November 26th, 2006 by screenwriterguy
As part of my struggle against homesickness, I bring a little piece of Western Washington into my rented garage/laundry room/bedroom each day. My personalized Google page includes a link to a webcam pointed off of this beautiful island in Western Washington. I was surprised to log in today and see that they have snow!
Meanwhile, down here in CA., temperatures have dipped into the 60s. What concerns me is that I have been finding that weather really chilly. Has my time in L.A. wussified me already? |
Posted in Living L.A. Vida Loca | No Comments »
November 25th, 2006 by screenwriterguy
With this posting I make a promise to you and to myself that the following lines shall never make their way into my writing. I’m not targeting clichés like, “What seems to be the problem, officer?” because people overuse them in real life as much as they do in movies and TV. Instead, the below phrases not only get tossed into screenplays with alarming frequency, they just aren’t how people talk.
| #10 |
“Is that all you got?” / “Is that the best you can do?”
For some reason, if a hero (especially a superhero) finally gets into a fight with the Big Bad of their story, the two must taunt each other for a while early on in their battle. So if your opponent has dealt you a weak blow, the most logical response is verbal antagonism? Hell no. It’s to attack back as hard and quickly as possible. Notice also that the answer to, “Is that the best you can do?” is always something equally lame like, “I’m just getting warmed up.” See it’s, another brilliant strategy our combatant has used. See, I thought I’d start with something less than full power, just to see if I would really need to TRY in order to defeat you. |
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Posted in Top-Ten Lists | 38 Comments »
November 23rd, 2006 by screenwriterguy
Plot flows from character, not the other way around. Remember this maxim, and you create fantastic television, like season two of Grey’s Anatomy. Forget, and you create mediocre television. Like season three of Grey’s Anatomy.
GA bought a whole lot of credibility in my eyes last season with their Super Bowl stunt. What happened? ABC aired the first episode of a powerful two-parter of GA right after the big game. Amazingly, GA held onto a portion of the Bowl audience somewhere in the upper 30 millions. Even more amazingly, a lot of these new viewers came back for more the following week. The cliffhanger episode achieved everything a network executive could hope for from “event” programming. Christina Ricci earned an Emmy nomination, and GA gained a major ratings spike, their average viewership jumping from 17-ish million to mid 20s.
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November 20th, 2006 by screenwriterguy
The trifecta of break-out hits for this season looks like this: ABC-Ugly Betty, CBS-Jericho, NBC-Heroes.
As an aspiring TV writer, I feel that it’s part of my “job” to be abreast of new programs, and especially the ones that are doing well. So it is that I have made an effort to watch the first several episodes of each of these shows. Unfortunately, watching them has taken just that—an effort. While America Ferrera shines, Ugly Betty offers all the edgy sophistication of an Archie comic. Meanwhile, Jericho does little more than reflect current American xenophobia in Lost rip-off form.
But it is in Heroes that I am most disappointed.
I’ve always considered myself to be of borderline dorkiness. I don’t own any Lord of the Rings memorabilia, and I have never attended any conventions in costume. (Unless you count the denim shirt and khaki pants dot-com days.) Still, my childhood basement hosted more than one weekend D&D marathon, and I do know the words to the Red Dwarf theme song. I am a fan of sci-fi. So I couldn’t help but be cautiously optimistic at the promise of prime-time, mainstream, high-production-value science fiction programming. Maybe Heroes would offer that feature so rare in the genre… Quality.
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November 16th, 2006 by screenwriterguy
Ha-ha! My efforts to involve talent in my upcoming reading have paid off. I got word today from the manager of my first choice that she will be joining us. Which means she must have read my script and decided it didn’t totally suck. Sweeeeet. |
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