The Road to Divorce

Haitian Divorce is the fifth feature-length screenplay I have written and the first one that I consider close-to-good.

I listen to the Creative Screenwriting podcast and in almost all of them, the screenwriters say, "This was my fifteenth screenplay. None of them were produced until now."

"Will you ever make your old scripts available online?"

"No. They're all crap."

"Aw, come on. I'm sure they aren't all that bad."

"Yes. Yes, they are."

Before I actually wrote a screenplay, I was all on the side of the journalist. If there isn't a chance of the screenplay getting produced, then what is the harm in posting it online? People (like me) love downloading and reading screenplays. Adding more to the stack wouldn't really hurt.

Then I wrote a bad screenplay. And another. And another.

I like the concept of white out. I like totally obliterating what has gone before when I don't like it. But if you've ever actually used white out, you know that it doesn't really hide your mistakes, but instead makes them all the more obvious thanks to the huge chunks of white goo surrounding them.

So, instead of pretending the Haitian Divorce is my first screenplay and it magically turned out to be sort of good (or, at least, not-all-that-bad), I will devote the rest of this blog entry to the big pile o' crap that has gone on before.

The four previous feature-length screenplays penned by myself are as follows:

Comicon Pimps - This was my first screenplay. I tried to be both funny and geeky and it didn't come out all that right. Basically, it was about a pimp contest at a comic book convention. Pimpin' ain't easy, especially when the potential clients would rather have a Star Trek Collector's plate instead of the company of a good woman dressed up as Catwoman.

It was pretty much a one-joke premise. I cut out all the filler and rewrote this feature-length monster (about 100 pages) as a four-page short film script. It is much better that way, and, in a way, oddly similar to the movie Gyuss Baaltar posted on his blog the other day, although (in my opinion) my script is a little bit funnier. It is filled with all sorts of pottymouth language, so I don't recommend it for anyone too young to be impressionable and too old to disapprove of my childish actions.

Zombie Prom Queen - I have new respect for the Troma Film guys. I tried to write a Troma-esque film and failed. Miserably. And, to add insult to injury, after I finished it, I found out that there was a short film named Zombie Prom already out there.

Hell Breaks Loose - Demons terrorize a small West Texas town. But they're in the fight for their lives, because everyone in West Texas is armed. Yeah. You heard me.

Scablickers - I wrote this one for the Slamdance Horror Screenplay Contest. This one is another horror film that involves a lot of people licking each other's scabs. And, no, it is not very good, unless, of course, you are into that sort of thing. I thought maybe David Cronenberg would like it.

So now you know why I don't share all of them. The next batch is going to be better, I promise. For one thing, I think I have the whole "cheap horror film" thing out of my system. I'll talk a little about the current batch of creative projects tomorrow.

Happy Episode #200 Filmspotting

Filmspotting is one of the best film criticism podcasts around. It is one of the three film review podcasts I listen to and the only one I consider actually having some worthwhile film analysis and criticism in it rather than just summarizing/reviewing the film and then giving an arbitrary star rating at the end of an uninsightful ramble.

I really dislike the current state of film criticism. I wish there was some sort of film critic's exam that people had to take and pass to become film critics. And believe me, if I wrote it, people like Rex Reed, Gene Shalit, and half the people on Amazon would not pass.

When I first started listening to Filmspotting with the launch of iTunes 4.9. I want to say the first episode I heard was Cinecast #18. The one where they reviewed Batman Begins. My first impression was that I liked what I heard. The guys on the show seemed like nice enough, intelligent enough people. I wanted to nitpick (they had really similar tastes so there wasn't much discussion, there was a profound lack of female perspective, etc.), but really it was a solid show.

But THEN the guys kept talking more about movies they had NOT seen as opposed to films they actually watched. And some of those films they proudly and stubbornly refused to watch were on my list of minimum requirements for knowing a blessed thing about discussing movies. (Seriously, Gone with the Wind? That's like saying you've never seen The Wizard of Oz.)

So I sent them cantankerous emails, ridiculing them for their profound lack of knowledge. And, to show that I wasn't totally evil, I also sent them donations and gift certificates with little notes like, "Please use this to watch 'Once Upon a Time in the West'." or "How can you pretend to understand the work of Brian de Palma without first learning a thing or two about Hitchcock. Here is some money, please buy yourself an education."

They responded by calling me their Nemesis (or, as Sam liked to call me "Elegant Nemesis") and making fun of me on their show whenever we disagreed on something. Once, Adam even sent me a private email wherein he called me a bastard.

I believe it read as follows:

RT -

You bastard!

Adam

But like with any good back-and-forth, the guys on the show did nice things for me, too. They let me announce on the show my favorite movie of 2006 (Children of Men) and when Adrienne Shelley died, they let me pick my favorite scene of hers to run on the show (it was from Trust and it was the speech about... well, about trust).

Anyway, the culmination of my relationship with the Filmspotting guys happened around episode #166 when Sam pitched a movie about a Steely Dan cover band called Haitian Divorce. I thought it was a smart enough premise and decided to make a screenplay out of it as a Christmas gift to the Filmspotting community. (You can read about it here.)

I didn't really finish the screenplay by Christmas. I got a solid 60-page draft out there and posted it just in time for the holidays. The plan was to flesh it out, get it to the 90 to 100 page range, and repost it by episode #200.



And I sort of made that goal. Episode #200 posted last Friday morning, and here it is Sunday night when I have my draft posted. (It is called Haitian Divorce. Click here to download it.)

Part of me really wishes I was one of the Filmspotting guys. They are living a dream of mine. On some days when I am stuck in meetings I don't want to attend, I daydream about being a globe-trotting film critic, interviewing the likes of Ellen Page and trading witty barbs with that guy who directed Brick. But I can't be one of the guys. The closest I can get is to be their Nemesis.

But, you know what?

It is good to be their Nemesis.

Here's to 200 more shows.

Merry Christmas Filmspotting Listeners

Merry Christmas fellow Filmspotting Listeners!

For those of you who need me to explain the elaborate in-joke, here it is.

In episode #166 of Filmspotting somewhere in the 50:13-1:01:50 point, Sam van Hallgren pitched a movie idea to the ether, hoping the forces in the universe would somehow make it so. This movie was entitled Haitian Divorce. (You can go here and scroll down some to see a nifty little poster for it.)

In a mad fervor brought on by lots of caffeine, sugar, and Dance Dance Revolution, a 62-page-third-act-is-missing script for Haitian Divorce somehow appeared on my computer.

And now, here it is for your enjoyment.

Haitian Divorce