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Screenwriting Practices 2A #9

Recently in TV class, we have been discussing the possible discrepancies between comedy and honesty, in respect to the lighter tones many of our shows seem to have gone for. Whilst I agree that dealing with a situation comically can be a way of resisting its 'true' dramatic tension, I also believe that this so-called 'truth' is relative, and defined by the laws implicitly written into a show. Given this, I'd like to take this opportunity to shamelessly promote my favourite stand up comedian Maria Bamford's new Netflix show, 'Lady Dynamite'.

Lady Dynamite* tells the true story of Maria Bamford's life leading up to, during and following hospitalisation in a psych ward, but the main 'truth' that it seems to strive for is the cathartic message that no matter what happens, there's nothing you can't come back from. Whilst there is a logic to the idea that tonal grittiness in television is a means of connecting with what is true in that we recognise that truth is something that is often difficult to swallow, depending on the circumstance, the simple truth that 'everything is basically okay' can also be something that is tough to swallow. I think this is a message that many comedy shows strive to reflect, and in doing so, they often get the criticism of 'not being connected with the real world', where it is not necessarily the case that they don't understand the plethora of difficulties life has to offer, rather, that it can be an arbitrary (and possibly self-punishing) thing to make them the focal point.

I look forward to Lady Dynamite's release on May 20th (plug plug plug), and I think it will be an experiment in what we've been discussing.

(*there's only been a trailer so far, but it seems to largely mimic Maria's stand up, both of which I'll link below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gSxKR0Cirs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSqlFjHP860

Screenwriting Practices 2A #8

My favourite game from the ones we were given over the holidays was 80 Days. It's a video game adaptation of the novel 'Around the World in 80 Days', which works surprisingly well. I assumed it’d be the most relevant to our twine games for being so text-based, but there is a reason why this was not totally the case. Once I had constructed a world that had any potential to be expansive, I immediately had to think about how I would be able to lock it off due to the shorter form we had to work with, and this is definitely one of the pitfalls of my Twine game. 80 Days is a very satisfying game for not relying on its negative obstacles, but instead trusting its ability to create the tone of a sweet sense of journey, and for including a simple, yet elegant mechanic that adds a personal touch to a sprawling, novelistic world.

Screenwriting Practices 2A #7

In the pilot episode of Dan Harmon’s ‘Community’, protagonist Jeff Winger’s clear episodic goal is to enact the optimal slacker’s route through Greendale Community College, on his first day as a student.

Jeff is quickly established as a self-serving and manipulative character. The first time we see him, he is ‘paced and orbited’ by Abed, an aspergers-y fanboy who is unaware that his confessional (expository) monologue amounts to a minor inconvenience for Jeff. Following that:

Jeff: Abed, nice to know you, then meet you, in that order. About that question I had?

Abed: Oh. (looks at watch) Five after eleven. When you asked.

This half of the scene tells us four things about Jeff very quickly, 1) that he lacks the average capacity for empathy, 2) that he only sees people for the advantage they can bring him, 3) that he has a kind of natural charisma about him and 4) that he has a plan.

In the second half of the scene, Abed attempts to walk away, when Jeff sees Britta, ‘the hot girl from Spanish class’. Jeff stops Abed, and uses his proclivity for oversharing to get as much information about her as possible. This generates a sub-goal: sleep with Britta, and given the character traits we’ve been exposed to, we know he’ll try to kill two birds with one stone if possible.

In the next scene, we see where Jeff was headed: the office of a college professor, whom he is already acquainted with. He quickly charms him by humbly accepting praise over the time he lawyered him out of a DUI charge, their only connection which he was bound to bring up, before segueing into asking for ‘every answer to every test for every one of [his] classes’. The combination of suave and moral depravity leaves Professor Duncan uncertain how to respond, as well as the fact that Jeff is no longer a lawyer, having been disbarred for lying about his degree, and introduces the conflict for Jeff that his formerly enticing charm may be negated by his current situation.

Jeff goes for lunch in the cafeteria, where he orchestrates an ‘accidental’ run-in with Britta. He tells her he’s a certified Spanish tutor (they take Spanish class together) and invites her to his study group. This sets up that if Jeff can find a way in with Britta, he can prove to himself that he hasn’t lost his charm, which he needs for his ultimate goal of cruising though life.

At the ‘study group’, Jeff’s plan is clearly in effect as he claims that no one else has arrived yet and gets her to write down her contact details. Their small talk lasts long enough for him to salvage a positive impression of himself, when unexpectedly, Abed arrives for the study group. Britta told him about it. Jeff panics, trying to go along with it. He gets Abed to write down his contact details, and then quickly texts him in an effort to make her aware of the situation, and help Jeff out. Abed excitedly receives a text message from an anonymous number (Jeff) and reads aloud, ‘Say you have to pee I need to talk to you.’ He doesn’t get it. Finally he gets an out - Duncan texts him to meet with him because he’s ready to talk.

Duncan meets with Jeff, but what he wants to talk about is Jeff’s poor moral decisions. Jeff manages to reverse-psychology this exchange into Duncan agreeing to give him the answers. Jeff then heads back to the group meeting, where he finds four new members in attendance. He starts trying to filibuster his way through the group meeting by riffing on group introductions. The group manage to generate enough friction between them that this pans out for a while. Jeff gets a call from Duncan, and leaves the meeting to collect the answers. He ends up trading Duncan his car for them.

Jeff heads back to the study group. Britta, having briefly stepped out, says ‘It’s a disaster in there.’ Jeff says they’re untutorable, and invites her out for Thai food. Britta is appalled, realising the study group was just a set-up for him to get closer to her, but agrees to get dinner with him if he goes back to the study group and fixes what he started.

Jeff goes back to the study group and pulls a pandering inspirational monologue out of his ass that gets everyone to sort out their differences. Everyone is impressed, except for Britta. She thanks him for calming everyone down, but tells him she lied about dinner, and since he isn’t a Spanish tutor, to leave them alone. Angered, Jeff brandishes his envelope full of test answers in the group’s faces. The group question why he would start a study group if he had all the answers, and he exposes the sham of his moving speech. Then, in full asshole mode, he insults Greendale before leaving.

Outside, he opens the envelope to find the pages are empty. He confronts Duncan, who tries to teach him again about doing things honestly, and then, under threat, gives him back his car keys. He dawdles back to his car, wandering around like a lost dog, and walks by the study group. They’re not nearly as mad as him as they ought to be. Britta asks what happened to all the answers and he shows them the contents of the envelope. Abed reminds him that they have a Spanish test tomorrow, and the group agree that he can join their study group. Ultimately, through the setbacks to Jeff’s clear episodic goal, leading to interactions with other characters that he is unsuccessful in manipulating (including those who can manipulate him back), he is forced to realise that he cannot go it alone at Greendale, and starts to humble himself with an honest perspective.

Screenwriting Practices 2A #6

This is a blog post which is meant to reflect on how the semester is going so far, which is ironic, because everything seems to be boiling down to my twine game at the moment, and the reason I’m writing this blog post is so I can do something other than write my twine game.

