Tweeting About It Doesn’t Make It A Good Story

Just thought I would throw this out there today…

I’ve been doing this blog for a few years and I hope by NOW that most of the visitors have gotten what I believe to be the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of what I TRY to talk about here at least most of the time.

STORY.

Plain and SIMPLE. Unfortunately, off and on over the last few years, I’ve given in and read some screenplays by a few readers… Completely AGAINST the advice of my attorney but I like to help if I can when and if I can find the time. One of the things I’ve run into since I became a screenwriter and since way before I ever got into this professionally was the mindset of MOST of the wannabe screenwriters I’ve known.

Let me define WANNABE SCREENWRITER. Somebody who writes screenplays but hasn’t been paid yet.

The mindset I keep running into is this…

IT’S GOOD ENOUGH or the ever popular, IT’S NO DIFFERENT THAN SUCH AND SUCH MOVIE.

Wow.

Kind of reminds me of a few house painters I know… LOL. It’s good enough.

And you know what?

You might have been right…

At one time.

But are you right NOW?

I don’t think so.

Why?

Recently, I stumbled on information that is freely out there for anyone to find about a fairly new movie called KILLERS starring Ashton Kutcher. Let me be up front and qualify this post… I have not seen KILLERS and from reading the many reviews I’ve read about KILLERS before writing this post, I won’t be seeing it anytime soon.

Most of the reviews I’ve read seem to put KILLERS into the DERIVATIVE category i.e., we’ve seen it before… Nothing really new here i.e., don’t waste your money.

Whatever. I’ll never sit here and tell people what to watch or not to watch… That’s up to YOU.

But here’s my observation THUS FAR…

As of this writing, @aplusk has 5,102,296 followers on Twitter… In other words, over 5 MILLION FOLLOWERS yet this movie has only brought in $32,345,995 (domestically) as of 15 June 2010. It even has a rating of PG13 so you can’t blame it BOMBING on an “R” rating. Its foreign boxoffice thus far is: $1,200,000 which brings us to a Worldwide boxoffice total of $33,545,995.

Pretty SHITTY.

What does this tell us?

I’d like to say STORY and I am 99.99999999999% sure that this is true… I would go ahead and say 100% but since I haven’t actually seen KILLERS, I won’t. But from everything I’ve read this morning, KILLERS has a shitty story. Maybe there’s some other problems but again, from what I’ve read, we’ve seen KILLERS before. It’s DERIVATIVE. There’s nothing new here.

Not even Ashton Kutcher himself with his 5 million plus followers could make this film a blockbuster. Sorry, I have to LAUGH now because the budget for KILLERS is reported as being $75 Million! Ahem. Now I’m going to sit back with an even HEARTIER LAUGH because I am picturing all those executives and even Kutcher himself sitting at that big fucking table with plenty of smug looks…

“We got this in the bag…”

“This is going to be a HIT!”

“We’re gonna make bank!”

“This movie can’t miss! Ashton has over 5 million followers on Twitter!”

So… Is there something we can LEARN from all this? Will KILLERS all of a sudden turn around and make $100 Million at the boxoffice?

I doubt it.

Would it have been any better if it contained a GOOD STORY? Probably. Maybe another actor? You be the judge: Ashton Kutcher Movie Box Office Results

I personally believe a better story would have made it become a box office hit because that’s what good stories tend to do at the box office. Of course good stories are subjective… What you like might not be what I like and all that SHIT but overall, MOST OF US LIKE GOOD STORIES and good stories tend to do well at the box office.

All I’m saying is that 5 million followers on Twitter is NEVER GOING TO REPLACE A GOOD STORY.

YAWN

Unk

UPDATE: Ooooh… Nasty emails from Ashton Kutcher fans… LOL. Something tells me you love him more than his movies because apparently, MANY of you haven’t actually seen KILLERS.

