As she told us later, it was a cheap babysitter. All we needed was money for admission, and money for popcorn, soda pop and jujubes.
I saw many movies back then, and I loved it. It no doubt made a great impression upon me, the extent of which I did not realize until much later in life when I struggled to make my own ultra, ultra, microscopic-budgeted movies. As that young child, after having gorged myself on popcorn, soda pop, Clark bars and jujubes, I would daydream about the movies I had seen, imagining myself as the hero. The following days I would corral my friends and I would have them reenact the movies with me, at my instructions. I would “direct” them, so to speak. Of course, I was always the hero, and my friends were always my sidekicks and supporting actors, or even the bad guys. You have to have bad guys too to make a movie, right? Or as Nietzsche said, “Ye moralists be a little less severe – we monsters are necessary to nature also.”
I’m not sure how I was allowed to see many of the movies I did at that age, but I was. The most memorable were the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, such as Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. I went home, cut a hole in the center of a towel and draped it over my shoulders, using it as a poncho like the one Clint Eastwood wore. I chewed on pencil stubs for a cigar, as I fanned my plastic, Mattel .45 caliber revolver in front of the mirror. No wonder my screenplays are so full of violence and gunplay.
I absolutely loved seeing Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde over and over again, until I had most of the lines memorized. My toy guns went with me everywhere after that, as well as my newly purchased fedora, and the suit I normally wore to church on Easter Sunday. I was instantly transformed into the Texas desperado, Clyde Barrow. The cute little blond 6-year old down the street, newly arrived on our street from Oklahoma, became my very own Bonnie Parker, and her older brother became Buck Barrow, as I orchestrated many imaginary bank robberies.
Other movies I remember making an impression upon me at The Lyric were The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Lost Continent and Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Others were the Elvis Presley movies: Spinout, Frankie and Johnny and Clambake, to name but a few.
My mom told me a story once of a mother she knew in the 1940’s who forbade her children to go to the movies. Her young, teenage sons received severe beatings if they were found out to have seen a movie at the theater, where they would often sneak into with their girlfriends. According to the mother, the movies were the product of the devil, what with all the kissing, dancing, violence and sinful ways. Then in the mid-fifties this same woman bought one of those newfangled televisions, which would miraculously beam movies directly into your living room! She would sit for hours and laugh and be entertained as she watched the very same movies she had beaten her children for watching 10 years earlier. I still wonder to this day if her sons forgave her for all the beatings they received for watching movies!
All of those movies I remember seeing in Chicago were all exciting fodder for a child such as I growing up in the psychedelic, turbulent Sixties. What a great babysitter that celluloid screen was, as I sat and stared with rapt attention. Thanks, Mom!
That was in the mid-Sixties, around 1966 and 1967. Back then, you could purchase a ticket for 75 cents and stay all day. Usually they had two, sometimes three features that would show over and over again, all day long. I have very fond memories of hanging out and watching the movies again and again until closing time. My brother and sister and I would then hang out under the street lamp until my mom picked us up. As she told us later, it was a cheap babysitter. All we needed was money for admission, and money for popcorn, soda pop and jujubes.
I saw many movies back then, and I loved it. It no doubt made a great impression upon me, the extent of which I did not realize until much later in life when I struggled to make my own ultra, ultra, microscopic-budgeted movies. As that young child, after having gorged myself on popcorn, soda pop, Clark bars and jujubes, I would daydream about the movies I had seen, imagining myself as the hero. The following days I would corral my friends and I would have them reenact the movies with me, at my instructions. I would “direct” them, so to speak. Of course, I was always the hero, and my friends were always my sidekicks and supporting actors, or even the bad guys. You have to have bad guys too to make a movie, right? Or as Nietzsche said, “Ye moralists be a little less severe – we monsters are necessary to nature also.”