Games class would make one hell of an elective, but it can be really frustrating simply because I feel like it’s something I never signed up for, and I can’t help bemoaning the fact that it’s a core part of my degree. Tim is great at putting together the Monday afternoon classes, which are often entertaining in the ‘I can’t believe this is uni’ sense - it’s just that they’re full of industry-related offshoots which would be perfect for any future games developer/narrative designer/serious gamer, but as that is nowhere within me, I am finding this increasingly difficult to embrace. For example, I currently have to do an oral presentation on a character from a video game, and that’s probably going to involve me researching a game I’ve never played (since the ones I do play like Mario/Pokémon/Crash Bandicoot aren’t all that nuanced), presenting on it, and then never playing it in all my life.

On a more positive note, it has been great going for the longer form in TV writing, and now that we’re sitting on a series bible, I’m nearing the point where I’ll hopefully be able to projectile vomit up a script, provided I don’t let it outpace me.

Screenwriting Practices 2A #5

Recently in games class we have been learning about how the mechanics of gameplay can operate as metaphor for the story being told. This is so far the most interesting thing I have learnt about games, and appeals to my interest in how stories can be told through their peripherals, framing and abstractions more than just directly through narrative. During my first twine tute, when I was in the first group up, I was just starting to get the impression that the best way to design a game is figure out a core mechanic and then work backwards into storytelling. Had I known this more definitively, as it has now been reiterated many times in class, I might have come up with a slightly different idea. So I have been scouring lists of twine codes to find the best alignment of mechanics to the metaphor of my story, so that it can achieve more of the ‘float state of mastery’ and playability of a game, that can take it beyond existing as more of a click-on-able story.

Screenwriting Practices 2A #4

HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’, a show which has what I’m just going to assume is the greatest number of recurring cast members in western television history, is tasked with revealing its many characters with extreme efficiency. Through this, it has found many compelling ways to introduce characters in a way which foreshadows much of their journey to come and tells us why we should care about them, sometimes in a matter of seconds. Here are a few examples:

1. Arya Stark (1x01). After ditching her needlework class, Arya stumbles upon her brother Bran learning archery. It’s part of his training to be a knight, but it looks like he has a long road ahead of him. Arya steals a bow and arrow from behind him, and promptly shoots a bullseye from way further back. As Arya’s father has a sturdy word with her about interrupting Bran’s lessons, he struggles to withhold his recognition of her talent. Immediately, we sympathise with Arya as someone who is being held back unjustly because of her gender, and we know that if King’s Landing needs to train future knights, they need her.

2. Stannis Baratheon (2x01). A servant reads him a letter to be sent to his brother King Robert. He makes two amendments. First, he asks the letter to read ‘my brother’ instead of ‘my beloved brother’. Second, he changes ‘Jaime Lannister the Kingslayer’ to ‘Ser Jamie Lannister the Kingslayer’, because ‘Whatever else he is, the man’s still a knight.’ Instantly, we recognise a guy who prioritises hard and fast principles over the particulars of their consequences.

3. Margaery Tyrell (2x03). At first glance, she hardly stands out as more than a faithful wife and Queen to her husband King Renly. Then, after a scene which reveals Renly has a secret lover in her brother Loras, we assume she is left blissfully ignorant of this. That is until the first time we see her and her husband in private, and after unsuccessfully trying to seduce him, she casually suggests inviting her brother in for a threesome if that’ll get the job done. (Oh, Game of Thrones…) This was a pretty smashing introduction to a character who is basically the embodiment of the two-faced stratagem of court that is required to ‘play the game of thrones’.

Screenwriting Practices 2A #3

This week in games class, we played the table-top role-playing game ‘Fiasco’, in yet another critical moment of my academic career. This was more of an expository lesson in what table-top gaming is, and I suppose we didn’t have enough 20-sided dice to go around/500 hours to spare for Dungeons & Dragons, the most classic of the form. This was an especially weird class for a group of screenwriters as the thing that was most noticeable about the experience is that it was definitely built around storytelling, only the game designer didn’t actually get to do a lot of it. I’m pretty sure our course is slightly modified to bring out the more story-centric side of gaming, and previous lessons on the concept of agency did this in interesting ways, but I continue to feel like if this doesn’t yield to my will narratively-speaking, I will want to hit it over the head with a lead pipe like I tried to do Will’s character at the end of our game. I suppose I should get over that at some point. This also featured strongly in my tute this week where the role of narrative designer looms threateningly, and I fear that I will never be interested in spicing up my story with clicky shit, (otherwise known as making a game).

Screenwriting Practices 2A #2

In ‘Parks and Recreation’, an inspired sense of duty, and perseverance, leads to serendipitous fulfilment. Leslie Knope, a local government employee and blinding beam of optimism embodies the theme of the show as she attempts to solve problems for her indifferent and often disparaging community with the fundamental belief that public service is capable of helping people. Underneath this is the incredibly bold ambition of the show, one that would be near-impossible outside of comedy: re-establishing faith in the idea of government, despite it being tethered to its many pitfalls.

Some of the funniest lines in the show come from the hyperbole of what peripheral characters will say out of spite for the government. This is a clever positioning of what are in some sense the ‘audience’ characters, in terms of the show existing to address the widespread disillusionment and distrust of government in Western society. With Leslie as the show’s protagonist, the show diminishes the kind of pessimism that these ‘en masse’ minor characters are aligned with. We laugh at the ignorance of characters who reflect what is really a very prevalent attitude towards government, and the show thereby obfuscates through broad exaggeration the aspects of these characters it doesn’t want us to parallel ourselves with. Instead, the humour of Leslie’s character, which is another kind of hyperbole, that actually comes from the quiet tragedy of just how much ambition is required to help people who don’t know they want to be helped, and to be a genuine voice amongst the many louder yet unsubstantiated ones, is what elicits our empathy.

Here is a scene from the pilot that demonstrates this:

TALKING HEAD

LESLIE: These people are members of the community that care about where they live.

MONTAGE OF PEOPLE IN THE PUBLIC FORUM YELLING AT LESLIE.

LESLIE (V.O.): So what I hear when I’m being yelled at is people caring loudly at me.

END OF MONTAGE.

Member of Public: Now, I have a few things I want to say about Laura Linney.

LESLIE: Thank you so much, Barry. Always great to have you here.

However, these marginal encounters can’t generate enough conflict alone to make the show compelling viewing, and in the first season of the show, the show sets up a more concrete antagonist in Leslie’s libertarian boss, Ron Swanson. Instead of merely disagreeing with Leslie’s every move and being the Republican to Leslie’s Democrat, Ron is a government employee who hates the government and whose main prerogative is to make sure nothing is accomplished through government services. Ron is yet another outlandish character because, unlike the unorthodoxly idiotic and seemingly ‘random’ outbursts of the townspeople, his humour is more embedded in distrust than disillusionment, and his trait of unimaginable self-sufficience leaves something wanting on the other side of what is depicted as necessary to fully realise this distrust. This is shown in another scene from the pilot:

RON is curtly showing the camera crew around his office.

