ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL TIME WASTER

My ex-friend Anne the Painter once said, "I love paint! I'd eat it if I could."

I feel the same way about words. I'd eat them if I ... yeah, well, sometimes I do have to eat them.

The Online Etymological Dictionary is a nifty Web tool for those of you who want to know where a word came from but don't feel like using the magnifying glass on their Compact Oxford English Dictionary. (You do have the Compact Oxford, right?)

SOME AWARDS I'M PARTICULARLY HAPPY ABOUT

The Gemini nominations are out. As DMc points out, these are like the Emmies, but not. Nonetheless I was chuffed that the series I co-created, Naked Josh, is up for Best Comedy Program or Series, along with noms for:

Best Production Design or Art Direction in a Non-Dramatic Program or Series
-Mario Hervieux - Naked Josh II - "Baring it all"

and

Best direction in a Comedy Program or Series
-James Allodi - Naked Josh II - "Fake It Till You Make It"
-Jim Donovan - Naked Josh II - "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Lover

Meanwhile, the insanely great Michael Filipowich is nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Dramatic Series for his work on Charlie Jade, and Patricia MacKenzie for Best Supporting Actress. Isabelle Levesque got a nomination for her editing work, and Stephane Landry for his Visual FX work. I never got to work with the sound guys, but they got a nom too.

Go teams!

IT DOES NOT SUCK

I finished reading my rough draft of The Alternative, in the process moving around some scenes, cutting a bunch of them, and generally trimming it down from 127 pages to 115.

There are some lines that made me chuckle, even though I wrote them. And some funny-awkward situations. And, in the last few pages, I found myself caring very much that Kiki gets what she's looking for. And the ending made me happy.

So, in all, I think it does not suck. For a first draft, that's all you can ask.

Now I'll probably try to get a few reactions from friends...

MOVIE MARKETING MASTER CLASS

... Or, possibly, the problem with the marketing campaign in ROC is that it did not include a carefully leaked Youtube video of Lucie Laurier's nipple "accidentally" seeing daylight during an interview. (The link is to an article, not to the Youtube video. Sor-ree!)

WE'RE NUMBER 3! WE'RE NUMBER 3!

Bon Cop Bad Cop held at #3 in the Canadian box office, in its fourth weekend in Quebec and its second weekend in the Rest of Canada. That's beating Snakes on a Plane (2 weeks), Beerfest (1 week) and World Trade Center (three weeks), among others.

It is a silly movie. But I'm proud of it.

And now I would like to point out the direct relationship between marketing dollars spent and receipts. BCBC got $1M in promotion throughout Quebec (pop. 8 or so million) and $1M in R.O.C. (population 25 or so million). Opening weekends were 1.4 million in Quebec and 350,000 in the Rest of Canada.

In other words, where Alliance spent three times as much money per capita promoting the picture, we got four times the opening.

I am sure the argument for spending less promoting the picture in ROC is that Canadian movies in French do much better in Quebec than Canadian movies in English do in all of Canada. French movies made in Quebec have climbed to 27% of the French market; English films languish between single digits and decimal points:



But maybe there is a self-fulfilling prophecy there? If they actually promoted English language films, instead of merely making them ... in other words if people actually knew what they were about and when to go see them ... maybe market share would go up?

Two weeks prior to the opening in Quebec, you could not avoid knowing about Bon Cop Bad Cop. I turned on French radio maybe four times, for maybe ten minutes each driving to pick up my daughter from day care. I heard stuff about Bon Cop twice. Once was an ad, once was a talk radio guy saying it was the "must see movie of the summer." Bus ads? Everywhere. Posters? Everywhere. Humongous posters in the multiplexes? Check. Trailers, ben oui.

Two weeks prior to the opening in Toronto ... zip. If you'd been to a movie, you'd have seen a trailer. Otherwise, crickets.

Maybe Telefilm should spend a little less money helping fund movie production, and a little more money promoting movies that have been made?

Advertising.

Just putting it out there.

(And here's James Oregan on the same subject.)

SELLING

Got an email from a producer interested in one of my TV projects. She had some questions for me. I was tempted to email back and answer the questions, but I quickly decided that it would be more fruitful to call back. I want to establish a relationship; I'd never met her. So I called.

Particularly in TV, but in film as well, you're not just selling your material. You're selling yourself. You always want to be selling. That doesn't mean faking; faking will haunt you later. But it does mean letting people know your good points in case they don't already know, or have forgotten, how wonderful you are. You can't depend on your agent to do that for you.

Your work has to be good. But the work is only half of it. Life is short and people want to work with interesting and fun people. Just appearing agreeable doesn't leave much of an impression.

If someone already likes a project of yours, you want to give them additional reasons to want to work with you. I mentioned various projects I've been doing with various people (= credible people like to work with me!). I talked about the Toronto Film Festival parties I've been to (= I'm part of the social whirl!). I discussed networks the project might be right for (= I know who the buyers are, and what they like!). I tried to give a rounded impression of myself as a credible pro tv writer, and also give throw out a few hooks for future conversations.

You can't Always Be Closing because you may not know what you're eventually selling to someone. But you want to turn every chance encounter into a conversation; and you want to turn most conversations into relationships. Always be giving people reasons to give their business to you instead of the next guy, in a positive, efficient way.

READING MY SCREENPLAY

I don't read my screenplays as I write them. I avoid reading what I've written for fear I'd get depressed or get hung up on sections that don't appear to work, and I wouldn't finish the draft. I'm big on closure; an unfinished screenplay isn't worth the magnetic media it's printed on.

The next step is a big long read. It's a long read because I can't help editing as I read. If it were someone else's screenplay I could read the whole thing and get a sense of what needs to happen. But it's mine, so I try to fix little things that can be fixed as I go through.

I'm also uploading the screenplay into my brain. Not the outline, but the screenplay I already wrote. The outline doesn't really have tone. Tone is something that exists in scenes, not in plot. An outline is mostly plot. So now I've got tone. I'm trying to get the whole movie into my head so I can see how it works.

(An outline is, strictly, story, and a story can have tone. But it's the bones of the story, not the story itself.)

So far, there's some good stuff here. I hope it holds up!

SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT TRICK

I asked in an entry a little while ago: what do you call it when you trick the audience into expecting something will happen, and then you withhold what they're expecting?

Piers suggested the excellent "shoe trick." As in, you drop a shoe, and then they wait for the other shoe to drop, but it never comes.

But Piers' suggestion brings to mind a more self-explanatory term: the shave-and-a-haircut trick.

(No Toon can resist the old 'Shave-and-a-haircut' trick.)

You set up the audience's expectation with 'shave-and-a-haircut,' and they're just waiting for 'two biiiiiits.' But it doesn't come...