Friday, January 21, 2005

A GOOD MORNING'S WORK

Lisa and I spent the morning knocking around the linear plot to Billy Wes, our new lowish budget feature idea.

Over vacation I decided to get the Crafty TV book proposal in some kind of shape, plus put together some tv pitches and a movie pitch. Always gotta have some irons in the fire. Crafty TV took longer than I thought because my book agent wanted more examples and explanation (my original outline was too insiderish). So we didn't come up with any pitches. So a few days ago we decided to have a bash at low budget movie ideas.

I had a play read in LA called City of Ravens, about a waitress who may be a fallen angel, who meets a singer with the voice of an angel but a damaged soul. I rewrote it as a movie, but it's never really worked, for a number of reason. Lisa had a few ideas how to improve it, but I'm not sure I'm still in love with the idea.

But I did realize that the novel Lisa's been kicking around in her head for the past twenty years is a movie. Maybe not a movie that's Canadian enough for the Scriptwriting Assistance fund. But Canadian enough to shoot here, at any rate.

I won't tell you the hook (it's not a very hooky movie, actually), but it's about two Army brats who grow up together, fall in love, and then lose each other. When the guy goes AWOL years later during a Ranger training mission gone stupidly and fatally awry, she hooks back up with him and tries to drive him to Canada and freedom.

Complications ensue.

They must confront the demons of their past yadda yadda yadda.

What makes it special is the really fresh and intense scenes from Lisa's novel. The details, the passion. She practically weeps when she tells some of it. More importantly, I almost weep, too.

(The Pikepie is wailing in her crib as I write this. Probably not thinking of Lisa's novel, though, she can't talk yet. I think she's crying because she's Not Being Held.)

This morning we went over the linear story. There are 5 time lines in the picture -- when they're kids, when they're young adults, when they're college age, the mission gone awry, and her interviewing at the Canadian border. We're not going to tell them one after another, of course, we're going to use highly impressionistic cutting back and forth. I want to say 21 Grams style, but nothing as extreme as that. More like The Limey, where there's a clear emotional if not literal connection each time you jump from timeline to timeline.

I think it's going to be a really great screenplay. I'm really excited about it. I'm letting Lisa do most of the heavy lifting -- really at this point I'm story editing more than writing, story editing in the TV story editor sense, not the development exec sense: I'm helping her weave the narratives, find the turning points and put the moments in order.

Occasionally I nix a scene. For example she wanted her heroine stalked in the woods, only it turns out it's by the hero. Problem with that is the rest of the movie is deeply realistic. So we're either not going to believe for a moment that she's really being stalked by a Bad Guy. Or, we'll worry that the movie is going to betray us. Either way we're not worrying she's being stalked. You always have to think what the audience is expecting. For example, she didn't want to let on too early that the guy had survived his training accident. But he's going to be on the poster. So we know he survives. You can play her not knowing, but we know, even if we're pretending to ourselves that we don't know.

She's great at these intense scenes. I'm good at making narrative sense out of them. It's nice when the woman you love complements you creatively, too, isn't it?

Hmmm ... I think the Pikepie really does need a fresh bottle...

11:31 PM

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