RON: I’ve created this office as a symbol of how I feel about government. This sawed-off shotgun belonged to a local bootlegger. People who come in here to ask me for things have to stare right down the barrel.

Both Ron and Leslie are challenged by the townspeople, and having to work together, they eventually become friends. Through this the show humanises and bridges the gap between contrasting political views.

After an onslaught of jokes, episodes usually end on a hopeful, sometimes even poignant note, which reiterates the show’s theme. This scene from the last episode of season 1 between Leslie and disappointed-with-how-life-turned-out city planner Mark Brendanawicz pulls the high-flying antics of the show back down to its core resonances:

LESLIE: Hey, congratulations are in order. I heard that you got that speed bump thing through!

MARK: Don’t make fun of me.

LESLIE: I’m not!

MARK: Oh yeah, I made a bump into a smaller bump, it’s a great day for America.

LESLIE: What are you talking about? That thing was a pain in the butt. You fixed a problem, that’s what we’re supposed to do.

MARK smiles a little.

LESLIE smiles.

Screenwriting Practices 2A #1

Welcome back, me.

This semester I look forward to doing a bunch of things that are slightly outside of my ‘comfort zone’, especially since my ‘comfort zone’ got cripplingly self-aware and overloaded itself with high expectations last time around. Writing for games is certainly that, but collaboration and television writing and pretty much everything we have to do this semester are more of that as well.

Speaking of comfort zones, there has been a bold claim to show a ‘more diverse’ lineup of film screenings this semester. Starting with Kathryn Bigelow, it’s hard to say where it’ll go from here*, but I very much enjoy the idea of where unique perspectives on storytelling have the potential to take us this year. Meanwhile we are studying video games which are massively sexist, but it’s a cutting. edge. industry.

*I wrote this before we got the sent the list of screenings but I'm leaving it in because apparently this is supposed to be 150 words.

DALLAS TASK

Season One - Susannah

Early on in the season, Lucy fights with Ray. She threatens to expose their relationship, but he is not intimidated by this, convincing her that the family will never believe her word over his. Desperate and frustrated, Lucy runs away from the ranch. Her disappearance exacerbates tensions between the family at home as they search for her. Wandering the streets of Dallas, Lucy is approached by a strange woman.

Also in the city, searching for Lucy, Pam and Bobby fight about where his loyalties lie; Pam is disappointed with her husband’s acquiescence to the family’s mercenary values. She wants him to stand up for himself and try to challenge J. R.’s authority, Bobby wants both of them to just try and fit in with the rest of the Ewing’s. Pam is disgusted and storms off.

She happens on Lucy. The mystery woman is standing with her, but Pam only catches a glimpse before she disappears. Lucy refuses to explain who the woman is, or why she herself ran away.

Pam’s return with Lucy, safe and sound, gets her into Jock and Ellie’s good graces, Lucy is also far friendlier than she was on their first meeting. Pam latches onto this friendship as she becomes more estranged from her husband, telling Lucy everything, even things about the business that Bobby tells her. One particular piece of information is that The Ewings are aware that the company that ships the crude oil that they produce to the refineries is using increasingly unsafe practices to cut costs.

Lucy sneaks away to the city and meets up with the woman, who is revealed to be her mother, who hopes to gain revenge on the family that drove her away by orchestrating their downfall. Lucy tells her about the dodgy shipping business, hoping that her mother will agree to her plan to sell the story to the newspapers and get enough money to build a life together. However her mother tells her to wait. They argue, and Lucy breaks off contact with her.

At the ranch, Pam catches Lucy returning from her covert visit to the city, and intends to confront her about it, but is distracted by her newly discovered pregnancy, which she is trying to keep a secret as she is having second thoughts about her marriage.

Disaster strikes when a ship carrying crude oil from the Ewing’s ranch is wrecked, causing a horrific oilspill. The business is damaged, but the public doesn’t yet know that the Ewings were aware of the unsafe shipping practices. Overjoyed, Lucy visits her mother, but once again she refuses to break the story, asking her what the Ewing’s plan to do. Lucy informs her that J. R. is travelling to the city to deny that the family had any knowledge of the danger before the oilspill.

Lucy breaks the story herself, and returns to her mother’s home to find it empty.

J. R. lies glibly at the press conference, smoothing over much of the damage. As he exits the building, he is met by a throng of new journalists; Lucy’s story has broken and all his work is undone. Among them, Lucy’s mother pulls a gun and shoots him, escaping in the confusion. J. R. is left in a coma, and Lucy is forced to stay at the ranch as her mother is now a fugitive.

Dallas Season 2- Elly

The season begins with J.R alone in his hospital room slowly waking from his coma. The machines he is attached to start to beep loudly and a nurse rushes to his attention. He is weak, having been in the coma for 3 months but he musters up the strength to whisper the name “Lucy” into the nurse’s ear. A few rooms over in the hospital we find Pam having an ultrasound. The doctor asks where her husband is and she avoids the question. He tells her she is 5 months pregnant with a healthy baby boy. Meanwhile at the ranch Lucy is confined to the property and being heavily disciplined by Ellie. When Ellie leaves to see the police about tracking down Lucy’s fugitive mother Lucy gets into a car and drives to a little cabin by the lake at the back of their ranch. Inside it is revealed that Lucy is hiding her fugitive mother, bringing her food and water. She is still angry at her mother but cannot bare the thought of her being put in jail. Outside the cabin we see Ray peering in through the window spying on Lucy and her mother with a sly grin on his face.

When Lucy gets back to the house Ray confronts her. He says that if she doesn’t rekindle there relationship then he will tell the Ewing’s where her mother is. Lucy reluctantly agrees and their secret affair continues.

Meanwhile Ellie is at the hospital with J.R, mothering him. Eventually the doctors allow her to take J.R home to the ranch. When J.R sees Lucy he ignores her, pretending she is not in the room. Jock tells Lucy that the only reason she is still here is that the shooting distracted enough from the dodgy shipping dealing that the company will be ok for now. At the same time Pam is struggling with how to tell Bobby about the pregnancy. Ellie keeps asking Pam if there is something different about her, Pam tries to brush it off and at an incredibly awkward dinner party where Lucy is being completely ignored by the family Ellie suggests that Pam might be pregnant. Bobby is shocked and asks Pam if it is true. Pam storms off and leaves the ranch.

