Did You Know... it was National Margarita day today?

I found out it was National Margarita day today.  If I had been alerted, oh say... a couple days ago when I had time to think, I might have enjoyed a frosty cold one after work today.  Instead I dragged my ass home through Los Angeles traffic to discover the news.  Damn.  There should be an emergency alert in place for events like this.

If only Margaritas were delivered by trucks that play music and go slow so as not to kill children and drunks.

Amy Poehler is the best!

Sayin' I Love You

Why, good morning, darlin'!  I will always love you!


Mr. Happy Man from Matt Morris Films on Vimeo.

Boardroom = Bored Room

If you want to bore everyone in the room, you can find no better place to set a scene than a boardroom.  They're deadly.    There are a number of reasons why you've just created a soft-spot in your script.

No one likes meetings.  Dave Barry says,“Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot masturbate.”  People (your audience members) are likely to have attended a meeting or two that week and if they want to sit around and not masturbate, they can do that at work.  People go to the movies for fantasy and escape.  Keep your boardroom scene if it can deliver both of those two missions.  You need to rethink the setting if you're not enabling some epic wish fulfillment.

Movies are about motion.  Things need to be kinetic.  A boardroom is a place where people go to sit and talk.  Imagine Yoda trying to explain the Force to Luke by calling a meeting and sitting down to discuss it before attempting to levitate fighters out of the swamp.  Throw in a Power Point presentation where slides illustrate the dynamics of the Force.  How it moves through us and around us.  How it's everywhere.  Really try to imagine how this would go down... Now think about how it was shown in the film.  They were doing stuff while they were debating stuff.  Luke is upside down lifting rocks in the air while arguing why he's got to save his friends.  Sit and talk = boring.  Do and debate = interesting.

There have been plenty of movies that have done the meeting room. Some better than others.  Office Space is one long wish fulfillment movie where the entire function of the working world is turned on its head and relies on the audience's intimate understanding of the work world.  It fulfills the promise of providing escape and fantasy.  Watch Working Girl.  They had to get creative.  The whole movie is about business, so they were stuck with this as a major motif.  But they had fun with it and kept things very interesting.  Each version of a meeting seems more outlandish than the last... all without having anyone freak out and run across the top of the table to leap at someone or jump out the window.  

If you've got a boardroom scene, it better be set there because that's the worst possible place for your characters to be at that moment.  Think about the words that are being spoken by your characters.  Can they be said while careening through traffic in a car with no brakes?  Or while levitating rocks while standing on their heads?  Still sure you have to set it in the boardroom?  Why?  It better be for more than a sight gag or a joke.  There better be earth shattering news delivered to your character that exposes their powerlessness.  

If you're sure you need to keep this setting, you have your work cut out for you.  It better be surprising, fresh, compelling, and real.  Anything less is just a yawn.

The ABCs of Character Names

It might seem like I'm talking about complex naming schemes that require simplification when I mention the ABCs of character names, but I'm actually being very literal here.

 If Mike loves Marni but Marni love Mark and Mark and Mike are best friends from their college days at Michigan...  Ugh, and there are another 98 pages to slog through?  It can quickly feel like this screenplay was brought to you by the letter M and we're trapped in an episode of Sesame Street.    God help you if you've got a character named Aunt Mary who shows up at the end of act one with molasses cookies and sage advice.  

I can hear it now... Aunt Mary's name starts with an A.  Really? You think Aunt Mary's friends, parents and co-workers all call her Aunt Mary?  I have actually had writers argue with me about this.  Imaging her lover, as he's about to climax, yells out with grunting passion, "Aunt Mary! I love you!"  If that picture didn't creep you out just a little, you've got bigger problems than the letter M.  

You also want to minimize confusion for the reader who might find it challenging to follow who is doing what to whom and why.  Remember, this reader has to write up a summary of your story for his or her boss.  If the synopsis looks like a primary school lesson, you're going to get ignored.  Part of your job is to make it easy for the reader to be a fan of your work.  Alliterative writing pulls the reader out of the story.  Is this supposed to be funny?  Is this for kids?  Is this a clue?  Then, when it fails to pay off, it reveals an inattention to detail.  That tiny assessment throws you and your script on the heap with the other amateurs.

Do yourself a favor.  When you start naming characters write out the alphabet twice on a piece of paper.  Above one set write: First name.  Above the other write, you guessed it: Last name.  As you use each letter, cross it off.  If you've got a story about a family, many of them will have the same last name, but the people who live next door or the principal should have different sounding names.

Make it easy for the reader to love you and your work!