Isolation makes us do strange things.

I have had many jobs over the years. Most of them have been entrepreneurial. I sold Insurance for the majority of the time. Yeah, that was fun, NOT. I was, for a long time, a freelance filmmaker and photographer. That made for many long days and sometimes weeks working from home by myself. Rarely did I have any co-workers, and I was mostly alone in my house trying to edit or drum up a sale. Usually, I spent my time learning something new or honing my After-Effects or Photoshop skills. It was a solitary existence. I do not have children, and my wife works strange hours, so it is always eerily quiet. Some people might find that relaxing, but for a guy like me, it is exhausting.

I need action and conversation to stimulate my brain. My attitude gets questionable when I have no one around to stoke the fires of creativity. I like to tell people that I am the type of person that likes to hear the roar of the cannonballs. That means there always has to be something exciting happening around me. Solitude is boring.

These past few weeks have been nerve-racking to me. But I am working it out. I get to go into the office a little here and there. Even there, I am by myself. I have made a few product videos and some promotional stuff for an online event, but they are kind of lame. They aren’t lame because the product I created isn’t any good; they are lame because it’s not hard work, and it is just an inanimate object spinning around on a turntable. There is no meat on the bone, so to speak.

I did create something exciting this weekend, though. I broke out my fog machine and filmed an eerie scene of smoke coming through the slats on a chair in my yard. Donald showed up for a few minutes. We stayed six feet apart, just like you’re supposed to (we do that anyway, no biggie).

Here is what I shot. It doesn’t have a story, but it is kind of cool.

Movie Review: Bad Boys For Life

If you haven’t heard yet, Will Smith is attempting to rekindle his career in action movies. The box office success of the 1995 film “Bad Boys” has sparked two sequels. In 95’ the movie was welcomed with open arms with its signature song and the massive popularity of the main stars, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. This movie helped to propel the career of Micheal Bay as a box office master of action and, what my dad calls “shoot em up” movies. By today's standards, the film didn’t make that much money, but by 1995 standards it was a smash hit making an estimated 140 million on a 90 million dollar budget. Bad Boys II came out in 2003 and cost almost 130 million to make and took in 273 million. Again, delivering on the promise of the first movie and, well, winning.

When Bad Boys premiered, the Miami lifestyle still had some “Miami Vice” reverberations and people were ready to see that vibe portrayed again. With audiences flocking to the other hits of the year like “12 Monkeys”, “Nixon” and the still-relevant “Seven”, we were all in the mood for a light-hearted action flick reminiscent of “Lethal Weapon.” Transferring the theme song from the hit TV reality show “COPS” didn’t hurt either. This movie didn’t let the theater-going audiences down as it delivered a healthy dose of camp, action, jokes, and star-power. I enjoyed the movie so much at the time that I bought it (there was no streaming then) and the soundtrack too. Although I found it “meth-lab” trailer park to play the theme song so I stuck to the other tracks when there was a possibility of someone eavesdropping on my musical choices. Bad Boys II might be considered a better film, and it made just as many people happy as the first, myself included

And now, in 2020, “Bad Boys For Life” has made itself known. For what, I am not entirely sure, but it might not be something good. It is playing on the same tropes as the past two movies with all the throw-back lines and situations. Nothing in the film was new and there is no twist ending.

CAUTION, SPOILERS AHEAD

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The movie is almost a repeat of Bad Boys II when it comes to the interpersonal relationship between Smith and Lawrence. Sure they forwarded the story a touch with Lawerence’s family but nothing has changed between them and Smith is still unresolved as a character. In fact, I would suggest that neither character has any real movement and leave the movie as they came in, stagnant from the previous two films

The biggest issue I have with the film is that it resembles an 80’s or 90’s action flick a little too much. Most of the scenes were made fun of in one of my favorite movies “Last Action Hero.” In the film, they bring all the stupid things screenwriters do to make an action movie move forward without getting too much into the details when they have run out of things to blow up or minions to kill. In fact, much of the movie has those nameless, faceless villains wearing motorcycle helmets riding motorcycles and driving chase cars with heavily tinted windows. Our heroes can kill as many of them as they want and no one worries about the body count because they are bad guys after all. This movie even goes so far as to have them chewed out by their police captain who yells and screams like a little baby about how much these two guys wreak havoc on the city. Even after the blistering attack from the boss, the hero gets a new team with abilities unknown to Smith. But, we find out that the team is good, but they don’t have what it takes to be a real old school cop like Smith and Lawrence so they flounder.

Then there are the unnecessary and unreal explosions and weaponry. Cars do not blow up when they are shot with a rifle round, motorcycles cannot roam around the city with a military machine gun attached to the front of a motorcycle sidecar and grenades do not have enough force to push a motorcycle onto its front wheel. But this is the movies, so I may just let most of this stuff go. Ok, I won’t. It is just too ridiculous.

