| Tim Burton's new movie, Reset |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|11:09 am] |
Oh man, so I was in the theater, very excited, and I was watching the new Tim Burton movie -- only this was something people actually cared about seeing, not just another masturbation into dim, oblique post-goth translations of other works.
This film, it was a little like he'd remade Die Hard and Dark City all at once, with a strange surreal-noir (you know, Burtonesque) story of a building taken hostage, only we didn't go outside the building (except, if I recall, the roof) until the very end, and so we never knew where or what kind of a crazy world the story was in. But there's more, and I wish I remembered more clearly now, but I know we were unclear if we were supposed to root for the hostages and their attempts to become free or the hostage-takers and their undeclared motives for taking hostages, or with the police/etc. trying to come in and save the day (which for most of the film are a force we do not know and have not met, but keep hearing about).
But what's really weird, and where I'm of course the fuzziest now, is that there was something about time travel or inter-dimensional travel or something, and the further into the film and the stranger things get the more we realize this isn't plain old Planet Earth. What I do remember is that the building the hostage situation was in turned out to be some big science building with a time machine or crazy dimension-warping... thing... inside it (kids this is the danger of falling asleep to Star Trek episodes), and that the people being held hostage turned out to be trustees and socialites and scientists.
Because of this, see, a couple of heroic hostages sneak away and use the machine. It's fuzzy if this means they go back in time to the beginning of the story or if they leap to a parallel dimension or if they sent a message back to their same selves and changed the outcome or what, but what happens is halfway through the story or so, they change the story drastically. So we start over, catching things about ten or fifteen minutes in, and now things go very differently. The building has been sealed with some kind of technology/magic (remember, it's all a little more Burton than real-life anyway) which essentially coats the building in glass and the hostage takers are now inside, just as before, but two of the hostages (I vaguely remember these as George Clooney and someone else, a woman... Julia Roberts?) know what's going on and avoid capture. The hostage-takers, led by I think Paul Giamatti?, do things differently now, and we start the story again, now with the upper-hand going to the hostages. We come to an impasse and someone else jumps back in the machine and we wipe the slate a third time, only now both sides have some degree of advantage.
There's something weird about the more times you use the machine the more warped and unlike the original dimension/timeline (Earth Prime?) things get, and this is where the Burtonisms start to show up as the world just feels more and more peculiar. Odd shapes, cultural bizarreness, unusual and unlikely inventions replacing ours. The implication is that each time they try, the world outside the science facility is changing drastically and the world inside, a relative bubble of normalcy, is only seeing a little of that bleed in, or something. I don't really remember. But it's a strange game of cat and mouse between hostages and hostage-takers as each fights their way back to the machine and uses it to back the story up with more advantage than the other side, all while cops try to find their way in and so on. It's obvious they're mutating things outside so much that the world won't be recognizable at all when they're done, but they're struggling for survival, or control of something (the machine?), or whatever: they're motivated and they won't give up.
So we're watching this in the theater and I'm thinking, "this is the first time I've been excited about a Burton movie since Big Fish," and I'm amazed at how complex and bizarre they're willing to take things, how we keep resetting and telling a different layer laterally to the same characters and events, rather than building a linear forward-moving story, and how weird it must have been to plot and structure it this way (even though upon waking, it doesn't feel that weird to me... still intriguing though). But, alas, the movie has a really bland, uninspired ending. I forget it now, but I know it was unanimously agreed upon as bad. Good movie, bad ending.
But here's the genius of it. Tim Burton very quietly released a "sequel." Actually he released new prints of the same film under the same title while it was still in theaters, only everything after the first fifteen minutes were completely different: when they start changing things, the changes just got better -- more inspired -- and I think the cops got inside and they started jumping back and changing things too -- and I remember being in the theater for the sequel, for some screening, and the audience had been chatting away for the first act which they'd seen before and suddenly after that first "jump," everything was different, with ratcheted up tension and a more realized universe, and we all shut the fuck up and stared in awe as the story just went somewhere more exciting. It was a coup, a sneaky move that nobody saw coming but everybody loved: the movie about resetting things and doing it again and where each reset fucked up the outside world into an even weirder configuration, used its own power on itself and reset. It was really exciting.
