A blog of endless possibilities where I discuss whatever I feel like, though the majority of it will end up being reviews of movies and the like. My tastes in film are pretty far-reaching but I usually end up being damn critical or ridiculously praising. Let's see if I can't fuck this up...
So, I'm a lazy bastard. I haven't done full on reviews for each of these movies. I try to be a little selective with the posts I make so that I don't get bogged down by too many obligations to just write all the time. At some point in the future I'm sure I'll get more in depth with some of these movies, but for now, I'm just going to rank them all and give a brief blurb about what I thought (strengths, weaknesses, whatever seems relevant, etc.)
By now I think people generally understand I have pretty broad tastes in films and this list represents that. Also, keep in mind please, that this list is reflective of me and my opinions ALONE. I'm not here to please anyone or to just jump on the bandwagon of opinions about the best movies of the year. I'm not a critic, so I can be as free-wheeling as I want with my selections, the general consensus be damned. But that's not to say I'm not unaware of the different criticisms leveled against some of these movies, some of them are indeed flawed, but the point I'm trying to emphasize is that my movie-going experience is unique to myself (obviously). We all go to the theaters for different reasons and we bring different perspectives and feelings about movies when we sit down and watch them. If I feel like dismissing the weaknesses of a given film because I think its strengths outweigh those flaws then I can do that.
Finally, the reason why there's nineteen of these Best Films is because of how I rate movies. Any film that I give 5 Stars (thank you, Netflix rating system) is one I consider pretty damn good. And this ranking of least greatest to superb is also my own.
19. Prometheus (Ambitious and incredible to watch on the big screen. The main problem is of course the rambling plot, there are too many characters and too many thematic asides being made that distract from the overall story, making it all a little confusing at times.)
18. The Amazing Spider-Man (Much better than Raimi's trilogy with genuine human pathos and emotional growth on the part of all the characters. The main issue was with the rather over-stuffed plot that inflated the running time unnecessarily.)
17. The Avengers (Saw three times; Joss Whedon is a god. It's kind of amazing how well this film works as an actual film. There's a solid story, all of the characters have their moments to shine, and there's a surprising amount of genuine drama. The final battle is a little too excessive in retrospect, but I admire the attempts at being supremely epic.)
16. Chronicle (Best use of the found footage format I've ever seen. Some of the effects are rather astonishing given what I assumed was a relatively modest budget. There are characters and emotions and everything feels oddly realistic given the story. Only criticism would be the occasional bouts of melodrama between the eventual antagonist and his abusive father.)
15. The Dark Knight Rises (Saw twice; A truly epic conclusion to an extraordinary trilogy. Who would've guessed a superhero's tale would lead to one of the pivotal cinematic events of the decade? A nitpick- there are one too many extra characters in this film that serve no dramatic purpose.)
14. Michael (A deeply unsettling film from Austria that barely anyone saw. It skimps on the backstory and emotions a little too much, but ultimately the direction and performances sell everything and make for a very creepy, very engrossing dissection of the life of a pedophile.)
13. Looper (Hard mother fucking science fiction. Probably one of the most original films of the year featuring an exceptional script and excellent direction. As with Tron: Legacy however, the CGI-rendered face of JGL to make him look like Bruce gets distracting at times.)
12. Seven Psychopaths (It breaks all the rules and I love it because of that. Arguably one of the most promising directors out there, McDonagh knows what he's doing behind the camera. And yet there are brief moments and scenes that seem a little too willing to blur the lines of reality and fantasy and sometimes not in a good, fun way but in a confusing, lacking way.)
11. Life of Pi (It could've done with a stronger opening and closing to bookend the main themes and ideas of the entire story, but Life of Pi is ultimately a wonderfully imaginative visual feast. The CGI is at times astounding, I may even be willing to shell out a few extra bucks to see it in 3D, and the story is surprisingly moving. Full of a love and appreciation for nature and life and spirituality, Ang Lee impresses me once again with his endless talents behind the camera as a director who is capable of creating vastly different worlds in each of his movies.)
10. The Master (A big fat puzzle of a movie. I don't even know what the hell it's about, but I don't care. Well, sometimes I do. But really the pure FILM of this film is incredible from the production design and cinematography to the carefully modulated performances and bizarre script.)
9. Zero Dark Thirty (It has some structural issues in the beginning and middle, but ultimately the entire movie is an incredibly intense and impressive feat of docu-drama style filmmaking. I'm not usually the biggest fan of historical dramas that depict modern conflicts and war in a graphic manner, mainly because they tend to feel overly political and I wasn't a huge supporter of Bigelow's previous effort, The Hurt Locker, which I thought was weirdly languid and unfocused. But everything she got wrong then, she hits out of the ballpark here. The acting is superb by pretty much everyone, Chastain especially, and the production is at times startlingly realistic.)
8. Lincoln (A screenwriter's wet dream come to life. This movie is written so ridiculously well it overshadows the sometimes lacking direction and occasionally melodramatic performances by the lesser actors. I usually don't like Day Lewis, but in this he astonishes.)
7. ParaNorman (What an imaginative and original little film. This is the kind of animation I like. Where the characters and environments come to life as real people and places, but where fantasy is also bursting at the seams to overtake their world. A nice, simple, relevant message well-conveyed in a wonderfully dark, scary, and moving story. And I LOVE Mitch's twist at the end. Of course.)
