I still haven’t seen the movie yet, but already the story has captivated me. “Where the Wild Things Are.” I’ve seen the preview a hundred times now, and the images keep filling my head reminding me who I am. For the last four or five months I’ve been trying desperately to grow up. Its been painful. There have been tears. Its been a tearing of me. And then the beautiful images of this film showed me what the problem was:
I’m not supposed to grow up.
I’m supposed to stay a kid. That is where fun is. That is where creativity is; freedom. Like the words of the theme song, “Our bodies grow up, but our hearts get torn up.”
I’m looking forward to taking the journey to “Where the Wild Things Are,” and finding the kid in me again.
If you haven’t heard it, take five minutes and enjoy the song “Wake Up.”
Britney Spears. Christina Aguilera. Justin Timberlake. All three superstars, and all a product of Disney. Arguably some our best pop talent today, and they all got their start on the Mickey Mouse Club.
I was listening to the radio last week and heard for the first time “Party in the USA,” but didn’t recognize the voice. A little bit cheesy maybe, but part of the song struck a cord with me. Maybe its because I relate to the story of being new to Hollywood, and building my own career. Either way, it sounded to me like a song of a young artist who was definitely breaking into the industry.
So when I got back home, I looked up the song on the net, and to my disbelief, it was Miley Cyrus. I was shocked – even though I’d never seen Hannah Montana, I was sure that anything that came from Miley Cyrus would have to be for tween girls – until I saw the music video.
Now forget about Miley for a second and just watch the video. It is aesthetically beautiful – the director did a fabulous job with different levels of lighting and contrast. It is eye candy for any director of photography. Part two: Miley. After watching this video, I know that Miley Cyrus is no longer Hannah Montana. She truly is entering the arena of young pop stars – following in the footsteps of Christina and Britney – but for some reason, I think that she is more ready for it than either of them were.
I want to put her in a movie – a real movie. Get rid of the Disney stigma, and see what she is capable of. As a dual threat, crossing the boundaries between music and screen, I have a feeling that her career is just beginning.
I’m at Starbucks, and I’m completely shocked at a what I see. A brother and sister walk in after school. She has pig tails. He has a Power Rangers back pack. She’s no older than eleven, and he’s maybe eight. They look like the two most innocent kids in the world, the kind that would be in a Walmart picture frame. They walk past the cash register, and straight to the back of the store and ask where the supervisor is.
So, the supervisor comes out, and immediately makes them drinks, and brings them to the kids. The kids leave. Did I miss something? I know they didn’t pay. I think that perhaps she knows them.
The next day, I’m back at the same Starbucks. The kids are back. They pass the register, including the line, and strait back to the back. I see the same supervisor this time shake her head “no”. I watch.
Then from the little eight year old boy I hear “Are you kiddin’ me? We come in here everyday for a year, and now you’re not givin’ us OUR drink? I mean, we’ve been LOYAL.” He starts waving his hands like a rapper. The eight year old.
The supervisor still says no, and then the twelve year old girl gets in her face. “You trying to tell me that you’re going to make us drinks every day for a year, and then out of no where stop? What’s wrong with you?” I could tell the Starbucks employee was getting nervous. Heck, I was getting nervous. Things were getting loud.
A few minutes later, both the kids walked out – drinks in hands like they owned the world. I know that they at least owned Starbucks.
A few days later I was back for my regular Carmel Macchiato. Guess who shows up? So they walk past the register as before, and are looking around. The supervisor from before must have been off that day. But after a minute of these kids sticking their heads in the back of the store, the eight year old boy looks around at all of the guests in the store, and throws his hands up in the air and says, “Must be the wrong store.” The girl flips her hair back, “Yeah, we ain’t never been in this Starbucks before.”
Writers constantly ask how to write great dialogue, and there are seminars and books devoted to teaching how to do this. We hold in such high esteem writers such as Quentin Tarantino and David Mammot, calling them masters of dialogue. Everyone is so concerned about the subject – and wanting to write the next Pulp Fiction, thinking that great dialogue is the secret to success. But they are all wrong.
