John August

fixed

Idiocy on Parade

Parade

A new feature in which I answer questions sent to Walter Scott’s Personality Parade®. Today’s column comes from December 17, 2006.

[q]Any truth to rumors that Barbra Streisand will play Mama Rose in a film version of the musical Gypsy?-Mary Jansen, Orlando, Fla.

[a]And this will change your life exactly how, Mary? Let’s say she does get cast. It will be at least a year before the movie comes out. During that time, you can conjecture and kvetch with others in various forums and message boards, discussing whether she’s right for the role, if the role’s right for her, and how absolutely fantastic or godawful her version of “Rose’s Turn” will be. Alternately, you could get a fucking life.

[q]I’m a fan of Jason Ritter, son of the late John Ritter and star of CBS’s The Class. Does he have a significant other? -Jackie N., Washington, D.C.

[a]No, Jackie. He’s saving himself for you. Or are you coyly trying to ask if he’s gay? I have no idea. Let me call his publicist. I’m sure I’ll get a straight answer. Wink, wink.

[q]In her new autobiography, Lessons in Becoming Myself, Ellen Burstyn reveals painful stories of abuse, neglect, incest and promiscuity. Didn’t she have reservations about such honesty? -Toby M., Lansing, Mich.

[a]Probably. But the desire to have her book sell more than five copies helped her get past her reservations.

[q]After you came out in favor of skinny models, two died from complications of anorexia. What do you have to say for yourself now?
-Grace Powers, Austin, Tex.

[a]Shove it, Grace.

[q]Masi Oka mostly speaks Japanese on NBC’s hit series Heroes. Is his English as good as his Japanese?-A. Liebman, Spokane, Wash.

[a]It’s called Wikipedia, A.

[q]TV stars like T.R. Knight of Grey’s Anatomy don’t seem to suffer by coming out of the closet. Are there many gay film stars who still hide their sexual orientation, like Rock Hudson did in the 1950s?
-Ross McC., Newark, N.J.

[a]No. Every actor in Hollywood is now straight as a lumberjack.

[q]I’m curious about Cheyenne, who won on NBC’s America’s Most Talented Kids and recently had an MTV reality show. Is that her real name? -Cal Campbell, Gallup, N.M.

[a]Jesus, Cal. I’d call you lazy, but licking the stamp on your letter took more work than Googling the answer. So maybe you’re just stupid.

[q]I haven’t seen Steven Seagal onscreen in a long time. Did he retire?-Andy R., Cos Cob, Conn.

[a]No, he transcended this plane of existence. C’mon Andy. I can see wanting your name in print, but do you really want it associated with Steven Seagal? And even if you can’t figure out how this whole interweb thing works, just typing his name into any random box will bring you to his website, which shows 30 upcoming tour dates for his band. Maybe you could ask him in person when Glimmer Man 2 will be coming out.

[q]How will history assess Donald Rumsfeld?-Mark Hughes, New York, N.Y.

[a]Fat.

Toddler books in the Store

Store

[binky] A surprising number of readers have been buying stuff through the Store,For reference, my biggest week has been a whopping $43. Which more than covers the site’s hosting fees. But I’m not giving up my day job yet. leading me to wonder, “What other tangible products do I have opinions about?”

It turns out, the tangible items I handle most these days are board books for my 17-month old daughter. She has her favorites; I have mine. I’ve taken the overlapping subset and created four new pages in the store with our mutual recommendations.

As a general word of advice for new parents, or those buying gifts for new parents: when it comes to books, think repetition. As you thumb through pages in the bookstore, ask yourself, “Will this provoke thoughts of murder-suicide upon the 50th reading?”

I’ve only included one book like that in my list, Sandra Boynton’s Perritos. It’s a counting book with dogs who bark in Spanish: “¡Jau! ¡Gau-Gau-Gau!” Fun at first, but really hard on the vocal cords after three times through.

The other books are generally great. I’m particularly partial to Leslie Patricelli’s books, the complete canon of which I now have memorized. Sometimes, stuck with a cranky toddler, I find myself “reading” the Binky book to her, flipping the invisible pages. It buys a few more minutes, which is sometimes all you need.