6. Skyfall (Saw twice; I already talked about this at length in my post before. Read it instead.)
5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Saw twice; Same world. New story and characters. Yes it gets silly at times and is overlong. But I love me some ambitious filmmaking and as usual Jackson delivers with an awesome recreation of a world we've seen before, but not necessarily like this. It further establishes how much fantasy there is to be had in Middle Earth and how much exciting adventure there can be there as well.)
4. Silver Linings Playbook (A wonderfully written, bittersweet, and at times painful family drama with just the right amount of hidden snarkiness and black comedy. I usually don't like David O. Russell's style of direction or writing, but this time he hits all the right marks and gets some excellent performances by pretty much the entire cast. Though it devolves into melodrama a little too frequently at times, the nicely upbeat and romantic ending wraps things up neatly without feeling all that forced.)
3. Django Unchained (Seeing a second time tomorrow; Tarantino hits another one out of the park. Better than Inglourious Basterds because it feels a little more focused and fine-tuned in the script and production department. As usual the dialogue is incredible and as usual the tension is nail-biting.)
2. We Need To Talk About Kevin (Granted it's technically a 2011 film, but the limited release in theaters was kind of confusing and it bled over into 2012 a fair amount, so that's why I'm including it here. Dark, dark, dark. Tilda's incredible as always. The direction is nauseating in its unsettling detail. And Miller really really makes me terrified. An extraordinarily real film that delves head first into the horrors of modern youth, violence, culture, and family.)
1. Cloud Atlas (Saw twice; One of the most daunting, moving, strange, ambitious movies I've ever seen or can imagine. It's very flawed, but I kind of like it more because it is so relatively problematic at times. A big grand epic that reiterates similar ideas and themes through different stories and events and characters, BUT they're all played by the same people.)
I was scared shitless my first year of high school. I had just finished saying goodbye to the friends I had at my middle school who were going off to Niles North, whereas I was heading to Evanston Township. This was primarily because of a slight mix-up of school districts. I had moved the previous fall during eighth grade, but my mother and I soon learned that the district we had gone to was part of the Skokie/Evanston crossover district. I was devastated. It had taken me a couple years to actually make the friends I had at McCracken primarily because I was (and still am) an awfully shy person. It takes time for me to warm to people because I'm very self-conscious about my appearance and personality, I constantly worry about how others perceive me because of my weight or my height or my sexuality. The point is- I was being forced to leave people I had known and grown to love for a place that was a complete and utter mystery to me. Evanston by all appearances seems a gargantuan suburb (it's really a full on city) and there were so many parts to it that seemed gang-filled and dangerous to me.
But I had no other choice. So I essentially started over. I stayed in contact with my old friends in Skokie, but as with all distant relationships, they began to fade into mere acquaintances. I still knew them as people but they were all changing in ways I couldn't fully see from where I was. Evanston Township was daunting. It's a huge school; one of the largest in the country- built under one continuous roof. I was sure I would get lost every day. But like with book covers, I had judged everything by its surface appearances. The school feels smaller once you're inside and once you get used to it. You learn every corner and secret passage and stairwell. It's a bit like Hogwarts, but without the elf slavery and floating candles and you know, magic. I didn't make a lot of friends (big surprise). And my grades started to slack. I was so muddled and confused by the metric shit tons of assignments, it seemed like every other class had some new concept that was foreign to me (which makes sense, because I was supposed to be learning new things, it's a school, duh). But what I mean more so is that previously in middle school I had been able to judge what kinds of things to expect out of classes. Write an essay for English. Do the math problems for Pre-Algebra. Etc. Here it was a whole different ballpark. Everything needed attention and focus and I was desperate to make every single assignment the best I could. But I, being a ruddy freshman without the slightest bit of intelligence regarding advanced classes of world history or math or science, buckled under it all. I floundered.
The worst was PE. Or Physical Exercise. Or Gym. Whichever you wanna call it. Now, I'm just about the least athletic person ever. I loathe sports and games and competitions. Except for baseball, which can be relaxing and simple. Just the whole concept of sports usually turns me off. The macho chest pounding, the homophobia, the violence, the barbarism. And so naturally anytime someone gave me a ball to throw or kick or a lap to run, I'd shudder and fall apart inside. This is also because I'm hopelessly unfit. So in Gym, when it came time to do anything aside from riding a stationary bike in the exercise room, I'd try to run the other way. I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of a bunch of guys.
Then came swimming. I did my best to skip it. It was supposed to be for two straight weeks in the latter half of the year. I dodged around and went straight for the library, or I made excuses to the teacher that I was sick; he'd send me to the nurse. Anything and everything was attempted. For four days. Then, Thursday night, my mom gets a call. I've been missing too many classes. If I don't go, I'll probably fail the quarter. Now my mom didn't often get mad about gym class, she always told me to just do the bare minimum. Fade into the background. But still try. And still show up. She also hated it when one of her kids was failing a class. Any class. She had had too many problems with my brothers in their high school years to allow me to slide. She put her foot down and said I would be in swim class the following day. A Friday. Saint Patrick's Day. I didn't dare challenge my terrifying mother, so I gave in and said I would go.
But I had a plan. I would be dying my hair green. The first time I had ever dyed my hair.