I’m not sure how I was allowed to see many of the movies I did at that age, but I was. The most memorable were the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, such as Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. I went home, cut a hole in the center of a towel and draped it over my shoulders, using it as a poncho like the one Clint Eastwood wore. I chewed on pencil stubs for a cigar, as I fanned my plastic, Mattel .45 caliber revolver in front of the mirror. No wonder my screenplays are so full of violence and gunplay.
I absolutely loved seeing Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde over and over again, until I had most of the lines memorized. My toy guns went with me everywhere after that, as well as my newly purchased fedora, and the suit I normally wore to church on Easter Sunday. I was instantly transformed into the Texas desperado, Clyde Barrow. The cute little blond 6-year old down the street, newly arrived on our street from Oklahoma, became my very own Bonnie Parker, and her older brother became Buck Barrow, as I orchestrated many imaginary bank robberies.
Other movies I remember making an impression upon me at The Lyric were The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Lost Continent and Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Others were the Elvis Presley movies: Spinout, Frankie and Johnny and Clambake, to name but a few.
My mom told me a story once of a mother she knew in the 1940’s who forbade her children to go to the movies. Her young, teenage sons received severe beatings if they were found out to have seen a movie at the theater, where they would often sneak into with their girlfriends. According to the mother, the movies were the product of the devil, what with all the kissing, dancing, violence and sinful ways. Then in the mid-fifties this same woman bought one of those newfangled televisions, which would miraculously beam movies directly into your living room! She would sit for hours and laugh and be entertained as she watched the very same movies she had beaten her children for watching 10 years earlier. I still wonder to this day if her sons forgave her for all the beatings they received for watching movies!
All of those movies I remember seeing in Chicago were all exciting fodder for a child such as I growing up in the psychedelic, turbulent Sixties. What a great babysitter that celluloid screen was, as I sat and stared with rapt attention. Thanks, Mom!
Labels:
60's movies,
childhood,
cinema,
movie blog,
movie houses,
movies,
Sixties
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Avatar Rocks the House!
Avatar… n. [Skt avatarah descent fr. Avatarati he descends fr. Ava – away tarati he crosses over….] (1784) 1 : the incarnation of a Hindu deity (as Vishnu) 2 a : an incarnation in human form b : an embodiment (as of a concept or philosophy) often in a person 3 : a variant phrase or version of a continuing basic entity 4 : an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user (as in a computer game or an online shopping site)
[From Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition]
I saw James Cameron's Avatar a few days ago. It has breathtaking special effects, and is a pretty good story. I thought it had a brief slow period in the middle, and almost got just a little too Disney, based on the amount of time his avatar spent orienting to the native way of life. I suppose it was necessary for the story development. However, the climactic ending is superb! Disney on steroids! It will probably be the first movie to gross over a billion dollars. It is an absolute must-see. Be sure and see it in XD 3D. It is very, very cool.
Avatar is a spectacular movie, a great achievement for James Cameron, and a milestone in movie making. All the hype is for real and well-deserved. The XD 3D version comes so close to actually putting the viewer in the jungle with the characters. I wonder if the next innovation will be infusing the theater with the aroma of the jungle, so that the viewer smells the flora; or infusing the theater with the humidity of the jungle, so that the viewer feels the atmosphere. Who knows? I'll stand in line to buy a ticket for that milestone, too.
Avatar is a beautiful movie: part science fiction, part action-drama and part love story. James Cameron, the man who has been called “the scariest man in Hollywood," has once again set the bar very high for other filmmakers. I know I will have to go see Avatar again, in the same way a poem should be read twice.
[From Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition]
I saw James Cameron's Avatar a few days ago. It has breathtaking special effects, and is a pretty good story. I thought it had a brief slow period in the middle, and almost got just a little too Disney, based on the amount of time his avatar spent orienting to the native way of life. I suppose it was necessary for the story development. However, the climactic ending is superb! Disney on steroids! It will probably be the first movie to gross over a billion dollars. It is an absolute must-see. Be sure and see it in XD 3D. It is very, very cool.