Later we find Ray helping Lucy by going out the little cabin and feeding her mother when she is restricted to do so. He begins to delude himself that Lucy is grateful for what he is doing and that she must truly love him. Meanwhile Bobby has decided to go searching for Pam against his mothers will. He goes to Pam’s father’s house and finds her there. Her brother is being extremely protective and tries to get him to leave but eventually Pam decides it is for the best for her child if she goes back with Bobby. Pam asks Bobby if when they get back they could go to the cabin to get away from his family just for the night. Bobby agrees. As they approach the cabin they are unaware of what they will find. They have a conversation in the car about their relationship and it seems as though they are finally properly making up. They get out of the car, open the cabin door and inside it is revealed that Lucy’s mother has been hiding out there. The shock of this sends Pam into pre-mature labor and Bobby is torn between taking Pam to the hospital and avenging his brother by making sure Lucy’s mother doesn’t escape.

Season 3 - Emily

We open at the hospital. Pam, her face pinched and pale, is staring out the open window. Bobby is a blurry figure in the background, speaking, but the words are unintelligible, as if he’s speaking from underwater. Eventually, Pam turns her face towards him. “What?” She snaps irritably. Bobby, squirming like a little boy in the face of her cold, broken demeanour: “I said you don’t need to be sad. We can try again. We can have another baby.” Pam stares at him blankly, feeling nothing for this pointless little man. “I’m not sad because the baby is dead. I’m sad because secretly, I’ve never felt more relieved in my life. And what kind of person does that make me?” Bobby stammers, useless, incapable of comprehending her. Pam: “I want a divorce. I want out of this family.”

Pam goes to stay with her father, and hires a lawyer. This lawyer is all jawline, sleek hair and piercing eyes. Hot lawyer is hot. He’s kind, sympathetic. Pam increasingly starts relying on him. Bobby is reduced to impotent rage whenever the lawyer is around, insulting Pam, stalking her, begging her, demanding that she doesn’t divorce. Hot lawyer smoothly defuses the situation each time. But then he goes back, when Pam is unaware, and punches Bobby and threatens him viciously and expertly, revealing his dangerous side. Afterwards, he meets up with Lucy’s mother and tells her the situation is going exactly as they planned. Hot lawyer actually works for a rival oil family, and is working with Lucy’s mother, who escaped. Hot lawyer is using Pam for information, to create discord and instability in the family, but is increasingly finding himself genuinely attracted to her. Pam and Hot Lawyer start having an affair. Eventually, hot Lawyer confesses his plan to her, and tries to convince her to join him and the rival family in taking down the Ewings. Pam, horrified, refuses. She fires him and tells him that if she ever contacts her again, she’ll call the police. Heartbroken, Hot Lawyer becomes even more determined to take down the Ewings.

Lucy has run off from the ranch with Ray to another town, Ray has a job in another cattle ranch. Ray is like a subservient puppy dog at this point, utterly convinced that the two of them are deeply in love. Lucy of course secretly despises Ray, finds everything about this old, gross man totally disgusting. She’s using him for a place to stay, for money. Since her mother entered into a partnership with the hot lawyer, she’s had little use for Lucy. Lucy is spiralling out of control, finding herself cut off from both her fugitive mother and her surrogate family. Hot Lawyer starts enabling Lucy, encouraging her to start drinking heavily, manipulating her into blaming Pam for her ruined life and the Ewings. Lucy is vulnerable and is easily convinced, she becomes obsessed with how the Ewings ruined her life, and how Pam particularly ruined everything. Drunk, full of rage and heartbreak, she pulls a gun on Pam, and forces her to drive to the Ewings ranch one night to confront the family. Lucy confronts Ellie particularly, and Ellie tells Lucy that she was the biggest mistake the Ewings ever made. Infuriated, Lucy storms out and sets fire to the ranch.

The family flee the burning house to a safe distance, but Bobby isn’t with them. The season ends with Pam running into the burning house to find him.

Season 4 - Jacinta

Cold open: Pam bursts through the front double-doors out into the former glory of the Ewing mansion’s main entrance hall. Beaming family portraits which ascend its double staircase unhinge and shatter to the floor amidst the destruction. Pam is frozen in shock, even more distraught than she could have anticipated from the outside, but swallows hard, a look coming over her face which confirms her volition to power through whatever she may find inside, and high-heel sprints up the staircase, stomping over a picture of Ray.

Credits.

Montage: Pam sprints through the intricate hallways of the Ewing mansion to the tune of an 80’s power ballad. Each time she enters a new room, an image is superimposed over the ruins - first the women of the family laughing in the kitchen as they cut the crust off piled up sandwiches, then the men of the family filing in to the dining room whilst delightedly perusing the culinary splendours prepared by their overeager female relatives, then the men enjoying beers and laughing in the living room around the hearth of a fireplace. Then a series of bedrooms where the superimposed image is that of its corresponding family member providing a message of encouragement - “You can do it, Pam.” “Go on and get our Bobby for us, Pammie.”

The montage ends with Pam rushing through the door of the master bedroom, her hairline having shifted from a middle to side part in the intensity of the pursuit, though each follicle remains impeccable. Standing in the midst of a few pieces of pried open floorboard is Bobby, attempting to pull a large cardboard box overflowing with papers out of the ground. Pam tells him to ditch the box. Bobby flatly refuses. Pam insists it isn’t necessary, “whatever it is”. A portrait of Bobby’s parents falls from behind her and Pam looks across to see smoke building up at the door. Bobby reluctantly tells Pam that it would be safer to follow him under the house. She follows him down there and finds a large circular vault which opens out on to a step ladder. Pam climbs down the stepladder and Bobby airlocks the vault after her. The dingy, mysterious underground cavern is at least definitely safe.

The next day at the Ewing house, the rest of the Ewing family, along with their friends and neighbours are gathered in front of the ruins, being interrogated by the police who presume both Bobby and Pam to be dead. The lawyer, parked in a car across the street, pulls a photo of Pam out of his wallet and weeps into his vehicle’s sun visor. Then he gets a phone call from a disguised voice, who assumes that he is enjoying the demise of the Ewing family, and gives him a time and address of where he can meet ’to follow through on this. This time they’re really going all, the way, down.' Through tears, he replies that he could never do such a thing and regrets any bad intentions had towards the Ewings, ’seeing them like this'. Then he becomes angry and demands to know who’s speaking to him. The other line hangs up and the lawyer throws his phone on to the passenger seat. The lawyer collects himself, and looks down at the phone. He writes down the time and address on the back of Pam’s picture.

Pam and Bobby are travelling down a long cavern, Pam complaining that they have been for weeks. Their only supplies are the box of papers which Bobby won’t explain. Bobby and Pam argue about Bobby’s hesitating to let her down there in the first place, despite the fact that it was necessary to save her life. Bobby insists that she doesn’t understand. Pam asks if it would have been better for her to die then, than find out we’re they’re going. Bobby says maybe.

Two policeman who previously broke the news of death to the Ewings discuss the tragedy, felt by the entire town, whilst posted on a quiet highway to pick up speeding drivers. They hear a rustling in the woods and investigate to find a highly intoxicated Lucy, wandering through the trees. They take her in the car to drive her back to the station. As we follow the car away from the area, we see who else is in the woods - the lawyer, who privately monologues that the ‘evil, Ewing-hating, good-for-nothing’ hasn’t shown up yet, but that he will wait for however long it takes to find him.

