The Writers' Resource

Right, so the CNN chaps and chapesses are excellent at pronouncing all those Iraqi and Libyan names.  Conceded. (Except Anna Coren).

But get a load of this one from the pommie CNN Sports Guy on today's world wrap of sporting highlights  (31/8/09) 1/09 in Australia's longitudes.

'If Federer wins this one, it will be his first Grand Slam win since he became a father to six week old twins.'  Ummmmmmmmmm go figure!  Were they 6 weeks old when born?  And why does that make a difference?  Is he the one getting up in the night to breast-feed?  Sleep deprived from the crying?  Well, they have a right to cry being 6 weeks old at birth and being blamed already for their father's losses.

This week Hollywood mourns and perhaps E.T. may feature something other than the Michael Jackson will and the showing of the 'lost' movies as a result.  Some of the brightest and best, Blake Snyder (Screenwriting  analyst and teacher - 'Save the Cat'), Budd Schulberg (The Hollywood Prince himself and screenwriter of masses of films including 'On the Waterfront'!) and John Hughes ('Pretty in Pink', 'Ferris Beuller's Day Off, 'The Breakfast Club' and umpteen more ground-breaking and very watchable teen hits) have all died this week, Hughes dying today.

The world is a less fun place without these three and it is a shame that three such articulate writers are lost in a world that thinks scripts are redundant.  To them the script was way more than something a continuity person could write on: theirs were vehicles for social commentary and adventures in linguistics. 

Vale all three.

Following the Chaser debacle (Hmmm, she didn't look at the programme tape, even knowing how those guys push the envelope of taste?) Courtney Gibson has 'resigned' from the ABC and gone to Southern Star as programme boss.  She has great contacts and an eye for talent but falls in and out of love with programmes and ideas too fast to keep a network's stability.  I am not a great fan of 'flavour of the month' programming as I think it has ruined the ABC and introduced a tawdriness that shouldn't be there. And please, don't be taking the credit for Spicks & Specks.  It's a panel show for god's sake, and without the gorgeous Adam Hills would be unwatchable like the rest of the crap on world screens at present.  Anyone who has ever spent more that a week working in TV (and therefore, an instant expert) would know that panel shows are the last resort for declining budgets as they are cheap to make and can be pumped through the system fast.

Let's hope that  Courtney is able to bring more REALLY ORIGINAL ideas and not just rehash the studied edginess of 'Eurotrash' etc.or other such shows that ultimately are dependent on their presenters' personalities to make them zing.

There are ideas out there - it's just that somehow when people are execs they tend to bury them amongst other stuff when they are in a network position.  I wonder how many of those submissions will now pop upfrom the subconcious as new and original material at SS/Endemol?

Glad I am not there to give a rats'...

5/08

It's always unnerving to see the opening titles with the lead star as E.P. and 'While she was out' has Kim Basinger doubling as heroine and persuader, each role suffering at the hands of an inexperienced director, also doubling as writer.  In general, a short story is a perfect adaptation vehicle for a film.  Short, snappy, linear with its peaks and troughs clearly enunciated.  Not so with this one as the opening is mired in sludge and is as slow as those last few hours before Santa arrives, which is when it is set.  Needing to get away from her nasty-piece-of-work hubby, Della (Kim B.) whizzes out on Christmas Eve to buy some last minute wrapping paper.  And to have a secret smoke as her ciggies are in the car.  Not so secret as the nasty-piece-of-work has already sussed out her stash.  Eventually parking, she leaves a note on the windscreen of a thoughtless bastard who has occupied 2 parking spaces.  That's her mistake and what follows is a complex chase with a handful of violent and well-made-up deaths.  Oh, a scene of Kim taking a pee in a flowing creek.  OK, so Huey Lewis set that precedent in 'Short Cuts'.  But when the baddie (Chuckie, just like that murderous doll) calls 'Della, Della!!!!' with all the agony of Marlon Brando in 'Streetcar...' the audience lost control and cackles broke out.

Should we have been laughing? It had all the ingredients of a scary thriller.  Chases a-plenty, a multi-racial gang of chasers, angst and tension at home so Della didn't want to go home, two cute kids who were threatened, and a pretty but gutsy lead character who had more moxie than we would have guessed at the start of the movie.  She was no housewife though.  On that score, it seemed that the kids were to blame, being messy and lazy and no wonder Della was down.  She also was peri-menopausal and her husband was one of those guys more likely to be seen in a Todd Haynes film about the 50s & 60s...

The fundamental problem is that the actions are not causes or consequences for the most part, and little of what we see on the screen is motivated or with an exciting and substantially rewarding payback. Such as the perfume reference, the fact that the wrapping paper is sodden at the end of the film, that pissing scene and so on.  Much clever layering could have taken this from a C+ to an A.  Some of the lines were just hokey.  So Susan Mountford was probably a light hand at directing, more worried about getting through this, her first film, without too much of a budget over-run and not taking the time to think out what the dialogue was supposed to be doing for the story.  Also, as writer/director and I bet doing the big financing runaround, she was exhausted when the shoot began and burnt out during the post.

Am I being too nasty?  Well maybe.  It was an adequate first film and certainly not as horrendous as some I could mention.  But then 'Pulp Fiction' was QT's first film ...

WR