For the previous couple of years I had been growing more and more aware of the fact that I was gay. And being a teenager, I let such feelings out in various ways. For a time I tried the Goth look. Shopped at Hot Topic and got a pair of $80 chain-link black pants. Wore the eyeliner and black nail polish. It was fun. But the novelty wore off and my angst just wasn't extreme enough to justify continuing to look such a way for everyone else's sake more so than my own. I still listen to the heavy metal and get a kick out of the Goth world, but it just isn't really me as I know myself to be. My clothes in high school up until this particular Gym class day had been relatively average. Jeans. A t-shirt. A brown hooded sweater. Black Chucks. I was fairly normal looking. But I was sick of it. This wasn't me either. I was perpetuating the same thing. What do others think of how I look? I asked myself. And I changed accordingly. Then I heard tell of a holiday coming up. An Irish holiday (keep note of Irish things in this post, it'll be a recurring thing). Green would be everywhere. But not a lot of people at Evanston would have the balls to actually go the distance and dye their hair, would they? Well sure, a couple of lame kids did the whole temporary spray thing. But that's child's play. I wanted a change. And this was my opportunity. So I took it.
I'd had enough of being more or less invisible. I wanted to say something. I wanted to be me. Not for the sake of the world, but for myself. So, Thursday night, I dyed my hair green. It was a mess. My first time. But it was worth it. I went to school and got all the comments and double takes and smiles and jeers and everything I wanted. This was my coming out, literally and figuratively.
I say that because I never really had an official coming out. There was no awkward discussion with mom and dad. There was no "let's sit down and talk" with my friends and peers. By taking an action, I was speaking volumes about the truth. Certainly people asked me in the following days and weeks and months and years, and every time I confirmed it as true. I went to the Gay-Straight Alliance and did my best to be a part of the community. I hung out with different gay or accepting people. But it was never something I had to say. It was implied by the virtue of my existence. I simply was gay to most people. I didn't want to beat around the bush and play the game. I just wanted to be me.
And it worked. For a time. Because something far bigger than my sexuality was looming on the horizon. Something I should've seen coming but hadn't.
The future.
High school got better. I made more friends. I branched out in my classes and got decent grades. I had a good time. And it was all on my terms. I wasn't letting the system push me around so much anymore.
But there was something irking me. Something that reared its ugly head toward the start of my senior year- I didn't know what I wanted to do beyond high school.
The world was just this big shapeless mess and at the time there was nothing in it that I could grasp onto. Nothing that could give me perspective on everything. I didn't know what I felt about anything. Politics. Religion. Relationships. Family. They each had their own presences in my life in various capacities and in various ways. But what was I supposed to do about them?
I have a pretty private family. We talk. And talk. And talk. But I never felt connected (and to a degree, I still don't). The conversations around the dinner table are there, but I never get substance. We argue about things, concepts, movies, ideas, but not each other. I'm not really complaining, I'm just saying it's the nature of my family. We avoid conflict as much as we can. But if I'm being honest here, it's all to a fault. There are like a hundred buried issues between us all and we avoid talking about them because we're insecure and uncomfortable. When we do try to lay things on the line, there's a lot of immediate dismissal or half-talks (we discuss things at a distance, detached emotionally). So when things explode, they do so with a vengeance. We lash out and say stupid things. We become overly harsh and lose our composure. And it's unpleasant. And really I'm sick of it.
Let me draw an analogy. For the longest time I thought it best to view every single movie in existence. What better way to draw inspiration for future writing than by basking in the glory of other films? I compiled lists on my computer. Literally hundreds of movies. And I slowly chipped away at them all for years. I amassed knowledge of movies that could help me to articulate my own ideas and feelings about the world. But more often than not, I was bored to tears. I was seeing films I really had no interest in seeing except for the fact that they had been praised in various articles and given awards and been written about ad nauseam by critics. I like The Maltese Falcon. It's a good movie. It's well made and fun. But I'd hardly call it one of the greatest films of all time. It's just my opinion. But I trudged on, doing what others expected of me. I was a film student. I was supposed to see every single last classic movie in the world. That's what we do. But it dawned on me in a discussion with another student about The Grapes of Wrath (a book I hated)- I don't have to see everything. I don't have to like everything. I don't have to hate everything. I don't always have to have my brain turned on, ready and willing to dissect and pull apart the quality of a given movie. Films are personal. They are our own. We see what we want to see. And really, if I know what I want to write about in a given story, it should only ever make sense for me to see the films that might be directly related to that movie either thematically or stylistically. I don't need to see Citizen Kane again and again to learn how to write a family drama. And more than this, relating the topic back to The Grapes of Wrath- I'm not a critic. I'm a writer. I create. If I choose to dismiss an author like John Steinbeck out of hand simply because I didn't like The Grapes of Wrath, then that is my decision. I don't have to give him another try because he might theoretically have done a better work. The Twilight Saga movies might have a couple of good films in their series, but I'm not going to watch them all on the off chance. I don't have the time or the wish to.
But back to the family matter- I don't have to be like my family. And that's really what inspired me to get into screenwriting. Here was a chance for me to break away from the monotony, the lack of honesty, the half-assed attempts at true acknowledgment of issues. I want honesty and I want to create something that reflects back on myself. This is why I tend to lean so much toward character. And flawed characters at that. And bleakness with dashes of hope. I need the worlds I make because without them I'd go insane.