Avatar is a spectacular movie, a great achievement for James Cameron, and a milestone in movie making. All the hype is for real and well-deserved. The XD 3D version comes so close to actually putting the viewer in the jungle with the characters. I wonder if the next innovation will be infusing the theater with the aroma of the jungle, so that the viewer smells the flora; or infusing the theater with the humidity of the jungle, so that the viewer feels the atmosphere. Who knows? I'll stand in line to buy a ticket for that milestone, too.
Avatar is a beautiful movie: part science fiction, part action-drama and part love story. James Cameron, the man who has been called “the scariest man in Hollywood," has once again set the bar very high for other filmmakers. I know I will have to go see Avatar again, in the same way a poem should be read twice.
Labels:
3D,
Avatar,
filmmakers,
James Cameron,
movie blog,
science fiction,
special effects
Sunday, December 20, 2009
He Liked His Beer, He Liked His Pot and He Liked His Acid
He liked his beer, he liked his pot and he liked his acid. “Oh, hell yeah, are you kidding, in my college days, I absolutely enjoyed acid,” he says. “I was a trippy guy already, and roaming around the universe of your brain at light speed – that’s a lot of fun. But ultimately I don’t think it’s very creative, because it’s not like you can create while you’re tripping. You can’t do shit.”
James Cameron
Rolling Stone Magazine
December 2009
Profile by Erik Hedegaard
So now we know... the director of the highest grossing movie of all time (Titanic) tripped on acid in his college years, per Rolling Stone. Who'd a thunk it? Of course, most kids were tripping on acid those days. The article also stated he "...has never shot a Hollywood movie that did not make money, spending more than $500 million in the process but returning a gross of $3 billion...." Wow, pretty good for a geeky acidhead.
I don't know about you folks, but I'm really looking forward to seeing Avatar, sans acid, of course - I'll just have to settle for 3-D. Usually a PG-13 rating is a turnoff for me (I prefer a strong R rating), but I'll give this one a chance just to see the new innovations and to see what $230 million dollars can do.
The article in Rolling Stone also mentions that while filming The Abyss, Cameron "...ran his production in such a way that Ed Harris burst into tears," and that "On one shoot, crew members wore T-shirts that said YOU EITHER SHOOT IT MY WAY OR YOU DO ANOTHER FUCKING MOVIE."
There is an old saying, "In order to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs." It sounds like if you work for James Cameron, you better bring your A-game, and have very thick skin.
The profile on James Cameron in this month's Rolling Stone is a good one. I recommend it. Rolling Stone is a great magazine, and revered text in my household.
James Cameron
Rolling Stone Magazine
December 2009
Profile by Erik Hedegaard
So now we know... the director of the highest grossing movie of all time (Titanic) tripped on acid in his college years, per Rolling Stone. Who'd a thunk it? Of course, most kids were tripping on acid those days. The article also stated he "...has never shot a Hollywood movie that did not make money, spending more than $500 million in the process but returning a gross of $3 billion...." Wow, pretty good for a geeky acidhead.
I don't know about you folks, but I'm really looking forward to seeing Avatar, sans acid, of course - I'll just have to settle for 3-D. Usually a PG-13 rating is a turnoff for me (I prefer a strong R rating), but I'll give this one a chance just to see the new innovations and to see what $230 million dollars can do.
The article in Rolling Stone also mentions that while filming The Abyss, Cameron "...ran his production in such a way that Ed Harris burst into tears," and that "On one shoot, crew members wore T-shirts that said YOU EITHER SHOOT IT MY WAY OR YOU DO ANOTHER FUCKING MOVIE."
There is an old saying, "In order to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs." It sounds like if you work for James Cameron, you better bring your A-game, and have very thick skin.
