Staring Out the Window

Bogart's Last Words

2010-09-27T15:20:00.008-07:00

"I should never have switched from scotch to martinis."

Dazed and Confused

2010-07-07T20:01:00.005-07:00

Those (few) who read this blog regularly are probably sick of me quoting New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott, so I won't do it again here. But suffice it to say, we appreciate similar things in our cinema. I've come to look forward to Friday mornings when he posts a Critic's Picks video looking back at classic or iconic films that have, for one reason or another, stood the test of time and, more importantly, stand up under multiple viewings. He goes a step further than most critics, looking at the ways the film has influenced popular culture or, just as often, defined a moment in time.

A couple of weeks ago it was one of my all-time favourite films, Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. I still find it hard to explain why this film resonates with me. It chronicles the last day of school for the generation that was ahead of me. But as a boy, we looked up to the kinds of guys and girls that are its protagonists and antagonists. There are many stand-out performances, particularly Matthew McConaughey as Wooderson, the old guy who still hangs out with high-school kids, and an early role for Ben Affleck as O'Bannion, the recently graduated bully who's holding on to his glory days with both fists.

One word of caution, if you're going to rent this DVD, look beyond the cover art, which is hideous and misleading, (unless it's the Criterion Collection edition, in which case it's passable).

Toy Story 3 - in 3D

2010-06-23T19:45:00.010-07:00

By way of follow-up on an earlier post regarding Hollywood's mad rush toward 3D ubiquity, I saw Toy Story 3 in 3D on Saturday afternoon. And I have to say, Roger Ebert got it right. He and I hate 3D for the same reasons. Okay, hate might be putting too fine a point on it. But as I sat there, wearing a pair of disposable 3D glasses over my glasses I realised that the picture looked kind of dark - the brilliant colours I had come to expect from the previous Toy Story movies were muted by the 3D lenses. Not a big deal, I guess. Then, about half-an-hour in, I realized that I wasn't getting that initial "Wow!" anymore. I had gotten used to the effect of being pulled into the screen, or having things leap out at me, and it basically became what amounted to a normal viewing experience. Except I was still wearing a cheap pair of sunglasses over my glasses.

Having said all that, I loved Toy Story 3. It's a wonderful, whimsical adventure story that explores relationships, the meaning of friendship, the journey of growing up and growing old. It's surprisingly profound for a cartoon, and was an outright joy to experience. Mostly because it's a good story, well told.

It was, incidentally, our little Birdy's first feature film in a theatre. At two-hours it was a bit long, loud and overwhelming for her, and she suffered a mini-breakdown in the parkade afterwards. But by the next morning she was already excitedly recounting her highlights.

Also worth mentioning is the time-honoured Pixar tradition of playing an animated short before the feature presentation. For Toy Story 3 it's Day & Night which would have been worth the price of admission all on its own.

Exclusive?

2010-06-09T21:03:00.003-07:00

I love watching movie trailers. When I go to the theatre (a rarity these days) I anticipate the new trailers (once known as previews) almost as much as the feature presentation. Luckily, there's the Internet. Not the same, but still, I check iTunes Movie Trailers regularly. But I noticed something a couple of weeks ago... every time there's a new clip added to the site it's lauded as 'exclusive'. Exclusive to whom? Only those special enough to have broadband Internet connection?

Anyway, the new Groovin' With Ken! spot for the upcoming Toy Story 3 is worth checking out.

Roger Ebert on 3-D

2010-05-04T14:52:00.004-07:00

One of cinema's foremost critics weighs in on Hollywood's current headlong rush toward all things 3-D in a Newsweek article entitled Why I Hate 3-D (And You Should Too):

"3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension. Hollywood's current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches. It is driven largely to sell expensive projection equipment and add a $5 to $7.50 surcharge on already expensive movie tickets. Its image is noticeably darker than standard 2-D. It is unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness. It limits the freedom of directors to make films as they choose. For moviegoers in the PG-13 and R ranges, it only rarely provides an experience worth paying a premium for."

Random Big Lebowski Quote

2010-05-01T17:30:00.003-07:00

I'm a big fan of The Big Lebowski. Like most episodes of Seinfeld, I've seen The Big Lebowski so many times that quotes pop into my mind at random.

Here's today's:

"...some burgers... some beers... a few laughs. Our f*#&in' troubles are over, Dude."

Whistling Lawyer Trailer

2010-04-08T11:07:00.003-07:00

Here's a trailer for the Whistling doc I've been working on intermittently for the last year or so:

The Whistling Lawyer - Trailer from Lank Beach Productions on Vimeo.

Criterion

2010-03-25T21:09:00.002-07:00

CBC.ca ran a nice piece about The Criterion Collection:

"No other video-distribution company commands the same veneration as the Criterion Collection, which produces lavishly packaged editions of many of the best movies ever made."

Here's why, (from elsewhere in the article):

"Though very much a boutique operation, Criterion invests considerable resources in archival and restoration work on vintage titles. Creating supplemental materials may require months of work and research. Due to the modest size of the operation, Criterion can only do five or six releases a month. Their products may cost two or three times as much as discs of current Hollywood hits, a fact that intimidates some consumers."

I don't own many dvds, but there are a few Criterion Collection titles in my meagre collection. I only feel the need to own films I'll see over and over again as my appreciation for them grows over the years. Which is why I think the extra money for the Criterion version, if available, is well worth it.

The first Criterion title added to my meagre collection was The Royal Tenenbaums, a Christmas gift. The beautiful packaging alone makes you want to take it off the shelf. My most recent purchase was Wings of Desire - I've probably spent about as much money renting this movie as I just did buying it. And my next purchase from the collection will most likely be the recently added Dazed and Confused.

Oscar's Identity Crisis

2010-03-09T09:31:00.003-08:00

Had an over-the-fence chat with my neighbour yesterday. He was appalled that The Hurt Locker had beat out Avatar for Best Picture at the Oscars the night before. And even though I was delighted with the result, I had to agree. How can a film that has just barely made back its budget be considered the Best Picture of the year against the highest grossing film of all time ($1.8 billion and counting) that's still selling out theatres twelve weeks after its release? Shouldn't the Best Picture of the year be the one that the most people like?

An article in this morning's NYTimes called The Academy Smiles With Both Faces addressed this glaring incongruity:

This year the entertainment industry woke up to a clear if troubling realization: the Oscars telecast exposed an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in full-fledged identity crisis. Almost everything about the ceremony was big and commercial; almost everything about the winners was small and arty.

Later in the same article an explanation:

Over the last decade the voting membership of the Academy has skewed increasingly toward indie- and foreign-based filmmakers. That is because revised admissions rules strongly favor Oscar nominees over the kind of Hollywood old hands who were once a shoo-in for admission. As smaller films got a footing in the awards over the last few years, those who made and appeared in them became voters, increasing the tilt toward little movies.

It's an interesting paradox, those who vote for the winners (the members of the Academy) are not the people the television show itself is catering to (you and me). Which, now that I think about it, actually gets back to the whole reason for the awards in the first place - a night for the entertainment industry to pat itself on the back. The fact that the general audiences interests aren't represented shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

Hurt Locker

2010-02-22T10:14:00.003-08:00

The Hurt Locker is about a team of American Explosive Ordinance Disposal experts working to make the streets of Baghdad safe for both their compatriots and local civilians by disarming and disposing of bombs. It's a standout film in a bevvy of poorly-received hit-and-miss war movies in recent years.

Much like Slumdog Millionaire did last year, The Hurt Locker sweeping all of the awards leading up to the Oscars. It's nominated for 9 awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, even Best Actor for Jeremy Renner (Jeremy who now?) Looks like not even box-office slayer Avatar can beat it. The David and Goliath story here is how director Kathryn Bigelow keeps stealing trophies from former husband James Cameron, even though he seems to be getting all the press for his tech-pioneering 3-D effort.

Salinger's Dead

2010-01-29T12:18:00.003-08:00

Two excerpts from the New York Times editorial:

"The last, long stage of J. D. Salinger’s life — the unpublishing of himself — is now over. It began, more or less, when he moved to Cornish, N.H., in 1953, two years after “The Catcher in the Rye” came out. And it ended with his death this week at the age of 91."

"It remains to be seen whether death will now publish Mr. Salinger — whether there is an archive of his later life’s work waiting to be revealed. There was a purity in Mr. Salinger’s separation from the world, whatever its motives, whatever his character. His half-century of solitude and silence was a creative act in itself, requiring extraordinary force of will. "

5 Dangerous Things

2010-01-25T14:35:00.003-08:00

While doing some research for what will hopefully become an upcoming doc, I came across a great little TED University video by Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School called: Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do. In case you don't have time to watch the video they are...

1. Play With Fire
2. Own a Pocket Knife
3. Throw a Spear
4. Deconstruct Appliances
5. (a two-parter) a) Break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
b.) Drive a Car

I'm pretty sure I did all of these things between the ages of 3 and 10. Loved the quote toward the end of the video: "Driving a car is a really empowering act for a young child."

Finding The Story

2010-01-21T16:02:00.003-08:00

I know it's been a while, but the doc I've been working on is finally coming together. (The delay has more to do with the life of our subject, Harvey Pollock, and a turn of events in his life that changed the direction of the film, than it does with the procrastination of filmmakers.) It's been a lot of fun to work with our editor, (via email and ftp server), watching how the scenes come together.

A lot of people have asked me how you write a documentary, and how is it different than writing a screenplay? And the best way I've been able to describe it is that you're attempting to find the story rather than create it.

Fantastic

2009-12-01T19:00:00.001-08:00

When the Wall Came Down

2009-11-07T14:39:00.002-08:00

It's been twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was seventeen at the time, and not particularly interested in world politics. Most of what I knew about East Berlin and the Iron Curtain came to me from the Sunday School comic book God's Smuggler. I may not have even paid it much attention except that my dad was flipping channels one night and came across the story as it was breaking live on the CBC. And the only reason he called us all into the room is because about a month earlier I had brought home a hitchhiker from East Berlin who had taken up residence in the drafty spare bedroom across the hall from mine. He spent the rest of the night sitting speechless, two feet from the television screen, watching as his world was breaking apart.

From CBC.ca Berlin, 20 Years After
"It was a completely unexpected event, a dizzying moment shared by millions across the world. The Berlin Wall, which, for close to thirty years, had divided a nation and seemed as permanent as the concrete out of which it was built, had fallen. What had once been a powerful symbol of Communist repression and the Cold War had suddenly become the site of a jubilant and seemingly never-ending street party. A country had been freed, a people reunited. Communism was dead. All without a single shot."

His name was Alexander - although he preferred to be called Xandie (Sandy). He had travelled to our little rural enclave on the tip from a friend that work could be found with a certain farmer at harvest time. That farmer happened to be my neighbour, so I gave him a ride only to find out that said neighbour was in Calgary visiting relatives. The sun was setting, and there was no where else to take him but home.

It was an event without precedent in our family, me coming home from work long after dark with a tall, lanky, somewhat bedraggled East-German hitchhiker. Xandie spent most of the next year with us, using our home as a jumping-off point for exploring much of the rest of Canada, always returning to regroup and earn a little pocket money.

My only regret is that we didn't talk more than we did. I knew a little German and he knew a little English, but we more often than not seemed to miss each other. Life experience had taught him a good deal more than it had me at that point, even though he was only (maybe) a year older. We kept in touch, loosely over the next several years. We had become good enough friends that there was talk of going to visit him. Some of his most interesting letters were of his disillusionment with the westernization of his environment and the loss of the security blanket that was communism, even as he extolled the virtues of being out from under from its bootheel. He sent me a little graffiti-smudged piece of the wall in the mail. I think it's still in my parent's China cabinet.

Naturally, I googled him this week, and found him. He seems to be living the life I imagined he would be, and I wish him well on this momentous anniversary.

The CBC has a great site dedicated to marking the occasiton, which includes a 45 minnute documenatry, and even an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev.

Lance Mountain

2009-10-30T09:47:00.004-07:00

This made me smile today:

Update: Video of LM rocking a backyard pool - better than ever at 45! - removed. Wish you could've seen it, it was a beaut.

Courtesy of All Hail the Black Market

El Más Loco

2009-10-23T15:07:00.004-07:00

I've been following the story of the Mexican drug cartel, La Familia, for the past six months or so. It reads like Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, only it's real, and as fascinating as any movie that has ever tackled the subject. From it's messianic leader, Nazario Moreno González, known as El Más Loco (The Craziest One) who carries a bible and a book of his own quotes, to their brutal methods which include beheading their enemies and leaving cryptic messages stating that the dead received divine justice. It's like reading a script you wished you'd written.

From today's story in the NYT:

'The group first gained attention in 2006 when more than a dozen masked gunmen burst into a nightclub in Uruapan and tossed five heads of drug dealers on the dance floor, with the message: “The family doesn’t kill for money. It doesn’t kill women. It doesn’t kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice.'

Apparently La Familia started out as a vigilante organization dedicated to ridding Mexico of the scourge of drugs and dealers, only to emerge as its most prominent and brutal cartel itself a few years later.

Six months ago President Phillipe Calderon moved 10,000 federal troops into the bordertown of Juárez to bolster overwhelmed and corrupted local authorities. Spitting distance from El Paso, Texas, Juárez has become ground zero for a turf war between La Familia and rival cartels over the lucrative trafficing routes into the US. But with 326 murders in the month of August, (in a city of 1.4 million people) the effort has proven a failure.

US Justice Department raids in 38 cities across 19 states yesterday and today netted 303 people, $32 million in American currency, 2,700 pounds of methamphetamine, 4,400 pounds of cocaine, 16,000 pounds of marijuana and 29 pounds of heroin, not to mention a bevy of arms and ammunition.

But El Más Loco and his top liutenants remain at large.

