show off your short nomination

'an exercise in vigilance' has been nominated for the 'best drama' reel award from the show off your short film festival.

w00t ftw!

yesterday, merriam-webster announced the winner of it's 2007 word of the year contest:

photo by flickr user: bubbles321232

yep. w00t.

which is...ridiculous. but in wired's coverage of the news, i discovered a new word: sardoodledom. now this a word worth celebrating. finally a great descriptive word that encapsulates how i feel about much of the slickly-produced but vapid content passed off as entertainment. w00t!

coined by george bernard shaw while disparaging french playwright victorien sardou's work, sardoodledom refers to:

plays having contrived melodramatic plot, concentrating excessively on the technique to the exclusion of characterization.
[via: wordsmith.org]

well made works of drama that have a trivial, insignificant or morally objectionable plots
[via: wiktionary]

although it sounds ficticious it's a real word, even being included in the 2007 scripps spelling bee, much to one participant's amusement.

film radar field trip

kimberly and i went to see 'juno' last night as part of a film radar field trip. film radar is a movie buff site created to inform los angeleans about the specialty film offerings in town. i'm on the weekly mailing list. from the about page:

My goal is to bring the virtually endless world of specialty film-going in Los Angeles right to your fingertips. This site covers revival, repertory, and special film events and the venues which house them. Whether your taste is classic Hollywood, documentary, avant-garde, foreign films, silent films, or cult classics ... FILMRADAR has it covered!

the creator of film radar, karie bible, regularly organizes field trips to get folks together to watch films. it's a casual affair. she'll pick a movie, place and time and let everyone know. anyone who wants to join in can simply get a ticket and show up. afterwards karie leads the group to a local eatery to chow down and discuss the film. i've missed the opportunity to make a few of the trips so i was happy to see that last night's film was at the landmark in the westside pavillion, which is close enough to santa monica to make an evening trip eastbound across the westside feasible. afterwards we walked down the block to a mexican restaurant for dinner.

karie is a lively, energetic person and passionate about film. we had a long conversation over mexican food and even picked up some free juno swag (t-shirts and funky home pregnancy test pens). if you like independent film and chatting with other film lovers, you can't go wrong participating in a film radar field trip.

if you're interested in getting a comprehensive weekly email with film happenings around town you can subscribe to the film radar mailing list here.

terms of the debate

photo by flickr user: varun2911

as the wga strike passes the one month mark and the rhetoric between both sides seems bogged down in contract minutiae, this paragraph in the latest essay by software developer joel spolsky struck me as the way we need to re-frame this discussion. joel wasn't writing about the strike - he was giving a speech to the computer science department at yale, his alma mater:

I noticed that the really good program managers at Microsoft were the ones who could write really well. Microsoft flipped its corporate strategy 180 degrees based on a single compelling email that Steve Sinofsky wrote called Cornell is Wired. The people who get to decide the terms of the debate are the ones who can write. The C programming language took over because The C Programming Language was such a great book.

it's amazing to think that microsoft's internet strategy was changed by an email and that a programming language would become the standard because it had the best written book. and it's this kind of acknowledgement of the power of writing that's missing from many of the conversations about this strike. it's also why i believe the writers can prevail in the end; not just because you can't support our massive entertainment needs without a serious amount of writing skill and creativity, but because as writers they have the power to define the fight.

"The people who get to decide the terms of the debate are the ones who can write."

formatted

i've written before on format and violating it. and i was reminded of that again recently when i downloaded the screenplay for 'the usual suspects' and read the first pages:

1 -BLACK

The lonely sound of a buoy bell in the distance. Water slapping against a smooth, flat surface in rhythm. The creaking of wood. Off in the very far distance, one can make out the sound of sirens.

SUDDENLY, a single match ignites and invades the darkness. It quivers for a moment. A dimly lit hand brings the rest of the pack to the match. A plume of yellow-white flame flares and illuminates the battered face of DEAN KEATON, age forty. His salty-gray hair is wet and matted. His face drips with water or sweat. A large cut runs the length of his face from the corner of his eye to his chin. It bleeds freely. An un-lit cigarette hangs in the corner of his mouth.

In the half-light we can make out that he is on the deck of a large boat. A yacht, perhaps, or a small freighter. He sits with his back against the front bulkhead of the wheel house. His legs are twisted at odd, almost impossible angles. He looks down.

A thin trail of liquid runs past his feet and off into the darkness. Keaton lights the cigarette on the burning pack of matches before throwing them into the liquid. The liquid IGNITES with a poof.

The flame runs up the stream, gaining in speed and intensity. It begins to ripple and rumble as it runs down the deck towards the stern.

2 EXT. BOAT - NIGHT - STERN

A stack of oil drums rests on the stern. They are stacked on a palette with ropes at each corner that attach it to a huge crane on the dock. One of the barrels has been punctured at it's base. Gasoline trickles freely from the hole.

The flame is racing now towards the barrels. Keaton smiles weakly to himself.

The flame is within a few yards of the barrels when another stream of liquid splashes onto the gas. The flame fizzles out pitifully with a hiss.

Two feet straddle the flame. A stream of urine flows onto the deck from between them.

The sound of a fly zipping. Follow the feet as they move over to where Keaton rests at the wheel house.

CRANE UP to the waist of the unknown man. He pulls a pack of cigarettes out of one pocket and a strange antique lighter from the other. It is gold, with a clasp that folds down over the flint. The man flicks up the clasp with his thumb and strikes it with his index finger. It is a fluid motion, somewhat showy.

Keaton looks up at the man. A look of realization crosses his face. It is followed by frustration, anger, and finally resignation.

                  VOICE (O.S.)
        How are you, Keaton?

                  KEATON
        I'd have to say my spine was broken,
        Keyser.

more advice from the land of start-ups

photo by flickr user: wondrous22

i've actually linked to one of paul graham's essay's before, and i tripped over his site again recently and read his essay entitled, 'how not to die.' once again, the lessons for those attempting start-ups seem directly applicable to writing and filmmaking:

If so many startups get demoralized and fail when merely by hanging on they could get rich, you have to assume that running a startup can be demoralizing. That is certainly true. I've been there, and that's why I've never done another startup. The low points in a startup are just unbelievably low. I bet even Google had moments where things seemed hopeless.

Knowing that should help. If you know it's going to feel terrible sometimes, then when it feels terrible you won't think "ouch, this feels terrible, I give up." It feels that way for everyone. And if you just hang on, things will probably get better. The metaphor people use to describe the way a startup feels is at least a roller coaster and not drowning. You don't just sink and sink; there are ups after the downs.

Another feeling that seems alarming but is in fact normal in a startup is the feeling that what you're doing isn't working. The reason you can expect to feel this is that what you do probably won't work. Startups almost never get it right the first time. Much more commonly you launch something, and no one cares. Don't assume when this happens that you've failed. That's normal for startups. But don't sit around doing nothing. Iterate.