Now, I'm not trying to badmouth my family, far from it. I love and adore my family. But I also know what makes them tick. I know the ways I need to employ in order to keep them and myself as sane as possible when the holidays come. I organize my life and my day-to-day schedule as much as I do because if I didn't I'd be lost again. I have to have something to work on, something to fix, something to make. And sometimes it's figuring out how to handle the holidays or the upcoming brotherly get-together. I need to know what's going to be happening with who so I know what to say and how to act. If I didn't I'd lose my mind and we'd be in the midst of a mad chaos. I need to balance out the 'reality' of my imagined worlds with the 'attempt at reality' of the real world (with my family). I'm not going to pretend that this is sane or logical or good in anyway, because it's not. It's not ideal and it's not pretty, but for the time being, it's what works.
Having said all that, I also need to address the matter of this particular year. 2012.
I've been going to Columbia College Chicago for almost a full four years. Even with all my previous remarks about knowing how to organize my life, I have to say it hasn't been easy and it hasn't always worked. In fact, it doesn't work, not in practice. What I said above is my idealized version of how my world would operate if everything fell into place. But it doesn't and hasn't. No human being has the true capabilities to compartmentalize their lives into separate boxes. No, what I described above was the general. A broad, loose, crazy breakdown of how I try to do things. And those things for the past few years now have been slowly killing me. Spiritually I mean. I don't sleep well. Ever. I'm always exhausted. I push myself to organize my life into these mad days of doing twenty things at once. And this organization has only ever worked a couple of times. And those times pretty much all took place this year.
I haven't been satisfied with my experiences at Columbia. I wasn't making the connections with people I wanted to. I was still broken down and incredibly introverted and shy. Or at least I THOUGHT I hadn't been satisfied in recent semesters.
This past Spring was a mixture of General Education credit courses that mostly bored me beyond belief and a couple of film major courses that pushed me in ways I hadn't thought possible. Screenwriting II basically gave me the golden opportunity I needed. I had spent quite a while writing nothing but shorts I didn't fully appreciate and so the chance to create a feature was a monumental challenge I was only too happy to take on. I wanted to prove to myself I had what it took to break away from the insanity of home and create a second home for myself to get lost in. I wanted, needed, something to obsess over. I still did the assignments in my other classes and passed them well enough with solid grades. But I was hellbent on perfecting this damn feature script, Grace. I revised it once and turned it in. Then the semester was over. I was happy. I was satisfied with where it was.
The last day for me in my Spring 2012 term was devoted to skipping my final class in favor of an extraordinary movie-going experience like no other. I saw all of the Marvel films in one sitting in the theaters in preparation for the midnight release of The Avengers. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. Sixteen hours trapped in a theater with a couple hundred crazy fans. It was exhausting. I was with one of my best friends. We ate cookies and Coke and Nutella and pita chips and more Coke and iced tea and overpriced mozzarella sticks. We laughed at all the jokes. We thrilled at all the action. It was unforgettable.
Then summer began. And I was a mess again. I took an unofficial summer class with one of my previous teachers. I wanted to revise Grace for real. The class fell apart several weeks in and the meetings felt sporadic and random. I instead developed the basic storyline for The Bounty. A western that I'd like to work on a great deal more after school is over. But not much else happened in the way of writing work this summer. It dawned on me like it had done so in high school, "What are you doing in the future, Galen? Where do you see yourself? Do you really think you can manage all of this?"
I wasn't sure. My doubts were getting the better of me.
But something else came to the rescue this summer. Something unrelated to writing altogether. My mom and I decided to move again. Get a smaller, cheaper place. I didn't really need a full on second bedroom; I'd been sleeping comfortably on the living room couch for a couple of years. We could throw things out and re-organize our lives and things over again. A new start. It'd be fun.
How wrong I was.
July 3rd. The week of the hottest days in the summer. Over 100 degrees. We moved. We hired a small crew of three men to do the heavy lifting for the truck. Those three soon branched out into a much-needed ten men from all over the city. We must have seemed to be mad people. But we trekked on.
I had spent the better part of two months putting together and organizing almost single-handedly nearly two hundred boxes. We have a lot of stuff. I did a break down of every piece of furniture we owned to keep track. My mom works two jobs and her schedule was full to the brim. She barely had time to do much of anything, so I had to pick up the slack. With only an hour to spare before the movers arrived I had to pack virtually every box in my mom's bedroom. I stood in a literal puddle of my own sweat at the end of the sixty minutes. The movers arrived. The move itself took about three times as long as predicted because of the heat. A lunch break was required. We were without air conditioning in either apartment for the better part of the day. At the old place I still had work to do. Cleaning of the kitchen. Organizing of the boxes for a few trips in the car. At the new place I had to tell the movers where to go with each piece of furniture. Finally the movers left. They charged us what the initial agreement was, nice guys that they were. But there was still work to do. I had been working non-stop for about twelve hours. Then my knee gave out. I felt a sickening, crunching pop in my leg. I had to sit down for a while to catch my breath and relax my leg. It was time for dinner. One of my brothers came over; I took a very slow shower, pulled on a knee brace, and took about half an hour to walk a five-minute distance to the new place where he and my mom were waiting. We drove to the restaurant and I sank into a plush leather seat with the most heavenly sigh I've ever uttered. We ate. I tried to sit up and felt the most awful pain in my legs. I had been sweating and working so much, my legs had become raw and red and chafed. I could barely walk. But I had to. We returned to the old apartment to hopefully finish working. It was taking too long. My brother would have to leave to get up early for work the following day soon. It would just be my mom and myself to work on the cleaning and a few more car trips. On the back porch of the apartment I finally broke down and shouted at the top of my lungs at my brother when he tried to push me to do more work. I was exhausted beyond belief. It was agreed we couldn't finish that night. We would have to wait until the following day, after a good night's rest, and we had to hope that the landlords didn't come calling to start work on the old place in the meantime. I didn't sleep well. My position was right in front of the air conditioner; my legs propped up, my entire body splayed out like Jesus on the fucking cross. It had been the actual worst day of my life ever.