The profile on James Cameron in this month's Rolling Stone is a good one. I recommend it. Rolling Stone is a great magazine, and revered text in my household.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Poets and Madmen: Filmmaker Quotes I Can Relate To
Making a movie can be a daunting task, even if you have a lot of money; something I've always had very little of when making my movies. I've been lucky to even have a few grips to help me tote the equipment from the grip truck, or more often the trunk of my car. I couldn't imagine making a movie and actually having the luxury of even a crew! For me, it's always been lean and mean, on the cheap, with plenty of people sniggering from the sidelines. Each time I tell myself the next one will be better and easier. Better? Maybe... easier... I doubt it.
Which brings me to the quotes by filmmakers I have gleaned from various publications. I've ran across some clever statements by movie makers. Some are quite amusing, others are very inspiring. The following are some I just put together on the spur of the moment. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
"I've always used a sporting analogy to describe [making movies]. You're a runner and you're just about to run the big race, and they come in and beat the fucking shit out of you and then they say, 'Okay, go win the race.' You get the shit beat out of you right before you're supposed to go perform your best. And it happens most of the time. 'We have our bets on you, never mind we just broke your fucking legs.' But it wouldn't be making a movie if it were easy. It should be a struggle. Otherwise, you're coasting."
Tim Burton, Director
Esquire Magazine, January 2008
“Tell your friend he’s getting fucked in the ass, and if he would stop squirming it wouldn’t hurt so much.”
James Cameron
(A message he once told a Fox producer to deliver to an executive at the studio)
New Yorker Magazine
October 2009
“I want you to know one thing—once we embark on this adventure and I start to make this movie, the only way you’ll be able to stop me is to kill me.”
James Cameron
(to Leonard Goldberg, then the president of Fox, on the movie, The Abyss)
New Yorker Magazine
October 2009
The worst thing that can happen to a filmmaker is to have doubt. Filmmakers need to feel the wind behind them. You have to be a pirate ship captain. Filmmaking is like hitting different ports. We don’t belong to any flag. And you need confidence to do that.
Oliver Stone
Movieline Magazine
Interview by Lawrence Grobel
November 1997
Which brings me to the quotes by filmmakers I have gleaned from various publications. I've ran across some clever statements by movie makers. Some are quite amusing, others are very inspiring. The following are some I just put together on the spur of the moment. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
"I've always used a sporting analogy to describe [making movies]. You're a runner and you're just about to run the big race, and they come in and beat the fucking shit out of you and then they say, 'Okay, go win the race.' You get the shit beat out of you right before you're supposed to go perform your best. And it happens most of the time. 'We have our bets on you, never mind we just broke your fucking legs.' But it wouldn't be making a movie if it were easy. It should be a struggle. Otherwise, you're coasting."
Tim Burton, Director
Esquire Magazine, January 2008
“Tell your friend he’s getting fucked in the ass, and if he would stop squirming it wouldn’t hurt so much.”
James Cameron
(A message he once told a Fox producer to deliver to an executive at the studio)
New Yorker Magazine
October 2009
“I want you to know one thing—once we embark on this adventure and I start to make this movie, the only way you’ll be able to stop me is to kill me.”
James Cameron
(to Leonard Goldberg, then the president of Fox, on the movie, The Abyss)
New Yorker Magazine
October 2009
The worst thing that can happen to a filmmaker is to have doubt. Filmmakers need to feel the wind behind them. You have to be a pirate ship captain. Filmmaking is like hitting different ports. We don’t belong to any flag. And you need confidence to do that.
Oliver Stone
Movieline Magazine
Interview by Lawrence Grobel
November 1997
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Loglines, Snickers Bars & Insomnia
Wow, what am I doing up at 12:51 AM on a Monday morning? Thinking about movies and munchies. I just raided my emergency backpack with three days worth of survival supplies and hobo gear stuffed inside. I've almost eaten a 11.50 oz. bag of mini-Snickers bars by myself! I have no shame! (Yes, didn't you know... Snickers candy bars are survival food.) Oh well, I needed to cycle the food anyway, and I don't expect the apocalypse to happen anytime soon. So, how about some loglines? Some synopses? Just don't steal my chit, man!