Back at the police station, the officers explain that they are only going to keep Lucy detained until she sobers up, but Lucy, in her drunken state, interprets this as the officers’ underestimating of her capabilities. She proceeds to confess the crime of burning down the Ewing mansion. The officers look at each other and decide to bring her in to the interview room.

Weeks later, the dishevelled bearded lawyer is still lurking through the woods. He has found an axe which he uses to chop wood for lighting fires in the cold. He chops a tree, which collapses on him, and he dies.

Finally emerging from the cavern, Pam is horrified to learn that she is not in Dallas anymore, when a nearby sign reads ‘Welcome to San Francisco’. Bobby will explain nothing and says the first they’re going to do is check into a hotel.

Back at the hotel, Bobby can take Pam’s ‘nagging’ no longer - he confesses that the box contains necessary financial documents pertaining to the origins of the company, but includes evidence of the long-repressed fact that Bobby’s great-grandfather who started the company lived until his death in San Francisco, refusing to move the company to Dallas despite financial opportunity because he actually preferred California, and that the company/family only moved to Dallas when his son took over and took hold of the neglected opportunity. Bobby breaks down crying and talks about how he knows his family are true Dallas people despite the records. He recounts his childhood in Dallas and many happy Southern memories. Pam wipes his tears and asks him to tell her more about Dallas. He professes his love for Dallas more. She appears mysteriously enamoured by his sentiments.

The lawyer’s body is found by Ray, returning from the ranch to apologise to the Ewing’s. He finds the photo of Pam and the address, which is where he is. He calls the Ewing’s, thinking that Pam is hiding out in the woods.

Bobby and Pam return to Dallas, down the same highway which the police picked Lucy up on, and the entire Ewing family is out searching for Pam on. They exit the car and embracing each other. In all the celebration, they announce that Pam is pregnant. Montage: Lucy behind bars. The christening of the baby. Everyone is overjoyed.

THE END.

Screenwriting Practices 1B #4

Disclaimer: The following is not suitable for James Bond fans and constitutes my one deserved slightly off-topic rant of the semester. It also perfectly addresses the prompt of ‘how [I] would make one of Dr No’s plotting illogicalities logical’, if not exceeds it entirely.

Ok, first of all I have to admit that I thought we were supposed to do this in script form so I’m kind of backtracking here since many of my creative liberties have been lost to this notion. Let’s start with a question: Do I like James Bond? No.

Now, how did I arrive at that decision

Let’s move on to how we might explain James Bond to an alien or a fortunate person. And for us to do this, we’ll need to take a trip down history lane. Back in Ancient Sparta, the male form was celebrated as the pinnacle of human beauty, but not in a gay way, cause that wasn’t a thing yet. Women’s status as no more than property actually managed to ramp up levels of homoeroticism in otherwise heterosexual/close enough men significantly by ignoring the desirability of something which constitutes sentient, oxygenated, intelligent life, as it is recognisable in women, and placing these qualities exclusively in men because oppression. James Bond is in this way a bit like a Spartan, but probably not in many other ways, so actually, more like a member of the cast of 300 in a moment of weakness after having accidentally deflated one of their man breasts.

As we discussed in our lecture, the James Bond films utilise their own sense of ‘erotic logic’, or perhaps in an unabbreviated form what could be deemed ‘homoerotic logic’ (and to be fair, a facet of it that is also not complementary to people of both homoerotic and logical inclinations). For this reason, in one fell swoop the illogicalities of Dr No can be deciphered, if we recognise that the ‘logic’ from which the plot has spawned exists in and through a character who is an attempt to represent everything sexy and suave so that men can fantasise about him, but not in a gay way, as explained.

Firstly, we wonder throughout the course of the film, where do all the women go (Sylvia, Miss Taro, Honey at some point)? And why are they there in the first place? The answer to this question is that they were never there. They are delusions spawned from the sheer magnitude of the dominant paradigm of male heterosexuality that overarches the film despite obvious counter-intuitiveness, as such, literally altering Bond’s perception of reality. In the beginning of the film, M, a famed Austrian psychoanalyst, is treating his patient Bond who is trying to stop an intensely recurring dream by revisiting it through hypnosis under M’s guidance. In these dreams, Bond describes, that he is clawing his way through a tunnel, trying desperately to get to the other side, to reach an elusive ‘Chinese man’, who he knows he must destroy. Bond insists that the Chinese man, inarguably the most important person in Bond’s life, has no hands at all, but upon further inquisition, M notices that this is an ungrounded assumption by Bond, who actually sees the hands gloved, making out their shape to be exactly that of a pair of hands, but insisting without empirical evidence that behind the gloves there are no hands. When he gets to the other side, he and the Chinese man enjoy a lovely meal, but Bond is hellbent on destroying him, although willing to listen to what the Chinese man has to say. It becomes clear that the what the Chinese man wants is Bond his mind, his talents, in no uncertain terms. Under hypnosis, M tells Bond that perhaps the Chinese man does have hands, but perhaps the hands that he truly needs, are those of Mr Bond*. But before the evening’s festivities can resume, Bond envisions a large and disproportionate explosion which has no connection to anything. The films pans out over the course of Bond’s therapy sessions wherein, through the best psychoanalysis has to offer, Bond must discover that the objectification of women does not a man make and uncover what has always been closest to his heart to find out what it really means to be a (good/empathetically-redeemed) man or behold the terror of twenty four sequels.

(Also, the spider was the one that killed Honey Rider’s dad or something.)

*Second disclaimer: I meant to hold.

Screenwriting Practices 1B #3

part 1 (Annie Hall):

Identify an example of:

• Realism being yoked with absurdity to create a comic juxtaposition

The flashback scene of Alvy in his elementary school classroom, where the kid version of Donald says, “I run a profitable dress company.” - it’s essentially him sort of quelling the vast potential of life as evidenced in an elementary school classroom into these little irreverent quips that seem overly factual.

• A big issue (like God or death) undermined by being linked with a daily irritation

Alvy’s stand-up bit where he says that he was trying to do to the girl he was dating (who supported Eisenhower) what Eisenhower was trying to do to the country - conflating his overall, occasionally politically motivated, pessimism with the frivolous attitude he holds towards most women (that is, not Annie). (Incidentally, sex is another big issue that he treats like a daily irritation - that is, trying to get it.)

• A small matter greatly inflated out of all proportion

“I need a large polo mallet” - when the ‘cast of the Godfather’ try to get his autograph. Classic comic use of inflation that reflects his neurotic personality.

• A seemingly straightforward list, the last item of which veers into surreal absurdity

“Mozart, James Joyce and sodomy.”

“left-wing, Communist, Jewish, homosexual, pornographers”

“sun, milk, red meat, college” (“Everything our parents said was good is bad.”)

The last item(s) in the lists act as an argument for what he sees as being wrong with its seemingly ordinary predecessors, like a Russian doll of pretence. So, instead of saying, “Tsch, the left-wing a-a-a-a-are basically the social equivalent, o-o-of gay pornographers at this point!”, it works better in the list format.