I woke up the following day and went straight back to work on the old place. My energy was still drained despite the constant consumption of water and Coke and donuts. I could barely move anymore. Box after box. Sponge after sponge. Vacuum cleaner after broom. The process of cleaning and moving seemed endless. I took a break, deliberated in my head, checked a newspaper, and consulted with my mom. We were going to finish by 3:00 that afternoon or else die trying. Why? Well I had a plan. And we we're going to stick to it. I pushed my mom and myself harder; we were re-energized by the prospect of a reward to come that afternoon. And we finished everything in record time and with an hour to spare. I could shower. I could sit comfortably for once. And I put my foot down to my mom. We always walk to the theaters in downtown Evanston, a good thirty-minute stroll. But I said no, not this time. The line had to be drawn here. So she drove us. And we saw The Amazing Spider-Man in 3D. It was incredible AND amazing. I lost myself in Andrew Garfield's dreamy eyes and even cried a little at the end when the New Yorkers helped Spider-Man out (this was probably more my deliriousness than anything else). It had been one of the best days of the year.
So that traumatizing experience behind me, I looked to the future. School was fast approaching and I still had my doubts about what the hell I was going to do beyond it.
Fall 2012. Six classes. All film related. I was stoked. The semester began. And pretty much right off the bat I knew that for the better part of fifteen weeks straight I'd be seriously lacking in the sleep department once again. And I was right. Practically every day was filled with something daunting. Some significantly complicated assignment that required extra time. Or else a week was filled to the brim with homework in every class, small projects, small papers, short scenes. There was always something. And because of the nature of my hours and my lack of a printer at home, there was the increasing necessity of a mad balancing act. This work had to be done here at this time in order to make room for an assignment to be worked on this night so that it could all be turned in in twenty-four hours time. It was a challenge and I made it. But just barely. And I doubt I would have without the enormous impact and help of a person explained in more detail below. The point is, it wasn't until this past semester specifically, that I felt truly willing and able to put forth the effort to try my hand at different things at the same time. A relatively good sign of my potential ability to juggle numerous projects at once. Which is sort of the whole point of film school and college in general. The teachers are nice, but brutal in their honesty. Well except for one. But he'll also be discussed in a bit. They each provide a rewarding sense of accomplishment in their own individual ways at the end of the semester. It's less that I feel like I've learned something new, because the basic concepts are already known at this stage by most screenwriting majors, and more so that I feel like I've accomplished something. Whether that something has future potential as a script or paper is next to irrelevant, the point is I succeeded and am aware of the steps that come next in the development of a given work. Practice makes perfect. The process never ends and we are never fully satisfied with our own stuff. Which is why it is almost always recommended that you step away from something you've been working on for a while. Give yourself some space and some greater perspective.
In Rewriting, I literally rewrote Grace. Not from the ground up, mind you, for that would have been nigh impossible to do in one semester given the nature of the script as it is. But the first act had to be altered. Subplots had to be tightened or re-arranged or eliminated. Dialogue had to be tweaked. Every word had to be scrutinized and deemed suitable for the final product. Which again was the point of the class. To recognize in yourself what was wrong and how to improve it in your way. Be aware of the rules and see how they applied to you.
1939, a film history class. Remarkably insightful and entertaining. Taught by one of my favorite teachers ever. A class to come and relax in. It stimulated my critical side and had me re-analyze the entire concept of context. It is necessary to recognize how and when a story is being told within the setting of the production itself. The films of 1939 were incredibly influenced by the culture of the era and reflected back on the historical events of the year in intriguing ways. The same applies today. We analyze films in a post 9/11 manner and create them in a similar way. We are more cynical and jaded and so our movies reflect some of those mentalities.
STP. Three little letters to represent three big words. Screen Treatment & Presentation. How to sell your script and yourself as a screenwriter. I dreaded this class. Why? Simple- pitching. Not my strong suit in any way. As I've said many times now, I'm shy. Painfully, awkwardly shy. And I was terrified of how my personality and stories would come across to others. More on this later.
CS. Comparative Screenwriting. With the subtitle of Impact of Censorship. I shan't go into details here about this class. I've described on Twitter and Facebook many times how much I loathed it. The teacher. The lack of genuine coursework. It was sold as a class where I'd learn how to compare different screenplays to each other. Not once did I do so. The Doctor- a man so contradictory in attitude and personality it's remarkable he can even be called human. Never have I had a teacher who got the point of blunt honesty and somehow still missed the target. Constructive criticism does not equal bitchy, snarky comments about the badness of my paper. I know it's crappy. Help me to fix it. And do so in an effectively conveyed manner. Please.