One of these fans even shared Mr. Kutcher’s Facebook page with me… Actually solidifying my hypothesis even more since over 3 Million people like Mr. Kutcher’s Facebook page. All I can say is Mr. Kutcher punk’d himself…

Hmmm. Hype or story. Story or hype… Hmmmm.

Thursday: 17 June 2010|1127|Under Screenwriting

26 Comments 

Guilty Pleasure

airborneYeah so I’ve been wondering about that particular phenomenon we call a GUILTY PLEASURE. It appears that the guilt is derived from the fear that someone may find out about our (according to Wikipedia) “lowbrow” taste(s).

Well shit… I stopped worrying about THAT a long time ago. Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke.

What got me to thinking about the idea of a guilty pleasure was from watching a movie on satellite recently… The name of the movie is AIRBORNE. But here’s what’s interesting… I first stumbled on this movie many years ago when I was stuck in New Orleans for a month with only one HBO channel. Being the insomniac that I am, the movie came on and it was OKAY but it was the kind of movie I could leave on in the background while I was doing other work.

The only problem however, was the fact that I was in New Orleans for an entire month and even though I had beaten a well-worn path from my room at the Days Inn on Canal Street to Ryans 500 Club down in the French Quarter, it seemed that every fucking time I finally got back to my room and turned on the TV, AIRBORNE was on. One very early morning after spending several very interesting hours with two Swedish female college students I stumbled my way back to my room and sure enough, AIRBORNE was on and this time, drunk as I was, I watched the damn thing.

And no… I didn’t like it. It was cute enough but not anywhere near my current taste in movies… And to top it off, it seemed like every damn time I got back to my room and turned the television on, this fucking movie was playing.

Let’s just say that I got extremely SICK of watching it and so sick of it that when I finally left New Orleans after a month and AIRBORNE would ever come on either regular, cable, or satellite television, I would dry-heave and turn the fucking channel.

So there I was sitting in bed last week… I was watching some movie — I can’t even remember what it was but left the channel on and sure enough, AIRBORNE comes on right after.

But this time, I swallowed my dry-heave and kept it on… And I’ll be damn if this little movie didn’t fucking grab me. Yeah, it was the same movie I’d seen back in New Orleans but this time around, I was actually enjoying it.

And now here’s my question… WHY DID I ENJOY IT? I’m still mulling that over but suffice to say that when it was over, I liked it so much that I found out when it was playing again and recorded the damn thing so I could watch it later.

And watch it I did. About five times now. Why? Simply because I am trying to figure out why it is now resonating with me when it sure as hell didn’t resonate with me way back when.

One of the things I’ve noticed right away is the simple YET EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE structure. It’s almost by the book Structure 101 storytelling. Now trust me… That does not mean that I like most Structure 101 movies… In fact, I do not but for some reason, this one hits home. Could be that the main character is a fish out of water surfer now having to live the next six months in Cincinnati, Ohio. Maybe I identify with the fish out of water character. Could be. Could also be that the main character is a really laid back kid who rarely gives in to sticks and stones rather than getting up into someone’s face. He doesn’t care that others see him as some kind of coward when in reality, he simply doesn’t see the need to fight about stupid shit.

But then of course at the end, he does finally figure out that there are some things worth fighting for… His new girlfriend, for instance. So fight for her he does.

Could be that I used to surf every day when I lived in San Diego and I completely understood his “perfect wave” mindset. Like I said, I’m still mulling that over but this is the first time since I’ve been a screenwriter that I’ve SERIOUSLY sat down and tried to figure this out.

Why THIS MOVIE?

I mean I like a hell of a lot of movies… Why is this one resonating with me so much right now? My last guilty pleasure movie was a very little known movie called EDDIE MACON’S RUN starring John Schnider and Kirk Douglas and don’t get me wrong… When that movie shows up on television, I still STOP what I’m doing and watch it. I just want to know WHY.

