When this happened with my last script it got picked up by a top producer and an amazing director. Here’s to lightening striking twice 🤞🏻
https://blcklst.com/projects/149594
A Short Guide to Watching The Big Lebowski
First you’ll need to find an appropriate glass. A straight short tumbler. Put ice in it. Eyeball measure one part Kahlua to one part vodka, then pour in two parts light cream (milk is also suitable). Stir. You now have a White Russian. Every time The Dude makes himself a White Russian, make yourself one too. If you are watching with friends, ensure that they do the same.
If they don’t drink due to being pregnant, they’re a recovering alcoholic, because they are currently taking medicine that reacts badly with alcohol, or simply because they are one of those annoyingly high achieving twats who has their shit together (fuck those guys), they can watch the film too, just know that they won’t be enjoying the film as much as you.
Slowly get drunk until the film swims into your soul and becomes a part of you.
When the credits roll, have an existential crisis, quit your job and dedicate the rest of your life to trying and failing to write a screenplay half as good as this one.
Die knowing that you tried to do something interesting with your small insignificant life.
Jimmy Stewart Rides Again
We’ve been on a Jimmy Stewart fix in this house recently, watching Rear Window, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Winchester ’73, Destry Rides Again (one of his best in my opinion), tonight’s film: Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and soon, as with every Christmas, It’s A Wonderful Life.
He had a certain way with him, in his mannerisms, and the way he spoke, and his comedic intuitions. He was a funny actor. I would love to have written a film for him. I wonder if there’s a modern actor like him out there somewhere? I mean, I haven’t made a single film yet, but if you’re going to fantasise about a future career in filmmaking you might as well make it unbelievable. Anybody got a time machine I can borrow?
8 On The Black List!
This has made my day! I just got a really excellent evaluation on The Black List for a screenplay I wrote called Runts. (I’ve shared the final part of the evaluation in the second image). A previous evaluation described the script as being “stunningly executed”.
The crazy thing is, I wasn’t sure about this one. I abandoned it a few years ago, convincing myself it wasn’t good enough. And then Rachel read it a few months ago and told me I was crazy, it’s great! (Her words). And convinced me to revisit the story and get it out there. Now I kinda love it.
Link to The Black List page: https://blcklst.com/dashboard/projects/149594
Writing Runts
While I was between jobs, about a year and a half ago, I wrote a feature-length script in four weeks. This week, I read it for the first time since then. It’s a hell of a lot better than I remember. It needs a couple of new scenes and a slightly different ending, but I’ve got that all figured out, and I’m on a mission to finish it today.
The next step for this script is the almost impossible step. It requires luck, an incredible amount of random chance, and not much else. Somewhere out there is a director who is looking for something exactly like this, and our paths have to cross at just the right time.
RUNTS. A council house in the south of England. Night. Two young brothers bury their dead mother in the garden.
So begins a story of two boys, Brian, aged 11, and Dean, 16, as they learn to fend for themselves while keeping this dark secret. Things spiral out of control, and Brian begins to realise that there is something very, very, wrong with his older brother.
The Madness of the Criterion Collection
I’ve never owned a Blu-Ray player. I had amassed a towering DVD collection from the late 90s to about 5 years ago which got so large and cumbersome I moved it into storage. In the end streaming services took over and large swathes of it were sold off. I like streaming but I’ve always missed my physical movie library.
My film nerd friends out there will know the words, Criterion Collection. They are a company that, in their words, dedicate themselves to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality, with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of film.
They don’t release the films that made the most money, or got the best reviews, they release the films that they think deserve to be presented in the best possible quality.
The Criterion Collection breeds madness. There are videos on YouTube of people standing in their Criterion Closets (walk-in wardrobes racked floor to ceiling with expensive Blu-Rays) swooning over their own obscure knowledge of movies you’ve never heard of. “The visual poetry of Jean Cocteau’s, Orpheus is… etc etc etc”. And in the next breath they’ll be equally excited about their Criterion release of Robocop. And rightly so.
It is a cult.
I am now a member of that cult.
For it is my birthday today and Rachel has given me my very first Blu-Ray player! And… My very first Criterion Blu-Ray!
Destry Rides Again is James Stewart’s first foray into the Western genre… etc etc etc
When is it OK to throw a cat for entertainment?
I have become obsessed with cat scares in movies recently and I’ve been on the hunt for the first ever one and I found it in the most unexpected place…
Becoming Superman Book Review
Has anybody read Becoming Superman by J. Michael Straczynski? Or even heard of Straczynski for that matter. I hadn’t until I came across a book on Screenwriting he wrote in a charity shop a few months ago. It was old and battered, published in the late 90s.
I started reading the screenwriting book but had to stop. There was something different about this book. Something that made it stand out tonally from other books I had read on screenwriting. So I googled him and lo and behold his autobiography (Becoming Superman) was released at the beginning of September last month. I immediately downloaded the audiobook.
It is one of the best books I have read in years. And I want to recommend it to you. It is a masterclass in autobiographical writing and the best book about how a writer became a writer I’ve ever read. I was blown away by it.
If you haven’t heard of him you might have heard of some of the things he’s written. Here’s a list of some of the highlights.
Cartoons:
He-Man
She-Ra
The Real Ghostbusters
Television:
The Twilight Zone
Babylon 5 (he singlehandedly wrote 92 of the 110 episodes)
Murder She Wrote
Sense 8 (new to Netflix)
Comics:
The Amazing Spider-Man
Thor
Superman
Fantastic Four
Wonderwoman
And many others
Novels:
Three novels including Demon Night
Films:
Changeling
World War Z
Thor
Godzilla vs King Kong (coming next year)
And so much more.
