It's a Director's Medium

by
John McFetridge

An update on the movie version of Dirty Sweet, if anyone’s interested.

Now that Dannis Koromilas and I have finished the screenplay (and a couple of sets of revisions based on notes from the producers) it’s going out to potential directors.

Things are really starting to get interesting, because as we all know, movies are a director’s medium:



Or an editor’s or an actor’s or even a producer’s – anybody but a writer.

Actually, I think there’s truth in that.

Every once in a while a movie comes along that’s really talky with static camerawork and no editing style and people love it, but that’s rare. And even then, the movie has some editing and some music added and something more than just the words – and someone has to bring all that together.

TV and the movies a are different, of course. When I was working on The Bridge I was asked to hang around for most things involved in the epsiode I wrote (even though I didn’t really write much of the episode). So, I went to the casting sessions and saw the pictures of the possible locations and stuff like that. Of course, the director was making all the decisions about these things but even then the main cast was already in place and the main location is in every show. When the six days of shooting were over the director had two days to deliver an edit (weeks before I’d loaned one of the editors the power supply from my laptop so I was able to get a peek at that edit, but I wasn’t involved). Then the producers had another go at editing and then the network had some notes and a final edit was delivered.

So, for some directors their job is really to get as much filmed as possible, to get every line of dialogue covered in wide shots and close-ups so the producers and the network have lots of choices (there’s a famous story about John Ford only shooting the lines of dialogue the way he wanted them used, only in close-up or only in a two-shot, and studio producers complaining bitterly, but you know, he was John Ford).

But movies are different, of course. Movies are a director’s medium. Directors are usually involved in all the desicions from the very beginning (well, not the very beginning, not that private moment the writer has in the shower or on the bus or some rare instance actually sitting at a desk when the idea for the scene first appeared).

I remember once when I was working as a driver on a movie shoot (wow, that was a long time ago) and I was taking the director and a few other people on the tech survey – the visit to the location before shooting. The director was sitting in the passenger seat of the minivan going through the script and reading things like, “Kathy sits on the edge of the bed,” and saying, “Maybe, maybe not, let’s see what else we can do in that room,” and I realized that in addition to the big decisions like the final draft of the script and casting, he made thousands of these little decisions all the way through, from pre to post production. If the director is good all these little things can add up to something, they can all be part of an overall feel of the movie that comes across without actually drawing attention to itself (that’s really just taste, I guess, I don’t like it when these things draw attention to themselves, but lots of people love these things – Martin Scorsese draws more attention to the direction of a movie than anyone else I’ve ever seen, except maybe Tarantino, and they’re about the two most revered directors out there. Clint Eastwood may be the best known for not drawing attention to the direction, so it really can go either way).

Of course, if the director doesn’t have a clear vision for the whole movie...

So it’s weird for me right now because the script for Dirty Sweet is being sent to directors and they’re quite different – young, old, male, female – and they make different movies.

If all goes well one of them will actually get to make the movie and it wil be, “A Film By___” and have the feel that director wants.

As it should be. But I’ll always wonder if one of those other directors had made a different movie how would I feel about that one?

Making The Time 2.0

By Jay Stringer

Something we've talked about a number of times on DSD is making the time. Dave has talked about making the time to write, the tough-love that if you want to be a writer you have to get down and do it. There have been day-in-the-life diaries on here that show how some of us make that time.

I've talked about something equally important; finding the time to read. It's easy -too easy- to fall into the excuse of, "if only i had the time to read." I seem to get in trouble one way or another when I bring that up, but it is a trap. Find the time. Doesn't have to be a lot of time. Doesn't have to be a major sacrifice.

And it's not just us. This is one of the regular topics among writers and readers. It's probably frequent enough to make it onto Dave's list of writing cliche's, but then it's because it's also true.

As far as I know there isn't a machine yet that can fit more hours into a day. There's still no magic button that stretches things out or freezes everything around us so that we can chill out and read, or stress and write.

If you're anything like me, time is an evil thing. An old work colleague once came up with the phrase 'job creep,' which was his phrase for all the extra jobs that crop up during the working day. You get to work in the morning with a list of about 637 things to do, and by lunch time the list has swelled to 742, even after you'd started clearing it.

Writing can be like that, sometimes. It takes a whole lot of work just to stand still. You might start the morning with a work count of 20k, and then after four hours and much typing you have a word count of 19k. They are better words, it's not time wasted, but to any outsider you would seem to be standing still at best.

I adapt my colleagues old phrase to life creep. You start the week with a million things to do, and the list just keeps getting bigger. Some of them are chores, they are done out of duty. Some are done out of love or respect or friendship, and you don't begrudge them, but you also wouldn't begrudge a little break every now and then.