Why? Because I do the same thing with all the classics… COOL HAND LUKE. THE GREAT ESCAPE. THE MALTESE FALCON and on and on… When any of the classics come on, I shut everything down and watch them. I know why I watch them because I continue to learn from them and enjoy their storytelling techniques along with their characterization. I mean, what’s NOT TO LIKE with many of the classics? Sure, many of us won’t like the same classic movies but I do think that the classics very likely cross over for many of us.

So why the guilty pleasure movie? Why does it speak to us personally? Is it because we can easily interject ourselves into one of the roles? Is it because WE probably GET IT more than the average person gets it? And if so, WHY do WE get it?

And MORE IMPORTANTLY, how can we use this to benefit our own writing?

Can we glean SOMETHING useful for our own writing from these guilty pleasure films? Because there is definitely an argument against it… Many of these guilty pleasure movies never caught on with an audience which is why they show up at 3:00 in the morning on satellite or cable and none of your friends or acquaintances have ever heard of them before.

For instance, as I watched AIRBORNE, I realized that the movie did really well at revealing the protagonist’s ordinary world to us… A much needed structural element for a fish-out-of-water story. And AIRBORNE does it fast and very efficiently… The only thing I found wrong with it was the protagonist and his buddy roller blading to the beach WITHOUT their surfboards under their arm yet when they finally get to the beach, they miraculously have their boards and paddle out into the surf.

In other words, the movie has flaws but I found myself doing something I rarely do… Forgiving the flaws and diving deeper into my suspension of disbelief for the greater good.

So far however, I’ve broken down AIRBORNE in my head only… Not on paper. What I keep coming away with is the efficient way they show us the protagonist’s ordinary world and some of his exposition. There’s a scene where he meets his future girlfriend and tells her a story of why he doesn’t see the need to fight anymore… Once we hear his story, the girl asks him, “So what happened to the surfer?” — and he replies, “He moved to Cincinnati.” So even when we now understand where he’s coming from, we can also see that he’s only figured out half the equation… i.e., even the perfect wave isn’t something worth fighting for and to him, apparently the perfect wave was, at this point in his life (he’s only 17), the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN HIS LIFE until he meets his girlfriend but it takes him awhile to realize that she’s actually more important than the perfect wave… But when he finally does realize it, he gets onboard with this new revelation and fights for her.

There are other structural elements in AIRBORNE as well that are efficiently portrayed and I think it very well could be this movie’s SIMPLICITY that I find appealing to my senses. The structure is easy to understand and thereby making screenwriting or storytelling structure that much easier to understand overall. And that could be why I find these guilty pleasure movies a guilty pleasure.

I like the movie. I will probably watch it again and in fact, it is one of the few movies that my brain is telling me to strip down and reverse engineer its structure… Not to copy it but to completely understand it and possibly why it is resonating with ME — which I think is probably a good exercise for me these days… It will get my head back to writing in a sense.

I even did a little search on AIRBORNE just to see what I could find and as it turns out, it’s a guilty pleasure for a hell of a lot of people.

What about your guilty pleasure movie?

Unk

Tuesday: 15 June 2010|1614|Under Movies

43 Comments 

Robert McKee — Worth Watching

Now this is NOT one of the gurus I was alluding to in the previous post… I like Robert McKee. Some of you think I don’t like him but I do and you can’t argue how much he fucking knows about STORY. My only problem was reading his book and then plopping down FIVE BIG ONES only to find out that I was listening to him RECITE his book.

I just wish I hadn’t just read his book before that weekend… Which is strange to me because if I remember correctly, I seem to remember getting an email from his company recommending that I do in fact read the book prior to attending the workshop.

Is he worth seeing in person?

Oh HELL yeah. I would have rather been surprised is all. The good new is that if you can’t afford to attend, purchase his audio book because that is pretty much the workshop except for the laughs and the cell phone donations.

This video is a little over an hour long but an hour well spent if you need a nice little brush up…

Unk

Saturday: 24 April 2010|1941|Under Gurus, Screenwriting

22 Comments 

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