• The gap between the objective truth of a situation and a character’s slanted, partial, lopsided perception of it

“Yeah, two more chairs and they got a dining-room set.” - in reference to the chairs of history of history and philosophy at Princeton and Cornell. This demonstrates his need to cut his own intellectual leanings, as referenced later on as “mental masturbation”, off at the knees.

• The gap between the subject of comic ridicule as it is in reality and as the character exaggerates and distorts it

The ‘shallow couple’ (of strangers) : “I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.” “And I’m exactly the same way.” He mocks their transparency as if it were so evident that these words were literally coming out of their mouth.

Ok, the more obvious example would be the way he talks about Los Angeles as if it’s a capitalist hellhole that exists as the destroyer of all artistic integrity, but I didn’t want to say that one...

part 2:

The Drover (Trailer)

EXT. END OF THE V LINE - DAY - ESTABLISHING SHOT - BIRD'S EYE VIEW

A single-tracked V-line train arrives through ominous creaks at its final destination [bottom-left of frame]. It's set against a vast field of ruffled tufts of dirt-grass and large power line towers that also end here.

The camera tilts to level itself with the horizon and begins tracking forward as only one MAN, in a high-vis jumper and khaki shorts, exits the train. The tracking shot lands on him and moves unnecessarily through his boot tag, which reads "Hard Yakka" on the inner side, and back out into the longing distance.

FADE OUT:

FADE IN:

INT. END OF THE V LINE - DAY

This same expanse is then reflected behind the intense glare of the sun, as the TRAIN CONDUCTOR sits petrified in the front carriage, his breath turning to golden fog in the hot Australian sun.

We pull into the CONDUCTOR's face as he turns slowly, through terror, at the slow clop of a pair of boots which bypass him.

FADE OUT:

FADE IN:

EXT. END OF THE V LINE - FIELD - DAY

In sepia, we see these same boots clop through a mixture of mud and blood. It is pouring rain and a power line has fallen in the distance.

FADE OUT:

Black.

Beat.

A chainsaw starts and begins to roar.

The lone 'baaa' of a sheep.

It fires up again, louder.

FADE IN:

EXT. END OF THE V LINE - FIELD - NIGHT

A figure shrouded in darkness pulls the chain of a chainsaw and launches it straight towards camera.

FADE OUT:

A low, rumbling sound like an entire cavalry of incoming horses.

FADE IN:

The chainsaw skips along a grassy patch, cutting erratically and mercilessly at the already-destroyed grass.

Rumbling continues.

FADE OUT:

FADE IN:

The sound is revealed as a hundreds-deep batallion-flock of sheep running toward a cliff face. They emerge from darkness into the deep-blue shadows of a sharp moonlight that beckons to a heavenly glow behind the visible edge of the cliff.

FADE OUT:

FADE IN:

INT. UNEXPLAINED CHILD'S ROOM - NIGHT

Moonlight is cast inwards from an nearby window. A stuffed toy, a sheep with a creepily-toothed grin in a jack-in-a-box, bangs two small cymbals repeatedly together, affixed to its hooves. The sound merges with continued sheep rumbles.

CUT TO:

EXT. END OF THE V LINE - FIELD - NIGHT

The flailing body of a full-grown ram before impact with a sharp rock.

QUICK FADE:

QUICK FADE IN:

EXT. END OF THE V LINE - FIELD - DAY

The train conductor in the process of completing his slow, terrified turn.

QUICK FADE:

QUICK FADE IN:

INT. UNEXPLAINED CHILD'S ROOM - NIGHT

A keychain-sized chainsaw hits the sheep toy squarely out from its box in a flurried spout of cotton balls.

[The score of rumbling and crashing cymbals nonetheless continues.]

QUICK FADE:

QUICK FADE IN:

EXT. END OF THE V LINE - FIELD - DAY

The train conductor, now cast in the man's shadow, his neck rotation nearly completed.

FADE TO BLACK.

The train's foghorn sounds, silencing the crescendoed score.

SLOW FADE IN:

The MAN leans in to train conductor's window. His facial hair is patchy like the grass field.

CONDUCTOR

(just able to project the words)

How do you sleep at night?

The MAN grins, sunlight illuminating the gaps between his teeth.

Beat.

THE DROVER

Count sheep.

CUT TO:

BLACK.

A loud, low musical score blares.

SLOW FADE IN:

TITLE: THE DROVER

Against a backdrop of slowly rotating cotton balls which swim up frame, bloodied on one side.

Note: Luke’s edit for week 1 post also updated.

Screenwriting Practices 1B #2

EXT. EXPANSE OF TREES - DAY

An unknown body of water [ECU] runs diagonally away from camera.

Treetops rustle and sway in a whispered breeze, the frame belonging to a pale sheet of blue sky.

The sun omits its first rays, in a slow and drawn-out flare, as if opening an eye to the scene.

Through the haze of the rising sun, a female body lays, barely visible, in a field of trees.

A stream runs diagonally away from her. We hear it gently trickle.

Nostalgic, quietly melancholic music accumulates in slow, tidal swells.

The sunlight hits the expanse, inches a path towards the body.

A hand moves from across the stomach, to fall, weighted at the wrist, towards the stream. The slow-moving water brushes and tickles the fingertips to respond in a soft dance.

Whilst neatly bisecting her figure, the sunlight glints, so as to briefly engulf the image.

We follow back to her uncovered stomach, which twitches slightly with some unknown weight.

A jolt and flurry of pink skips rapdily across the area between the girl and the river as a pepto-bismol coloured bottle of cough syrup pries itself from under the arch of her back.

Her stomach moves to flatten itself.

The small bottle lands in the water and disappears.

Beat.

A burst of colour spreads like a hushed explosion from its submerged source.

SWIRL TO: PINK.

Screenwriting Practices 1B #1

part 1:

When we first meet Jack what is his problem?

Jack feels that he has been untraceably beguiled into leading a life that is not what he intended. He feels controlled by his obligations to his loveless marriage and resultant child. He has struggled for a long time with his ambition to become a writer, including his wish to be publicly viewed as such, and to have this be a predominant qualifier of his persona, superseding the burden of his other labels of ‘husband’ and ‘father’. We see no evidence that he actually enjoys writing, only his need to have being a writer constitute a definite answer to personal fulfilment for him. Jack also struggles with the sporadic outlets of these frustrations, which have previously manifested in his former alcoholism and violence. These situations have created a tug of war between Jack’s individualism and Wendy’s need to act for the good of the family, which bubbles under the surface of all that occurs from the very beginning of the film.

What opportunity does Jack get to potentially solve the problem?

Jack goes to the hotel to ‘write’. His family go with him, but in an ancillary way which sits well with Jack’s self-directedness. Jack wants to use the time at the hotel to confirm that being a writer is his answer to personal fulfilment, but the hotel has other ideas which he might take more of a shining to. (sorry.)

