Idea Has Been Done Before

Script development can be pretty hellish at times and never more so than when you're on the receiving end of hastily written feedback... This script report from the early 1900s circulated by Essanay films (best known for Chaplin films) suggests not a lot has changed.

Meet Me Here #3

These have been lost weeks.

Meeting after meeting, draft revision after draft revision, budget discussion after budget discussion.

In between a mountain of other work, we've had to fit numerous dances, shimmies and shuffles as we teeter on the verge of getting a new flick off the ground. If all goes well, we'll be filming a feature drama on location in Canberra early next year. I've written on it in these pages before and, I imagine, if all goes well, I'll be writing on it a whole hell of a lot more as we descend into the seven circles of pre-production hell.

So, I am in hiding. Deep in a bunker in my folks house in the outer suburbs. Surrounded by sheaves of paper and the occasional glimmer of insight.

I've got a handful of books and films with me for company that have nothing to do with my film and offer no threat of diluting the difficult script decisions I need to make by offering comparison or consolation:

Books:

John Berger's 'The Sense of Sight'
Mario Vargas Llosa's 'Feast of The Goat'
and a sentimental favourite, Garcia Marquez' crystalline 'No One Writes to the Colonel'

Films:

Alamar by Pedro Gonzalez Rubio
Le Petit Voleur by Eric Zoncka (a joyless, sublime favourite from way back)
The Headless Woman by Lucrecia Martel
Children Underground by Edet Belzberg
Madeinusa by Claudia Llosa
and
a regular touchstone for me... Nenette et Boni by Claire Denis

I also have my nephew for occasional company.

He seems to know what's going on.

Lost in space

Hosted on the great, great Euro Screenwriters site is this little gem (click through to get to the goodness):

Could the 5 minute film school be like the Tao Te Ching? Each lesson a point of meditation and distillation of thought, action and inaction? Either way, they should market the hell out of it and sell it for a couple of bucks. They could make a mint.

Also on this site is a great list of interviews with screenwriters, including Jean Claude Carriere, Richard Price, Paul Schrader, Suso Cecchi d'Amico and Sergio Donati.

There is also a page of notes about directing (Truffaut: "Film lovers are sick people") which happens to include one of the best Klaus Kinski rants about Herzog (for me My Best Fiend is one of the great films about madmen/filmmakers):

Now I absolutely despise the murderer Werner Herzog. I tell him to his face that I want to see him perish like the llama he executed. He should be thrown to the crocodiles alive! An anaconda should throttle him slowly! The sting of a deadly spider should paralyze him! His brain should burst from the bite of the most poisonous of all snakes! Panthers shouldn't slit his throat open with their claws, that would be too good for him! No. Big red ants should piss in his eyes, eat his balls, penetrate his asshole, and eat his guts! He should get the plague! Syphilis! Malaria! Yellow fever! Leprosy! In vain. The more I wish the most horrible of deaths on him and treat him like the scum of the earth that he is, the less I can get rid of him!

Klaus Kinski - On The Importance Of Maintaining A Good Actor/Director Relationship

Also great for a procrastinating writer is this page of inspiring quotes to keep you at work including this infamous gem from Hemingway:

"The first draft of everything is shit."