Writers for some reason overlook a very simple fact – if your movie is successful, which hopefully is what you are after, its going to be distributed internationally, and get translated. Or Subtitled. Probably both, if it is to be shipped overseas for a worldwide release. So there goes your dialogue. So now some of you are probably thinking – great, I hadn’t thought of that, now I have to figure out how to write great dialogue that transcends language barriers. Wrong again.
What transcends language barriers is the image. Its the one thing that we do have control over as writers. We can get so hung up on dialogue, that we forget that a film is telling a story through pictures. If you remove all of the dialogue from your script, a reader should still be able to completely understand the story – so that when one day a foreigner is watching your film without knowing what the fuck is being said, they can still enjoy it, and follow the storyline.
Probably not the best example, but I was watching the Lindsay Lohan version of Herby for the first time, and I was watching it in Spanish (because I was eating a burrito), without subtitles, and without understanding a word of dialogue, I was able to completely follow the storyline, and get this – ENJOY the film.
So, forget about dialogue a little bit. The actors are probably going to want to rewrite it themselves anyway. Focus on telling your story completely through images.
Los Angeles. The city of Angels. The city of dreams. The city of the Taco Truck. I mean, do you realize how lucky we all are? Not all cities have a taco truck. Just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about – there’s this one ice cream truck, except it’s for adults and they serve tacos.
Now the crazy thing about this taco truck is no matter where you are in L.A., at lunch time – the taco truck is there. Has anyone else experienced this? I mean it’s like clockwork. If it’s lunch time and I’m in Santa Monica, boom, the taco truck pulls up. If I’m downtown, noon, boom, there’s the taco truck. For a while there, I actually thought that this Mexican guy was stalking me, but it actually just turns out that he knows my stomach.
Last week, I’m looking for an apartment in a new part of town, and I’m hungry. I turn the block, and out of no where pulls out the taco truck. It’s like magic. Is it just me, or does it seem like we were preconditioned as kids to chase the ice cream truck, and now we’re all chasing this taco truck. And when you see it at lunch time, there’s always like a line of fifty people lined up waiting to get their taco.
Now usually the process is smooth – I snap my fingers and the truck appears. But a couple days ago, I’m going out to get my taco – I literally eat from this taco truck everyday now – and I walk up to the same white truck I always do, I’m about to order, and it turns out it’s a lady selling fruit! A fruit truck.
So I do a double take, scratch my head, and look around. No tacos. So I hop in my car and I’m cruising looking for this taco truck. I finally see the truck – but it’s on a one lane road. So, I circle around the block, and then illegally park behind him in a fire lane, run up to grab my taco and – another fruit truck! So I’m getting worried – something’s going on. There’s a fruit conspiracy or something. I don’t know. And I’m passing Taco Bells left and right and I don’t care because I need my taco truck taco.
And I’m getting scared because its an unmarked truck, so I don’t have the guy’s phone number or anything. I’m wondering if the guy’s sick, has the swine flu or something. So I’m praying to God for the guy, and finally, just like magic, there he is in front of me. Turned out my watch battery had died the day before right after getting my last taco. A close one I know. But for the first time, I realized just how dependent I was on this guy – and I didn’t even know his name.
Most people in L.A. are complaining about there being too many Mexicans. I’m exactly the opposite. The reason I moved to L.A. was because of Mexicans. Because of the taco truck. I had first discovered them one time while visiting, and yes, that was enough to convince me it was time to make the move. And I have to say, the taco truck to fruit truck ratio is too low – we need more taco trucks like this one. So I’m currently pushing for less restrictive border policies so that we can get even more illegal immigrants into our country – because THAT is where the good food comes from.
Now the one problem that I’ve experienced with this taco truck is that there really does still seem to be a language barrier. You see – you think that this taco truck owner knows English. He’s pretty convincing – he says “Hello, how are you, what would you like,” and I start ordering like a dumbass because the truth is, HE DOESN’T understand what the Fuck you are saying.