When we first meet Danny, what is his problem?

Danny isn’t loved by Jack, who has complete dominion over his life. He also has ‘the shining’, a supernatural power seemingly passed down to him by his father, which causes terrifying visions. The disturbance of these visions in Danny’s life are not unlike the lingering threat of violence from Jack in their horror and immediacy, and in that there is always something developing with them unbeknownst to those around him. Danny also seems to be friendless apart from his ‘imaginary friend’ Tony, who is really the voice of the shining. This seems to mirror the irony of Jack’s heightened sense of individualism causing his family to become more dependent on him, in that Tony is a refuge for Danny but one that brings about more terror.

What opportunity does Danny get to potentially solve his problem?

The closest thing to an opportunity for Danny is meeting the hotel’s chef Halloran and being told what the shining is, although we see from this encounter that Danny is in quite a futile position based on how long his relationship with Tony and the threat of his father have been allowed to continue. It might only constitute an opportunity beyond the events of the film as Danny grows up and uncovers things a bit more, since his childish innocence makes him prey to the shining and Jack, as the two controlling forces in his life.

Does Jack’s problem change significantly during the course of the story? If so, what are the new problems and where and why do they occur?

There are a few key scenes that show how Jack’s problem develops. One is the first scene in which Wendy interrupts him while he is writing. In this scene, we see him alone before Wendy enters the room, typing quite slowly and very deliberately as if to give authority to his actions, yet this is clearly not the way that anyone swept up in their own writing would type. When Wendy begins to talk to him, he turns on her a little hypocritically and tells her, with a sense of mania, that he doesn’t like to be interrupted while he’s ‘working', to once again imply, this time to another person, that things will go well if he just continues doing what he is doing. Wendy’s visit breaks the facade of determination, and when she leaves, Jack throws a ball at the walls of the hotel to entertain himself, but perhaps subconsciously to ask the location to give him more direction than he had before he got there. Indeed, it does. A similar scene is one in which he tries to convince a terrified Danny that he loves him, as both of scenes have a similar air of trying to impart what he expects of reality onto a more complicated and differing situation. However, because of the film’s genre and where the story begins, these scenes serve the purpose of outlining Jack’s already brewing problems more so than developing them. I would say that the house gives a completely new direction far away from his problems, like how Jack subjectively assesses the mentality of the cannibals that ‘had to’ eat each other to survive on the way to the Overlook Hotel (I’ve just realised that’s a really good and probably relevant name). In a disturbing way this sort of frees him of all of his problems, other than tactile, primitive ones like getting an axe through a door, which seem more like impulse control.

6. Does Danny’s problem change significantly during the course of the story? If so, what are the new problems and where and why do they occur?

Like it is with Jack, I don’t believe that Danny’s problems actually undergo significant change in the story, and I think it’s a mark of the genre that unveiling the characters is a more effective device than recreating them, given that most of the characters must be tangible concepts in some sense in order to ground them in the less tangible frightening possibilities of the events of the film. Basically, I think that Danny becomes more afraid, and at times when Jack is being possessed (I would call it) by the hotel, more susceptible to Tony’s influence. These two things go hand in hand considering that Tony shows him the visions. But unlike Jack I think that Danny is much more victimised by the shining, and usually seems to lack autonomy entirely, either at the hands of his father or the shining. So I would say there are no new problems for him, just the same ones increasing in scale.

7. In dramatic terms, does the plot begin at the best possible place? In what other places might an alternate version of ‘The Shining’ begin?

Whilst the horror genre is not a platform for detailed character-based interiority, possibly the greatest achievement of this film is in its treatment of surfaces, where its characters are richly and uniquely drawn, but in a process that allows it to be dynamic. This process seems to bank heavily on the interplay between narrative structure and intrigue, and so I think that the film, whilst it could be said in some ways to start ‘late’ in the story, begins at the best possible place, because it is most effective in terms of intrigue and with the awareness of how little the audience actually needs to be forced to focus on character rather than events when the events themselves contain, minimalistically, all that is necessary to know about the characters. Other entry points might have diluted this unless it were some type of insane supernatural family drama, which it would have been if the film had shifted its aims from the horror genre and intrigue to character study like the answering of these questions, and I’m glad that it didn’t do this.

part 2:

In the not-too-distant future, a duo of Silicon Valley millionaires, begin their first foray into a now abundantly legal pharmaceutical trade of ‘prescription medication', by developing a drug that can help people 'to experience themselves in real time'. The pair, known internationally for their playboy status as app developers in their early twenties, now settle into middle age and embark on this next project as the financial security of their decadence has finally begun to wind down. The series also follows a gang of middle-class teenagers, including two best friends who have never met their fathers, who are among the first to experiment with the drug through friends who achieve the elusive ‘diagnosis'. The series unfolds in juxtaposition between youth and adulthood. A number of non-recurring characters are presented in b and c storylines in a kind of slice of life ode to the themes of the show, along with more conventional a and b storylines involving the very ‘real’ stories of daughters wanting to know who their fathers are (guess who) and the mid-life crises of men trying to break away from reputation and re-enter the youthful world of possibility, in an exploration of the emptiness behind the systematic.

issue: This idea was largely inspired by two things. One is the controversy surrounding the epidemic of ADHD diagnosis in children, which has been linked to both the huge profits for prescription drug companies based on the the natural levels of activity in many mentally healthy children, as well as the use of diagnosis in the place of addressing the problems of an increasingly standardised education system which benefits from literally sedating children so that it may run smoothly. This would manifest in darkly comic undertones to do with exploitation. The second thing was the concept of the simulcrum/post-modern pastiche, or in simpler terms, the idea that we are living in a world that no longer represents reality, but one that represents our own representations of reality (i.e. in our mass consumption of media), and our own representations of our representations of reality, etc. I thought it would be funny/absurd to have the app developers discussing subtle changes to contracts involving the product of the reality drug so that it could better create the experience of reality, and that kind of thing.

Luke’s edit:

In response to your question, ‘Do you mean the drug allows users to experience themselves in an undrugged state?’, what I am more so intending is to blur the lines between a permeating state of societal consciousness and the one that is more specifically induced in drugs. As I have stated, this is a society that exploits the definition of ‘medication’ for its own financial needs, and this is very like how in a massively consumerist society which also relies on mass consumption of media images, concepts of health/happiness are skewed so that we are always in need and therefore at the mercy of those who profit from this ‘need’. So, I guess in short, the ‘undrugged state’ can’t really exist any more so than a total deconstruction of everything that makes these capitalist/consumerist systems possible, since it is within human nature for our needs to be exploited or at least mishandled in some way, as much as it is for us to need. Obviously we don’t need drugs to live, but you can consider that even our brain chemistry in a way undergoes a process of drugging, albeit an organic one, which is at the mercy of our circumstance (and which is continually, in a broad definition, ‘exploited’). Hope that made sense... (probably just made it more confusing though.)