Genres. The horror script. A slasher film. It works in concept. I wish there had been more of a chance for me to make it better, to develop it more. Time was a factor and I turned in a script that was adequate and met the primary requirements, but which wasn't satisfying to me. And really, that's somehow worse than turning in a purely bad script. I'd much rather turn in dreck and know it to be so rather than turn in something middling and have nary a clue what the hell is actually wrong with it.
Topics. The western script. Character-based and minimalist. Enormous potential. But again, I want to, nay need to, go further with it. I could bust open the gates of Hollywood with this baby one day. But for right now it exists in only a bare bones blueprint of a script. I know the concept and the story and the structure. But there are still so many hundreds of small blanks to fill in. Details to be addressed. Nuances to be established. I want it to be a labor of love like Grace. But for right now, my attention needs to be elsewhere. And someone else's work. A story so superb and simply so it frustrates me that I hadn't come up with it first. But no, I couldn't have. The story is too personal to the creator, too much their particular vision. I am humbled and honored to even be considered good enough to handle such remarkable material. I feel I should be in a hazmat suit whenever I look at it.
So for fifteen weeks I tossed and turned restlessly. I drank mug of hot tea after Coke and didn't stop. The classes came and went in a flash. And really I don't know how I survived.
But that's not true. Not for a moment.
A single person helped me. And through the smallest of gestures basically gave me hope again. Rekindled what was a dying fire. And I'll be forever grateful. Regardless of what the future may or may not hold for myself and my potential career as a screenwriter, I know that to have, even briefly, dabbled with a person who's thoughts and feelings about story and film seemed to mesh so ideally with my own, was arguably one of the most incredible experiences of my life.
Now, I don't like naming names online if I can avoid it. This is a public arena and to do so seems awkward and rather invasive. I'm just not comfortable with it. So I shall avoid it. From here on out I shall refer to this person as Cim. Or CIM. Or Certain Irish Man (See a callback to the Irish thing, right?)
Cim came into my STP class on the off-chance. He himself described it later as being a quick push from his teacher to simply run in for a few minutes and pitch his short. Nothing else. He could write his email on the board for someone to contact him if they wanted to and that'd it be it. The intention from my teacher's perspective would be for us as a class to listen to how more advanced students do pitching in their own individual ways. Once the students were gone, we picked apart what they had said.
I don't like pitching. I think it's fake and overly showy. The idea is to spin yourself and your story in a way that wows people and producers and agents. I'm rarely wowed. I can see the seams in the fake personality. The extra smile, the exaggerated tone, the over-annunciated words. It's all a scam.
Who was this guy? Dressed in pretty average clothes. Tall. But then everyone's tall to me, Hobbit that I am. What should I expect? "Locker room. Football." Ugh. I was turned off, but for one thing. He was Irish. I'd never met a genuinely Irish person before. So I figured, why the hell not? I'll listen. Maybe his perspective on football will be unique. Maybe he means soccer. I don't know. He carried on for a bit and I faded in and out. I caught the basics of the story. Then, suddenly, it dropped. The G word. This was about a gay character. My ears perked up. Perhaps this will go somewhere interesting. But I was still cautious. This has the potential to become a joke. And a cheesy, bad one at that. What was the reaction to the protagonist coming out to the school going to be? A bunch of silly cheers and someone playing Lady Gaga? Would it become an overly obvious political statement about equality? No. The reaction was...subdued. Quiet. Awkward. Funny. And yet accepting. It was a joke. But not ha ha. More like a light chuckle at an uncomfortable silence. The audience feels the same way the main character does. This whole gay thing? they seem to say. Who gives a flying fuck? Get over yourself. And that was it. It wasn't the world that had been wrong. It had been him. He was so wrapped up in himself and how he was being perceived, he didn't even consider that most people couldn't care less anymore. It was upbeat without being preachy. But above all- new. I was sold.
Cim blew me away. There was genuine passion in his voice. He was connected to his short film. He knew it inside and out. The moments he described in it were so vivid, so clear, and yet so wonderfully simple, I was simply dazzled. And not for a second did I think it was fake. Really the story could've been anything, and I probably still would have followed up with an email talking about how I wanted to work with him. But more than the sell was the fact that the story was actually so damned good.
I am, by no means, a producer in any way. I couldn't possibly do that kind of work given my personality (or lack thereof) and my actual severe lack of confidence. In fact I usually can't stand most producers. Their stories often have little to no originality, they feel overly familiar or safe. And on top of that is the sale itself. If I don't believe you, I don't believe your story. But Cim was the whole package. And it was refreshing and intriguing. I knew, instinctively, that I needed in.
But how to go about doing so? I didn't have the slightest clue. Remember, here I was, surrounded by a multitude of intelligent peers who always seemed lightyears ahead of me in their work and in their confidence and the practical side of getting their work out there. What had I done? Tried for a contest or two? Big fucking deal. But I couldn't let go. Something nudged at the back of my mind. A lump in my throat all through that night. I was feeling guilty. Why wasn't I emailing him this instant? DO SOMETHING, my brain said. And so I did. I wrote a quick message and clicked send.
It was the first step toward the best decision I've made all year. Possibly in the past couple of years.
The response came back. He was willing to listen. A correspondence started up. We traded a few emails back and forth, testing the waters. Was I actually as good as I said I was? He read my samples and was pleased. Did he have the actual story he had pitched, or was the treatment a piece of garbage? It wasn't. It was incredible. There came the rare occurrence where I wasn't sure what to fix. Here was a producer with a writer's sensibilities and abilities. Someone who was tuned into both frequencies and knew what the hell he was talking about, unlike most of the others.