Eventually the new movie climaxed on the roof, and things are so bizarre that the buildings are all dangling by cables from some overhead rock structure, like daisy-chained christmas ornaments, and there was nothing below them but more cable and more buildings. It was supremely weird, and a lot of people didn't like it and got up to leave before the movie was even over (prompting, I remember, an out-loud laugh from me... which in turn prompted me to make a silent apology to the girls sitting in front of me when they stink-eyed me), but at least it was different and it wasn't afraid to be so.
The truth is, though, everybody left this movie still kind of disappointed, but just before the climax someone (I want to say it was Giamatti, the hostage-taker) had gone back down to the machine to "go back and sort this out once and for all," and we didn't see him come out the other side yet... so we knew a third version was coming, and somehow we all knew the third reset would be the one. And if not that, the fourth.
Somehow the prospect of going back and warping things further and giving yourself more knowledge about what to do next was a really exciting one to the audience, kept us coming back for more. In real life, I think it would be exhausting and disorienting and frustrating -- not to mention a cop-out and a headache.
Still, part of me wonders if I could tell some kind of a marketable story here. I almost think I could.
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| in which many things come to a close and there is a lull in the manic activity of the author's life |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|12:41 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | 1844, event, foto, go me, inane, iphoned, laika, nothing, open, racc, spacecat, star trek, sundance institute, work, writingland | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | "management by mutiny" | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | odo and o'brien blathering techspeak | ] |
It's interesting. I had roughly one-third of the people who told me they'd be there actually show up, and yet Tiga was packed to standing-room only, with a row of people shoulder to shoulder along the bar watching at odd angles as we screened our program. There were of course wanderers-in who didn't seem to mind gossiping at full volume in the other half of the bar, over our films, and although I was tempted to point out they were attending a screening, I decided to just let it be. For the most part, though, I had a decently rapt-seeming audience for the show. And don't get the wrong idea, I was thrilled with the turn-out, both the quantity and the quality of friends who showed up, and I am so grateful for how the whole thing turned out... really my most successful event yet. (We're getting better every time...)
Much (bordering on all) of the program selection credit goes to Andy, but it went really well; in fact, I don't mind saying I think ours might be the best selection of short films I've seen in a single sitting in any festival or screening event ever. Despite three days of struggling with Blu-Ray discs, we ended up showing everything on an SD DVD up-res'd by the Blu-Ray player rather than on a BRD itself, but it looked pretty damn good, actually. Ingrid from RACC was there, too, to witness the screening, emphasizing for me that the night had been a total success, since it was really thanks to and because of RACC we were screening anything at all.
And now, it's over with.
That night, last night, after Worst Date Night Ever, Brie, Jon, Dave and I went to Stripperoke, and Brie and I closed it down. Brie even convinced me to drunkenly embarrass myself through "Bullet With Butterfly Wings." What was embarrassing wasn't my lackluster performance; it was my commitment to trying all those ragey screamy parts, whiny melodic parts, and more ragey screamy parts. I figure, if you're up there and a topless girl is dancing around you and the song is Smashing Pumpkins, you just... er... bite the "Bullet"... and dig in.
Sometime (soon), Jon and I are going to meet and talk about final sound work, what can be done, what can't be done, what's worth being done and what's not worth being done. Looping dialogue is not off the table yet. We will see.
Beyond that, Open is actually ready to step in line alongside Every Room is Empty, and I'm about to start double-barreling festivals, especially European ones.
As noted, I am now officially a two-time finalist and no-time finishist for the Sundance Institute's Screenwriter's Lab, the first step to the prestigious Director's Lab. So it goes.
And today at work, after several hours of queasy, spinning, grotesque hangover (see above), I had a meeting with my manager, which was short and as awkward as ever (he is a nice guy but a very Manager-y kind of guy, and somehow we've never mastered the rhythms of casual conversation together), but which amounted to telling me that, as of January 1st, 2010, I will be Laika staff -- no longer project staff. Hello, benefits: hello, paid time-off (!); hello, insurance (!!); hello, 401K and disability coverage. Also I was told he was happy with the reports on my performance and thought I was doing well. I'm so nervous about it, not because I don't think I'm good but because so much of my job is waiting to jump or watching progress bars slowly climb toward 100%, which means I spend a lot of time browsing the internet or rearranging folders, and I worry that I don't look as useful to the company as maybe I am. But apparently it's at least less of a problem than I feel like it is. So hey, that's awesome.
