Who Are You People?

I have a good friend who's a camera operator on a big TV drama. He told me the buzz on set is that the WGA is going to go on strike, and he asked me if that was true. He's a dear friend, and there was no rancor behind the inquiry, but it's an inherently loaded question. If my guild goes on strike, that means his show shuts down production and he's out of a paycheck indefinitely.

I'm hearing that statement, in one form or another, more and more nowadays -- "I hear the writers are going on strike." A lot of people in LA make their living in the entertainment industry, and many of them will be affected by a work stoppage. Sometimes I hear a touch of bitterness, because a WGA strike is out of their hands.

Well, guess what, folks. It's out of mine, too.

We might strike. We might not. It all depends on how events unfold once the writers and the companies sit down to begin negotiations this summer. We're all waiting with bated breath.

I don't want to strike, but I don't want the guild to eat a shit sandwich, either. Technology is bringing about great change in our business, and we don't have a system in place to account for these new revenue streams. If we accept lousy terms, we'll likely be stuck with them for a long time to come.

Uncertainty sucks. But there's no real solace in being certain you're screwed.

Anyway, I just wanted to provide an answer to all of you who have been wondering if the writers are going on strike. The answer is: there is no answer.

Fun, huh?

Believe me, nobody hates an unresolved plot line more than we do.

Posted by Michael Gilvary at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a rant. No, actually, it's a desperate plea.

Can we please stop with the wire-fu?

Seriously. It was fun for a while there. We had some good times in The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But lately, I just feel like we're going through the motions.

Within the past decade, we've seen an increasing prevalence of action movies that are in blatant violation of the law. No, I'm not talking about Lindsey Lohan's inevitable drug offense. I'm talking about Newton's laws of motion. These movies defy gravity. And I think that sucks.

Now, I won't argue that movies are, or should be, anything akin to a perfect replica of reality. From the time of George Melies in cinema's infancy, the art form of the moving image has been used to subvert, heighten or completely ignore reality. And I love it for that. I wouldn't have it any other way. It's why we have movies like The Wizard of Oz, Brazil and Pretty Woman.

But, the action within a story must be internally consisent with the laws of that story world. And, unless that story world has a valid reason for rejecting the laws of phyics as we know them here on earth, what goes up must come down -- and at a rate consistent with what we'd anticipate.

Not being an early fan of Hong Kong cinema, my first experience with wire-fu was probably in The Matix. And I loved it. I flipped for it. It was a reality-bending effect in a movie where bending reality was part of the fun. It was, in other words, part of the story.

But not once did I think, "Hey, that's a cool effect! Let's put it in every other action film from now on."

Though, to be honest, my problem isn't even necessarily with the wire-fu. It's with the effect that bad physics due to wire-fu -- and also CGI -- is having on movies.

Suddenly most of our action films are brimming with preposterous action sequences. These movies are frequently derided as "cartoonish," but let me tell you something -- that's an insult to cartoons. Even the Looney Toons of Fritz Freling, Tex Avery and Chuck Jones had a healthy respect for the laws of physics.

Sure, they didn't always follow those laws, but they didn't ignore them either. They played with them. They exaggerated them. They obeyed them right up to the moment when they didn't -- and that was the gag. Wile E. Coyote running straight off a cliff and NOT falling was the joke. And then, of course, he fell. Which was also the joke.

But how many modern action films have you seen -- ones ostensibly based in reality -- where something like this happens: an explosion detonates and the hero is sent hurtling backward through the air, following a trajectory so flat that Kiera Knightley could sue for trademark infringement. Even a 90+ mph fastball carves out a discernible arc as it sails toward home plate. Yet this actor, traveling a fraction of that speed, floats above the ground in a straight line.

Nobody's fooled by this. We all know he was suspended by wires. The wires have been digitally erased, but you can still tell. How come you can tell? Well, because it turns out that human beings have a well-developed sense for how objects in motion should behave. We develop this ability at a pretty early age. We have to. Without it, we wouldn't survive very long.

In this study, researchers found that between the ages of three and six, children develop the ability to predict the motion of objects under the influence of gravity and inertia. Here's a salient passage:

Human adults are sensitive to a variety of effects of gravity and inertia on the motions of objects. In particular, a hand-held object that is released in mid-air looks natural only if it begins to move downward, an object that falls freely looks natural only if it undergoes appropriate acceleration, and an object that rolls off a cliff looks natural only if it moves downward on a parabolic path.

