I hope you've had a glorious holiday with your families! Or if you don't happen to celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a wonderful week of eating Chinese food and playing in the snow.
I say snow because I am blogging to you from temperatures that never grace the palm trees of Los Angeles. It is Cold. I am Cold. (Yes, that was two capital Cs.) I'm the goofy chick in the corner coffee shop bundled up in twenty layers of sweaters and hats and a gigantic scarf. Even though I act like a baby, running inside from the car to minimize exposure to the snowy weather, I secretly enjoy it. It is fun to get out of the unending summer that is Los Angeles and enjoy a few different seasons. Especially this time of year. Somehow Santa seems a little more jolly and twinkle lights give off a little more twinkle when surrounded by snow banks. If you can, it's worth it to get out of the city for the holidays. Los Angeles (and this career in general) are such a grind, you need to step into some fresh air every once in a while. (Both the literal and figurative fresh air).
I was working right up until I left for the holiday. A couple days before jumping on the plane, I had to pop into a sound studio to do a little ADR for one of the movies I shot this fall. AD-what?? It stands for Automated Dialog Recording, also known as looping.
Sometimes when you're filming, something happens with the sound. Perhaps an ambulance drives by or an airplane flies overhead, or maybe your wardrobe rubs the body mic taped between your boobs and it crackles. On-set sound pays close attention to stuff like that while shooting, and the director will start another take and "hold" the call for action until the sound annoyance is out of mic range. But inevitably, somewhere along the line, your best take will have a dog barking right through the middle of it.
When that happens, you have to go into the studio during post production and re-record your lines. It's a bit weird. You watch yourself say the line on repeat (looping) and try to match your voice with your own lips on the screen. You get three beeps and then your line starts immediately, then three more beeps, and you try again. As a performer, you want to try to make it authentic and real, but it's this strange, orphaned line experience without the context of the entire scene. And did you grunt, or make any odd "thinking" noises? Yeah, you have to recreate those too.
Still, looping is a necessary evil and every movie has at least a few. They stand out to me like a sore thumb, even in big fancy blockbusters. It's one of those things that makes you realize you've left normal movie fan world and entered into professional filmmaker world. I'll be in the theater and halfway through the movie I'll flinch slightly. My friend looks at me to ask "What?"
I whisper, "Blech. Badly looped line."
My friend just rolls her eyes and asks that I please stop ruining movies for her.
Oops.
I may be an eternal optimist, but I'm not naive. The whole Sony-The Interview debacle could be one master-mind, sadistic, manipulative publicity stunt that we're all playing into. Anything is possible. Smarter people than me have been duped before.
But if that truly is the case, they've duped our own government too. They've taken the exercise so far as to involve the FBI, the CIA and to elicit multiple statements from the POTUS himself. That's one helluva publicity stunt, on par with dialing 911 for a non-emergency. You can face jail time for that shit.
However, maybe it's because I am an eternal optimist, I have a little more faith in our government. I believe if it truly were a publicity stunt, we would have heard that by now. I believe Sony really was hacked. I believe they were told it was in response to The Interview. I believe Sony was really intending to pull the movie until the overwhelming support of the people flooded their doors and they realized that not showing the movie was a mistake. A mistake that bled all the way to the first amendment of the constitution of the United States.
The Interview is a movie I would have paid little attention too. I probably would have skipped the theater and just checked it out when it popped up on Netflix. I really couldn't care too much about the movie itself, but because it has become such a symbol of the freedom of speech, you bet your ass I've already bought my ticket to see it at one of the few places in LA where you can in the next few days. I'm going because no person nor nation state has a right to tell us what movies we can or cannot make. As Obama so eloquently put it, "That's not who we are. That's not what America's about."
Okay I'm a patriotic sap. So what. But it's not just about what we do here in the star-spangled 'Merica. It's about the freedom for anyone around the world to have the right to criticize an oppressive regime. Sorry if you don't like that, boys. You've been overruled.
I went and did something last week. The decision was rash. I was in the heat of the moment, but I am not sorry. I love you readers and I love connecting with you. So I did it. I jumped on Twitter. (Oh god! What monster has this career turned me into??!)
Yes, it's an extension of my blog, but it won't just be tweets announcing new posts. When I can't find the time to commit to writing to you here, I'll write something funny or motivational there. Follow me both places to stay updated on all things Anony and let me know what kick ass things you're doing to pursue you're big dreams.
We'll follow them together.
Yours,
Anony
Thanks to my mother's encouragement, I was an avid reader. I don't even remember starting the habit-- the "read for a half hour before bed" instruction mom gave my sister and I-- and I certainly don't remember considering it a chore. I guess I must have loved it from the start. I loved the stories the characters within them and how they made me feel. So from the time I was about eight years old, I wanted to write a novel myself.
I used to get my mother's typewriter out on the floor and hammer away for hours on end. I probably started four novels before I was in junior high. They never really got much beyond ten pages or so, but I was inevitably pulled back to that keyboard to try again. Convinced I had a voice for writing, and driven by the strange satisfaction I found in watching people read my work, I decided to scale back and write short stories. They were always overly melodramatic and sappy, but I wrote dozens of them. Eventually I even found my way here... writing short stories to you for three years. It has been wonderful and fulfilling, but I still imagined that someday I would graduate (and find the self-discipline) to write a bona-fide, full-size novel.
Okay. So maybe it isn't a novel, but writing this screenplay somehow feels like I'm doing just that. It's certainly my own story, a massive undertaking and I'm operating on pure instinct. There are times when I sit down to write and I just feel empty. Stuck.
Where can I go from here?
Do I have it in me?