Eight Years On

2009-09-11T09:57:00.004-07:00

Interesting article in the NYTimes this morning about how the New York spirit has rebounded in the eight years since 9/11, despite feelings of dread that it would become a dystopian fortress city in which no one would ever feel safe again.

In sharp contrast, little progress has been made at Ground Zero, due in large part to conflicting interests and infighting.

After the Deluge

2009-08-24T13:55:00.005-07:00

Sometime after the horror of 9/11 had turned into something like reflection, I began to wonder how this catastrophic event would eventually be represented and interpreted in literature, film and art. I've since read some wonderful short stories in The New Yorker, and 9/11 has edged it's way into film, but often only as a set piece and certainly not with any lasting resonance that I'm aware of.

In the aftermath of 9/11, and in the face of another catastrophe, this time Hurricane Katrina, artist and graphic novelist Josh Neufeld decided to leave New York for Mississippi to volunteer with the Red Cross. He has turned some of the true stories of the survivors he met there into the unlikely form of what many consider to be comic books.

In a review for online magazine, smithmag.net, David Eggers writes:
"One of the best-ever examples of comics reportage, and one of the clearest portraits of post-Katrina New Orleans yet published. An essential addition to the ongoing conversation about what Katrina means, and what New Orleans means."

I haven't read it yet, but it's exactly the kind of thing I hoped to see.

Quotable

2009-08-09T18:10:00.004-07:00

I'm not even a huge Hughes fan, but this page of iconic video clip quotes from his films on NYTimes.com is irresistible.

Hughes

2009-08-07T09:25:00.004-07:00

John Hughes is dead. The films he'll be remembered for were largely teen comedies, but somehow always managed to mean something in the end.

My wife (who shared her love of Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club... with me many years ago) and I were recently discussing that no one was making movies like John Hughes anymore. Apparently, not even John Hughes.

From The Breakfast Club, (with a tip of the hat to Locomotion):

40. INT. LIBRARY - DAY

We see Vernon pick up Brian's essay and begin to read.
                     
                          BRIAN (VO)
            Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact
            that we had to sacrifice a whole
            Saturday in detention for whatever
            it was we did wrong.  But we think
            you're crazy to make an essay
            telling you who we think we are.
            You see us as you want to see us...
            In the simplest terms, in the most
            convenient definitions.

                                               CUT TO:

41. EXT. FOOTBALL FIELD - DAY
We see Bender walking towards us as Brian's monologue
continues.
                       BRIAN (VO)
                 (CONT'D)
            But what we found out is that each
            one of us is a brain...
                     ANDREW (VO)
            ...and an athlete...
                      ALLISON (VO)
            ...and a basket case...
                      CLAIRE (VO)
            ...a princess...
                      BENDER (VO)
            ...and a criminal...
                       BRIAN (VO)
            Does that answer your question?
            Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

Rewriting

2009-07-30T12:49:00.002-07:00

"Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing." - Richard North Patterson

Nuff said.

TdF

2009-07-06T22:59:00.007-07:00

The Tour de France is three days underway and the big story, of course, is the return to the peleton of its undisputed champion, Lance Armstrong. I followed the tour religiously during his reign, not entirely because of him, but because of the stories - nay legends - associated with it. By the sheer scope and magnitude of the race itself, and the physical prowess and mental fortitude required to surivive it, much less win.

Like many fans I've had a falling out with professional cycling in recent years, due in large part to the doping controversies it's embroiled in. Lance has always managed to skirt those controversies without ever being snagged. He is supposedly the most tested athlete in the bunch, yet has never come up with a positive result while nearly all of his contemporaries and rivals have.

Whatever the case, there is no denying that Lance is the protagonist of the great saga that is his life. He's currently in third place, forty seconds behind the race leader, Fabian Cancellara. The story could break either way. But if he goes up the mountains like he has in the storied days of his seven-win run, another chapter will be written.

*Update:

In the first real mountain stage of the tour Lance's twenty-six year old teammate, Alberto Contador, went up the mountain like a gull soaring on a thermal. He gained 21 seconds on all the race favorites, enough to place him second in the overall classification two seconds ahead of Armstrong.

So as far as story goes, what's more compelling, a young up-and-comer rivaling the reigning patron of the race to reclaim victory (maillot juane in 2007), or a long-in-the-tooth seven-time champion making yet another career comeback after a three-year retirement? Lance has the heart of the people, while Contador has the scrap of an underdog.

My money's always on the underdog.

Pretty Neat

2009-05-27T11:56:00.002-07:00

So I'm having an over-the-fence conversation with our neighbour while our daughters are playing in the sandbox together and he asks me, "What are you working on these days?" To which I replied, "I just finished adapting the first season of Pretty Cure. It just started airing on YTV..." When his ten-year-old daughter jumps in, "Pretty Cure?! I love that show!" Then to her dad, "It's about two girls who are given super powers and have to fight these bad guys from another dimension."

Couldn't have said it much better myself.

Justified

2009-05-11T13:41:00.003-07:00

Vancouverites are often considered smug by the rest of Canadians. I should know because when I first moved out here in '93 I could barely handle the self-aggrandizement and sense of superiority that most people I met seemed to wear like a badge of honour. "Winnipeg? Nice place to be from."

Hardy-har-har.

I even got a few welcome-to-God's-countrys, which is exactly how the first Nova Scotian welcomed me after I arrived in Halifax for what turned out to be a relatively brief stay.

Now that I've been here in Vancouver for much of the last sixteen years, it seems I've finally become one of them. Probably for good. But if we need to justify our smugness, if not neccessarily appologise for it, the Mercer's Quality of Living survey for 2009 gives us what amunition we need.

But, you know, it does rain here an awful lot.

Wolverine

2009-04-26T11:38:00.001-07:00

I was trying to avoid all the hype, but I've gotta say, having just seen the trailer for the first time, I'm in.

Phew

2009-04-24T13:32:00.007-07:00

I sit here at my desk with an odd sensation: I have nothing to do. Not that there aren't a dozen stories waiting to be written in my Idea file, (an expanding manila folder filled with scraps of paper covered in hastily scribbled notes and articles culled from various publications that tweaked a train of thought I didn't have time to climb aboard in the moment), but I have no deadlines. No wolves howling at the door.

I've just come through the most intense season of my career, having written three anime series comprising 105 half-hour episodes, an ultimately ill-fated re-imagining of a beloved animation series, 18 video scripts, innumerable pitches/proposals and a documentary script (shooting this weekend!) for Lank Beach, and major rewrites on two feature film scripts. All of which was accomplished primarily evenings, nights and weekends since I've been a work-from-home dad to a singularly beautiful and rambunctious daughter who was born twenty months ago, just as all of this work was germinating.

I need a nap.

Lost in Translation

2009-03-25T20:52:00.003-07:00

Shut up. I premise that it is hardly for the person who is trying to revenge without a back up of the family to team up with other people.

Who is Harvey Pollock?

2009-03-04T18:35:00.006-08:00

Well, among many other things, (lawyer, art-collector, entrepreneur...) Harvey Pollock is a former world-champion whistler. For those of you unacquainted with the world of competitive whistling, it's a lot like American Idol except, you know, with whistling instead of the singing.

On the heels of his victory back in 1977, Harvey became something of a national celebrity, performing with the Winnipeg and Toronto symphony orchestras and appearing on radio and television variety programs across the country.

But that all came to a shuddering halt in 1982 when Harvey's son, Nathan, was killed by a drunk driver. In Harvey's own words, "In whistling there is no filter between you and the audience, no instrument to hide behind. You are the instrument. You can't fake it. A person who isn't happy can't achieve the transcendence necessary for a winning performance."

This April, after a thirty-two year hiatus, Harvey will once again return to the world stage of competitive whistling.

Why do I know all of these seemingly obscure facts? Because I had the great pleasure of interviewing Harvey in Winnipeg last December, and this week the documentary script I wrote from those interviews was greenlit for production by Omni TV.

More soon.

A Brief Oscar Wrap-up

2009-02-21T08:40:00.005-08:00

As predicted, it was Slumdog Millionaire's night. The only big surprise was that Sean Penn beat out Mickey Rourke for his vivid portrayal of Harvey Milk. I love both actors, and even though I was routing for Micky I think Sean Penn deserved the accolade. Sean gave the better performance (even from what little of Milk I've seen - previvews, clips) while Mickey had the best backstory, coming from career self-imolation to a podium-topping awards season, (Golden Globe, Screen Actor's Guild Award, Independent Spirit Award...).

Two other standout moments were when Heath Ledger won posthumously, and when Penelope Cruz won Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Vicky Christina Barcelona, the best Woody Allen movie in recent years.

The best acceptance speech of the night, in my humble opinion, came from writer Dustin Lance Black, who adapted Milk from his own stage play. In my ignorance I always assume that the issue of gay equality is pretty much a battle won. But when you discover that there were pickets protesting Milk outside Kodak Theater last night, you realize that just isn't the case.

And regardless what you think about the Oscars, they are about movies, and movies matter. Not all movies, but some. They matter to guys like thirty-five-year-old Dustin Lance Black. And to the people he wrote Milk for. From his acceptance speech:

"But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, by the government or by their families that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures who have value. And that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you."

Lost in Translation

2009-02-20T11:25:00.001-08:00

It's been a while so...

Once card of this permits limitless entries for up to five persons during the auction period. However, the number who can actually participate in bidding is limited to one person regardless that you are private or a team.

Things That Make Me Smile

2009-02-20T08:48:00.003-08:00

Saw a kid maybe twelve, thirteen years old, walking to school this morning with a full size Kevin Staab pirate skateboard (circa, I dunno, 1989?!) under his arm. Don't know what kinda wheels it had, but they were big, and neon green.

Seems like only yesterday...

My Perspective

2009-02-17T09:31:00.002-08:00

Well, my segment aired on Perspectives last night. And I gotta say, I came off pretty well. It didn't look as frenetic as it felt during the taping. I was able to articulate myself even though most of the questions weren't vetted before hand.

I've been told that I talk with my hands a lot, and had to make a conscious effort to keep them still. But it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because compared to the host even my most erratic gestures probably would've gone unnoticed. Peg's a force of nature. He's one of the most passionate people I've ever met, and it was an honour to be asked to appear on his show.

Since it's an Oscar-themed show it will re-air on Friday night (the Oscars are on Sunday). And it will probably show up on YouTube at some point. If and when it does I'll post the link.

Stellet Licht

2009-02-03T19:24:00.007-08:00

I finally got a chance to see Stellet Licht, which is, to my knowledge, the only motion picture in history to be filmed entirely in Plautdietsch. If I'm wrong about that I'd be more than happy to be corrected.

This film escaped my notice until it won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2007, after which it was reviewed in the New York Times. I missed it when it screened in Vancouver a few months ago, but now it's out on DVD. I wish I had seen this one in the theatre though, because it is exquisitely rendered. From the languorous opening shot of the sun rising to the closing shot of the last morsel of light disappearing from the screen over the horizon at sunset. It is gorgeous.

Before I worked as a subtitler I always assumed that subtitles were the best available translation. Actually, I never gave subtitles much thought. And while my Plautdietsch tongue is a little rusty to say the least, my ear for it is good. There were times when what I was hearing and what I was reading didn't quite... stemme. (Note: Spelling of 'stemme' from the Pautdietsch Dictionary. I would've probably spelled it schtem.) Having said that, the film takes place on an unspecified Mennonite colony in Chihuahua, Mexico, and the dialect is closer to that spoken by E's family, who came from Paraguay, than my own.

The story itself is pretty straightforward and not all that incendiary, but I'm sure, as was the case with Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness, certain people will still find lots to take exception to. Basically a long-married man finds true love in a woman other than his wife (the incomparable Miriam Toews, by the way - who knew she was an actor?). This is not a mid-life crisis story. He's not looking to get laid by a younger more beautiful, funner woman. He's fallen in love with a woman whom he would've chosen over his wife had he met both of them at the same time. The other interesting departure from the usual plot is that he hides nothing from his wife, he's completely transparent about it. They suffer together.

The silence in this film speaks louder than the words, of which there are relatively few. There's no score and no music, other than the unaccompanied three-part harmony of a funereal hymn. Despite my Mennonite heritage, I don't necessarily relate to to the film or the setting, and I'd hesitate to recommend it, having precious few hours to see films these days myself. But I can safely say it's a film unlike any I've ever seen before. And worth two hours of my time. Which is more than I can say for many of the films I've seen in the last year or so.

In Makeup

2009-01-28T13:54:00.006-08:00

I just got back to my desk after spending the morning in the studios of JoyTV for a taping of the show Perspectives with my friend Randall Mark (a.k.a. Peg).

I've always said that one of the things I like best about being a writer is that when the phone rings anything can happen. Which is how I ended up sitting in front of the camera next to Peg, (in makeup for the second time in ten months), pontificating about the likely outcome of the Oscars, sharing my picks for Best Actor (a toss up between Micky Rourke and Sean Penn), Best Picture (Slumdog Millionaire is a lock) and how my perspective as a person of faith affects the work I do.

All in, like, six minutes.

The show airs the Monday before the 81st annual Academy Awards, which would be February 16th. Channel 11 in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, channel 10 in Winnipeg.

There are a million stories in the naked city...

2009-01-09T09:18:00.003-08:00

The population of New York City has grown significantly since those immortal words were uttered in the film noir The Naked City.

One In 8 Million is an interactive feature which gives a few of New York's characters a chance to tell their stories. The latest entry, Joel Carp: The Corner Druggist, is outstanding. This is why I love the New York Times. It's also why I love New York, and old neighbourhoods like the one we live in in Vancouver, where there seems to be a story on every corner, a character on every park bench. The kind of place where the man behind the deli counter knows everyone who's lived in your house since the day it was first occupied in 1945.

Is it a Wonderful Life?

2008-12-22T12:38:00.006-08:00

The holidays seem like as good a time as any to deconstruct one of the most beloved Christmas movies of all time, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Not that I have the time for it, but fortunately those dutiful reviewers at the New York Times do.