What are the origins of this sensitivity? Gravity and inertia have constrained the motions of objects through-out the history of the earth, and humans and other animals have evolved a variety of sensory and motor mechanisms that take account of their effects. It is therefore possible that humans have also evolved perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that are sensitive to effects of gravity and inertia. Alternatively, human adults have a lifetime of experience observing objects, and they may have learned about natural object motions.

It's precisely because of this innate perceptive ability that animators will tell you one of the biggest challenges of animation is convincingly reproducing the effects of gravity. If an animated character jumps in the air and lands a fraction of a second too late, we sense that something is wrong -- even if we can't pinpoint the reason why.

But, for some reason, it's become acceptable -- sometimes even expected -- for a movie character falling off a building to slow down, as the wire harness brakes him, instead of accelerating as he plummets toward his death. Or a CGI monster runs along the wall instead of the floor -- not like a fly or lizard, gripping the surface, but bounding across it, as though gravity were suddenly pulling it sideways instead of down (I'm looking at you, Underworld).

Sure, sometimes these sorts of effects can look really cool. The problem is...

I don't care.

When the hero suddenly, at the most convenient moment, displays an ability to defy the most basic laws of Newtonian physics, I no longer fear for his safety. I no longer worry that he can't achieve his goal. I no longer wonder how he'll defeat the bad guy.

I no longer care about him or his objectives. And, the moment that happens, the story stops working.

That doesn't mean Superman shouldn't fly. Of course he should. That's why he's Superman. But how come a mortal man who has simply studied martial arts can make gravity wait while he dispatches his enemies? Do they teach that ability at those strip-mall dojos? It's one thing for Fantastic Four's the Thing to lift a car over his head; his superpower is strength. But there's no good reason why he should take a punch and soar forty feet backwards in a straight trajectory. That's just stupid. And it shows a frightful lack of respect for the filmgoing audience.

Wire work is a groundbreaking tool that allows for stunts that could never before have been safely attempted. And CGI has developed to the point that there is literally nothing a filmmaker can't put on the screen (given enough time and money, of course). But just because we have these tools, that doesn't mean we should use them every chance we get.

This isn't a rant, or a desperate plea. It's a call to arms. This sloppy storytelling (and that's exactly what it is -- a failure of storytelling) is ruining movies. It's turning them into mind-numbing video games where the more that happens, the less we care.

Watch the stunts in an older film like Mad Max. When that guy flies off his motorcycle and goes ass over teakettle into a field, you never suspect that he's got a wirework team keeping him aloft. His trajectory matches the distance and speed that he travels, which makes you instinctively cringe. And that keeps you in the story.

Nobody instinctively cringes at a wire work stunt.

Posted by Michael Gilvary at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

It's a bit of a cliche in Hollywood that screenwriters are frustrated people. We have relatively little power and influence. We tend not to be household names. We're easily and frequently replaced, and so on. The list of complaints is endless. But they all spring from one inescapable fact:

Screenwriters don't make movies, we make screenplays.

That is to say, a screenplay is not a finished product. It's merely one of many required components of a finished film (some wouldn't even call it a requirement, but rather an optional step). So, the screenwriter pours his guts onto a page, revises it until his eyes bleed and, eventually, finally, at long last, gazes upon the fruits of his labor -- a half-inch stack of paper with thousands of little black runes printed on it. Pages. With words. It's quite a feat, when all's said and done.

But it ain't a movie.

It won't become a movie until you add one director and a couple of stars, stir in a generous amount of financing, bake for about a year and a half, and then glaze with domestic and foreign distribution deals. It's bad enough that most of these ingredients are on the endangered species list. It's even worse when, in the end, the finished film bears little resemblance to the screenplay.

In other words, a screenplay has to pass through a lot of hands before it becomes a film. That's a lot of complicated layers between the screenwriter and the audience -- most of them well beyond our control. And let's not forget: most screenplays -- by a breathtaking margin -- never make it past the stack-of-paper phase. You stay up nights and weekends writing your masterpiece, call in every favor trying to get People in Power to read it, and then try not to let them see you cry when they say, "Loved the script. What else you got?"

What else have I got? WHAT ELSE HAVE I GOT? Why you self-involved little prick --

I'm sorry, where was I going with this? Oh, right.

