John August

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Teenage girls and gay men

Formatting, QandA

questionmarkI have a quick question in regard to my current screenplay. I have a scene set at a concert and it contains the line:

  • The enthusiastic AUDIENCE is made up mostly of teenage girls and gay men.

Should I just capitalize “audience” (as I have at the moment) or should I also capitalize “teenage girls” and “gay men”? Or should I keep audience in lowercase and just capitalize teenage girls and gay men?

— Mason Fox
Long Island, NY

While it’s certainly not a make-or-break decision, I vote for your third option:

The enthusiastic audience is made up mostly of TEENAGE GIRLS and GAY MEN.

The reason screenplays capitalize groups of extras is to help the assistant director and casting coordinators figure out what types of people they’ll need for a given scene. In this case, you need TEENAGE GIRLS and GAY MEN.

In general, if I break a bigger group down into specific categories, I only capitalize the categories. But I’m sure that if you read through other scripts I’ve written, you’ll see counter-examples.

Good interviews about Father Knows Less

Film Industry, Projects

UPDATE: 4/28/2011 — Links to “Father Knows Less” IMDb listing no longer active.

UPDATE: 4/28/2011 — All podcast links have been updated.

podcastOkay. It’s not actually podcasting, but behold the site’s the first-ever audio links.

I’m currently rewriting a script called Father Knows Less, originally written by Aline Brosh McKenna. It’s the story of “a loving but aloof guy (Dustin Hoffman) abandoned by his trophy wife, [who] finds himself in charge of raising his young kids. In order to connect with them as their father, he turns to his children from his first marriage for help.” (synopsis by IMDb)

Tonally, it’s a dramedy in the James L. Brooks mode. More Jerry Maguire, less The Pacifier. New Line is the studio.

As it happens, Claude Brodesser of Variety has been tracking this project on his KCRW radio show The Business, and has had various members of the production on to talk about the process. It’s a refreshingly candid discussion of how a movie wends its way through development.

You can start with the initial conversation with McKenna, agent Devra Lieb, and producer Laura Hopper about the pitch, and how the project was set up. The discussion starts at 11:08.

Next, there’s a follow-up conversation with McKenna and Hopper as they start looking for a director. Starts at 2:51.

Finally, Brodesser talks with the movie’s director, who explains his decision to take the project, and the discussion about bringing on a different writer (which ended up being me). The talk starts at 9:20.

Sundance Screenwriters Lab announces projects

News

For the past four years, I’ve been one of the creative advisors to the twice-yearly Sundance Screenwriters Lab, a program which connects working screenwriters with emerging independent filmmakers. Because of work commitments, I’ve actually missed the past three labs, so I’m happy to be going back again this June.

The Sundance Institute recently announced the list of projects and filmmakers for this session. I thought it would be interesting for readers to see how far from “obviously commercial” these projects tend to be.

Taika Waititi (writer/director), A LITTLE LIKE LOVE, New Zealand: For two awkward misfits, life is the question, and love is the answer. Taika Waititi is of Te Whanau-A-Apanui descent, from the east coast of New Zealand and directed the Academy-Award nominated short TWO CARS ONE NIGHT.

Cruz Angeles (co-writer/director) and Maria Topete (co-writer), DON’T LET ME DROWN: In a post-September 11th world overflowing with fear and hate, two Latino teens discover that sometimes the only thing that can keep them from drowning is love. Born in Mexico City and raised in Los Angeles, Cruz Angeles is an award-winning student filmmaker from the graduate film program at NYU. A Bay Area native, Maria Topete began her film career while studying at U.C. Berkeley, and has collaborated as co-writer and producer on several award-winning short films.

Dante Harper (writer/director), DREAMLAND: An unflinching portrayal of the origins of domestic terrorism, DREAMLAND is the tragic story of Tim McVeigh, from his boyhood dreams of being a soldier to his life as a man at war with his own country. Dante Harper is an independent filmmaker, video artist and co-founder of CLC Films and director of the independent film THE DELICATE ART OF THE RIFLE.
[Read more…] about Sundance Screenwriters Lab announces projects

Mongolian characters speaking Chinese

Charlie's Angels, Rant

full throttlerantI’ve been thinking to write you this letter for a while. I saw the movie Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle on a movie channel recently. As a Mongolian, I’m deeply offended by your knowledge about my country.

In the beginning of the movie you show a scene that something is happening in Northern Mongolia and the people in the movie were speaking in Chinese. If you know a little bit about the country you would’ve known that Mongolia has its own, unique language, Mongolian. If you wanted to use Chinese people with their language you should’ve called that place Northern China.

I’m pretty sure that you’re a young and talented writer, but if you don’t know much about other cultures then don’t use them. I’m glad I didn’t pay to see your movie.

— Toshka

The sequence you’re talking about was written in English, with Russian subtitles, because the bad guys were supposed to be Russo-Mongolian. However, when it came time to shoot the sequence, they ended up casting Chinese actors. From a production standpoint, this makes sense: the martial arts team for the movie was largely Chinese, and these are the people who would end up doing the fight sequence anyway.

This is an example of why it’s frustrating being a screenwriter. You get blamed for a lot of things that are completely out of your control: plot holes that arise from editing, crappy dialogue improvised on the set, and supposedly Mongolian actors speaking Chinese.

I’m sorry, Toshka, that the five or six lines spoken in Chinese during the sequence offended you, but I think you’re expecting way too much cultural accuracy from a movie which ignores gravity, plausibility and narrative logic with alarming consistency.

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle isn’t my favorite movie either, but I can easily think of five better reasons to be frustrated by it:

  1. Too many villains. (Four, if you’re counting.)
  2. The wrong kind of sexy. Flirtatious, meet slutty. Oh, you’ve met.
  3. The whole ring McGuffin. Where’s Frodo Baggins when you need him?
  4. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s — huh? Demi Moore can fly?!
  5. Bernie Mac? Funny! I just wish I could understand what he’s saying.

I was complicit in at least three of these faults (#1, #3, and #4, begrudgingly), so I’ll gladly accept my share of the blame. But as for the Mongolian problem, nope. Can’t help you there.