Is my premise frail and unable to support a feature-length story?
Am I making it too complicated?
Is it even any good??
Those are the times I would have stopped as a child. I would have become frustrated at the roadblocks and left it at ten pages. I've been really frustrated with the second act, feeling like I didn't know how to take what I'd built in the first act and carry us solidly to the end. I just couldn't come up with an idea that I believed in. But in the last couple of days, I had a breakthrough and an idea that I can't wait to write down. It was so obvious. How could I have missed it before? I've taken about a month longer than I intended to get this first pass down, but I don't care. I want to do it right. I'm doing it for that eight year old me who somehow knew I could long before Hollywood and fancy cameras and fancy dreams.
In honor of one of my favorite screenwriters (and a great show that just came to an end), here is a beautifully written scene that is beautifully performed. I get goosebumps watching this and daydream about writing this well. Let it be as inspirational to you as it is to me.
Take it away Leona...
If you've been paying attention to entertainment news recently, you've been hearing about the Sony hack. (If this is the first you've heard of it, Sony's computer systems were hacked and basically anything and everything about anyone who's ever worked with/for/near them has been leaked to the public.) Fortunately I haven't personally been affected, though the director of my film last week fielded a phone call from his lawyer between takes. "Yeah. Your name is out there."
I admit I've been casually skimming headlines and first paragraphs out of sheer curiosity, mildly entertained by the candid emails sent between studio execs. Some people are up in arms because "X" exec was frustrated when "Y" star pulled out of their movie and shared what weren't exactly flattering opinions. It feels a bit high-schooly. Sure, more delicate words could have been chosen, particularly in a medium as permanent as email, but I hold nothing against any of them. We'd all be blushing if the world combed through our private emails with a magnifying glass.
What actually does upset me is the alleged reason behind the hack. (I say alleged because I don't think it's still 100% confirmed.) Apparently it's Kim Jong-Un's response to a Sony film with the premise of an assassination attempt on Kim Jong-Un. I can understand that ol' Kim isn't so pumped about that. The Interview is probably a really shitty movie with bad-taste humor about someone everyone loves to hate. I imagine it's going to place Kim Jong-Un in pretty unfavorable light. If it were me, that would make me pretty crabby too.
Unfortunately for Kim (and anyone else who's had to face intense public criticism and satire)... hurt feelings are not an adequate justification for stifling free speech. Neither are desires to preserve a certain image you would like to maintain. (Even if that's how you run things in your own country.)
What upsets me the most? The hackers succeeded. Sony has pulled the film. Is it really that easy to block the release of a major studio picture because you don't like the plot? Precedent is a word everyone is throwing around today. It's a scary word and no one knows what the long term effects of this will be.
My initial outrage was at what felt like a back down, a surrender in the face of blatant censorship. After I calmed a bit, I realized that there are so many other factors at play. Like, can the theater companies protect their employees and patrons from a hacking similar to that which has crumpled Sony? (**I am not even going to attempt to address the other threat. I cannot imagine that anyone would actually bomb a movie theater over a stupid movie that people will forget 10 minutes after they finish their popcorn.**) If those companies are not confident in their digital security, then perhaps we should take a moment to get that under control and revisit a release later. That's a smart and responsible move... even though my 'merica instincts want to go all cowboy and air the movie simultaneously on every tv channel around the world during primetime.
Ironically, if it is North Korea (and not a Sony publicity stunt, which is an actual theory that is circulating, dear god let that not be true), the move will likely backfire. In reality, this has actually increased the awareness of what would have probably been a forgettable box office event. Everyone is now jonesing to see the film, myself included.
We'll see how this plays out. Meanwhile, go change all your passwords and watch how you phrase your thoughts in heated emails.
It's that time of year when the Hollywood train comes to a screeching halt because of the holidays. Everyone is sick of everyone else, so they head out of town to spend quality time with their families. Then after a couple weeks, they can't stand them any more either so they become anxious to get back to the industry and started on the looming pilot season.
Yesterday, I think one breakdown was released that I could be kinda/maybe/sort of/barely be right for. It is S-L-O-W. But that's great news for me because I am 100% in writing mode. I am determined to get this screenplay draft done before the end of the year. Then my story partner (let's call him Sin Nombre) and I will team up to do the "real" writing in 2015.
So I'm sitting at my computer in my jimmy jams, typing away for hours at a time. It's excruciatingly slow, but there is a long way to go. I feel like I'm bringing a baby to full term and birthing the bastard. Part of my DNA will be in this script. At times it screams at me and wants more but I don't know what it wants because it's a baby and can't talk yet so I pull my hair out trying all sorts of different things to try to make it happy. Is it hungry? Is it tired? Is it teething? Ahhh!!! It's my first and I feel totally lost at points and wish it could just write itself so I can go have a glass a wine and watch the Newsroom finale.
Okay, enough baby metaphors. It's a challenge, to say the least. I recently just completely threw out what I had written for the second act. Threw it out. Like if I had written it on paper, I would have crumpled it up and thrown it on the floor. Possibly burned it. As I was explaining my newest plot points to Sin Nombre, I just hunched over, mid-sentence and defeated, "This sucks," I said, "It's boring as hell."
He laughed, but I figure if it's boring to write, it's going to boring to watch. So I cut that shit out and went a different direction. I think I've written 150 pages of screenplay by now for the modest 60 I currently have to show for it. Still, that's 60 pages more than nothing and well on the way to having a feature film script. A bad ass feature film script that I would die to make because I love this story. That passion is truly the greatest motivation on the planet. I could write forever on a story I'm passionate about.
Here's to the next 50 pages. Let's write them.