So, the screenwriter's lot in life in inherently frustrating. That's why it behooves us to look beyond the Hollywood landscape to find other means of getting our stories in front of an audience. Writing novels is one way, and there are a number of screenwriters who routinely bounce back and forth between scripts (where they are peasants) and novels (where they are kings).

Another route -- and one that has really become much more viable in recent years -- is to write a comic book. And I have several friends who've done exactly that.

Steven Barr and Danny Grossman co-wrote a screenplay a few years ago called Devil Water, an action/western/horror/comedy, but never managed to sell it. Recently, Steven saw an opportunity to repurpose the story as a limited series of comic books. The first issue of Devil Water is out now, through King Tractor Press.

Another friend of mine, Sam "Stormcrow" Hayes, has just seen the release of his manga-style graphic novel, Afterlife, through the Tokyo Pop imprint (not that you'd know, from the scant bit of marketing they do for it on their own freakin' website -- not even an image of the cover? WTF?).

The book will have to fight for attention in the crowded marketplace, but it's already getting some pretty stellar reviews.

The payoff with the comic book route isn't complete autonomy, since the writer must rely on an artist to interpret their work (although the writer might be responsible for chosing an artist, and can have approval authority over the artwork). But, in the end, the writer has something tangible to show for their efforts -- a finished book on store shelves. The layers between storyteller and audience have been largely eliminated.

And there are other benefits as well. Both Steven and Sam got to attend this year's San Diego Comic-Con in a professional capacity, as opposed to mere fanboys. And there is still the possibility that the stories they've written can find their way to the big screen -- as an adaptation. By publishing the story in comic book form first, these writers are attempting to create what Terry Rossio calls Mental Real Estate. In fact, as a result of the publication of Devil Water, Steven and Danny have recently optioned their original script, which would otherwise still be sitting on a shelf.

Bravo, boys. Best of luck.

Posted by Michael Gilvary at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Revolution has failed.

Joe Roth's Revolution Studios is winding down operations, just six years after it burst on the scene with the promise of quality movies at modest budgets. Well, I guess if you consider Gigli quality filmmaking...

It's interesting to me that an autonomous studio predicated on "quality" films turned out such an unimpressive slate. There were a few fine films, like Black Hawk Down, and there were quite a few dogs -- Hollywood Homicide, XXX, The Forgotten, the aforementioned Gigli (which has become synonymous with failure). But, perhaps most tellingly, the slate was comprised largely of films I'd never pay to see -- Radio? Stealing Harvard? Christmas with the Kranks?

In other words, the Revolution slate was more or less exacty the same as every other studio. And I wonder if that isn't indicative of what's really wrong with Hollywood.

During Hollywood's golden years, the studio logo at the head of a movie usually told you something about what was in store for you. MGM, for example, was known for its bright, lavish musicals and literary adaptations, Warner Bros. for its darker, grittier gangster pictures, and so on. But nowadays, to a large degree, studios really don't have much of a brand -- at least not in the eyes of the moviegoing public.

And it's not even that I think studios need a brand so much as a passion for something -- anything! Instead, what we get are movies that are born not from a desire to create something interesting, but from a desire to turn a profit. I'm not naive enough to believe studios should operate as charities or artistic patrons, but, in modern times, the business has changed in ways that encourage studios to focus solely on the bottom line.

Films are -- by orders of magnitude -- more expensive to make and market then they were just a few decades ago. And that has contributed to massive wide release patterns that put all of the studio's eggs in one basket: the opening weekend box office reports.

Movies live or die based their opening weekend returns, which means that a film's success is no longer determined by how much the audience likes the film (i.e. word of mouth). Instead, it's determined by how many people show up on that opening weekend. So, we become more reliant on known quantities -- sequels, prequels, remakes, etc. -- in order to get asses in seats in front of 3000 screens on that first Friday night. If those people universally hate the film, no big deal. We've already got their money.

It's this attitude that leads to movies like XXX: State of the Union.

It's a scorched-earth policy. We make shit because we know the audience will buy it. But when all we sell them is shit, eventually they stop buying it. They stop trusting us.

And, as a result, it's not just the movies that are disappearing by the second or third weekend. Now, apparently, the studios are becoming disposable as well.

Posted by Michael Gilvary at 9:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)