Joey & Jeffie - A romantic crime drama based on the life of NY mobster Joey (Crazy Joe) Gallo, as seen through the eyes of his Creole, showgirl wife, Jeffie Lee. Adapted from the biography, Joey, by former NY Times editor, Donald Goddard.
Having My Baby - An action drama about a fundamentalist Christian who kidnaps an agnostic law student from the abortion clinic parking lot and takes her to the mountains to force her to have his baby as they are pursued by the FBI and National Guard. (Film premiered August 2009 in Dallas. See www.havingmybabymovie.com.)
Blood is Thicker - An action drama about a young man who inherits some land in a small Texas town that is being terrorized by a corrupt sheriff and drug dealing white supremacists.
Dead or in Huntsville - A biker soap opera about an ex-biker who marries a yuppie and tries to go straight. His plans go astray when an old biker buddy shows up needing a place to crash. (Days of Our Lives meets Hell’s Angels on Wheels.)
Junkyard Dog - A near future, science fiction, noirish story about a baby that is abandoned in a Los Angeles junkyard by illegal immigrants and is raised by urban coyotes. The baby grows up to become a vigilante crime fighter with a souped-up hybrid car, who is bent on rubbing out all the Los Angeles criminals and corrupt politicians.
Hillbilly Karma - Hillbillies and hallucinogens, rednecks and raunch... a young aspiring writer in rural Texas tries to escape the birth/death wheel of samsara and the karma of his family dysfunction.
Warboots - A young poet finds himself sharing living quarters with a Vietnam veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a paranoid schizophrenic rock and roll guitarist who thinks he lives on Mars.
That's it... I've got more where that came from. Oodles and oodles of story concepts and loglines. Brimming with ideas. Jonesing to write another script. Chomping at the bit... reeling out cliches like a hack writer on nose candy. Nothing can stop me now! Yawn....
Joey & Jeffie - A romantic crime drama based on the life of NY mobster Joey (Crazy Joe) Gallo, as seen through the eyes of his Creole, showgirl wife, Jeffie Lee. Adapted from the biography, Joey, by former NY Times editor, Donald Goddard.
Having My Baby - An action drama about a fundamentalist Christian who kidnaps an agnostic law student from the abortion clinic parking lot and takes her to the mountains to force her to have his baby as they are pursued by the FBI and National Guard. (Film premiered August 2009 in Dallas. See www.havingmybabymovie.com.)
Blood is Thicker - An action drama about a young man who inherits some land in a small Texas town that is being terrorized by a corrupt sheriff and drug dealing white supremacists.
Dead or in Huntsville - A biker soap opera about an ex-biker who marries a yuppie and tries to go straight. His plans go astray when an old biker buddy shows up needing a place to crash. (Days of Our Lives meets Hell’s Angels on Wheels.)
Junkyard Dog - A near future, science fiction, noirish story about a baby that is abandoned in a Los Angeles junkyard by illegal immigrants and is raised by urban coyotes. The baby grows up to become a vigilante crime fighter with a souped-up hybrid car, who is bent on rubbing out all the Los Angeles criminals and corrupt politicians.
Hillbilly Karma - Hillbillies and hallucinogens, rednecks and raunch... a young aspiring writer in rural Texas tries to escape the birth/death wheel of samsara and the karma of his family dysfunction.
Warboots - A young poet finds himself sharing living quarters with a Vietnam veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a paranoid schizophrenic rock and roll guitarist who thinks he lives on Mars.
That's it... I've got more where that came from. Oodles and oodles of story concepts and loglines. Brimming with ideas. Jonesing to write another script. Chomping at the bit... reeling out cliches like a hack writer on nose candy. Nothing can stop me now! Yawn....
