Intake mode.

I have a crippling tendency to over-think everything I try to do.  That's how projects I begin take so long for me to complete.  See, most writer's I know don't spend so much time pouring over the little details of what they're trying to say when they start, they just say it.  When it's done you give it to others for revisions, and it's infinitely easier to do when it's all there, mistakes and everything.

So why am I bringing this up?  Because I need accountability.  I still hold to my goal of finishing at least one if not two scripts by the end of August.  Too many ideas, not enough patience and organization, and not enough diligence and doing the simple but sometimes terrifying task of sitting in one place and not getting back up until you've written what you set out to write.

Universe, help me.  I need to get my act together.  I haven't read 'The Secret' but I understand a part of it is putting out there what you want most.  Well, I'm putting it out there again.  I want to finish a script by the end of next month, two really, and I need to get my ass in gear.

I have been reading quite a bit more lately.  I read 'No Country For Old Men' last week and I'd say I enjoyed it just as much as the film, all 20+ times I've seen it.  I'm on the tail end of 'Blood and Money' by Thomas Thompson now.  It's an epic true crime novel chronicling a series of three murders in Texas in the late 60's through the early 70's.  I had never heard of this case before and discovered it after watching 'Zodiac' recently and then reading Roger Ebert's review in which he notes similarities between the two.  At its best I'd say the book is successful at creating a massive mythology for all the key players in the crimes, explaining their backgrounds and histories and depicting all of them, murderer or murdered, as victims of tragic fate.  I've gotten a lot from the book, particularly in terms of structure and how to introduce characters, as well as reminders as to what kinds of details are most effective and which not when telling a story of this genre.

It seems crime and mystery have become my genre of choice, and recently I've found myself combining it with others with which it wouldn't normally mix.  One of my scripts that's due next month is a fantasy of sorts, combining elements of a story like 'All The President's Men' or 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' with something like the fantasy realism of 'District 9', but without aliens and not taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Trust me, you'll see.

I love the feeling that you aren't supposed to be here, that something horrible has happened here in a place that may once have been good.  Like in 'The Silence of the Lambs', which I watched again last night, where you begin to actually feel sorry for Buffalo Bill and his lonely house of horrors, his personality that if it had been met with love and acceptance may not have spawned a murderous alter ego sequestered in his basement.  It's trite, I know, but that's why I love Resident Evil 1, 2, Code Veronica, and 4.  In good mysteries the details are what make it; imagery, dialogue, settings and environments, characters' costumes.  With every mystery I've watched or read recently I keep thinking, "I need to see the one I'm working on.  This one is good but I need to bring mine to life so I can see it."  As this period of absorbing media seems to be coming to an end and leading to the stage of the cycle where I create again.

I've enjoyed my intake mode because I needed to regroup and explore the territory.  I knew after "Podunk" that I needed to learn more not only about how to tell a story but about genres.  To me mystery has the most potential, or, at least it's a genre that to me offers the most functional method to explore characters, events, locations, and tell a story that has the potential to be captivating.  There's a relatable and sympathetic tragedy in mystery and crime when the elements are properly balanced.

Well, that's enough talk for now.  Check this out, it's the Gamecube Resident Evil remake and it's one of the most lushly detailed visual experiences in video games.  I want to live in this mansion some day.  Or maybe just visit.

http://youtu.be/2wzWbkkiDZc

On to writing!

And the Punk Renaissance continues.

Over the weekend someone posted what was apparently a pirated recording of the red band trailer for David Fincher's 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'.  In a matter of a day or two the trailer had accrued almost two million hits on youtube, before being removed today for a supposed violation of Sony copyright laws.  But this is too perfect, really, and it reeks of a hoax.  Whether it is or isn't, either way this is, to me, another example of a director who is very much aware of the current media environment and the expanded advertising playground it provides.

I've already ranted and raved about 'The Social Network', and there Fincher came into his own and gave a very long overdue 'fuck you' to the establishment (i.e. the academy that has so long ignored him for being merely an aesthetic director of little substance).  He has become, more than ever, an anti-establishment punk who has finally worked his way up the ladder, subscribed to the prescribed method long enough, to be in a position of power from which he can now freely exercise his anarchistic attitude.  Few others can make biting the hand that feeds you so chic and, well, badass; few others can so succinctly elucidate the milieu of youth today.  And it only took him until his fifties to be able to do it.  Perhaps I'm mapping my own take of his work onto him, but Fincher seems very aware of the fact that he is not of the culture he is examining; he has long outgrown it.  And yet this is how this art works.  The director works for years, maybe decades, to have access to the tools he or she needs to explain what he or she felt important years or decades ago.

I'm not typically a fan of remakes.  In fact, I'm often vehemently opposed to it because I think it typically speaks to a certain reverse imperialism, that not only do we spread out, but everything that comes in must be converted to Americanism as well.  However, here I just can't resist.  'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' was one of the most exhilarating mystery stories I've read in a long time, and seemed to definitively capture some of the best traits of a thriller all in one book.  Seeing Fincher's cinematographic lust for the depraved, violent, and aberrant is too exciting to turn down.

As of the time of this post, the trailer is now once again available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIV-sWKyFno

Though it will likely follow suit and be taken down within a day or two.  My guess is that even if Fincher and/or Sony/MGM pictures aren't involved in it's guerilla capture style and believably authoritarian intervention and swift removal they wouldn't object to the method of its dissemination.  It's a 'punk' that is simultaneously fortified and evacuated of its definitive meaning (for if the entire process of uploading and removal is contrived then it is truly meaningless), and as long as Fincher understands (and I think he does) that punk is where you find it and to look elsewhere before he's exhausted it here, I think it'll be ok.