Every time I order I say I want beans, rice, cheese, tomato, sour cream, guacamole, and cilantro but NO LETTUCE. And every time my burrito comes back with no beans, no cheese no sour cream, no guacamole, no cilantro, just rice tomato, and LETTUCE. It’s like just rice and lettuce and some other shit that I didn’t order. I mean, the guy not only gives me the wrong thing, but the exact opposite of what I order. But somehow its still amazing and I still keep coming back. Maybe its the cocaine that he puts in, I don’t know.
Oh, and did you here about the lawsuit this year? The taco truck got sued. Yeah. A bunch of restaurants got together and were suing the taco truck for selling in front of their businesses. Like the taco truck is taking away all of their business. The guy who can’t get the order right. The guy who doesn’t speak English. But you see, the thing is we live in America. And America is good. It went to court and the judge took one look at it, and you know who won? Yeah, the taco truck. An ice cream truck starts selling ice cream in the Cold Stone parking lot, and he’s going to find his ass in jail. But the taco truck, like I said before, is a bit magical.
Or, if you want to know my real opinion, that Judge was hungry – and the thought of no taco truck was just too much to bare. I mean, what would L.A. be today without the taco truck? Talk about a dystopia. I don’t even want to think about that. I love that taco truck.
The other day a thing really pissed me off. Some idiot came up to me, and actually suggested that there was more than one taco truck. That there were several, possibly hundreds all around L.A., that it was an entire network. Idiot. That’s like saying there’s more than one Santa Claus just because he hits up every house in one night. No. It’s just that one taco truck. The magical taco truck.
Everything. You have a shitty title, no one is going to read your script. So many scripts come across my desk that have clearly not had a minutes thought put in to them. “Summer,” “True Love,” “One Day in Summer,” “Love Everlasting,” “The Long Summer.” I swear that if one more title comes across my desk that has the word summer or love in it, I’m going to freak out. Not that those are bad words – the problem with these titles are that they are terribly non specific. They tell me absolutely nothing about the script except for telling me that I probably shouldn’t read it. That it would be a waste of my time.
The key to a great title is drawing me into the script. If I have fifty scripts sitting on my desk, the title is going to truly be the thing that is going to help me narrow down what I should read. The title should grab my attention, and immediately make me speculate what the script is going to be about. “Jurassic Park” – a park with dinosaurs maybe? “Back to the Future” – something about time travel right? How about “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” – okay, so that one does tell me absolutely nothing, but it does at least sound original.
So, a title should be very specific. The best titles in my opinion are the ones that either tell you exactly what the movie is about, or even tell you the main character. “Spiderman,” “Batman,” “Hancock,” – I already know what these are before i read it – some sort of superhero flick. Don’t waste your time with a generic or vague title. You may have an amazing script, but if you haven’t thought through your title, that is going to show any potential representation that you aren’t as creative as you say you are.
And don’t even think about leaving your script “Untitled.” Samuel Goldwyn himself will turn over in his grave and come and get you.
So I’m sitting with my left foot elevated. Because I spilled burning hot coffee on my left foot. It burned through the sock. In fact, I think that the sock actually helped the burning process. Helped the heat stay near my foot. I have some sort of burn relief cream on it now. Kinda sticky. I don’t think it is helping. Good thing I have another foot.
It never fails. For some reason, I think that superglue should be strong enough to bind two pieces of metal together, yet I still go about the job with bare hands figuring that I am a pro. And then when the job’s done, I figure the glue will come right off my hands, even though I’m expecting it at the same time to keep my project together. Always have glue on my hands for about two weeks after a project. Maybe next time I’ll actually use gloves. Probably not.
Here is a short film I shot earlier this year. It was a great project – shot it entirely with friends on a zero dollar budget, and have now had over six thousand views on Youtube. And a five star rating. Thank you to all who worked on it with me! Enjoy.