Friday, December 4, 2009
Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Movie Producer
I have a story concept for an over-the-top exploitation film. I have a friend with around 300 acres in the boonies of Parker County, Texas I could film on. I was going to have my art director build a small village with grass huts, etc., and have a bunch of topless Mexican chicks in grass skirts and a bunch of Mexican vatos in loin clothes portraying cannibalistic natives.
The story line is a film crew arrives in the jungles of a fictional South American country to begin filming a soft-core porno movie in the jungles. They get lost in the jungle and attacked by a cannibalistic tribe and have to outwit them and escape from them. The movie will have lots of bullets and lots of babes. The director is a dictatorial asshole. The female star is a preening primadonna. The male star is a handsome, ex-Marine who drinks a fifth of vodka a day and is going to seed. The production assistant is an innocent farm girl from Kansas. The star's bodyguard is a bone-crunching, karate slinging bull dyke to die for. Throw in some missing shipments of gold, some drug lords, federales, rebel armies, rich gringos from Hollywood hiring ninjas dropping out of trees.
Shoot it all guerrilla style, with digital equipment, natural lights, limited makeup, baloney sandwiches and daily stipends and/or points, all pp shot within a two week period with one day off in between. Balls to the wall, seat of the pants, do or die, fuck all, shoestring budget.
Any takers?
[I got the idea for this after watching the 70's German independent film, Man From Deep River.]
The story line is a film crew arrives in the jungles of a fictional South American country to begin filming a soft-core porno movie in the jungles. They get lost in the jungle and attacked by a cannibalistic tribe and have to outwit them and escape from them. The movie will have lots of bullets and lots of babes. The director is a dictatorial asshole. The female star is a preening primadonna. The male star is a handsome, ex-Marine who drinks a fifth of vodka a day and is going to seed. The production assistant is an innocent farm girl from Kansas. The star's bodyguard is a bone-crunching, karate slinging bull dyke to die for. Throw in some missing shipments of gold, some drug lords, federales, rebel armies, rich gringos from Hollywood hiring ninjas dropping out of trees.
Shoot it all guerrilla style, with digital equipment, natural lights, limited makeup, baloney sandwiches and daily stipends and/or points, all pp shot within a two week period with one day off in between. Balls to the wall, seat of the pants, do or die, fuck all, shoestring budget.
Any takers?
[I got the idea for this after watching the 70's German independent film, Man From Deep River.]
Saturday, November 28, 2009
"Elvi, I Was Only Kidding! Fly, Pelican!"
Scarface... helluva movie. "First you get the power, then you get the chicks." The immortal words of Tony Montana, as penned by the Dilligaf revered screenwriter and filmmaker, Oliver Stone. He wrote the screenplay in Paris while kicking a cocaine addiction. Oliver Stone is one cool dude... my favorite filmmaker of all time. [David Lynch is a close second. "We hunt buffalo now, Reggie! Remember the number 10!"]
Trying to raise money to shoot a remake of Man From Deep River, a German-made indie from the Seventies. That might be more practical than the biker flick, Dead or in Huntsville, since I'm living in the boonies now instead of the big city of Dallas. I have access to a lot of acres for exterior shots. Dead or in Huntsville seems to be jinxed, anyway. It's a long story.
Going to try to make it happen on the cheap again. Going to have to pool resources and combine talents with some heavy hitters to pull this rabbit out of a hat. Gonna write a killer script, though. Could be a lot of fun. Writing the script is the fun part. May have to come up with a proposal or private placement memorandum (PPM) to raise the money. Or save some money from my "job" in the "real world." Oh, I forgot, I'm unemployed again. I swore I'd never make another movie without the money first. In the words of Blaine Carson, "Dad gummit!"
