Script vs Script!

This Monday! Monday! Monday night! Script smackdown - Boring Editing Process versus Exciting New Script Idea. Who will be named the victor?!

Unfortunately, nobody wins in this accurate, albeit strange metaphor. So, I've got this Goodland script back with notes all over it (excellent notes, might I add - thank you Brittany), but then I've got my new script idea, which I've already outlined and completed the 40-scene breakdown for. What should I do? There's the lure of the shiny new script idea, but then there's that old faithful script, that time-tested Goodland which has proven itself through edit after edit to be without the plot holes and character misrepresentations - problems my new script is sure to present. Is it wrong to start a new script without completely and totally finishing the other? Am I cheating on Goodland? Can you cheat on a script? And is it cheating if I've only outlined it?

Okay, that's enough metaphor for this evening. I had cake for dinner, so I'm a little hyper. Let's lay the question out there: should you finish your current project before beginning a new one? And by finish, I mean get all the notes back and make the necessary changes so that it is ready to be sent out to the people you actually pay to read it, and I mean the people you pay with money and not banana bread (although I have it on good authority that a certain someone enjoyed her banana bread very much). At first, I don't see the harm in starting a new project. I can refer to the older, almost finished one whenever I want, and isn't it good to let a script ruminate, breath, travel around in the mind for a while until something occurs to you that would be perfect for it, so you pick it up again and have that special moment of brilliance? But we all know those people, or rather that feeling we get when those people tell us they have a script they've been working on for years. Years. I don't ever want to tell someone that I have a script I've been working on for years. Finish it. Finish it, and move on. Isn't that the name of the spec game? Makin' sausage? Shoveling crap until the pile is so high that someone has to notice it? Am I reading too many scriptwriting blogs?

So, I'm not entirely sure what to do. I think I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to work on Goodland until it is totally, wholly, 100% ready to be sent to a professional reader, and not until then will I set it down. And if I just can't help myself, I'll secretly work on the other project. But I'll try not to (but I probably will).

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies...and Emma Woodhouse?

As an aside (oh yes, it is perfectly acceptable to begin a post with an aside), I would like to draw your attention to the right of this blog, where my progress bar for Goodland, Phase: Edit, has reached its goal. My Manager/writing buddy/fearless leader is now in possession of it, and I await her most excellent notes.

Moving on. Friday was my birthday, and my most astute husband picked up the hints I'd been meticulously dropping for weeks and bought me what I really wanted: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! So delightful. I am a Jane Austen purist, at heart. I do not like people trifling with Dame Jane (okay, maybe she's not a Dame per say, but in my imagination she was actually knighted - she would have preferred that). I don't enjoy the idea of having her beautifully crafted works dumbed down into two hour movies that do no justice to her brilliant characters or her subtle commentary on class. There are but two exceptions to this, the BBC A&E miniseries Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth (the real Mr. Darcy), and Emma Thompson's most excellent Sense and Sensibility, which represents the very best of Jane and Thompson both. I'm not one for The Jane Austen Book Club, or Becoming Jane - A whole movie about a woman we know very little about, and who led what can only be assumed to be a very secluded and lonely life - I think not. Me thinks they had to make up a lot of stuff. That being said, I couldn't be more excited to read this Zombie-laden version of Austen's classic work. I think it displays the very best of classic literature tampering, at once ridiculous and hilarious, utterly stupid and yet completely genius. Were Austen alive today, I think she would be extremely diverted.

However...

I have come across one tiny, minute point of discontent with this, my soon to be most favoritest book ever. That is, the portrait Quirk Classics (or whoever it is who owns them) chose for the cover. We are to suppose it to be Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of this tale, be it with or without zombies. She is displayed with deliciously gory detail, which I immediately ascertained to be nothing short of spectacular, and had I not been already reading Emma, I would have abandoned my current book and begun reading this one right away. But I am of the opinion that one Austen should never be slighted for the other, so I resolved to finish Emma before beginning P&P&Z! Taking up my copy of Emma, I saw something familiar. I went back to my new book and discovered the truth. Holding them side by side, it was revealed that the portrait of the zombified Elizabeth Bennet was indeed not Elizabeth Bennet, but her complete character opposite in almost every way, Emma Woodhouse! Who has no relation to that work at all. So now what? Is it Emma, or Lizzy? Penguin Classics seems to think it Emma, while this Quirk Classics (whoever they are) seem to disagree. I, being the tie breaker, have to side with Penguin Classics, who claimed the portrait first, and therefore are in the right. So Quirk Classics has mistakenly, or blatantly, chosen Emma Woodhouse for their zombified tale where Elizabeth Bennet should have been present. This is my sole complaint. And it is but a trifling one.

Okay, tell me you see it.