And on top of the day job, the night job, the washing, the ironing, the cooking, the shopping, the kids, the husband, the wife, the travelling, the stressing and the many buckets of coffee, you also have to fit life. You have to find time to unwind, to watch a movie or read a book. To dress up as a Klingon and re-enact battles that won't happen for several centuries. Then you have to find time to write, and you secretly start to begrudge the people at work who lead "simpler" lives; those who go to work, then go home, and don't spend all their spare time having to cram in all these other things. Their lives aren't simple either, but that doesn't really interfere with that bit of you that wants to hold a grudge against somebody.

And being a writer or a reader, the person you most hold a grudge against is yourself. If you were better as a writer, then you would have more time. If you were better as a reader you wouldn't be needing to make time. If you didn't just flat out suck, then chapter 22 wouldn't sag under the weight of its own disappointment.

And to make matters worse, you get some limey guy preaching at you from a website, busting you to make more time. Screw him, huh?

Making the time has always been pretty straight-forward for me. I like to read books and comics, I need to write, and I like to watch movies and TV shows. Added in to all of this is a full time job that often takes us 6 days a week. I've always taken the -to me- logical step of cutting out the one optional thing from my day. Sleep.

I'd work a full day, then come home and be normal for a while, or go shopping, or get some exercise or be sociable, then I would read for awhile, write as much as I could, watch a few episodes of THE WIRE (or whatever box set I was working through) do a bazillion emails and then slip into bed in time to get two or three hours sleep before doing it all over again.

I've hit a point now where that needs to stop. My body, and more importantly my brain, at 30 has decided that it wants to sleep like a normal person. The people at my day job would rather I turn up in a state approaching alive and my body is a fair way off 'in shape' simply because of the way I stretch myself. I'm also noticing that my writing is starting to suffer for the first time from my brain needing more sleep.

So i'm here to ask a question rather than preach at you. I've told you how I do it. I find a way to stretch the day out for as long as I can. I reckon there's probably a number of you do the same. But for the rest of you, you crazy people who manage to sleep and still make the time, how the hell do you do it?

NaNoWriMo MoMo

By Steve Weddle

Today is the first day of November, which means it is the day I stop what I am doing and focus on one thing: Oh, crap, the mortgage is due.

My lovely bride, who used to be a Catholic, reminds that it's also All Saints Day.

And, if you're that chick from Square Pegs, it's the day you say "rabbit, rabbit" first thing for luck.

But if you're coming here and you're not one of those booger-licking, Saban-loving, rectum-smelling blog spammers, then you're probably already aware -- it's the kick-off to NaNoWriMo.

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

How cool is that? 50k in 30 days -- not quite 2k per day, but it's pretty close. Could you do the needed 1,667 words per day? Heck, I've done three times that in a day. One day. The next I probably didn't get any writing done. Maybe I caught up on the laundry. Maybe it was a double-header on the soccer pitch. Maybe there was a Project Runway marathon on. Heck if I know.

I've had 5,000-word Saturdays and 15-word Tuesdays.

No one writes 50,000 words in a month, do they? I dunno. Here's how I write. The other day I had a picture banging around in my head. My main character is going to meet someone for a chat. Needs to be some place other players in the book wouldn't pop in. No cops. No attorneys. No tough guys. Gotta be the hippie food place I remember in Shreveport.

--at Earthereal, a dark, tight little place up on the hill, under big oak trees, between the smart kids' high school and the little boutique shops in what used to be the nice part of town.--

OK. Nice use of commas, moron. And at some point, I'll have to clean that idea up. Can't you hear Samuel L. Jackson suggesting that I say "little" one more time, futher mucker? And I'll need to hit the Google maps to see if the layout is how I remember it. Maybe streetview that sucker, too. All for a scene that will probably get cut.

So that's what I got. In a day. If you really want to hear about it, as Holden would say, that's what I got last week. Shut up. I've been busy. I'm not writing on contract. I'm not writing for anyone but me. So, there's no external imperative. Unlike my job. My family. The yard. The dishes. The laundry. There's this Laura Kasischke poem with the line: "This is the way the small survive./ The way the small have always survived." This is the way the small write, isn't it? Fits and spurts. It's how I write, anyway.

But you know what? That's the book's fault. At times, it's tough to keep up. I write and the words just flow, unstoppable, like an over-flowing toilet. Sometimes the scenes flow on into another, the next chapter opens and this one closes. I just type what they're saying, you know? And then sometimes I have characters stuck in one place for a month.

I like the idea of NaNoWriMo. Being forced to write, get the words down. It's perfect. I like that idea the way I like the idea of reading that big nonfiction book on some disease in 14th-century Italy and how it helped shape the way we used modern medicine. Sounds good, but I'll just end up returning this one back to the library. I mean, it's due the first of November so I should get that back soon. Heck, I should have already gotten it back to the library. But I'll get it back in the morning. The second will be fine. Right after I swing by the post office and get some stamps for these bills.

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Do YOU NaNoWriMo? Good idea, yeah?