The point is, this guy knows his shit. But the reason I want everyone to read it is his personal story. The way he tells his own life story is a masterclass in suspense and intrigue and great prose all by itself. His life growing up was horrendous.
I won’t spoil things here because every revelation and dark turn is worth discovering for yourself. But I think it’s safe to say if he hadn’t become a writer he would have become a serial killer. His history is full of murdered pets, a family of criminals and psychopaths, nazis and a terrible family secret, incest, violence, and madness.
The book is hilarious in parts and incredibly dark in others.
I read this as an audiobook and as audiobooks go it is perfect. The narration is outstanding. At the beginning of the book there is a short and funny conversation between Straczynski and the narrator explaining why Straczynski isn’t allowed to narrate his own book. You know from the moment you press play that you are in for a treat.
I will be ordering a hardback so I can read it again just as soon as I get paid.
There is a worry that I’ve hyped this book up far too much and it couldn’t possibly live up to expectation. But it can, and then some.
I very rarely feel the urge to read a book twice but I’m eager to start again from page one already.
Episode 2 – Coraline (Kassidy’s Nerd Box)
Kassidy delves into her nerd box to talk about the history of Riverdale and Archie Comics and shares some interesting facts about the show.
https://audioboom.com/posts/6705515-episode-2-coraline
Transcript of the “Brief History” section of the podcast.
The history of the stop motion animated film, Coraline, starts 20 years before the movie hit the cinemas. Way back in 1989 when Neil Gaiman was 29 and his first daughter was 4 years old. Her name was Holly. She would go off to kindergarten and come back to see her dad writing. Holly would climb up on her dad’s lap and dictate stories to him that Neil Gaiman would type out for her. They were all about young girls, like Holly, who would normally have witches pretending to be their mothers and the kids would have to escape from them.
Neil thought to himself, “This is so cool, she loves stories like this, I know; I’ll buy her some.” So Neil went to the bookshop to find really good scary books for four year olds. Alas, he failed. Such a book did not exist. So Neil Gaiman did what any good writer would do and wrote it himself.
10 years later the book was finished. It was never meant to take 10 years. Life got in the way. The book got abandoned. Holly got older. By now Holly was too old for the book but Neil’s second daughter, Maddie, was not. Neil decided he had to get the book done before she was too old. He finished it when Maddie was 6.
After the first draft of the book was complete Neil sent it to his film agent, John Leven, and said, “John, there are only two people who I would ever want touching this. One would be Tim Burton, and the other would be Henry Selick.”
Henry Selick had already directed Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas (in fact Tim Burton had little to do with the movie) and Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach.
Neil never heard back from Tim Burton but a week later Henry Selick called up Neil and said, “I’ve read Coraline, I want to make it a movie.”
That was in 2001. It took Selick 7 years to make his movie. The film was released on the 8th May 2009.
Facts from the podcast.
1
At the beginning of the film the two movers, unloading the lorry with all their belongings, were caricatures of Jerome and Joe Ranft. Jerome was a sculptor for Pixar and Joe was a story man. I’ll list some of credits in a minute but Joe sadly died at the age of 45 while directing Cars for Pixar. Ironically he died in a car accident. As homage to Raft, who Henry Selick called “the story giant of our generation”, the removals van had a logo on the side which read, “Raft Moving Inc.” Both caricatures of Joe and Jerome Raft were voiced by Jerome. A little add-on to this fact; the money used to pay the moving men had a picture of Henry Selick on it, instead of an American president. Selick worked with Joe on The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Monkeybone.
Just to give an idea of why Raft was so important here is a short filmography. (This part wasn’t in the podcast).
He was a story artist on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Beauty and the Beast; he did the story and provided several cartoon screams.
Aladdin (dad’s favourite animated film); story and more cartoon screams.
The Nightmare before Christmas; Storyboard Supervisor and the voice of Igor.
The Lion King; story.
Toy Story; story and voice of Lenny the Binoculars.
A Bug’s Life; story and voice of Hemlich.
Toy Story 2; story and voice of Wheezy.
Monsters Inc; voice of Pete “Claws” Ward.
Finding Nemo; voice of Jacques the Shrimp.
Cars; Co-Director and voice of Red and Peterbilt.
And many more things that would take too long to list.
2
The Cherry Blossom was made of popcorn.
3
The layout of the house, in the book at least, was based on Neil Gaiman’s actual home at the time.
4
The production made 500 dogs to populate the theatre in Spink and Forcible’s Other Flat.
5
5 miles of gold thread for a 5-inch wig. (Miss Forcible).
6
They used a record breaking 130 sets across 52 stages to record different scenes at the same time, over 183,000 square feet.
7
Wybie is not in the book. This means no nan, which means no doll.
8
It was the first animated film to use stereoscopic 3D. Which means that each frame of animation was photographed twice. Once for the left eye and once for the right.
9
Coraline is left handed.
10
Coraline is a spelling mistake. Neil accidentally spelled the name wrong but liked it so kept it that way.
11
And finally, in the scene where the other Father sings a song at the piano he is wearing Monkeybone slippers. Monkeybone is the film Henry Selick made after Coraline.
***
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Andrew Chapman / Author and Screenwriter 