My favourite critic, A.O. Scott, starts his video review/retrospective of It's A Wonderful Life by saying, "Everybody knows this movie as a uplifting, heartwarming holiday tale, but if you look at it again a very different kind of picture emerges. It's a Wonderful Life is a dark disturbing fable about greed, exploitation, misery and disappointment."

Elsewhere, in an article entitled, Wonderful? Sorry George, it's a Pitiful, Dreadful Life, Wendell Jamieson offers a similar analysis.

"Lots of people love this movie of course. But I’m convinced it’s for the wrong reasons. Because to me It’s a Wonderful Life is anything but a cheery holiday tale. Sitting in that dark public high school classroom, I shuddered as the projector whirred and George Bailey’s life unspooled.

Was this what adulthood promised?

It’s a Wonderful Life is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation."

He goes on, in some detail, about the prescience of the movie, given the current financial collapse of the banking system, and the waning livability of small towns like the film's centrepiece, Bedford Falls.

And while I've always felt many of these things while watching the movie, as I do with E every Christmas, it was interesting to see this negative sentiment in print. It almost felt like sacrilege.

But as A.O. Scott concludes his thoughts he, like us toward the end of the film every time we watch it, turns sentimental.

"And this, I think, is the secret to this movie's enduring appeal: Every year around Christmas time we can gather around the televison and watch it with our friends and families and go visit a lovely place called Bedford Falls, a small American town where everyone looks out for one another. It's a welcome, if temporary, respite from the greed, exlpoitation and meanness that we face every day here in Pottersville."

Posttersville, of course, being the hell on earth Bedford Falls would've become if not for George Bailey.

And while Jamieson's piece is far more cynical than Scott's, he nonetheless ends on a sacchrine note.

"It’s something I felt while watching the film all those years ago, but was too embarrassed to reveal. That last scene, when Harry comes back from the war and says, 'To my big brother, George, the richest man in town'? Well, as I sat in that classroom, despite the dreary view of the parking lot; despite the moronic Uncle Billy; despite the too-perfect wife, Mary; and all of George’s lost opportunities, I felt a tingling chill around my neck and behind my ears. Fifteen years old and imagining myself an angry young man, I got all choked up.

And I still do."

As do I.

Does Winnipeg Really Exist?

2008-12-19T20:00:00.002-08:00

A little Hollywood validation for those of us who need it.

Sound Investment

2008-10-07T10:39:00.002-07:00

In these times of uncertainty, finally some sound financial advice:

If you bought $1000 of stock a year ago, you would now have:

$91.28 if you bought Washington Mutual

$37.50 if you bought Neomagic

$21.29 if you bought Freddie Mac

$20.79 if you bought Fannie Mae

But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the recycling refund… You would have… $214.00 in cash.

So the best investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

It’s called the 401-Keg Plan

Quotable

2008-09-10T18:44:00.008-07:00

Movie quote of the day (wherein I highlight great writing from great movies, or something like that):

Terry:
Conscience... that stuff can drive you nuts!

From On the Waterfront.

P.S. I'll write something resembling a real post soon, I promise!

Summer

2008-08-15T09:45:00.003-07:00

Maybe it's the fact that it's supposed to reach thirty degrees Celsius in Vancouver today. Maybe it's because I've been reflecting on youth and freedom and summer holidays... I'm not sure. But this made me smile this morning.

KRAZY!

2008-08-12T09:44:00.003-07:00

I don't get out to the art gallery nearly as often as I'd like too, or nearly as often as I should. But when I caught wind of the latest main floor exhibition, I knew it wasn't to be missed.

Krazy! The Delirious World Of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art is the first exhibition of its kind, a groundbreaking project that offers unique and dynamic insight into the world of comics,animated cartoons, anime, manga, graphic novels, computer/video games and visual art. Spanning a century of artmaking, the works in this exhibition reveal an extraordinary history of production, one that is poised to redefine the scope of visual culture in the 21st century.

Of particular interest to me was the Anime stuff, since I'm at least peripherally part of that world now. The presentation of classic, groundbreaking work like Akira, and newer stuff like Paprika, projected on the walls at bizarre angles, as opposed to movie or television screens, seemed to transcend the genre.

Of course it was good to see my old friends Wallace & Gromit on the way out, too.

If you're in Vancouver between now and September 7th, you outta check it out.

Season Two

2008-07-28T10:01:00.004-07:00

Having taken it on the chin a bit from Plett in the comments of my last post, I have to admit that I, too, detest AMC for claiming to be the 'Future of Classic' while it edits the guts out of said beloved 'classic' films.

To wit, I happened to land on The Usual Suspects on AMC late last week. It was the line up scene where each of the suspects has to recite a certain line that I won't reprint here. Suffice it to say, the line was not: 'Hand me the keys you fairy godmother!'

If that's the future of classic, I'll stick with the past of classic. Or whatever.

However, AMC did have the cajones, and the foresight to pick up Mad Men when HBO refused even to get back to Sopranos producer Matthew Weiner when he handed in the pilot script. What sweet justice.

The second season premiered last night, and it was brilliant. Of course the New York times says it best.

The very first time the hero of “Mad Men” appeared on the screen, this ad executive was in a swanky New York bar, smoking and drinking manhattans before heading downtown to look in on his sexy, free-thinking girlfriend — before going home to his wife.

Season 2 puts Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in his undershirt in a doctor’s office, where he is chided for his blood pressure, two-pack-a-day habit, five-drinks-a-day lifestyle and other forms of dissipation.

And a little further down, the distillation of the second season.

“Mad Men,” which returns to AMC on Sunday, distills the moment in the American century when the buoyant certainty that came with winning a war and running the world was beginning to crack.

And just a couple more reasons to love it, and watch it.

“Mad Men” beguiles like a Christmas catalog of all the forbidden vices, especially smoking, drinking and social inequity. Yet the series is more than a period piece. It’s a sleek, hard-boiled drama with a soft, satirical core.

Okay, enough gushing. It's just a tv show.

Mad Men

2008-06-20T10:40:00.005-07:00

I've never been a dedicated television watcher. I prefer movies. Probably has a lot to do with my absolute revulsion of television advertising - I mean, come on, those station identification logos are onscreen through the entire show now?! Guess I should invest in a PVR. But I caught wind of a new show last year called Mad Men.

Unfortunately by the time I heard about how good it was, the first season had already run its course. Fortunately ACMtv ran the entire season again in Fall for those of us that were late getting on the bus. It's some of the best drama I've ever seen anywhere.

Lost in Translation III

2008-06-12T19:56:00.003-07:00

From the same episode, same character:

I will never do something like looking for a secret path. No way. No thanks.

Lost in Translation II

2008-06-07T16:01:00.004-07:00

Maybe not technically a Lost in Translation moment, but this line made me chuckle today:

Now, when I look at it with my own eyes... it gives me a creep!

That about does 'er

2008-05-27T15:20:00.004-07:00

Came across this 5-second version of one of my favourite movies of all time over at Dead Things ON Sticks. I couldn't resist. Enjoy!

I Am Iron Man

2008-05-11T10:00:00.006-07:00

E and I recently snuck away to a weekday matinee, the first movie we've seen in a theatre since a certain baby girl took over our lives. And while it was a fun little getaway (thanks, Opa!) it reminded me why I'm loathe to go to the theatre. Granted, it was a Silver City megaplex, but by the time all was said and done it cost us about fifty bucks! If Hollywood wants to lure people back from their home entertainment systems I'd suggest that they start by lobbying theatre chains to reduce the prices at the concession stand. We were even in a mood to splurge. But come on, $4.99 for a small popcorn, (49 cents extra if you want real butter), and $3.69 for a Diet Coke?! The film of choice begged for big-screen viewing though, so we sucked it up.

Anyway. After sitting through six or eight commercials, the previews finally came up, and half an hour after the posted start time we were finally treated to the opening credits.

What did we see? Iron Man. Which was awesome. Seriously. Good enough to salvage the afternoon of consumer gluttony and have us leaving the parking lot with smiles on our faces. It's been getting good reviews, and I've always loved Robert Downey Jr.'s acting (his performance alone worth the price of admission) and Jon Favreau's direction. But it was surprising to see both of their work in a summer, tent-pole blockbuster like this.

On the heels of its $100 million opening weekend, Marvel Studios, fresh from having pissed all over itself, announced the sequel for April 2010.

Oh, and the song over the closing credits, even though the lyrics have no relevance whatsoever to the plot of the movie? Black Sabbath's Iron Man, natch.

Bill C10

2008-04-11T10:13:00.006-07:00

I'm admittedly playing catch-up, not having kept up to speed on the Senate hearings on Bill C10 over at Parliament Hill. But I have been following Sarah Polley's thoughts on the matter because, well, she's fantastic. Well spoken, passionate and after distinguishing herself as the Oscar nominated writer/director of Away From Her, one of our finest filmmakers. And she's, what, all of twenty-eight years old?

Anyway, I digress.

Jennifer MacMillan had a nice piece in the Globe and Mail earlier this week, here's an excerpt:

Oscar-nominated actor/writer Sarah Polley arrived on Parliament Hill on Thursday to protest against a provision now before the Senate banking committee that could cut off tax benefits for film and TV productions that contain graphic sex, violence or other content that the government finds offensive.

'If there's something artists fear, it's censorship,” Ms. Polley said Thursday at a press conference.

'Part of the responsibility of being an artist is to create work that will inspire dialogue, suggest that people examine their long-held positions and, yes, occasionally offend in order to do so.'

And then there's the niggling little problem of American productions being granted a pass, which would effectively increase the divide between American and Canadian content and make it even harder to compete against corporate Hollywood.

Equally upsetting to Canada's cultural sector is the fact that the legislation, criticized as a "morality hammer," applies only to Canadian TV and film projects. Hollywood and other foreign productions that apply for tax credits get a free pass.

And for those of you out there who think spending tax dollars on films and television is a waste of money anyway, how about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on months of Senate committee hearings when the end result seems like a foregone conclusion?

Check this out at Dead Things ON Sticks... unbelievable, indeed.

Think I'll go back to bed now.

Lost in Translation

2008-04-04T12:16:00.003-07:00

Consider this the launch of what will become a recurring feature here on Staring Out the Window. Lost in Translation will showcase particularly tricky or absurd lines culled directly from the Japanese-English translation scripts I work from. For the sake of discretion, (and respect for my Non-Disclosure Agreement), I won't reveal which show the line is from, or which character it is attributed to. Believe me, it wouldn't make much of a difference if you knew anyway.

So, without further ado...

'Aiee. The final day is passing like another day?
Gee with. Where did my princess go?'

Fallout

2008-03-28T18:40:00.004-07:00

Reports are just coming in about the fallout from the writer's strike which ended last month. Seems like there's lots of ugliness and uncertainty, particularly on the TV side of things, what with the pilot season being pretty much obliterated.

This from an article entitled Recession, post-strike blues grip town in Variety earlier this week:

Thunder Road producer Basil Iwanyk said that the overall level of anxiety and stress around town is "very high," and that anyone who claims otherwise "is lying."

"Everybody is shocked there wasn’t a barrage of scripts," he said. Iwanyk, who also works in TV, said the small-screen biz is "a complete catastrophe."

A little further down the column, Canadian writer Hart Hanson attempts to set the record straight about the feeling that producers are wreaking vengeance, intentionally screwing writers and sabotaging deals.

"Nobody’s getting a big fat raise, at least not easily or automatically," he said. "I feel I have to justify expenditures even more than usual. I have to say, though, I don’t get the sense of the companies ‘taking revenge.’ The strike hurt their bottom line, and they are trying, as corporations, to mitigate the financial hit they endured. There’s not the feeling of personal vengeance behind it."

Vengeance can be a tricky thing. And expensive. With the recession looming, everyone's watching their bottom line. Or at least the bottom line of their shareholders. Sounds like business as usual if you ask me.

Of course it looks like the studio bosses might well be in for more of the same in June, when the Screen Actors Guild contract expires.

Day Job

2008-03-19T17:11:00.010-07:00

In previous posts I've hinted at and alluded to various projects on the go without taking the time to explain them properly, mostly because I either didn't have the time or the freedom to do so. But as I sat down to write a blog about my afternoon yesterday, much of which was spent in a studio in front of a camera recording DVD extras for an anime series I've been working on called Hunter X Hunter, I realized a little housekeeping was in order.

The first thing people always ask me when I tell them I'm writing for a Japanese animation series is if I speak Japanese. And the answer is always the same. No. I don't. I work from translated scripts. What I do is called ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) writing. The company I work for does post-production for Japanese animation that's being redistributed in English to North-American audiences.

This is my day job, so to speak. The thing that pays the bills. And, like a lot of day jobs it can be a real grind at times. But let's face it, I'm essentially watching cartoons for a living, so I have no reason to complain. I've done a lot worse. A lot worse.

So basically what I do is take a direct-translation line like this:

The world is filled with mysteries.
A hunter is a person to pursuit those mysteries and precious items that are hard to obtain.

And rewrite it to become something like this:

The world has many mysteries and hidden treasures...
And a Hunter is someone who goes out to uncover them.

It's not as easy as you might think. If you're paying attention you might've noticed that the original lines and the rewritten lines are different lengths. That's because in addition to making the line coherent and palatable for North-American audiences, I also have to make it fit the pre-existing mouth flaps on screen. Those don't change.

Hunter X Hunter is an adventure story in which a young boy goes on a quest to become a Hunter in order to find the father he never knew. 'Hunters' in the context of this series, are members of an elite society of people with super-human skills, like ninjas. Or Jedi. Come to think of it, our hero's not unlike Luke Skywalker in Star Wars in many ways, a gifted young kid being raised by relatives who discovers he's part of a world he never knew existed.

So back to me, sitting in a dark studio in front of a camera answering questions for the Hunter X Hunter DVD extras with a little cover-up on my face.