New Blogroll Addition, and A Word About Wes Anderson

I think it's pretty apparent that I'm very particular about what goes on my blogroll, considering up to this point there are only three links on there (so, particular or just ignorant of all the blog-like resources out there to script writers... I'll go with particular). But today I am going to induct a fourth. ScriptShadow is brilliant. Thank you to my Manager for sharing. Just as my life was spiralling downward under the weight of increasing expectations of keeping up with all that is screenwritery, here is a website that will make available to me the newest scripts, ready to read, along with insight into who is playing what part and who is making it. Brilliant! I love it. Thank you Carson Reeves, whoever you are. And the very first screenplay I read off this blog was Leap Year, a romantic comedy written by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (I know, I never heard of them either). Seek it out. It's wonderful, and I mean that exactly as it sounds, very light and pleasant and feel-good. Wonderful. As Carson says, the first act tries too hard, but push past the first fifteen pages and I promise you will not be able to walk away. You are going to have actual and for real emotional responses to this (dare I say it?) gem. But more important than the short-term good feeling this movie evokes is the long-term benefits of reading such a well presented story. I learned some things, some things I didn't know how to do before. Looks I didn't know how to write into a movie before, gestures, little tricks for your action lines that make them less perfunctory but at the same time not stepping on any other creative toes. I'm going to admit something that I may wish I hadn't later on, but I can probably count the number of screenplays I have ever read on one hand and one finger. Quite literally. Including Leap Year. And then I wonder, "why can't I write good?" I realize more now than ever the importance of reading what you wish to write. And not just things that represent how you want to write, but if you want to write romantic comedies, you may want to bend your focus that-a-way. Some might read Leap Year and think it formulaic, and it is. That's why it works. Formulas work. Patterns work. You don't criticize a seamstress because they followed a pattern, you rather expect them to. You want your shirt to look like a shirt, not a pair of house slippers. The brilliance comes when you can take that same old shirt pattern, add a few buttons here, ruffles there, maybe a lighter fabric (this is obviously a lady's blouse), and there you go. Something old, but new. Something familiar, but different. It's a shirt, but it's... okay, you get it, you get it. It's metaphor. Check.

And now for something completely different...

Wes Anderson. This guy I don't get. I watched The Darjeeling Limited last night (yesterday was a very good day for me, cinematically speaking), and for the first twenty minutes I thought, "here we go again. This guy is just being an 'artist.' He's trying to be 'different,'" and I'm not too big on different where my movies are concerned. I like the shirt pattern (oh yeah, I'm gonna drive that shirt pattern thing into the ground). And then, somewhere in like the tenth slow motion sequence, I realized what was going on here. This guy is just on another level. Maybe it's not a higher level, maybe there's no hierarchy to be had here, but somehow he's a little further down the road than I am. And it's captivating in a way, after you accept the fact that maybe the turning point and the "raising the stakes" moment aren't going to be that easy to see. But they're there, in some form, or maybe I just imagine them to help me relate. But it's taken me years of Wes Anderson to realize how good he is. He really is good. I don't know him personally, I don't know what he's really like, whether or not he has a good reputation with the Who's Who of the Where It's At, but he does something that makes me watch what would otherwise be gibberish in the hands of anyone else. I may be a bit tardy with this epiphany, but there it is. Now I've admitted two embarrassing things in one blog: the fact that I haven't read that many screenplays, and that it's taken me until now to appreciate Wes Anderson. I am quite ashamed at myself. Horribly, horribly ashamed.

The Whole Screenwriting Process and Its Relevance to Baking Banana Bread at 11:08pm

I got home from Harpo's (more on that in a moment), and realized that the bananas I had been waiting to turn had in fact been excreting some kind of juice in the bottom of the Ziploc bag, so regardless of the hour, banana bread had to be made. I might have made it this afternoon, but I was lazy taking a nap. Most people say busy taking a nap, but I prefer lazy taking a nap, because that's pretty much what it boils down to. That's what I do when I'm overwhelmed, I take a nap, and this afternoon I was overwhelmed, I am overwhelmed. There's just so much to do. You're supposed to write as much as you can, but also keep up on what others are writing, so that means reading screenplays to get the feel for new things, but also be sure you keep an eye on what is coming out so that you understand the market, but don't just watch trailers, see the movies, since that's what you're writing anyway. Then you need to make sure you've got time to read real books, because that's important too, but also make time to get involved in the writing community, in person and on the web. That's what I was doing at Harpo's. It's where The Kansas City Screenwriters meet, and that's the kind of thing aspiring screenwriters should be doing, meeting up with other aspiring screenwriters to exchange ideas and whatnots. It's all good stuff, just taking it in all at once can seem daunting. How am I supposed to accomplish all these things on a consistent basis while maintaining a job and eventually school, taking care of the husband, and finding time to bake banana bread at a reasonable hour? Blake Snyder says I should be spitting out four scripts a year. I can't imagine! It's not possible in my current state. I would have to change my surroundings, my circumstances, altogether to make that feasible. Am I willing to do that? Probably not. I want it my way. I want to get my school done, live a happy non-neurotic life, maintain a healthy love life, and produce good, quality scripts at a rate of about one per year. If I can't make it doing that, then right now I'm just not going to make it. I'll have to wait. And some day, I'll get tired of not making it and things will change. But I'm not there yet. I want to make it my way. So I'm making banana bread at 11:08pm. That's fine. I'm hungry anyway.