But there’s more.

In my humble opinion, when a screenwriter gets stuck or can’t see beyond their own creations eyes they do dumb things. Just like in the film “Batman VS Superman,” the duo is miraculously saved at the end of the movie when the team they left behind in Miami suddenly appears to give the crucial assist. This is amateurish and Smith and Lawerence should have been able to figure this out by themselves. It would have been a way better ending.

Instead, the screenwriters wrote themselves into a corner by having fifteen or so bad guys attack the guys in Miami. The rule of thumb for writing a screenplay is to make the next set of bad guys tougher than the last. Well, the only way they could do that is to double up on the number of bad guys since there was no set up for a supervillain henchman as that role was taken by the sub-plot of the super henchman being Will Smiths son. Yes, you heard me right, he had a child with the main bad girl. Explained to us in a reflective scene, we find that Will’s first assignment out of the academy was to be an undercover operative in a Mexican cartel. Just Another overused trope that this movie intends to cram down our throats in an unsuccessful attempt to make the audience care for the Characters that fails miserably.

Top all of that off with the Super Henchman (AKA Will’s son) is captured after turning on his mother and given a second chance to prove his worthiness even after killing the police captain, everyone’s dear friend, in cold blood just thirty minutes before. I mean Come On!

While I could go on and on about this film, I wonder if it will find an audience that revels in its creation. The world has changed and sensibilities have deepened. Can a 1908’s style buddy cop flick hold it’s own? If so, I can write that. And it would probably be better than this 1.5-star silly movie. Mostly because I always try to avoid cliché’s when writing a story. This movie leaves me wondering if our society has digressed to the point that a good story isn’t as crucial as making stuff blow up. The box office take for this movie will tell us and I hope it’s not bad news.

1917, Every tool a Plot driven Screenwriter can muster.

I watch a lot of movies. Most of them aren’t very good. Most of them are trying to be modern in their cinematic qualities and the stories have all the little things in them that the screenwriting books tell us must be included. They always add in the save the cat moments to make our hero seem likable. They have the sex at sixty or the love scene comes about the sixty-minute/page mark. When the hero finds himself in a position that feels impassable and all is lost, that is a screenwriting trope. The list goes on and on and sometimes it isn’t actually a good thing to see that every one of them is in the movie. Usually, that means it was written by someone that has lost their way when it comes to telling a good story.

I am going into massive spoilers with this blog about the movie “1917”, you have been warned.

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The movie is doing well with nominations this year. It is a good movie. However, it isn’t a great movie. The story is all about the plot and not about the characters. In fact, it must be noted that the main character isn’t who we think is it. The character we begin following is killed in the first half of the film. The other character, George MacKay as Lance Corporal Schofield, is quiet and argumentative. Schofield (MacKay) is not empathetic and really is overshadowed by Dean-Charles Chapman (Lance Corporal Blake) until his death at the hands of a German Bi-Plane Pilot.

Dean-Charles Chapman (Lance Corporal Blake)

Blake (Chapman) begins the film by volunteering his friend for a special project. Schofield has seen up-close combat, supposedly, and his friend has not. Given the task of getting orders from the General to the front lines to fall back and call off a misguided attack by Col. Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) as the Germans fall back to a more substantial position to ambush the entire section of the British Army. To do so, they must pass through “no man's land,” the abandoned fortifications of the Germans, and weed their way through dastardly non-descript German soldiers who have no other reason to exist than to kill whoever is dressed as a soldier playing for the opposite team. And that’s about it for the story, plot and anything else that you can think of.

I am not saying that the story isn’t right. It is a good story and you are on the edge of your seat at the beginning. Every scene has the pre-requisite amount of tension and all the boxes are checked. That is unless you have a yearning for characters who do things that have nothing to do with the plot but everything to do with the story, like me.

I will concede, after watching an interview with the Director/Writer Sam Mendes, this was completely intentional. He stated that he kept the characters obtuse and unfleshed out to keep the tension up. I agree that it worked but in the end, I was left with nothing. Maybe that’s the point? Perhaps it is his way of commenting on what war can be and what it takes from individuals to be executed correctly. I can see the point and it does make a statement. But, sometimes, the statement you want to make, or the theme you want to get across, shouldn’t be the only reason for the story. Not saying that was his “theme” and it is more of an observation on directing in general, I would suppose.

The movie is shot exceptionally well. I enjoyed ninety-five percent of the shots and set up. I especially love the one-shot, one-take way they did most of the film. It is very compelling and demands respect as it’s the most technically challenging thing to film. I thought they had to be using a boom or crane on a vehicle to get the shots of the two men going down into craters that must have been twelve to fifteen feet deep without having any camera shake, and they did exactly that. Pretty cool if you ask me.