Q: What's the biggest difference between writing an original screenplay and writing ADR on a show like Hunter Hunter?

A: They're very different in that when you're writing an original screenplay...

Q: Excuse me Angelo, begin your answer by restating the question, please.

A: Right, sorry, I keep forgetting...

The biggest difference between writing an original screenplay and writing ADR for a show like Hunter Hunter is that when you're writing an original screenplay you're creating the entire world - the characters, the story, the dialogue, everything. But when you're writing ADR you're just focusing exclusively on the dialogue. Sometimes there are ways to enhance the story through the dialogue, and in that sense it's not unlike re-writing an original screenplay. You're trying to make each and every line as good as it can possibly be.

Q: Cut, print. That was brilliant!

A: Gee, thanks!

Unwarranted Nostalgia

2008-02-18T10:37:00.006-08:00

Okay, i have to admit, nostalgia compelled me to turn on the TV at nine o'clock last night for the return of Knight Rider. I could've cared less that KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand instead of Two Thousand, clever huh?) had been upgraded from a Trans Am to a Mustang Shelby. I was more interested in seeing how David Hasselhoff would get shoe-horned into the new plot as Michael Knight while his vigilante burden fell on the shoulders of the younger, sexier, roguish "ex-Army Ranger and failed race-car driver", Mike Tracer! (Michael - Mike, clever huh?)

It started out okay with a tasteful modern rendition of the old theme song... and KITT taking off on his own to find the daughter of his murdered creator.

Well, I didn't last past the first commercial break. It was brutal. I don't even know who she was or how she fits into the plot, but one of the main characters was introduced surfing at dawn before she proceeds to strip off her wetsuit in an outdoor shower scene before returning to her bedroom and her one-night-stand lesbian lover to suit up for a day at the office as... an FBI agent. Get it? Young. Tuff. Sexy! No, I'm not making this shit up.

Cut to Mike Tracer, (our hero remember?), being woken up in the middle of the day by a couple of thuggish money collectors bashing down his door... oh, wait, there are two women in his bed! What a guy! He's young. Tuff. Sexy!

CLICK.

Struck

2008-02-11T09:01:00.000-08:00

All weekend people were telling me the strike was over. And it looks like they may be right. There has been a lot written and reported on with regard to the writer's strike, a lot of it hyperbole. I followed much of it.

The shift in perception seemed to come after the Golden Globes went from being an orgy of red-carpet arrivals and celebrity self-aggrandizement to a perfunctory press conference awards presentation with poorly written jokes. Which raised the spectre of an Academy Awards show cancellation. No one wants that.

TV writer Denis McGrath has a nice analysis on his blog, Dead Things ON Sticks. His observation that 'The weary inevitability the screwing of writers has always garnered has lifted.' may be our most significant, hardest-won gain.

Think

2008-01-14T08:10:00.000-08:00

One of the best things I did for myself and my career last year was to buy myself a decent chair. When you spend as much time sitting at your desk as I do, the importance of a good chair cannot be overstated. But it wasn't easy. I looked for this chair for a long time. Years.

When I first started writing and wanted to be Jack Kerouac, I sat on a wooden stool. Just like him. Or rather, like he had, since he was already long dead by that point. He said it kept him grounded, kept him awake. That and all the Benzedrine. I loved the monastic asceticism of it. But those of you who know me know that I don't have a lot of meat on my bones, and after a couple of hours sitting on that stool I began to worry about pressure bruises on my ass. But I kept that up for a couple of years. Mostly for lack of a viable option. We didn't have a lot of furniture at that time. I kept the bruising at bay by taking a lot of breaks, which wasn't so good for the writing in the end.

My last chair wasn't much better. It was one of those old oak steno chairs from the 1950s. It had wheels, and even swivled, but the seat was hard as... well, oak. I think it's a chair Kerouac would've approved of. It was left in the house by the previous tenants, and I loved the way it looked. There was a certain purity and simplicity to it. And I appreciated the irony of working on a modern laptop while sitting on an ancient chair. But I still had to get up and walk around a lot.

I had long been dismayed by the pathetic gaggle of chairs on offer at Staples or any of the big office supply stores. It's like they keep them in the back of the store out of embarrassment. They are without exception, overpriced, plastic, disposable, ugly and uncomfortable. I've sat in many of them in the various offices I've had the displeasure of working in over the years, and not one of them ever inspired me to go out and buy one.

Then one day along came the Aeron chair. I read about it somewhere, probably in the New York Times, but I can't remember now. After doing a bit of research (Google) I knew I'd never be able to afford one, but hoped that since they were so immensely popular, someone somewhere sooner or later would build a more economical version that employed similar technology and ergonomics. Or, at the very least, that manufacturers of office chairs would start to give some serious thought to their product.

And so it was, years later, that I found the Think chair (pictured above). I first saw it in a photo on the side of a moving truck for an office supply store. A week later I had the Think chair in my office. It's simple, and elegant, and awfully comfortable but not in a soft, gooey way. It's firm and efficient. The arms are adjustable, not just for height, but forward, backward and side to side by way of an ingenious swivel built into the arm cap. One brochure I read claimed that the chair would increase productivity by 70 percent. I'm sure it's done at least that for me.

Anyway, I'm not trying to sell the thing. I'm just sayin'.

Benny's Gift

2008-01-06T13:23:00.000-08:00

It being Sunday morning and all, I thought I'd catch up with my favourite televangelist.

The Season

2007-12-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

Between l' enfant, writing ADR on a new sixty-two episode classic Anime series, having the metaphorical dust blown off of an old feature project and thrust into preproduction, and a rewrite on a more recent feature... the headlong plunge toward the holidays has been particularly harried this year.

I'll take the time to expand on all of the above here in the near future. I promise. But until then, Happy Holidays to you and yours.

Strike On

2007-11-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

A few people, mostly friends and family concerned with my financial well-being, have been asking me if the WGA strike affects me or not. Since I am neither American nor a member of the Writer's Guild, the quick answer is: no. But, as with so many other things, the outcome of this strike in the states will set the bar for us up here. So it's safe to say I have a stake in it, even if that's down the road a ways for me, career-wise.

And for those of you who are interested... or those of you who couldn't care less because you were led to believe by certain media outlets that this strike is all about a bunch of whiny rich Hollywood writers trying to fleece even richer whinier Hollywood producers, Mark Harris lays the whole thing out rather nicely at EW.com.

Thanks for your concern.

2007-10-22T11:02:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty excited about this...

...not least of all because E and I spent three months in India in 2004, and about three weeks of that time in Darjeeling.

In addition to the eclectic soundtrack on offer, the Darjeeling Limited website has some neat little on-location making-of clips. We saw many of those same places firsthand on our Indian sojourn, including the Osian Dunes. Although the trains we rode bear little resemblance to the film's namesake.

Wes Anderson has also done something interesting in making Hotel Chevalier, a short-film precursor to The Darjeeling Limited, available for free on iTunes. And I read somewhere this morning (can't remember where at the moment) that it may play ahead of The Darjeeling Limited in select theatres. Which would be kinda cool.

Now all I've gotta do is find time to go and see it.

I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski

2007-10-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

This made my day.

Something I was reading recently referred to The Big Lebowski as a 'cult film', which made me do a mental double-take. I've loved The Big Lebowski since I saw it in the theatre on opening weekend (1998) while ducking out of a wedding shower my wife was holding in our apartment for one of her friends. I think it was the first time I ever went to the theatre by myself. And laughing, out loud, during the film in the theatre by myself, felt strangely wonderful.

I've seen it probably a dozen times since. Maybe more. A good friend and fellow traveler bought it for me when it came out on VHS. And I still watch it whenever I stumble across it playing on television, and although the General audience edit isn't nearly as funny, I know what the lines are anyway. And still laugh.

But cult film? Why did it surprise me to read that? Not sure. Maybe I think of cult films as hallowed vestiges of some bygone era that have been somehow rediscovered by a younger generation desperate to bring some semblance of coolness to their existence. Not something I discover for myself, by myself, in a shopping-mall movie theatre in Abbotsford. And I guess it makes sense that if I've loved this movie enough to watch it over and over again, subconsciously imprinting lines of dialogue in my grey matter that come out of my mouth unbidden in everyday conversation, others would, too.

All of this because I stumbled upon the Lebowski Fest website again this morning. I found it a few years ago... or maybe a friend sent me the link. I don't know. Can't remember. But it warmed my heart. And made me want to take the morning off - it's raining, and dark and gloomy in Vancouver - and pop in that creaky VHS tape.

Top Ten?

2007-10-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

I just got a note from Bevan informing me that Retired is in consideration for Canada's Top Ten Shorts of 2007.

From the Toronto International Film Festival Group website:

Canada’s Top Ten was created in 2001 to recognize and honour excellence in Canadian cinema. Each year, an independent 10-member national panel of filmmakers, programmers, journalists and industry professionals vote on the best Canadian films of the year, which can include features, shorts, documentaries, animation, and experimental films. Each film selected as part of Canada’s Top Ten must have either premiered at a Canadian film festival or had a commercial theatrical release in Canada during the year.

Well, that all sounds rather lovely. And it behooves me to say that even being considered is an honour. But to be quite honest, I find it a bit perplexing because Retired wasn't accepted to screen at TIFF.

So what are our chances? It's hard to say. Who knows what moves the hearts and minds of independent panels of independent filmmakers, programmers, journalists and industry professionals these days. At the best of times this stuff feels like a bit of a crapshoot. Sometimes you get accepted, sometimes you don't. Most often you don't. At least that's been the case with Retired. When I saw the first cut of the film I thought it had all the makings of a festival darling... it was dark, quirky and quite beautiful, with a disturbing climax followed by a hanging bittersweet ending. It's all there. And yet... and yet. Almost resoundingly rejected by festival panels across the country. Well, okay, not rejected. Just not accepted.

So, having said all of that, this "consideration" is a welcome thing. Although I'm still unsure whether it restores my faith in the jury process or dashes it completely to bits.

From Sunny Goose Bay, Labrador

2007-10-02T06:00:00.002-07:00

Well, my writing career has taken me to some interesting places, but none as far-flung and fascinating as the one I find myself in this morning, the barracks at 5 Wing Goose Bay, Labrador. Now, my character doesn't align itself easily with the military mindset, so I was a little uncomfortable when I showed up at 443 Squadron Hanger at the Victoria airport after dark for my 11:40 pm Canadian Forces Airbus flight - a milk run that took us to Edmonton, Winnipeg and Trenton before arriving in Goose Bay at five o'clock the following afternoon. Luckily there were two other civilians on the flight to deflect some of the attention - an adolescent girl and her younger brother who were accompanying their father as far as Trenton. I did get a chance to sit up in the cockpit with the pilots for take-off and landing, an experience that, in this day and age of airline paranoia felt akin to stepping into the Holy of Holies to have a look at the Ten Commandments.

5 Wing Goose Bay is a Canadian Forces Base that was built in the lead-up to WWII to protect North America's northeastern flank. It made headlines around the world on 9/11 when seven trans-Atlantic commercial airliners were diverted here following the closure of North American Airspace.

I'm here with Lank/Beach Productions covering SAREX 2007, a training exercise and competition for Search and Rescue Technicians from squadrons across the country. These are the guys in the blaze-orange flight suits you see on the evening news, pulling unfortunate weekend sailors from their overturned skiffs.

Not sure exactly what I'm in for, yet - the "Exercise Activities" start tomorrow morning. I passed on the opening night reception at The Canuck Club last night. I was a little burned out from the flight and decided I wasn't up for drinking beer with about a hundred guys who jump out of airplanes for a living.

Six Years Later

2007-09-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

It's September 11th, six years later... and in many ways it feels like the world we've lived in for six years now is normal. And I guess it is. A new kind of normal. At the time many said things would never be the same again, and I guess they aren't. Six years doesn't seem like much of a marker, really. A plain, ordinary number. Not like ten or twenty-five. Yet I suppose the day, September 11th, will always dawn for us under a shadow.

In the days, weeks and months following September 11th, I began to imagine how the events of that day would figure into the literature of the future, much like other enormously catastrophic events of our history have of their representative eras. I haven't seen a lot of that yet, but some of the greatest writers and photographers of our time contribute regularly to the New York Times which annually compiles the best of their talent largess for its 9/11 reflection. It's worth tapping into, even if you have to sign up (it's free).

The art above (by John Mavroudis & Owen Smith) is poached from one of my favourite New Yorker covers of all time. It's from the September 2006 edition, and depicts Philippe Petit's famous tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers in 1974 in the ghostly absence of the towers which made the feat so spectacular.

Finch

2007-08-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

I always intended for this blog to be about my professional meanderings in the writing trade, loosely aimed at keeping friends, family, colleagues and sundry contacts informed about what I was up to. I haven't been very good at updating it, but there's not always a lot happening. And when there is, sometimes I can't talk about it.

At any rate, I've tried not to tie in to my personal life too much - a good friend once wrote in his in his own blog that no one needs to know what he had for breakfast, a sentiment I heartily echo. But I do feel that I would be remiss if I didn't mention what has been taking up the bulk of my time, energy and attention in recent days, even though it may veer dangerously in the direction of personal journal.

You see, on August 8th my wife and I welcomed a lovely little creature into the world whom we named Imogene Finch, and the intervening days have been some of the most wonderful of my life for all of the obvious reasons. An inordinate amount of time has been spent staring into her wide eyes as she tries to make sense of what she's seeing, (blurry shapes whose voices sound strangely familiar). That and the changing of diapers.

But fret not, dear friends, I've already got my ass back in the chair. Daddy's gotta bring home the bacon, after all. Not that there's any bacon in our house, not unless Grandpa's visiting, but you get the idea.

Thanks for listening.

ReBoot ReGenerated

2007-07-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, I can talk about this now. For the last four or five weeks I've been more-or-less holed up in my office re-imagining a new direction for the re-launch of the much beloved, prematurely canceled, computer-animated series ReBoot. And it's been a lot of fun. And it ain't over yet.