Lost Rooms and American Zombies

Prince of Persia, Projects, Psych 101, Television

elleI set the TiVo to grab SciFi Channel’s “The Lost Room” mini-series, largely because it co-stars Elle Fanning, who is also in The Nines. The two projects seem to overlap thematically: in my movie, Elle plays the key to a dark conspiracy; in the series, Elle is a player in a dark conspiracy about a key.

It’s a giant relief to see The Lost Room, because it’s very similar to a show I nearly pitched this season — which would have involved Elle getting kidnapped, a cult, and mysterious goings-on. Since The Lost Room effectively precludes my idea, why do I classify it as a relief?

Because now I don’t have to write it.

Many of the projects I write — and the majority of the projects I produce — begin because an idea will present itself and I’ll think, “Wow, someone should really do that.” I’m sure a sizable portion of the American public has similar “why doesn’t somebody…” ideas. The difference is, I am that somebody. I can call up ABC and pitch a show and get a fair chunk of money to write it. But it’s not always the best use of my time.

“Someone should do a crime show set in Alaska” — six months writing and shooting the Alaska pilot

“No one’s ever done a show about private military contractors” — a year and a half writing three different versions of the pilot for Fox

“Prince of Persia would make a great movie” — going on three years executive producing an adaptation, which still doesn’t have a start date

So that’s why, sometimes, I’m delighted when someone else has the same good idea. I recently had 30 projects on my “To Write” list. Now I have 29. Actually, 28…

I just saw in the Slamdance catalog a listing for American Zombie. That’s a title I’ve had on my list for three years, without any real story to go with it, just a sense that, “Someone should make a movie called American Zombie.”

Now someone has. The director’s name is Grace Lee. I hope her movie’s terrific. Either way, I thank her deeply.

I heart WriteRoom

Projects, Rave, Software, Sundance, The Nines

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the production notes for The Nines. The document will end up being about 20 pages, detailing the backstory of how the movie got made, from inspiration through editing, along with everyone’s bios. It’s part of the press kit for the film, helping the journalists at Sundance remember who the hell was in the movie they saw three days ago.

Ultimately, we’ll end up formatting the notes in Word or Pages, but for raw text I lean heavily on TextMate, which is what I use for all of the writing for the site. It’s unbelievably powerful, if occasionally maddening.To wit: If you use command-z “Undo” to fix something you shouldn’t have deleted, TextMate will replace it one letter at a time, undoing each backspace rather than the whole chunk. Apparently, the software creator feels strongly that this is the logically correct behavior, and while I disagree, I fully respect his decision to say, “because that’s how I want it!” I have TextMate set to automagically generate a lot of the formating markup, and the tag-wrapping feature can’t be beat. But on a lark, I decided to try a new application for writing the production notes: WriteRoom.

It’s deliberately, refreshingly bare-bones and retro. When you open a window, it takes over your entire screen, including the menu bar. All you see is the words, complete with a blinking cursor. Perhaps nostalgic for my years writing on an old Atari, I’ve chosen a dark blue background with almost-white 18 pt. Courier. Give me a kneeling chair and a dot-matrix printer and I’m in junior high again.

Other writing applications are picking up this full-screen meme — honestly, it’s hard to figure out why it took so long. Apple’s Pro apps (Final Cut Pro, Aperture) have had no qualms grabbing every available pixel of real estate, although they don’t completely banish the common interface elements. (Except for Shake, which also requires a blood sacrifice to Ba’al.)

The big-screen treatment is the digital equivalent of closing the kitchen door when company comes over: Never mind the mess in the sink, let’s have a nice dinner.

WriteRoom 2.0 is in beta, but there’s nothing spectacularly different or better than plain old 1.0. Either version is worth checking out.

As for the inevitable question: Could I write a script with it?

Yes, no, maybe.

I’ve actually had conversations with two gurus of web markup about creating a simplified screenplay markup that could be imported into “real” screenwriting applications like Final Draft. WriteRoom and its ilk support tabs and external scripts, so it’s conceivable to build a system like ollieman’s screenwriting with TextMate bundle.

But for now, I have an actual paid rewrite to be doing, and it’s a Final Draft job. Sigh.