In domestic news, Martha's in Thailand for the holidays and Andy and Christina are who-knows-where (Molalla, at a guess?) until Wednesday, and so apart from two cats who are trying to knock over anything that will crash, spill or break and a kitchen in which there is literally one clean plate, one clean spoon, one clean knife, no clean glasses and no clean forks, and piles of gross crusty dishes delicately piled atop every surface (alas), I have a whole house to myself and no stresses or anxieties to deal with. (I like my roommates, but sometimes people just stress me out; I am unfortunately a cave-dweller at times.)
Anyway, to sum up: Open got a screening, which went well, which means Open is (99.95%) complete and ready to enter the festival phase -- which also means the pressure of the screening is behind me. So I have zero films (except for that .05% of Open) in post-production anymore. Also I just got benefits at work. Also I know I'm not going to SDI this year (which I knew before, but the wait for that shoe to drop is over as well). Also an empty house. So in the last twenty-four hours there's been a whole bunch of changes going on to my stress level.
My reaction to all of this: I haven't done anything productive or useful in the last 6 hours. I've watched some random episodes from season 1 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and chatted online with Dutch about the series. I've dicked around the internet, caught up on my google reader feed, and ... what? That's about it. And yes, I am so wearing sweatpants. I don't mean to be that guy but today, I've earned it, and all of you can suck it.
Soon I'll settle back into it, pick up my scripts, start panicking about how far away my next project is, worry about all the other stuff I've put off (fixing my diet; finishing my dental work; returning to the gym; christmas shopping; home improvement; cat parenting; therapy and drugs and a social life; and of course a relationship), and I'll be back to my nothing's-ever-good-enough one-step-away-from-the-abyss multitask-procrastinator's lifestyle. But for tonight, I'll just keep watching the weak first year of an underrated show that I have to keep reminding myself gets a lot better, pet my kitty and do and think nothing.
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| round two |
[Dec. 11th, 2009|07:26 pm] |
Dear Travis,
Thank you so much for submitting THE WORLD OF MISSING PERSONS to our 2010 January Screenwriters Lab. Unfortunately, I'm writing with the disappointing news that your project was not selected for the Lab. Please know that we gave the script careful consideration. We were genuinely impressed by the consistently high level of submissions this year, and had so few available spaces; the selection process was incredibly challenging, and unfortunately your project didn’t make it into our final mix of material.
We wish you the best of luck and would encourage you to consider submitting other material to us for our future labs. Thanks again for your interest in the Feature Film Program.
Sincerely,
Michelle Satter
Director
Feature Film Program |
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| labor fruit |
[Dec. 11th, 2009|12:48 am] |
I have been out or at Laika until after ten -- usually after midnight -- every night this week, preparing for the Worst Date Night Ever screening/party, which in case you didn't know is also the Premiere of Open. Fucking finally.
Anyway, here's the fruit of my week's worth of neck-killing, sleep-dodging, cat-neglecting labor:
Exhibit A, The DVD of my short films, which you get with a $5 donation at the screening. As promised on the flier:
Exhibit B, The final (screening) edit of the film in question. Sound designed (unsweetened, which is how I like my tea but not how I like my dialogue), scored, titles and credits, everything:
Jesus, my neck hurts.
Good night, brothers and sisters of the internet. See you all Sunday, I hope.
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| Open has its premiere finally |
[Dec. 8th, 2009|10:45 am] |
I haven't updated in a while. Been busy, distracted, anxiety ridden, a little creatively derailed, but mostly busy. A lot to do before Sunday. Lordy lordy.
See you there?
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| The Doctor, single women, picking pockets |
[Dec. 6th, 2009|09:12 am] |
I've been rewatching the new Dr Who series, starring David Tennant, and oh god. How does a television show make me get misty over people in big rubber alien suits? How does it create a sense of majesty and tragedy about a time traveler, and make me care about a robot dog in just one episode? (you're a GOOD DOG. 'Affirmative.' AHHHH) I think maybe I've gone soft in the head.
Looking for a Christmas gift for the independent free-spirited lady in your life? The last time I looked, my novel Overqualified was something like #20 in "Literature / Single Women" over at Amazon. I have no idea how that sort of thing happens, but when I read that, I walked around all day winking at ladies on the street. As you do.
The TV show Hustle has me wanting to become a professional con man and pickpocket. What could go wrong? It's sort of the opposite end of the spectrum from being a super-villain, which has been another dream of mine for a while now. Do you think it would ruin my career if I kept getting arrested for picking pockets? |
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