The basic idea is that parent company Rainmaker Animation assembled five teams and charged each with coming up with a new direction for the rebranding of the show, which they intend to relaunch with a feature-length trilogy. In the meantime they're attempting to enlist the avid ReBoot fanbase by putting the five pitches up online. Fans can interact with the creators and offer their thoughts/comments/criticisms and eventually vote for their favourite take. And it seems to be, um, working. It's been just over twenty-four hours since the site went live, and it took the fans all of two nano-seconds to weigh in. I think I can safely say the response has been overwhelming, and only time will tell how it all plays out.

The host site is Zeros2Hereos, and even though there are some issues with the the site, it is a beta-test version and I've been assured that the outstanding issues are being dealt with as I type (fingers crossed). At the moment, finding your way to our team's project, ReBoot: ReGenerated, is a little tough. You can start by going to the ReBoot Launcher, and then clicking on any one of the sample art images or "Follow the Team" links except, of course, ours. A Flash window should pop up, and if you then click on ReBoot: ReGenerated you should be on your way.

So, check it out. And let me know what you think because... that's kinda the whole point.

The Tease

2007-07-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

The project I alluded to in a recent post is about to launch... here's the teaser. Check back for the lowdown later this week.

*Playback makes it official.

Rat-a-too-ee

2007-07-18T16:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure whether it's the fact that I've been immersed in animation work myself lately, (wink-wink), or that Esther and I were recently in Paris, or that we're about to become parents ourselves in hours/minutes/days... but seeing Ratatouille in a matinee theatre filled with kids on summer holidays was a blast. It's about Remy, a rat who happens to have a culinary gift, and the inept restaurant garbage boy who helps him achieve his dream of becoming a chef. We went to see Toy Story in 1995 under similar circumstances, and ever since I've made it a point to see animated films in the afternoon with the kids. They're just so present in the moment, oohing and ahhing, spitting laughter, giggling uncontrollably... gasping, sometimes even whimpering, during the scarier scenes. And when the male lead Linguine got kissed full on the mouth by his love interest Collette, one little girl let out a genuinely disgusted "Eeewwwwh!" I imagined how great it would feel to be the filmmaker, sitting in the back row.

Pixar's Ratatouille is the second directoral effort from Brad Bird. His previous film, The Incredibles, won him an Oscar, and is one of my favourite films just because it's so darned fun.

And it's also worth mentioning that this film has once again taken animation to a whole new level visually. The rats looked cute, of course, but also wet and bedraggled, and turned my stomach slightly when they streamed across the kitchen floor en masse. But Paris - and the Notre Dame from the banks of the Siene - never looked so beautiful.

Something New...

2007-06-22T16:10:00.001-07:00

I'm working on something new right now... something I've signed non-disclosure agreements for, so it will remain a secret for the next six weeks or so. At which point it will go public in a big way. I can say that it's very collaborative, exciting and most importantly a lot of fun. So far.

The Project in question came about sort of out of the blue, but because of and in part due to, much of the work I've been doing in relative anonymity over the last, oh I don't know, five years or so.

But I should leave it at that. This is all, quite deliberately, to say check back soon, and all will be revealed...

In the meantime, why don't you go and watch a short film? There's a new one every day, brought to you by the IFC. Yesterday's film, Ha Ha Ha America, was very entertaining. I laughed out loud a couple of times. A great example of a smart, simple concept done on the cheap to great effect.

What I'm Reading

2007-06-12T08:54:00.001-07:00

Last night as I sat down on the couch under my favourite new lamp with the pile of books I'm currently working my way through, it struck me as kind of an odd group. Normally, I try not to read more than one thing at a time, but lately my interests seem to be expanding and my reading list widens daily. And the books pile up. Here are a few of them.

The mainstay of the pile is The Yiddish Policeman's Union, the
latest novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. It's a fun, hard-boiled detective story which takes place in an alternate history where the State of Israel collapsed following WWII and European Jews fled to Sitka, an outpost settlement in Alaska. I've been following Chabon since Wonder Boys, reading back to his earliest work, Werewolves in Their Youth, and forth, and was eagerly anticipating his first full novel since The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, (which won the Pulitzer in 2001). The thing I like best about Chabon is that he seems to believe that reading should be fun. In between novels Chabon's been writing short stories, comic books, children's fiction, editing for McSweeny's and a whole bunch of other cool stuff, most of which seems to have a decidedly pulp-fiction (not the movie) bent. All good stuff.

Next up is The Losers, Ante Up the first in a series of graphic novels (long comic books, but usually with more R-rated themes and content). It's about a crack team of black-operatives who take on the CIA after being betrayed and targeted for elimination by their superiors after witnessing something they shouldn't have. The Losers is everything I always wished and hoped comic books would/could become. The art is great, very cinematic (it is, of course, being developed as a feature film in Hollywood, slated for release in 2009). The writing is spare and terse and visceral. Without being, dare I say it, as cheesy as the comics from the golden age, which, lets face it, haven't aged very well. A number of modern comics seem to be going in this direction, like my beloved Amazing Spiderman.

And finally, the biggest book on the bottom of the pile (separated from the others by various comic books) is Garden in the Wilderness, Mennonite Communities in the Paraguayan Chaco, 1927-1997. This is an engaging historical account of the exodus of the Mennonites, my people, from Europe against the backdrop of the two most devastating wars in history, detailing their journeys and travails as they try to find a place where they can live out their lives, and more importantly their faith, unmolested by governments. And even though the book focuses on the Paraguayan Mennonites and how they transformed an inhospitable wilderness into a prosperous region, it ties all of the migrations of this stubborn, determined but humble and pragmatic people together nicely, including my own ancestors who came to Canada in the late part of the nineteenth century. Fascinating stuff.

Summer Redux

2007-05-24T19:18:00.000-07:00

Well, it feels like summer's back... (not sure what happened to the spring. Although it was only eight degrees Celsius in Vancouver on Monday. Weather, whatever. Bah!) ...and that means summer blockbusters. I've been more out of touch with what's been happening in the theatres lately than in recent history. (Incidentally, since my last post Grindhouse flopped at the box office. A hard sell to the masses, I guess. It's all about opening weekend, don'tcha know?)

Seems like it's the summer of thirds. Shrek the Third, Ocean's 13, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, The Bourne Ultimatum, Rush Hour 3...

Speaking of which, I did go to see Spiderman 3 and was... what would the word be... mildly entertained, I guess. Which isn't all bad. Not exactly disappointed, but not thrilled. Even though, yes, the 10-man-years that were reported to have gone into the special effects for the flick were spectacular, (and, as I've said elsewhere, after spending so much of my childhood imagining, I could watch the webhead swing around Manhattan for the duration of the film and be satisfied), they couldn't save the muddled overwhelming mass of story. Too many plotlines intersecting needlessly, and with outrageous coincidence, waaay too many villains, enough villains for three or four more movies. And Venom, well, that whole storyline was so butchered that... I digress, (and show my -- I hesitate to say it -- fanboy leanings when it comes to the black suit).

All of which is to say that my opinion, and the opinion of most movie-goers doesn't really matter when the Hollywood marketing machine manages to draw enough viewers for, what, a $151 million opening weekend for Spiderman 3?! Does it really matter what anyone thinks after that?

So, what's coming up that's of interest?

Not much, I'm afraid.

Live Free or Die Hard? (No, I didn't make that up. Coming to theatres late June.) There is Sicko, the latest polemic from Michael Moore which got rave reviews last week at Cannes. In the film Moore takes a group of sick Americans to the only place in America with free health care, Guantanamo Bay. And it'll be interesting to see how he has adjusted his tactics now that he's an international media personality.

And okay, there's The Simpson Movie, that'll be good. I'll go see that.

Moviegoing

2007-04-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

I've been really busy with the day job lately, (of which a post has been percolating for some time), but not too busy to sneak out to the movies this weekend to see Grindhouse. And this stylized retrograde double-feature by tag-team directors Robert Rodrigeuz and Quinten Tarantino really did make the moviegoing experience feel like sneaking out, playing hooky... it was that much fun. One-hundred-and-seventy minutes of cinematic exuberance. I don't think I've had fun like this at the movies since I was a kid.

The first movies I ever saw were in the ramshackle single-screen movie house in Saint-Pierre-Jolys, Manitoba.

I remember walking in to the sickly-sweet smell of popcorn, pop and cheap candy, and marvelling at the posters on the walls of the narrow entrance hallway. Particularly this one:

I couldn't understand why a woman would want see-through panels on the back of her jeans... I was probably nine years old at the time. I still don't. But it was exciting, I knew that. I saw Pinocchio in that little theatre, and Treasure Island and On the Right Track starring Gary Coleman as a shoeshine boy who lives inside a locker at the train station. And I LOVED them all.

As crude and misshapen as Grindhouse was, it made me feel kinda like that again.

I have to admit, there haven't been a lot of films that have pulled me into the theatre lately. I been struggling to put a finger on exactly exactly why that is until I saw Grindhouse. It's not that all the films coming out are bad or anything, (I'm no snob), but it's just that in recent days the Hollywood fare just feels so... calculated. It's almost like you can see shareholders meetings that have gone into making them.

I refer to A.O. Scott's review in the New York Times:

"Really, though, what Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Tarantino try to evoke is less a particular style or genre of moviemaking than a lost ambience of moviegoing."

The audience for the three-o'clock show on Friday afternoon was kinda rowdy, and broke out into spontaneous applause for the faux B-movie trailers that were part of the Grindhouse package, laughed and groaned together. Making it feel less like the lifeless multiplex that it was, and a little more like a rickety, smelly old theatre in some small cultural backwater. Which is, arguably, a good thing. At least in this movie-lover's opinion.

Good, Great, Okay

2007-03-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

The films were good, the people were great, and the parties were okay. At least that was my experience at NSI Film Exchange this year. But then again, I'm more of a pub person than a club person. I'm not so good with yelling in the ears of people I've just met. And not a lover of skewered meat appetizers.

The Retired premiere went smashingly. The house was packed, and a number of old friends showed up, lending a charmed almost dreamlike quality to the experience for me. All of the short film programs were hosted by Shane Smith from Movieola, who did a fabulous job with the post-screening Q&As. He knew the films, appreciated the craft and dedication that went into making them, and asked insightful, thought-provoking questions. I guess this shouldn't be surprising from the man who was the director of the Worldwide Short Film Festival for the last six years and was on the shorts selection committee at Sundance this year. He understands and respects the medium.

The climax of the weekend, A Conversation With... Sarah Polley, was not to be. She cancelled due to some kind of family emergency. Which was a shame because her appearance had been hyped by the festival - rightly so - and the local newspapers for weeks in advance. I've never been a huge Sarah Polley fan, although I appreciate her work and her position on the state of Canadian filmmaking, but after seeing her feature film directorial debut, Away From Her, I'll certainly have to rethink that. The film is magnificent. Destined to become a Canadian classic in years to come. Although, now that I think back, it's not quintessentially Canadian in the usual, obvious ways. It's subtle. It doesn't pander to its audience. And it's heartbreakingly beautiful.

Perhaps one of the reasons I liked Away From Her so much was that, like my short film Flickering Blue, it starred venerable actors - Gordon Pinsent, Julie Christie and Olympia Dukakis - at the height of their craft. Gordon Pinsent was in attendance for the Q&A and, reminiscent of my friend, James Karen, answered each question, no matter how simple or petty, with class, grace and good humor, in that studied, deep, resonant voice.

And then there were those two Neil Young songs. Now, Neil Young songs in a Canadian film may seem natural and obvious. But apparently Neil hangs onto the rights to those songs pretty tightly. Quick, name another movie with a Neil Young song in the soundtrack... nope. I couldn't think of any either. One of the producers apparently spent four months trying to get a 'yes' from Neil's manager. For two songs. But, trust me, it was worth it.

Away From Her comes to Canadian theatres May 4th.

Every film festival seems to have its own atmosphere, its own culture. It's hard to say who creates this, what drives it. Sometimes it's about the filmmakers, sometimes it's about the famous guests they've managed to attract, and sometimes it's just about the festival itself. The panels seem to have their own culture, too. Many of them are optimistic, telling filmmakers to keep at it, to push through and get it done no matter what. Others seem to be saying that you can do it if you really want to, but it's tough and ugly an extremely difficult - almost impossible - but go ahead and try it. At Film Exchange both of these camps had equal representation, in my experience anyway. Canadian festivals seem to have a more realistic approach in general. I was disappointed, however, that of all the conversations about how to save the Canadian film industry (that is to say the English-speaking Canadian film industry, Quebec is doing fabulously, thank-you very much) I didn't hear a single creative idea, perspective or even a hint at a solution to the problem. And that troubles me.

Oscar says Best

2007-02-28T08:45:00.000-08:00

It's probably a little late to be writing about the Oscars now that most newspapers and broadcast outlets in the English-speaking world that have been glutted with post-game analysis since Monday morning are finally getting on to other things. But, I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention that the film I've been talking about here all year, The Lives of Others, won Best Foreign Language Film. It's enjoying a limited theatrical release, (check local listings, and good luck unless you live in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal), which should be extended now, thanks to the Academy. I took my wife and some friends to see it on Saturday afternoon. And while it's not necessarily a 'feel good' picture, it is hopeful. Hopeful that no matter what dreadful things we as humans are capable of doing to one another, we're also capable of unexpected goodness.

And while I didn't think The Departed was his best work, it was somehow satisfying to see Martin Scorsese finally win for Best Director.

One more Oscar-related thing before I head out the door to catch my flight to Winnipeg for Film Exchange... Alex at Complications Ensue raises an interesting point that illustrates the arrogance, pomp and circumstance surrounding the Academy Awards: When are they gonna stop claiming that 1 billion people around the world are watching at home?

