The Difference is Substance

What’s the difference between a Hollywood film, an independent film and a foreign film?

Simple! Let’s look at three different versions of the same story.

The Hollywood version:
A lovable alcoholic (played by Nicolas Cage) alienates everyone in his life and beats alcoholism (in a week, during a montage) to regain the love of his wife and kids.

The indie version:
A loveable wife-beating alcoholic (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) alienates everyone in his life but comes to the conclusion that, “Hey, maybe I do have a problem.” The wife tentatively agrees to give him a second chance if he gets help.

The foreign version:
A wife-beating alcoholic (played by Gerard Depardieu) alienates everyone in his life and comes to the conclusion that everyone around him is a son of a bitch while looking for loose change to buy his next beer with.

So Unfair...

Kurt Vonnegut died this year. Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman died within the same week this year as well.

In my local newspaper, these men got honored with blurbs. A certain professional football coach (who shall remain nameless), upon death, received a full front page article and an entire sports section devoted just to him.

Think about that one, a full front page. Not a blurb in the front page. The whole front page. Plus, several pages devoted to him in the sports section. All for a man who coached football. Not to knock his accomplishments (which were many) but isn't that overkill?

Three men whose cultural accomplishments spanned the whole world get less ink than a man who coaches a sport that only this country takes seriously.

So it goes...

Thank You, Lost!

So the writers of LOST have said that they will not let the show go on for longer than it should. Maybe I'll finally start watching the damn show.

Someone has some sense in TV.

There's a reason I don't watch LOST it's called The X-Files. I loved The X-Files, but it let me down. Oh it let me down. I'm talking I-can't-believe-people-pay-money-to-watch-Bruckheimer-movies-level of letting me down. So if LOST wants to go out while the story still makes sense instead of going on for four unnecessary seasons, I'll all for it.

You know what the worst part of The X-Files was? That at the end of it all. The truth was still out there. You gotta be kidding me?

There's a point in a TV show like The X-Files where the mystery comes to it's apex and if you don't solve it soon, the audience will be pissed. Someone in charge decided to keep going past this point. And when you keep an audience hanging for longer than you should, you're suffering from something I like to call Mysterious Mysteries of Mysterious Mystery.

I've read a lot of screenplays since I've started writing and when reading amateur ones there's nothing I hate more than a story that suffers from MMoMM-syndrome.

Lets hope the people behind LOST live up their word.

A Rant

Bear with me for a minute...

I hate movie titles, not all of them, obviously. Just the ones with no imagination.

The Culprits (in no particular order)

#1 Teen Movie Titles:

Bad Titles-
Whatever it Takes, Drive Me Crazy, Get Over It
One word, GENERIC. These titles could be anything. They're all teen movies, but I'd be hardpressed to tell you which one's which or even what the difference is between them.

Better Title-
Mean Girls
Why? Because the movie is about mean girls.

Even Better Title-
Heathers
The movie Heathers is about a group of mean girls, all named Heather.

#2 Those #^&$ing -ING titles.

Bad Titles-
Being Julia, Leaving Las Vegas, Finding Nemo, Finding Neverland, Finding Forrester, Owning Mahowny...or any title with an -ING VERB + WHATEVER.
These bother me far more than they should but for some unexplainable, guttural reason, they irk me like no other. They just feel lazy. Take any title, change it to an -ING + WHATEVER title and see what I mean. Casablanca = Leaving Casablanca, Citizen Kane = Explaining Kane, Vertigo = Getting Dizzy on High Ledges.

Better Title-
Being John Malkovich
Simply because To Be John Malkovich sounds odd.

Even Better Title-
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, The Killing Fields, The Howling
In the first and third, it's a noun. In the second, it's an adjetive. Don't ever use it as a VERB then.

#3 The Overly Poetic/Vauge Titles
Ask the Dust, Advice from a Catterpillar, The Science of Sleep, Requiem for a Dream
It pains me to put Requiem for a Dream with these, especially since it gets its name from the book, but life's tough and this title is vague. Seriously though, Ask the Dust? The second is an Alice in Wonderland reference, but that is still one clunky title. The Science of Sleep? What is this, a lecture?

Better Title-
A Beautiful Mind
Marginally, marginally better. Only by a little bit and that's only because it has to do with the story.

Even Better Title-
Snow Falling on Cedars, Smilla's Sense of Snow
Snow's makers made a good choice sticking with the book's title. Poetic, and a beautiful image. Smilla's Sense of Snow is clunky and odd, but Smilla, raised in the snow, can pick up more by looking at it than you and me. So therefore it's apt. Ask the Dust?

#4 Mouth Mumblers and Sentence Confusers
Saw
These are harder to define. The best example:
"Dude, I just saw Saw."
"You saw what now?"
"Saw!"
"Yes, what did you see?"
"Not see, Saw!"
"See saw? That doesn't sound like a cool movie to me."