Intimacy/TAF Update

Well, this one is more or less wrapped up.

I was home Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and managed to more or less finish off this script.
It was a tortuous one, I tell you. I wanted to create a kind of Bergman feel to it. Really dense in psychological arguing but also with some hope, with some light at the end of the tunnel.
To be quite honest, half way through I didn't really know how it was going to turn out because there was just so much bile going on that I was feeling that these characters never wanted to see each other again.

But I hope that they touched rock bottom.

That's what I wanted to show.

That sometimes you need to say all the wrong things, share all the truths you've kept hidden - however ridiculous and childish they may seem - in order to come back.
I think Micah and Danielle do this in the film. I think they are honest to one another to an extent they never really managed to before. Perhaps even to themselves.

Maybe there are things left unsaid that are still relevant but, if there are, there are still further drafts and polishing up for them to surface. In any case, there's just so much that you can say with words and perhaps that's something that comes clear in the script. We cannot always fully satisfy each others need for a total explanation of things.

There were a few moments that writing seemed to be going downhill, almost out of control. I could see them clearly in my head and hear the dialogue. Almost as if it were a part of me. Something I had seen at some stage in my life. A recollection feel and at the same time the knowing that this is the first time I'm seeing these things.

I was quite surprised with this script because I knew quite clearly the starting point and the end point. It was the middle, two people locked up in a house for weeks, trying to sort their lives out, that was going to be the though thing. No (hu)Man's Land...

There were several aspects to solving this.

First I knew I wanted a Ingmar Bergman feel to the whole thing. I wanted it to be deep and troublesome. I wanted to be rational but also emotional. I wanted the script to be able to point out problems clearly but also provide answers. On a direct way but also on a more subtle level.
I even considered watching a couple of Bergman's films but since I wanted his black and white period, his early days, and I didn't have any around me, I kind of put it aside.

The second thing was a talk I had with a friend. We had just seen THE FOUNTAIN and we started chatting about it.
She didn't think much of the film. I loved it.
But she raised a very important point. The characters - Isabel and Tomas - in the film aren't really explored. Their love, which is the central thing, isn't really explored. Darren Aronofsky is more concerned in telling us the plot than in talking about the characters personal history. For instance, if he had showed us a bit more of the Izzy/Thomas - in present day - relationship we would've felt a lot more for Thomas' loss, thus making the whole bigger than life journey trying to defeat death for the love of his life so much more powerful.
To me this aspect didn't affect me so much because I had read the comic and, in the comic, the rules of storytelling absorption are somewhat different. For instance, Kent Williams sketchy drawings actually pull the characters closer to you. The fact that you can't see much about their faces and you only a perception of mood more than anything else, makes you instinctively fill in the blanks. The writing works better in the comic as well.

(And there were a few lines in the film that I didn't really buy to be honest...)

But that got me thinking about characters really seriously.
I kept telling her that I didn't know what to write next.
And then I started talking about Micah and suddenly he became more fully alive. I told her the back history of that story (which I'm not going to share here, sorry) and what were the elements that I wanted to integrate and why.

By the time I finished (I must've talked for at least half an hour) I had already a few scenes to write for the next day.

And that's what I did.

I started writing them longhand because it felt more natural. And lo and behold: the pages started to pile up.

And this was the third thing that I picked up. That I really like to write scripts the best in long hand. I know it's a pain typing it all back and, in a way, a waste of time. But the fact is that I write more if I do it in this way. And I'm already revising the text when typing it back. Sometimes efficiency is not just using a computer. Efficiency is knowing how you work best and hone yourself in the process.

In any case, I have also found that if I'm writing a short story or ideas for a script I prefer to use the computer... If it's just text, typing on a keyboard seems to be the preferred medium...
Sometimes not even I understand myself...

So, on Monday and Tuesday I more or less wrote the remaining 40 or 50 pages of the script. I wrapped it all up and typed the final words on Wednesday morning and finished with 106 pages of script.

Done.

Well... not quite. I still need to do at least a scene or two more. I need a scene with their kids. A scene that will show the audience how their life together was before they got there. In order to make it all more believable. I need a scene that will establish their ongoing conflict, but also their love of their kids, the pressure that this creates on their kids, their decision that they need to sort themselves out.
And quite possibly another scene - even if it's a couple of shots with voice over - of their early days together. The happy days that now seem gone without a trace.

Hopefully inspiration will come before the month is over and I'll write these two scenes, add them to the script, organise it a bit and leave it at that before I revise it at some point.

And that's all I have to say about INTIMACY.

Now about TAF...

Yesterday I got home late, watched a couple of episodes of AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER (I'm hooked on it you know...) and proceeded to read and map out what I had done so far with TAF.

Not much it seems. Even though I already had about 40 pages of script... this one is going to be a lot longer than INTIMACY.
But it doesn't really matter. Since this is a comedy, it's better that I have more scenes than needed so that I can then choose the best ones and compress it all a bit.

My initial plan was easy. Show this crazy physical ed teacher's week. We start on the Sunday and we end on the Saturday so that we establish his routine very well.
Then on the Saturday "the event" occurs...
And everything changes and that's when the comedy side of it really kicks in.

I was on Tuesday and already on page 30...

So yesterday I started long handing it and, early this morning - I think with 12 more long hand pages - I got to Friday night. So, I'm hoping that by page 50 I'll be on the "Saturday event"...

After this it should be fairly simple because I already have a whole heap of scenes that I want to do. And these will be a one minute or two minute gags. Again, I want to have quite a number of them so that I can choose from them afterwards.

What I'm going to do today is type up the longhand pages and add them to the rest of the script. Then I'm going to write on a list all the other gag scenes. And a couple more that I've thought off in the meantime.
Then I'm going to organize them in chronological order (kind of...)
and start writing them, longhand.

Hopefully it will all work out in the end.
And soon!

Peace!