*Update: Oscar telecast attracts 10.6 million viewers in Canada. That only leaves about 990 million viewers to divvy up among the rest of the countries of the world. If I was a fan of emoticons, that one with the winking eye would go right here.

40 Below

2007-02-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

The 40 Below Films website has been updated just in time for our Film Exchange premiere. The downloads section of the Retired main page has samples of the music for the film from Moses Mayes and the fabulous Christine Fellows, who wrote the hauntingly beautiful closing-credits song.

It all starts a week from today, in Winnipeg. Which, incidentally, has had 40 below temperatures for the last couple of weeks. But hopefully the recent balmy weather will hold.

Film Exchange

2007-02-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

Well, the NSI Film Exchange schedule is finally up. You'll find Retired about halfway down the most recent press release under "Showcase of Canadian Short Films". Retired plays at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 3rd at the Globe Cinema (one of the only two reasons for going to Portage Place, the second being McNally Robinson, of course... oh, wait a minute, Prairie Theatre Exchange is in there too!). Nevermind. We're in a good theatre. And since the brand spanking new 35 mm print of 'Retired' has just been finished, I'll get to see it for the first time on a big screen. It should be beautiful, and given the time slot, reasonably well attended.

There are a number of things that make the Film Exchange special, the most prominent of which is probably the Opening Night SnowScreen. It's quintessentially Winnipeg. No one but a Winnipegger would think of something like this. Films, usually animated shorts, are projected onto a huge screen carved out of snow. Outside. In February. In Winnipeg. Oh, and it's free!

I was at the first one five years ago when it was downtown in the Old Market Square. We huddled around oil-drum bonfires, drank free hot chocolate and watched Cordell Barker's excellent new (then) short Strange Invaders.

It made me glad to be in Winnipeg. In February. No, really. SnowScreen's moved around a bit since then, and it's semi-permanent home seems to be at The Forks now.

The rest of the program looks pretty good, too. All Canadian, all the time. And, if you're in Winnipeg anyway, you can't beat hanging out at the Hotel Fort Garry. Should be a good time. And for whoever has some free time on Saturday afternoon, March 3rd, I'd love to see you there!

Nod

2007-01-16T13:16:00.000-08:00

It was nice to see my favourite film of 2006, The Lives of Others, (Das Leben der Anderen) get a Golden Globe nod for Best Foreign Language Film last night, even if it did lose out to Clint Eastwood's heralded Letters From Iwo Jima. The Lives of Others is also Germany's official submission (each foreign country only gets one) to the Oscar's this year, but those nominations haven't been released yet.

The Lives of Others will have a limited North American theatrical release starting February 9th in Los Angeles and New York. The website is much improved since I last posted on this film, and it even has a decent trailer. Check it out, and if it comes to a theatre near you, go see it. Or don't, but it is one of the few films that I can heartily recommend.

*Update: The Academy Award nominations are published; The Lives of Others makes the list.

Strangely Wonderful

2006-11-30T16:34:00.000-08:00

I try to read as many screenplays as is practical. Which usually works out to be about one a week. Sometimes more, usually less. How many I read has more to do with the quality of screenplays I can find online than how much time I have. Or how fried my corneas are. Since I started this racket, a number of online script repositories of varying quality have popped up. The most consistently good seems to be Simply Scripts. It's my favourite anyway.

I try to read something classic every now and again to get a sense of the venerable shoulders my craft is standing upon, and/or something current to see what the up-and-comers have come up with. It's always interesting, and often even enlightening, to read the screenplay for a movie you've already seen because you can get a sense of how the story has changed from conception to execution. Which ideas were strong enough to get through development hell and which didn't make the cut. But there's no greater gauge of a screenplay's inherent quality than to read it before you see the movie.

This afternoon I read Stranger Than Fiction. I haven't seen the film, yet, but I have seen the trailers so I wasn't coming into it without a reference point. I knew Will Ferrell was the main character, that Emma Thompson was the Narrator and that Dustin Hoffman was the English lit prof that Will's character goes to for help. I can't remember ever having enjoyed reading a script as much as I enjoyed reading this one. It's not easy to make me laugh out loud alone in my office, but Stranger Than Fiction had me chortling every few pages. The premise is brilliantly simple: A man starts to hear a voice that seems to be narrating his life as it happens and discovers that he's somehow become the main character in some author's tragic novel. And like all brilliant writing, it looks easy, and leaves you wondering, 'Now, why didn't I think of that?'

I first read about the writer, Zach Helm, in a Vanity Fair article about a year ago, but I didn't realize that what I was reading was his until I IMDb'ed it afterward. Helm was a highly-paid screenwriter who, like many highly-paid screenwriters, had never actually seen his work produced, and found his success less than satisfying. At which time he came up with a personal manifesto that more or less flew in the face of the industry and the prescribed career path of the vast majority of professional screenwriters. Vanity Fair didn't publish the entire manifesto, but it boils down to not allowing money or ambition to dictate the terms of the writing, to maintain and protect the sanctity of the creative process. Of course it could be argued that he already had done the working hack thing successfully for a number of years before his great epiphany. But either way it seems to have worked out pretty well for him. The writing is wonderful. Stranger Than Fiction has grossed over $33 million bucks in the domestic box office so far, and his next film, which he's also directing, is in post production.

I still haven't decided whether or not I'll go and see Stranger Than Fiction. I'm not sure I need to.

Here We Go

2006-11-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

This is an advance look at the Retired promotional postcard which will be distributed at screenings and festivals and whatnot. I had little to do with the postcard itself beyond writing the logline and, of course, the title. I really like the look on Cal's face - a combination of fear and defiance - which sets the right tone for the film you're about to see.

We've just begun to release Retired to festivals. It's an exciting, anxious time. The air is charged with potential as your baby goes out the door and into the world. Will it be accepted, understood, appreciated and seen by... thousands? Or not?

Time will tell.

Das Leben

2006-10-15T16:02:00.000-07:00

The VIFF wrapped on Friday, and as I sat in the theatre for one of the final screenings -- the crowd shouting out word-for-word the farcical festival promotional spots which appeared before each screening (but, hey, no candy commercials!) -- I couldn't help but think about how wonderful it had been. Two weeks of world cinema right on our doorstep. Two weeks of ditching work early to duck into a darkened theatre in the middle of the afternoon with a few hundred other aficionados. I was struck by how easy it had been to see a number of fabulous films, films you'd never usually get a chance to see, films you'd never heard about, knew nothing about, and hadn't been preconditioned to like or avoid. There is a certain thrill of discovery inherent in attending a film festival. You know that there are going to be some truly tedious and perhaps even a few awful films, but there are also treasures to be uncovered.

I kept getting lucky throughout the festival, scoring tickets to sold out shows that I had only chosen because they happened to suit my schedule. Which is how I came to see one of the best films I've ever seen in my life, a German film called The Lives of Others or Das Leben der Anderen. A week or so later it was given The People's Choice Award for Most Popular International Film.

The Lives of Others is set in East Berlin during the years preceding the fall of the Iron Curtain, and is about the master interrogator for the secret police who believes that if someone's hiding something he can find out what it is, and everyone's hiding something. He is at once fearsome and relatable because he's a believer, proud to be the "...shield and sword of the Party." When he's charged with finding something to indict the state's leading playwright and his beautiful actress wife his faith begins to slowly unravel as the corruption inherent in his superiors is revealed to him through the round-the-clock surveillance of the couple he gradually comes to respect and, eventually, actively protect.

The film is exquisitely written, beautifully produced and emotionally devastating. It is a rare film that feels this true. It is founded in some very fascinating facts. For instance, the German Democratic Republic is credited with the being the most effective intelligence agency in the world effecting the most comprehensive infiltration of a civilian population in history. One in three-hundred East Germans was employed by the state and one in fifty citizens were informants for the secret police, or Stasi. After the wall came down, citizens could access all of the surveillance that had been gathered on them, or at least that which was not destroyed by terrified officials in the republic's last days. Which is the stage upon which one of the most powerful scenes in Lives of Others plays out.

By contrast, last night Esther and I went to see The Departed, and while it is Scorsese, I was struck by how loud and sensational it was; all bombast with no discernible emotional resonance.

Made me look forward to next year.

Snubbed

2006-10-04T11:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, perhaps 'snubbed' is overstating it, but Douglas Coupland and jPod failed to make the Giller Prize short list. Being named to the long list (I've never heard of a long list before, but there you have it) is prestigious enough. And it's not like he needs the Giller Prize-winner accolade in the same way a lesser-known, less-established writer does. And it's good to see lesser-known, less-established writers get their due. So I guess all is well.

But it is interesting to note that Coupland has always been a bit of an outsider on the CanLit scene. In his own words:

"CanLit is when (sic) the Canadian government pays you money to write about life in small towns and/or the immigrant experience..."

The Globe and Mail earlier this week suggested that Coupland may have finally "cracked the inner sanctum of Canadian Literature". Which I'm not sure is something he's ever aspired to accomplish. He's probably better off right where he is.

Everything's Gone Coupland

2006-09-30T17:10:00.000-07:00

The 25th annual Vancouver International Film Festival opened last Thursday, and boasts 500 screenings of 300 films over two weeks. It is one of the best-attended film festivals in North America, registering an average of 150,000 attendees in each of the last three years.

As you can imagine it can be a bit daunting to pick up the program catalogue and figure out what you want to see. It would take you almost a week just to read through all the synopses. So I adopted my usual approach of choosing a single film that I absolutely must see, a few more I really want to see, a couple of short-film programs and a documentary or two.

This afternoon Esther and I attended the must-see film on the list, Everything's Gone Green, which happens to be Vancouver novelist Douglas Coupland's screenwriting debut. I was tempted to call it, Douglas Coupland's Everything's Gone Green because while that kind of credit is usually reserved for the director, this is undeniably Coupland's film. And I think the filmmakers knew that going in. They gave credit where credit was due.

If you've read any of Coupland's books (or all of them) you'll immediately recognize the Couplandisms throughout Everything's Gone Green. The protagonist is a thirty-something slacker who finds himself suddenly disillusioned by life and the path he finds himself on, watching from the sidelines as his siblings and friends seem to fall ass-backwards into success and become exceedingly rich. A father who has been disposed of by a company he's given his life to and who finds himself too young to retire and too old to learn something new. Various doomed fringe characters living on the margins of society, engaged in nefarious occupations. Unconventional romance. And, of course, Vancouver.

What I appreciated most was that Vancouver was not made exceptionally beautiful. Much of the filming was done in the spring, and the city looks as it should. Like Vancouver. Which is to say wet, dark, green. Overpriced condos dominate the skyline. Mountain-tops disappear into the low clouds. And there are bridges to cross. There is a lot of fun made of Vancouver-as-film-set, made to stand in for Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, et al in thousands of films over the last decade. The protagonist's love interest is a set designer and talks about a palm-tree prop that has appeared in more movies of the week than Jane Seymour.

The film was good. I enjoyed it. So did Esther, and from the sounds of it, much of the sold-out theatre. Douglas Coupland was not in attendance. No wonder. He's just made the Giller Prize long list (new this year, the long list), with J-Pod, is preparing to open a play based on Life After God, his documentary, Souvenir of Canada, came out on DVD this week... I'm quite sure there's more, but suffice it to say the man is busy.

Time Will Come

2006-09-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

Last week, in a comment on my In the Midst of Manhattan post, Jer linked to a Katrina Onstad article from cbc.ca that echoed my sentiments about New York and the movies. Or rather, my sentiments echoed hers, I guess, since hers appeared three days before mine. Had I read it before I wrote that entry I would likely have simply pasted a link with a few additional personal reflections. It's remarkable that she's used a number of the same reference points I did, citing similar films, actors and directors.

In the days, weeks and months following 9/11 I wondered how writers and filmmakers would respond, and how the culture and character of New York City could never be represented in exactly the same way it had been. The shot of the World Trade Center towers in the opening credits for Friends, for example, suddenly took on a profundity that the show was unprepared to deliver.

And while Hollywood seems to have recently returned (with limited success, it seems) to making New York a backdrop for beautiful, wealthy, navel-gazing intellectuals in their multi-million dollar loft apartments, I'm waiting for the films and novels in which the events and aftermath of 9/11 and how it has shaped the way we live are explored in greater depth and with historical insight, with the perspective gained from the passage of time. And I don't mean movies and books literally about 9/11, such as United 93 or Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. That doesn't really interest me.

Well, since Onstad already said it, (and in case you don't want to read the whole article even though it's so good you really should...), I'll quote her:

"Some might say that seeing New York function once again as set dressing means that the terrorists aren't winning, but maybe it only suggests a kind of artistic denial, or complacency. Of course, "movie New York" has always been a myth, but on 9/11, that myth was shattered, maybe irreversibly, leaving a space at the movies for a new kind of New York. Wouldn't it be great if filmmakers could find a way to show New York that is neither blinkered to the new world reality nor directly addressing 9/11? Soon, perhaps, films will catch up to our own stretched imaginations and New York will turn up not just as a changed city, but also as a changed symbol. The city means something new now, and it is up to artists to tell us what that is, however complicated, however divisive." ~ Katrina Onstad from New York State of Mind, cbc.ca

What, for instance, does Woody Allen have to say about what has become of his town? And I wonder if that has something to do with why his last few films have been mounted in London, England. Similarly perhaps, Spike Lee took on Hurricane Katrina in a much-ballyhooed documentary, When the Levees Broke, but has not really addressed the attack on the city that has become synonymous with his persona in any significant way.

That I'd like to see. And the time will come.

Five Years Gone

2006-09-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

On a CBS documentary about the FDNY and 9/11 last night, it was said that if you scratch the surface of any New York firefighter you'll find 9/11. And having been in New York recently I'd extend that sentiment to all New Yorkers.

Ground Zero affected me more deeply than I had anticipated. Seeing that gaping wound in the Manhattan skyline was heartbreaking. As I stood outside 10 House, the fire station across the street, a bicycle courier came out of the station and called back over his shoulder to the firemen inside, "You guys are my heros, you know? That's where it's at."