Coffee was consumed and much was discussed in person. This was a real tangible person with a genuine story. Not a fake. Someone older and experienced who had done actual work and who was pursuing with incredible tenacity and willingness even greater challenges. Hurdles I couldn't possibly imagine. Assignments were described for the span of a single week that seemed impossible. Was this guy a fucking superhero or something?
I inquired about the inspiration and expected either a shrug of the shoulders or a desperately maudlin and overly detailed examination of his past. Instead I got wonderfully blunt, yet beautifully conveyed and poignantly told, honesty. There would be no beating about the bush. "This is what the story is and this is where it came from." I asked about the previous version. He said it was awful. I insisted. Now I really wanted to see it. He gave in and emailed me a copy. It was bad. But in a way that held potential.
I was hired. A treatment and potentially a first draft of the actual script was my task.
Almost immediately, elsewhere in my life- home, other schoolwork, etc. I picked up. I was gaining confidence in my assignments. I had a willingness to push myself because at the end of each week was a beacon. A light at the end of the tunnel. Once my dreadful homework was dealt with, I could work on something else. Something disconnected. Something of my own that didn't require the rules of teachers and structure. I could do as I pleased. But I knew enough to not abuse such power. I needed control and I needed to show that I could do this.
So work began. It was a blast. Amidst all the chaos of the semester, here was something separate. At the end of the day, I could come home and just plug away at it. I could put into practice everything I had learned. But it was all on my terms. There was no safety net of school to fall back on. All I had was the pressure from Cim. But he too was relying on me. I couldn't be selfish and just let myself run with whatever I felt like. I needed input anyway, I needed to know what he wanted me to do. So he told me. Directly. The trick to spinning it in my own personal way would come in the execution of the treatment and the script. Only there could I dare speak and say something undiscussed beforehand. There was a freedom to be had in five pages. A freedom that spoke to both of us. He could create the story and I could create the reality. This relationship had become mutual. We needed each other to bounce ideas off of. To figure out what worked and what didn't. And I still needed that voice of reason. To help guide me in the right direction, even in the smallest of ways.
There were similar tastes to be had as well. A love of mild cynicism and irony. An adoration of idealism and hope. An appreciation for character. All this best summed up in the agreed upon admiration for Star Trek, a world that somehow encapsulates all those things and more. (However Cim's liking TNG and VOY over DS9 needs to be discussed at some point...)
Then there was the gay thing. More so how we perceived such a thing in our own lives. Which was mainly that we don't. Our sexualities are second nature to us. They are a reality unto themselves and deserve addressing in stories and characters. But such things should never be made to be overt and obvious. Subtlety beyond belief. Realism at the core.
He shared with me his own coming out story without the blink of an eye. It was just another tale to him. Granted, an important one, but still an event of wonderfully startling inconsequentiality in retrospect.
Writing the short was a joyous experience. Here was a story I could get behind. Something I cared about a great deal. And something I was willing to put forth my best effort on. I cared about it and gave it my all. I agonized over every word as best I could. I desperately tried to work the pages down to the necessary number. I wanted it to be perfect.
But there are ALWAYS flaws. And the most vital thing a person can do to help is to point them out. Every. Single. One. Because they all matter. They all mean something just as equally as the things that work do. Something can always use finagling or perfecting. And the depth of the revision feedback I got was extraordinary. Less in the details themselves, but more in the level of care. Here was someone who cared enough about the story to ask every question, to pose every idea, and always in the most helpful of manners. Nothing ever felt rude or forced or accusatory. These were genuine. Again. And sadly, that's a rarity in the film business. More often than not, feedback is cursory and simple-minded, the producer cares more about the number of explosions than in the character details. Not with Cim. Every stone was unturned, every consideration made, and every feeling evoked.
And then came the feature. Cim emailed an attachment containing a short version of a proposed storyline. He sent the message without notes. I was just to read the thing and get back to him whenever. I raced through the eleven pages as quickly as I could. I was in a rush for class. I barely got past page two before I knew something special was going on with this story. I finished in a few minutes and laid my head back against my chair in the screening room for my 1939 class. Gone With the Wind came on. Of all the films to not be able to pay attention to for this last semester, this was the one I didn't really wanna miss. But my brain wandered. I was struggling to wrap my head around the short. What in God's name was this thing? An intimate character drama or a wacky science fiction story with an odd and out of place subplot thrown into the mix? Was it a disaster or a masterpiece waiting to happen? I needed to talk about this. So Cim and I agreed to meet the following day.
Never have I had such a conversation. There was so much to consider. So much to be done theoretically. But the discussion ended with a loose plan. A plan I was wary about. Cim wanted me to help write this thing. This incredibly simple story set against a mad backdrop. I knew I had to accept. And so I did. More or less gladly. My reservations were my own, and I knew enough to set them aside. Could I actually do this? Work over break and into next semester on such a script? Did I have the ability or the right?
The following week there was to be another coffee conference. We wanted, needed, more time to discuss the feature.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012. The best day of the year. So far. But I suspect it will remain so.
Why? Well there's no simple answer. I can't define really what makes a single day perfect. But this was it. It's a feeling down the back of your neck you have all day.