Also, here is a short video that roughly and incidentally explains the ridiculousness of the concept of ‘real time’ (/is hilarious and features Jeff Goldblum):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32gd8BZ5xhI

Industry Perspectives Week 12

This week I once again attended only one class (see previous post), but this time it lasted the whole day. Obviously it was the oral presentations class because I had to do mine. I’m just going to cite some random details about them.

I knew next to nothing about any of the eras that were presented (1920s - 1940s), and any time a film is quoted as having been made then, my guess of its release date could be off by 30 or so years. But that is potentially starting to change.

First off, the 1920s. In my mind, this was when the first film cameras were being built, though I vaguely understand peripherally that that was in the 1880s or something. Close enough. But actually I was surprised to learn that a film I had actually seen, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, was made in not even the decade of, but the year 1920. Susannah apparently knows a fair amount about Germany, German expressionism is a big deal for more seminal reasons than I can point out, and two things I remember about the film from when I saw it were how it made a lot of sense to me that it had influenced Tim Burton and that is has the most annoying subtitle design of any film ever made. So that was cool.

In the 1930s presentation (yeah, moving on, I can’t cover everything, that’s what the presentations were for), everyone was really impressed by the list of names that went into writing The Wizard of Oz. I love The Wizard of Oz because every aspect of it that you can examine is totally insane and yet it’s such a well-known film that so many people grow up on that it’s not really possible to step back from its weirdness. Disney's collaborative process has barely changed at all in my understanding. I remember watching a thing about the making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves where a guy explained that people in the writer’s room got tips ($$) for suggesting brief little gags like the one where three of the dwarves noses pop out over the bed frame as they’re looking at Snow White (I don’t have a gif, this makes sense in my head). Disney is of course a really good argument for a collaborative process but it is important to note what kind of films they make to try to understand why that might not be successful all the time.

Then there was the 1940s. That was really good too, I just don’t feel like writing about them. Probably because my group was up next and I was kind of stressed during their presentation.

Ok, thanks for reading my blog. Byeeeeee.

Industry Perspectives Week 11

Forewarning: this is going to be one of two final blog posts which cover a period of time in which my attendance in the classes I am supposed to blog about was extremely minimal. This week, for example, I attended one whole class. And it didn’t even go remotely well. Wow. We also had to hand in the second Non-Verbal Script and our Industry Guest Lectures Assignment.

Across all of my blog posts I have not at all discussed any of the industry guests. This is because I assumed my approach in the final assignment would be to refer to many of them at once. I was entirely wrong about this and wrote exclusively on Tony Ayres. I know the point of the assignment was to try and orient our own goals within the overall landscape of Australian film and television, but basically I was holding out for someone vaguely auteur-y and when Tony showed up I thought he was my best bet. But he also offered up a lot more than that and once I committed to writing about Tony that whole originally planned basis had to be glossed over pretty quickly to get to the stuff that was less superficially true. The whole thing was not too dissimilar from the oral presentation in a way, where we had to look at the stories of different screenwriters, as it had the same kind of orienting effect, but from the point of view of history. Though the history was often noteworthy purely for how little it has changed. This kind of process is something that happens pretty organically for me anyway, just out of my unrelated-to-the-course general interest in screenwriting, but it was necessary for me to regain the Australian context of it all, when in my free time, it’s preferable to investigate people who don’t serve any practical reality for me, other than on the level of ideas. I feel like I have some of my first kind of legitimate bearings of the Australian industry this semester, even though they still haven’t necessarily directed me towards anything specific.

Anyway, backtracking, the class I did attend this week was my final tutorial for Pictures, Sounds, Words. I kind of fucked this up because I somehow thought it would be a good move to finally attend the tute group I’m supposed to be in rather than the one I’ve been going to this entire time, but apparently there was some sort of unspoken agreement in which we were beyond orchestrating this at this point and we would just let the groups be what they are, and yeah I probably should have figured that, but I did not. So, given that this was my second tute and I’d managed to find myself in a new group, and also that I didn’t want to read my script out because it was caught between two different versions and I didn’t know how to interchange them, and I honestly just was hoping the whole thing would miraculously get better, which it did not, I basically re-pitched my idea as I had done in my first tute, to very similar reactions, of which no one is to blame but me. As for the other scripts, they were adorable (thus fulfilling their intentions, I don’t mean to sound patronising, it fit with the kind of stories being told). I wish I had been able to focus on them more but I had to speak last and I was panicking about what I would say and therefore way too self-absorbed to even give feedback that could be vaguely of use to anyone. Pictures, Sounds and Words is specifically the class where I have learnt that one must stare at the floor in order to ingest a screenplay that is being read out, so at least that lesson was solidified this week. Hahaha. Ok, bye.

Industry Perspectives Week 10

This week, amongst a now-constant, frantic stream of assessment, we raced through early-morning traffic and the throes of a city-wide blackout to be in the Grant St theatre at no later than 9am for our viewing of ‘Madonna: An Origin Story’. Not only did I not know Madonna was an actress (sort of), but I also had no idea the entire legend and mythos of the pop star was cooped up in an 80s blockbuster I had never heard of. The movie seemed like it was probably a better platform for Madonna than any music documentary that could be made about her, and she wasn’t even playing herself (apparently). The weirdest thing about it was that it created an experience as a film that made it almost impossible to think about the experience it was trying to make. With Rosanna Arquette’s meek character as the lead, and wanting nothing more than to find Susan (Madonna) and be Susan, she was not nearly compelling enough for an audience to want that specifically for her, instead of just for the sake of it being more entertaining when Susan was on screen.

Interestingly, before viewing this film we were told two contradictory things about it - one was that the film was a sort of feminist metaphor for being able to lead the life you want to live and not be defined by the role society gives you, like say, that of a housewife, and the other was that both Susan and Roberta (the lead) wanted to be like each other. Whilst the evidence for Roberta wanting to be more like Susan was extensive and rich, the brief moments in which Susan seemed even the slightest bit interested in Roberta veered more towards a kind of mild fascination that someone as carefree as Susan could espouse and retract on a whim. Roberta was, after all, ‘desperately seeking Susan’, and Susan was a character who continually existed far from any form of desperation. A film that directly vouched for more fluid and malleable roles for women would’ve found an underbelly for Susan that saw her also constrained by the way in which the world viewed for, but this was a film containing wacky exoticisation of Egyptian culture and medically incorrect side-effects of amnesia, and one that mainly did good for women owing to the world it created between women, in its depiction of women who celebrate each other rather than contest against one another. For this reason, if the film had more of an agenda it was unlikely to have done as well, as Susan was a goddess to believe in rather than a testament to universal fallibility, in a world which already amplifies its criticisms when they are directed towards women.

Overall, it was a strange experience watching a movie that explained the concept of Madonna to me for the first time, but an even stranger one for the real story existing within a much different story, with plot details becoming translucent. It is hard to say what would have been a better movie - one in which the audience was given what they wanted or one in which they were made to crave it.

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