I could even get rubbed out by the Mob. I own the screen rights to the definitive biography of Crazy Joe. I adapted a screenplay from the biography, Joey, by Donald Goddard, when I conceived and produced 3 Violent Plays with Thin Dime Theater Company in 1996. What if the Mob doesn't like it? What if I got it wrong? What if Joey Gallo's side lost the gang war and the winners of that gang war don't appreciate my version of the Crazy Joe story? Maybe I shouldn't even call him Crazy Joe... he hated that name. Nobody ever called him that to his face. (He was also known as Joey the Blond. He was shot down in Umberto's Clam House in NYC in 1971 on his 43rd birthday.)
My asking price for my script Joey & Jeffie is one million dollars... what if the Mob wants a cut? What if they send some Pauly Walnuts kinda guy to jack me up? Maybe he'll just stab me in the leg with an ice pick if I'm lucky? Holy shit, what have I done? What wicked webs we weave. Maybe I should give up this movie business and become a florist. Nah.
Trying to raise money to shoot a remake of Man From Deep River, a German-made indie from the Seventies. That might be more practical than the biker flick, Dead or in Huntsville, since I'm living in the boonies now instead of the big city of Dallas. I have access to a lot of acres for exterior shots. Dead or in Huntsville seems to be jinxed, anyway. It's a long story.
Going to try to make it happen on the cheap again. Going to have to pool resources and combine talents with some heavy hitters to pull this rabbit out of a hat. Gonna write a killer script, though. Could be a lot of fun. Writing the script is the fun part. May have to come up with a proposal or private placement memorandum (PPM) to raise the money. Or save some money from my "job" in the "real world." Oh, I forgot, I'm unemployed again. I swore I'd never make another movie without the money first. In the words of Blaine Carson, "Dad gummit!"
I could even get rubbed out by the Mob. I own the screen rights to the definitive biography of Crazy Joe. I adapted a screenplay from the biography, Joey, by Donald Goddard, when I conceived and produced 3 Violent Plays with Thin Dime Theater Company in 1996. What if the Mob doesn't like it? What if I got it wrong? What if Joey Gallo's side lost the gang war and the winners of that gang war don't appreciate my version of the Crazy Joe story? Maybe I shouldn't even call him Crazy Joe... he hated that name. Nobody ever called him that to his face. (He was also known as Joey the Blond. He was shot down in Umberto's Clam House in NYC in 1971 on his 43rd birthday.)
My asking price for my script Joey & Jeffie is one million dollars... what if the Mob wants a cut? What if they send some Pauly Walnuts kinda guy to jack me up? Maybe he'll just stab me in the leg with an ice pick if I'm lucky? Holy shit, what have I done? What wicked webs we weave. Maybe I should give up this movie business and become a florist. Nah.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Back in the Saddle
I've been trying to get back into the groove to write more about Dilligaf Productions. I've been very busy moving Movie Central to our new location in Springtown, Texas, now known as Movie Central West. We all hated to see our location change due to monetary problems.
Our last location in Dallas was where it all happened... the bunkhouse, the beer binges, the steel balls, the shouted obscenities, the loose women, the working girls, the 99 cent frozen pizzas, the 3 for a dollar frozen burritos, the Bugler brand, hand-rolled cigarettes, the all-nighters, Mako shoveling coal in the engine room, the unmentionables, and the the 700 movie DVD and VHS archives to choose from when anyone cared to watch a movie instead of make, film or edit one... they will all be missed!
Now it's onward, wagons ho and don't look back. Coming soon... the biker flick, Dead or in Huntsville! More to come!
Our last location in Dallas was where it all happened... the bunkhouse, the beer binges, the steel balls, the shouted obscenities, the loose women, the working girls, the 99 cent frozen pizzas, the 3 for a dollar frozen burritos, the Bugler brand, hand-rolled cigarettes, the all-nighters, Mako shoveling coal in the engine room, the unmentionables, and the the 700 movie DVD and VHS archives to choose from when anyone cared to watch a movie instead of make, film or edit one... they will all be missed!
Now it's onward, wagons ho and don't look back. Coming soon... the biker flick, Dead or in Huntsville! More to come!
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