I woke to the smell of baked cookies. I had done them the night before and left them out to cool. They were for my STP class. I had some small assignments to do. I jotted out some basic answers and ran off to catch the train for school. I printed out my work and waited. The internet at Columbia was being obscenely slow, so I fiddled with a beat sheet I had created for the feature and around 12:30 traipsed over to the coffee shop. Ordered earl grey tea, my favorite. The barista wanted to give me whipped cream on top. I gave him the definitive fuck off look and sat down to wait. Cim walked in a few minutes later and we got to work. And it felt like the most incredible high had overtaken me. This was work. Not school. Not a lame job. Not a hobby. But work. Something I cared about. I was connected once again. My brain, my focus, my dreams had been lost for literally years. I hadn't known what to do with myself outside of high school and that feeling had been overtaking me again as college carried on. But suddenly, in a matter of a couple hours, I felt reborn. The story faded away and all I could see was Cim for a while. There or not, I saw reflected, myself, in a way. I had once had this passion. Long ago. With my friends. Where I felt safe and happy. This was a person I wanted to be like. Someone I could aspire to. It didn't matter how old he was or how much experience he had, I wanted that fire back. I had felt it writing Grace months before and I could feel the flames lapping at my arms once again.
The meeting was finished. It had seemed both an incredible eternity and like no time had passed at all in an instant. But I left for my last STP class. I was expected to do two elevator pitches, one for a short, the other for a feature. I had barely practiced, but I had a few notes written out. I stared at them for a moment, trying to follow what they said, but found I couldn't. My brain was focused elsewhere temporarily. So I shut my laptop and stared at my teacher. I never feel energized during pitches, they feel like a slog to me, but this time I was overcome with confidence. It didn't matter that I didn't remember every last note. I knew this story. I liked, loved, this story. I wanted it too to become a reality someday. So I pitched like nobody's business. Cim, in his own small ways, had given me the proverbial balls to get the fuck over myself. I couldn't care less what others thought of me because what mattered was my story.
The day continued. My feedback was excellent. My teacher said I had come out of my shell as the semester had carried on. Somehow I had gained confidence in myself and in my stories. That night I went out to dinner with my brother. We followed it up with my second viewing of Skyfall. There, for the first time ever, I told a talking couple to please be quiet. Then I went home to go to bed. And to bed I went. I slept well. For once my dreams were pleasant. Something in me was very content.
But so what? That day didn't seem that big a deal, right?
But there was one more thing that had happened that I haven't described yet. One of the most important things of my life.
I had emailed Cim a copy of Grace in the hopes that he too could see the thematic connections between it and his feature story. He assured me he would read it when he got a chance, but that his schedule was pretty full and he wasn't sure when he would get around to it. Turns out, he lied. He read it and read it well. Took notes and everything. I had recently announced my intention to put Grace away for awhile. I had worked on the damn thing for the better part of a year. I was terrified. What the hell did he think? Was it melodramatic or too wordy? Too dialogue-based or confusing? I had no idea what to expect.
He prefaced his feedback by saying he had a tendency to be very brutal in his honesty about most people's work. The tension mounted and my knuckles turned white. Here it came...his verdict....
He liked it. I sighed. He thought it was pretty good. But there was still stuff to fix. I nodded. We went down a list of different notes on things to possibly change.
Then he mentioned the gay relationship at the center of the story. A pause from both of us. What about it? I wondered.
It moved him. Genuinely. I saw the look in Cim's eyes. He was being honest. There was something in his voice, in his tone, his manner. They said it all. Cim was moved by it. What did that mean? What could that mean? Whatever the intention, it was irrelevant. I had to look away. Here I was, being humbled and honored by words I never thought I would ever hear from another person. What was I to think?
And so, one person. This Certain Irish Man. He saved me. No joke either. I seriously considered this summer that dropping out of Columbia would be my one recourse if the semester didn't work out. These silly dreams of writing scripts and making movies were a child's wishes. I needed to grow up. I needed to stop playing games with the world and move on. Get a real job and just settle down. Stop making so much noise. Stop dying my hair.
But with Cim I gained a new perspective. On school. On work. On the future. And on myself. I needed to stop over-analyzing every detail of my life. I needed to do something. Put myself out there in some way. I needed to stop caring what others thought about myself or my work.
These last few years have been more than just hell in my head. I can't quite describe the nervousness, the fear I had at the prospect of starting life alone, without the aid of my stories. I can't imagine a world without them. And thanks to Cim I have a way to hold onto them now.
From the bottom of my usually unsentimental heart, I say thank you, Cim. Thank you for bringing me out into the world again. Thank you for saving my dreams. Thank you for saving me.
What does the future hold for me now?
I genuinely felt turning twenty-two this year, that I am getting older. The novelty of the young adult age is wearing off. I need to do something. I need to be hired and get an actual job. I need to take my final (hopefully) Spring classes. I need to work on Cim's feature. But first and foremost I need to grow my hair out over break and get it cut down to the brown again.
Because the first thing I'm doing before the next semester starts is dying my hair.
Movies can be all things, they cross all barriers of emotion, they break all rules, they educate and entertain; but above all they give us something of ourselves- our humanity, our reality, our fantasies, and our feelings. They give us the lives and stories of people we never would have or could have met in real life and they make us laugh and cry and cringe and embrace them. Movies are us.