In the Midst of Manhattan

2006-09-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

I was in Manhattan last week for the first time, and I was surprised to discover how familiar the place felt. I've been in a number of great cities, but have always had the joy and wonder of discovering them upon arrival. It was different with New York. It was like I already knew it, like I already had an accumulated memory of the place from all of the thousands of things I've read in books, seen on television and in movies, heard in songs... and throughout the week, as Esther and I wandered around town we kept knowing things, identifying landmarks, that we hadn't seen actually seen before. At one point, we were walking up 5th Avenue, when Esther told me to look back. There was the Flatiron Building. We had just walked right by it.

It's impossible to look at the Statue of Liberty in the distance from Battery Park without thinking of ten-year-old Vito Corleone staring through the window of his quarantine cell in The Godfather Part II. Or Perry and Jack Lucas lying on their backs "cloud-busting" from the Great Lawn in Central Park in The Fisher King. Or the Brooklyn Bridge without thinking of Isaac and Mary watching the sun come up in Woody Allen's Manhattan. Or any of hundreds of locations from the the Woody Allen oeuvre or, more recently, Sex in the City.

Our hotel was in Midtown, a block from the Empire State Building, and we must have passed it three or four times a day, and every time I looked up I wondered at the scale of King Kong, or the ill-fated meeting of Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember, on the observation deck eighty-six flours up.

While in the Metropolitan Museum's Temple of Dendur exhibit, I thought of Harry asking Sally to dinner. Come to think of it Holden Caufield, from Catcher in the Rye, spent some time looking at the mummies and "toons" in the Met, too. I definitely thought of old Holden in Central Park, urging his little sister, Phoebe, to ride the carousel.

"I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could have been there."

In Greenwich Village I imagined Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs haunting the cafes, jazz cellars and stoops, drinking cheap wine out of gallon jugs and heading back to their cold-water flats to eat Benzedrine, write and listen to jazz all night from a transistor radio. I walked under the awning of The Village Vanguard and thought of John Coltrane and Charlie Parker shaping their sound, and birthing the only truly original American art form and emerging onto the street at dawn, probably without a much of a clue as to the significance of what they were doing.

Being in Manhattan somehow makes you feel like you've become a part of all that, part of all of that history, those lives, those stories, part of the mythology of the world's greatest city. Maya Angelou said she became a writer so that she could live more than one life, and that's kind of how I felt in New York.

And I guess you could take the high road and thumb a nose at this, say that its corrupted and inauthentic. I've heard the lament, for instance, that Times Square has been Disneyfied, that Broadway is dead, that it has become a tourist trap in line with the showiness of Las Vegas. But I was awed by the talent on display at Sweeney Todd, in which the ten actors played multiple characters and multiple instruments each... and did all the set and costume changes without a hiccup!

I think New York City has always aspired to be a mythical place, and all of those moments, remembered or otherwise, only served to make the place more magical, magnanimous and mystical than it already is.

I, for one, am thankful for every writer, filmmaker, artist, actor or citizen of Earth that has contributed to the collective memory of The Big Apple.

Ready to Retire

2006-08-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

When I was in Winnipeg last week I had a chance to sit down with my collaborators and screen a draft of our latest film, Retired. (Yes, we've come to our senses and returned to the traditional spelling. Not sure what we were thinking.) And the film looks fabulous. I mean, it's beautiful. Given the fact that the single location is a tire warehouse, you'd expect it to be drab and colourless with those awful overhead warehouse fluorescents. But it's visually very interesting. There's a depth of colour and texture and atmosphere that I hadn't anticipated.

Director Bevan Klassen came up with some interesting choices, (suggested, at least in part, by the evocative writing, of course). Cinematographer Steven Morrisson really stood on his head this time out, and his work will be done justice in glorious 35mm on the big screen come festival time.

Winnipeg's own Christine Fellows is hard at work on the score, which should be completed in the next couple of weeks. The cut I saw had temp music, bits and pieces, experiments in sound which hint at the final score to come. Haunting cello and her signature piano sound. I can't wait to hear what she comes up with. Should be wonderful.

I've spent a fair amount of time with our producer and director lamenting the state of narrative film represented in Canadian festivals in recent years, which seem to celebrate the edgy and audacious over those that actually endeavour to tell a story. It remains to be seen how this film will be received, but it is more edgy and dark than our last film. In a way. I'd call it a black comedy, if it wasn't so disturbing. It feels festival friendly.

Someone recently asked me if it this film was autobiographical. My knee-jerk reaction was to say, no, not this time. But then they asked me how I'd come up with the title, and I said, "Well, when I was fifteen I worked at the local service station, primarily in the tire shop. And my boss was this very affable man who had little catch-phrases for everything. He knew and loved his customers, kind of like this guy Doug in the film, and if he knew his customer needed new tires he'd ask them if they were ready to retire..."

I may have to adopt Hemingway's retort to a reporter who asked him if a particular story was autobiographical. He said, "Isn't everything?"

Dog Days of Summer

2006-08-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

Well, summer is about half over and what have we learned so far? Besides that there might be something to this whole global warming thing after all.

The summer blockbusters keep on marching out in lockstep every weekend. Some do as they're expected to do and others don't. Some are good, and some are not so good. None are horrible, out-right bad or laughable. None are great. At least none I've seen. The worst you can say about most films in this corporatized Hollywood age is that they're bland. Not much to love, not much to hate. Hard to feel anything about movies lately. I still get a swell of emotion as the house lights go down, just before the string of crass candy and automobile commercials come up, then a short surge of anticipation during the previews, but the feature presentation leaves me feeling... not much.

I tried to be optimistic about Superman Returns, I really did. I wanted to like it. I wanted it to be a modern myth, a film I would see again and again as time went by, something I might show my son one day, in the event that I have a son one day. But now, six weeks later, virtually nothing from that film has stuck with me. Kevin Spacey was lame as Lex Luthor, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The usual plot involving a hard-to-come-by piece of Kryptonite, and a dubious usage of crystal Lex borrows from The Fortress of Solitude after walking through the front door unchallenged. Brandon Routh was passable as Christopher Reeve, which, I guess makes him a decent Superman. I dared to hope for something more; I hoped for a new Superman, someone... I don't know, heroic.

It took the better part of two decades, dozens of writers, hundreds of drafts of screenplays, a bevy of A-list talent and $260 million to get a new Superman movie into the megaplexes. I don't think it's even made back it's staggering budget yet. Time will tell if we see more of Superman in the future. There's a plot point in the film that anticipates another sequel, but I'm not sure there's an audience for it.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, on the other hand, was a lot of fun. Remarkable set-pieces. Epic storytelling. Myth. Adventure. Action. And more special effects per minute of screen time than... well, than the last one. The villain, Davy Jones, was a pleasure to watch for every squirming, slithering, gurgling second he was on screen. And, of course, Johnny Depp, reprising his role as Captain Jack Sparrow, was fantastic. The plot, this time around, has Captain Jack trying to save his own soul from eternal servitude on Davy Jones' crew of the undead by finding the key to Davy Jones' Locker. It's part two of a trilogy, so if you're one of the three people in North America who hasn't seen it yet, don't expect things to tie up tidily before the credits roll. You'll have to wait until next summer for that.

About the only thing Miami Vice has in common with the tv series of the same name is that it takes place in a highly-stylized Miami. And that it's about vice cops fighting drug lords. And the character names. Just because you loved the series doesn't mean you'll love the show. I liked the series, and I liked the movie. Director Michael Mann - who executive produced the series - uses high-definition digital technology as an end in itself, and not simply, like many filmmakers, as a way to reduce budget. Budget isn't a problem for Michael Mann. Certainly not in this film, with it's ocean-going speed boats, state-of-the-art aircraft, high-tech weaponry and drug kingpin castles. Like his previous film, Collateral, Mann uses the digital pallet to create a gritty realism and raw beauty. And he makes it look so, so gorgeous. No one shoots night exteriors like Michael Mann. At several points in the film I found myself gasping, as lightning lit up the murky heavens over the neon Miami skyline.

A. O. Scott, of the New York Times, captures my feelings exactly:

'With “Miami Vice” he clearly had money to burn, and the flames are beautiful to behold. Mixing pop savvy with startling formal ambition, Mr. Mann transforms what is essentially a long, fairly predictable cop-show episode into a dazzling (and sometimes daft) Wagnerian spectacle. He fuses music, pulsating color and high drama into something that is occasionally nonsensical and frequently sublime. “Miami Vice” is an action picture for people who dig experimental art films, and vice versa.'

If I had one complaint, it was that Colin Farrell is outclassed by the picture. He tries to cover his Irish brogue with a sort of deep south/cajun drawl that just doesn't cut it. I keep wondering when his acting will step up to meet his reputation. He's too young to be phoning it in.

I haven't seen Clerks II yet. I mean to, and I'll definitely rent it if I don't catch it before it disappears from theatres. Now, there's smart filmmaking. Clerks II made money before it opened. The box office take is gravy, $22 million worth, so far. I love Kevin Smith more for who he is and what he does than for the films he makes. Say what you will about the man, he does have a rare vision, and makes films that he himself is genuinely amused by. Which strikes me as honest and authentic.

What's up next? Little Miss Sunshine. It took Sundance by storm earlier this year, and Steve Carell currently has my endorsement for the funniest man in show business.

So, um, what started out as a rather bleak commentary on the state of summertime film-going has become almost... I don't know. Jubilant? Nah, that's probably pushing it.

Stills

2006-07-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

Bevan recently sent me a couple of stills from the set of our latest project, reTired, so I thought I'd share.

Here we have our protagonist, Doug, blissfully unaware that one of the 200-plus phone calls he receives before five o'clock will irrevocably alter the course of his life.

Production stills are shot by an on-set photographer to approximate the key images from the film for the promotional materials, press releases, festival submissions and whatnot. And since I couldn't visit the set due to an eleventh-hour shooting reschedule, this is the first look I've had, too.

The Manitoba Arts Council has given us the money to blow reTired up to a 35mm print, (which is what you see when you go to the movies), so it should look absolutely gorgeous up on the screen when it hits the festival circuit in the Fall. And we may even have attracted an amazingly talented singer/songwriter to score the film, but I've promised to keep that news under my hat until contracts are signed and agents have been placated. All in all, I'd say this little film is shaping up remarkably well.

Oh, dear. How did it ever come to this?

Summer Films

2006-06-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

So, it's summer. Even in Vancouver. And with it comes the usual glut of summer films. Summer films are generally considered to be those that cater to the broadest possible audience, usually humans less than thirty years old. Kids on summer holidays. Which more often than not means movies that are long on spectacle and short on story. A season of remakes, adaptations and sequels.

And I've usually been pretty elitist about this kind of thing, and prepared to settle into a long dry spell until the Fall when the Oscar contenders line up and start to appear on the box office marquee. But I read something by the notoriously surly David Mamet today, a piece called The Screenplay and the State Fair, that made me rethink that attitude.

"If we reason or accept that this is not drama, which it is not, we need not decry the summer film's vapidity. It would be inappropriate to criticize the pie-eating contest for lack of reasonable nutrition."
~ David Mamet

Indeed.

You know, I've never had the pleasure of seeing a real live pie-eating contest, but I imagine it would be pretty entertaining. It's not something I'd like to watch every day.

And there's only so much beautiful weather a person can take. Especially a person without air conditioning in their house. It's really nice to duck into a dark, cool theatre for a couple of hours on a hot day. And I have to say, there are more than a few summer movies that will get my dollar (or twelve). After openly mocking the concept of creating a movie inspired by a Disneyland ride, I loved Pirates of the Caribbean, and I've really been looking forward to the sequel, Dead Man's Chest. I'll probably go see Clerks II, Miami Vice... (yes, they really did make a movie of the show, but at least it's directed by the creator of the television series, one Michael Mann, who has since directed some of my favourite movies).

Think I'll pass on Snakes on a Plane, though.

Jesus Christ Superman

2006-06-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

I was never a Superman fan. Sure, I liked the old movies enough, as a kid, but I never got into the comics. Superman always struck me as a goody two-shoes. Too pure and virtuous and innocent to be relatable. He never really screws up. His only real dilemma is whether or not to reveal his true identity to Lois Lane. I always thought he should spend more time trying to round up all the spare Kryptonite in the universe so it would stop getting into the wrong hands. Plus, I never bought that whole Clark Kent thing... I mean, a pair of thick glasses and a conservative suit doesn't exactly hide the fact that you're basically a god walking among men.

(Bear with me, this blog will not become all about superheros and comics, I promise.)

When we first saw the teaser for the new Superman Returns, Esther immediately said, "They're setting him up as Jesus Christ."

To wit, from the teaser, Jor-El (Superman's father, as if you didn't know):

"Even though you've been raised as a human being, you are not one of them. They can be a great people Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity to do good, I have sent them you, my only son."

Boom.

Which is fine. Superman has been compared to Jesus/God before. I've got no problem with that. But I do start to get nervous when people support or decry a movie solely because of its perceived message.

Just last month we had Christians of every stripe the world over drawing lines in the sand over The Da Vinci Code, as if it actually mattered or something. I mean, isn't all of this just getting a little bit out of hand? Is this the legacy of The Passion of the Christ? Which was recently rated the most controversial film of all time but which still made $370 million at the domestic box office. (And if you think Mel Gibson made The Passion of the Christ with his own money because he's a devout Christian, then I've got a bridge to sell you. Mel made Passion because he saw an untapped market. And, baby, did he tap it.)

I'm all for movies that make a statement, raise discussions, and even change the way we think about things. And I think filmmakers should aspire to say something with their work. But when I can see the strings of the studio's marketing departments being pulled for all they're worth to evoke meaning and incite controversy for the singular purpose of selling tickets to both red and blue states, and people actually falling for it, getting downright sanctimonious about it, buying out blocks of tickets, even whole theatres to support it... my skin crawls.

They're still just movies, right? Entertainment.

Go watch the movie. If you like it, that's great, tell your friends. If not, don't. Me? I'm going to go see Superman Returns because I think Bryan Singer makes great superhero movies, and because (as I've said before) my friend James Karen has a speaking part in it. And I think it'll be a lot of fun.

'Nuff said.

Lingering Adolescence

2006-05-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

When I was... let's say twelve-or-so, one of my uncles abandoned his lingering adolescence and with it his comic book collection which was, at the time, inadequately housed in a number of blue plastic milk crates. I more or less rescued those blessed crates and the comics therein from sharing the fate of this same uncle's record collection, which ended up smoldering among the coffee grounds, eggshells and plastic bags in the local dump four miles outside of town. (I do hope some resourceful soul rescued them, although to this day the only record I can remember seeing in that stash was Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell which isn't particularly rare.)

In those blue plastic milk crates were several comic book series like DC's Jonah Hex and Scalphunter and Marvel's Power Man and Iron Fist and, my favourite at the time, The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. And I spent many happy months with those comics spread out over the floor of my bedroom, reading.

I was dismayed to learn, after reading them, that most of the titles I had been enjoying had been cancelled. The one series that hadn't been cancelled was The Amazing Spider-Man, of which there were relatively few in my newly acquired collection. So I started buying them every chance I got at the Fort Richmond 7-11 while my parents shopped for groceries at the Safeway across the street.

I soon realized that there were three Spider-Man titles, The Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man and finally Web of Spider-Man. Being 'from the country', it was hard keeping up with all three on those infrequent forays into 'The City'. It never occurred to me to subscribe, probably because of the pure joy of spinning that squealing metal rack at the end of the candy aisle, (in that 7-11 which always reeked of vomit), perusing the various covers before finding my chosen quarry.

For anyone who's been paying attention, (or not), you've probably noticed Hollywood's obsession with comic-book based movies in recent years. Which I greeted with some righteous indignation after watching the Batman franchise get progressively worse, (before finally surfacing from the quagmire of mediocrity and bad camp with last year's Batman Begins).

Then came X-Men.

I never bought any X-Men comics, but one of the two other guys in my high school who read comic books did, (the third read Fantastic Four, so we had all bases covered), and I read his. And I found the first film very satisfying. Cyclops was still a bit of a dweeb, and Wolverine rocked, though I found myself disappointed in how underutilized Rogue was. But, more importantly, the story and characters were true to the comics, more-or-less, and the special effects were suddenly viable. It gave me hope that comic books could make good movies.

And then, finally, in 2002... Spider-Man.

I won't get into how disappointing the Green Goblin's high-tech costume/armour was, or the fact that Kirsten Dunst was miscast as Mary Jane, because, frankly, I was too mesmerized seeing Spider-Man swing through the streets of Manhattan. It was just as I'd imagined it. I could have watched that alone for the two hours. (Sorry, I'll, rein in the fan-boy stuff.)

When I read about the guys that got hired to write X-men, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man et al, I learned that most of them were guys like me who had read comic books on the floors of their bedrooms as kids and grew up to become screenwriters. Some of them even wrote comic books, which was something that had never occurred to me for some reason. Most of them got to meet Stan Lee, and were given free comic books from the studio. And, as it turns out, comic books make good movies because the writing and imagery are similar to screenwriting and story-boarding.

Now, why didn't I think of that?

Guess I should start working on my pitch for The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu.

Update: Drat, foiled again.

Best of 2005

2006-05-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

I'm generally reluctant to recommend films to people, and when I do I offer a standard list of disclaimers that usually ends with "...well, I liked it anyway." Which is an oblique way of saying "This is something I found valuable, and if you value some of the same things I do, you may enjoy this film as well." All of which serves to let me off the proverbial hook in the event that the person I'm recommending it to ends up hating it. I'm never sure if I've loved a film until several days later and the initial emotion of the first viewing has faded.

Having said that, I humbly offer my favourite film of 2005: The Squid and the Whale.

I first saw The Squid and the Whale at the Vancouver International Film Festival where my last short, On A Sunday, was in competition. I had convinced my wife and our film's director and producer to attend, even though none of them had heard of it. Which put me solidly on said proverbial hook.

The Squid and the Whale is a comedy about divorce. Loosely speaking. It's also a coming-of-age story for its teenage protagonist, the eldest of two sons born to two bohemian intellectuals living in Brooklyn's Park Slope in 1986. It is the third feature film from writer/director Noah Baumbach, who co-wrote The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou with Wes Anderson, who wrote and directed one of my favourite films of all time, The Royal Tenenbaums. See how this all works?

Noah Baumbach earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for The Squid and the Whale which was largely autobiographical. Jeff Daniels, who plays the faded patriarch and writer-gone-to-seed, Bernard Berkman, actually wore clothes from Noah's father's wardrobe. Baumbauch shot the film for $1.5 million, on Super 16 millimetre and the camera work is largely handheld, which makes the film feel like it was shot as it happened by a fifth member of the Berkman family.

In the case of the VIFF screening of The Squid and the Whale last year my cohorts enjoyed the film as much as I had, which came as a relief. But sooner or later we all have to defend a film we love that others, often our closest friends or family, hated. For instance, how could I like films as different as Heat and Husbands and Wives? The closest I've ever come to a catch-all statement to defend myself is that the film has to transport me for its duration. Which means that I have to buy into the reality of the film, but I don't necessarily have to like or relate to the characters or subject matter. My parents have one of the healthiest marriages I've ever witnessed, and I've never been to Brooklyn, and yet I have no doubt that that the pain, confusion and absurdity suffered by the Berkman family in The Squid and the Whale is true and authentic.

I don't think that's a lot to ask of a film, (especially at today's ticket prices), but it is a tough thing to accomplish.

Rejig

2006-05-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

So, as anyone who has been here before can see, I (with a little help from JDH) have changed the look, and quite possibly the feel, of this space.

Previously, the purpose of this page was to give my friends, family, colleagues, collaborators and potential clients some idea of who I am and the kind of work I do. Those self-imposed parameters began, at some point, to feel rather limited and limiting. I'm not entirely sure just how things will change in the days, weeks and months to come, and it's safe to say the content will evolve. I hope it will become a better reflection of where I'm at in addition to providing some insight into the things I'm working on and the things -- books, music and most importantly movies -- that I'm digging at any given time. You may find an excerpt of my work, or a movie review, or a childhood photo, or an emerging personal philosophy... you just never know, (because, at this point, neither do I).

I've also enabled comments, so please feel free to say 'hello', drop a note, or ask a question and I'll do my best to say 'hi' back, answer asked questions or ignore said comments, depending.

And, for the record, my wife does understand, (why I stare out of the window, that is). God bless her.

As We Speak

2006-04-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

My latest short script is being shot this weekend in Winnipeg, and if all goes well, will wrap probably very late Sunday night.

It was exactly a year ago this week that Bevan (director), Frank (producer) and I met over falafels on Portage Avenue in Winnipeg to discuss this project for the first time. In the intervening twelve months the script went through eight official drafts, and too many polishes to count, the last of which was only four weeks ago. Which gives you some idea of how long it can take to get a film from concept to script to camera, even a short film, and some idea of how intense the collaborative process can be.

We also tossed around a number of titles before settling on 'reTired'. And since I've put this off long enough, 'reTired' is about...

Doug, the self-described Wayne Gretzky of telephone jockeys, who fronts a $40-million-dollar tire inventory that dwarfs his sales desk in the dark heart of an enormous warehouse. Doug fields hundreds of customer calls every day with good humour and panache, but by the time the phone rings one minute after closing time on the worst day of his life, Doug's decision of whether or not to answer it has become a matter of life and death.

Exclusive

2006-04-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not entirely sure, but I think this still photo* from the set of Superman Returns just may be an exclusive. It features screen legend Eva Marie Saint as Martha Kent, (Clark Kent's mother), and her beau, Ben Hubbard, played by my friend, James Karen.

I'm not sure if it's just nostalgia or what, but the trailer for Superman Returns gave me the goosebumps. Look for it in your local megaplex this summer.

*Thanks to JHP for the photo.

Never Say Die

2006-03-29T15:12:00.000-08:00

I'll be in Winnipeg this weekend for what was supposed to have been the shoot for our next short film. Instead, I'll be hanging out with friends and family and meeting with colleagues, which isn't all bad.

Here's why:

If you're following along from my last, somewhat cryptic and vague, post, you'll know that this short film was unique in that I wrote the script based very closely on the life of an actual person, a non-actor, and the central location was his workplace. The thinking behind this approach is that the performance, and the resulting film, will be more authentic and truthful. It worked for John Cassavetes and Mike Leigh, it seems to have worked for Steven Soderbergh, (even though Bubble wasn't very well received), but it didn't work for us. At least not this time.

In a tragic case of life-imitates-art, the fellow for whom I wrote the script has recently experienced the central event of the film in his real life. It's out of respect for him that I won't go into further detail. Suffice it to say, that he found himself unable to participate in what has since become a parody of his own circumstance.

So, we lost the lead and the central location, but still had the script and the money to shoot it. Within hours of learning the bad news, our intrepid and undaunted producer, Frank Zappia, was in his car scouting new locations while director Bevan Klassen started to recast the lead. I've since made the necessary changes to the script and, in the true spirit of independent filmmaking, we are moving ahead with production, albeit delayed a few weeks.

The Next Film

2006-02-27T16:24:00.000-08:00

The next short film from 40 Below Films, written by yours truly, is ramping up toward production and is scheduled to go to camera on the first weekend in April. This film will reunite the team from our last film, 'On a Sunday', and, thanks to the Manitoba Emerging Filmmaker Award, will have significant financial support and will premiere at NSI Film Exchange 2007.

I haven't written or talked much about this project because, well, it's hard to write or talk about. Which may or may not be a good thing. I'm not sure. Common screenwriting wisdom states that you should be able to describe your story in a single sentence. It would be hard to do that with this film without revealing the ending. So, I've been talking about the process of making the film more than the film itself.

When I was last in Winnipeg Bevan approached me to write a short script with several special conditions. One, that it be short, six to eight pages. Two, it should be set in a single location. Three, he already had the location. Four, it would, ideally, be a single character piece. And, five, he already had cast the lead.

I guess I was up for the challenge, because a couple of hours later I found myself interviewing the actor, on location. Which also happens to be where the actor worked his day job. Oh, and he isn't really an actor. But he is a fascinating human being. And it's a visually interesting, unique location...

Okay, maybe I shouldn't have started this.

There is, by the way, some precedent for this kind of filmmaking. Most recently Steven Soderbergh did something similar with Bubble. But he's, you know, Steven Soderbergh. He can pretty much do whatever he likes.

From Rosenort

2006-01-30T17:44:00.000-08:00

As an alumnus of the Vancouver Film School I was recently tapped for an interview, and the story has just appeared on the writing department website. Reflecting on my time at VFS "...well back in 2000" for the interview was an interesting process. And I even managed to come up with a couple of quotables. It's a little odd to read what someone else has written about you and to see how they have interpreted what you've said, written or done.

I'm left wondering what the general impression might be on a reader who has never met me. Or, for that matter, on those of you who know me.

And, to set the record straight, I have since remembered seeing roses in Rosenort, the pink ones that grow ragged and wild in the ditches.

About Hollywood

2006-01-13T13:47:00.000-08:00

This is the first photo I've posted on this site; the writer's life is not usually particularly photo-worthy. In case you didn't know, this is Jimmy Karen flanked by me and my wife Esther. The photo was taken during the reception in the atrium of the DGA building following the 'Flickering Blue' screening. I also got a chance to see director Harper Philbin's new film, 'The Gospel According to Roy', which was very good, and funny.

Hollywood is Jimmy's town, (at least it seems to be when you're with him), and he is a natural and generous host. On Saturday night we met Harper and his wife Gail at the gorgeous apartment in the Hollywood hills that Jimmy shares with his wife, Alba Francesca. After a warm welcome, and a little flirting with the ladies, Jimmy jumped behind the bar, "What are we drinking?"

Our time in Hollywood was short, but undoubtedly sweet. The fact that it was 20 degrees and sunny all weekend didn't hurt. We may have even come up with a way to make our feature, 'Slim Bullinger', but I'll leave it at that for now.

Back to L.A.

2006-01-02T18:13:00.000-08:00

I've been invited back to Los Angeles for a screening of 'Flickering Blue' at the Directors Guild of America next weekend. The DGA building on Sunset Boulevard is a stunning structure, and I remember standing in its shadow one sunny day the last time I was in Hollywood (for L.A. Shorts Fest) and wondering which famous director might be ambling its hallowed halls at that very moment.

Even though I've said it before, (in this instance I've enjoyed being wrong), this will likely be the last time I get to see 'Flickering Blue' on the big screen. This occasion marks the second time I've seen it on Sunset Boulevard -- the last time was at the Arclight Cinemas. I'm still very proud of this little film. It's been good to me.

My wife, Esther, will be joining me in Hollywood this time around, and I'm happy to have the opportunity to introduce her to my friend, director John Philbin, and our L.A.-based cast and crew including First A.D. Patrick Priest, cinematographer Jack Anderson, and the inimitable Jimmy Karen. Jimmy has had a very busy year, racking up four film credits, and working with such luminaries as director Bryan Singer and actress Eva Marie Saint on Superman Returns, and Will Smith.

Blizzards

2005-12-14T13:25:00.000-08:00

I'm increasingly skeptical about the proliferation of awards and award shows in the entertainment industry. I'm not sure what the point is of being so self-congratulatory. But, having said that, it's always nice to get a nod. 'On a Sunday' has been nominated for a Blizzard Award for Drama: Short Form by the Manitoba Motion Picture Industry Association. The Blizzards are held every second year. The winners will be announced at the awards show at the Winnipeg Convention Centre in February.