I found most of the sets believable except for the number of dead bodies lying and floating around. In those days they would call front line cease-fires for Collecting the dead and wounded. Chivalry was something that all the armies followed, for the most part. The dead loitering everywhere is really an embellishment of the director to horrify the viewer. Other intricacies of the film can be called into question, I suppose, but they really aren’t anything that takes away from the film itself.

What does take away from the film is the number of writing tropes they threw into it. Since it doesn’t actually tell a real story and just shows you the plot with no character growth from anyone on screen, I suppose the more mechanisms it can put into place, the better.

The first, and most apparent, mechanism this movie uses (well, not that obvious since it happens in the second act instead of the first) is the reluctant hero. Our main man Schofield (MacKay) tries to get Blake (Chapman) to wait until dark before heading out on their mission. He beleaguers the point, over and over again, until they top the trench and begin their trek. Then he tries to stall his friend and hapless leader when they find some rations left behind by the Germans. Of course, this is a trap meant to bottleneck the invading soldiers so they will get caught in a tunnel collapse when they gather to eat. Our hero, who we have yet to discover is the hero, barely escapes while his cohort is none the less for wear.

Not to let the point go, the screenplay then has Schofield ask why Blake choose him and not someone else. In retrospect, as I sit here typing, this is the most exposition of the entire film. Then, it goes away and never comes back.

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At one point in the film, I almost fell asleep. No, really. I was so bored with what I was watching; it took everything I had to keep from snoring in the theater. Schofield, now on his own to complete the mission, has come to the town just outside the forest where the Colonel is preparing for the imperiled attack our hero has been charged with stopping. He is chased by a random darkly shrouded German Soldier into a small room with a fire burning. Schofield has managed to evade the German but finds himself presented with a pretty young French woman who has hidden there with a child. Schofield questions the woman and, in broken English accompanied by subtitles tells him that the child isn’t hers and that she randomly just found the fat baby (that isn’t an exaggeration, this baby is HUGE). He has a moment with her and then leaves to complete his mission.

This entire scene is something that I would have thrown out of my own movie as it has nothing to do with anything. Just an attempt at character building in a way that is utterly useless to the narrative we are watching. If you cut this entire scene from the movie, you have lost nothing. It is there because of the trope and mechanical tool that is called “sex at sixty.” It does nothing for our character and nothing for our movie. It also what clued me in to what the screenwriter was doing to make this story work. Then all the bells went off and I knew what, why and where everything happened as well as what to expect next. Essentially the movie ended for me during that scene and explained why I was trying not to saw an entire forest of knotted pine from my seat or at least sound like I was.

Overall, 1917 is a good film. Where it lacks in character everything, it makes up for in its artistry. The dialogue doesn’t miscarry and the characters seem mostly true; Schofield even has a mentor during one scene. The setting is bleak, as it should be and the war is represented in a mostly accurate way. The performances are strong. Albeit why wouldn’t they be when there is little dialogue once Lance Corporal Blake is killed.

Does it deserve Oscars for acting? I would bet there are better performances this year. Should it be given an award for the best screenplay? An absolute no. Cinematography, Most definitely.

I accidentally wrote a movie.

Writing is hard. Just ask anyone who has tried to write something that is somewhat coherent and actually has a story that makes sense. There are so many rules, regulations that you have to follow as well as being creative at the same time. For me, I have always found it hard to get too far past the first act and into the “fun and games,” (as Blake Snyder calls it) portion of any script. Today, however, was the exception.

I actually sat down to write a ten page short that I could fund and shoot myself (by fun I meant it actually doesn’t cost anything other than time), I knew what I wanted, I knew what I needed to get there. Yet, I still held fast to the baked in rules of screenwriting. I didn’t mean to, but I did it anyway. Like I say in my podcast all the time, I plotted it out, found the turns and went in for the kill, but ten pages just isn’t enough time.

I got to the point I wanted to make, I set up the relationship of the main character with her boyfriend, I introduced the characters for the “B” story and gave the boyfriend more time to tell his story so his role could grow. Then came the mentor. The mentor is the Obi-Wan Kenobi character that teaches our main protagonist how to navigate the world and the tools they will need to defeat the Dark Night of the Soul. Then I thought, wait… How many pages is this? I looked, and I was on page 14. CRAP!

See; usually, a screenplay needs to have the first ten pages for setup and the turn into the second act, give or take. The reason for the ten pages is mostly due to the script readers at the studios only giving you ten pages to hook them. The mentor comes in just before that, and you should have a visit from every character so we can see just where they are starting out in the world, set the rules of the world and a couple of other things, things the audience needs to know.

After looking up and seeing my page count, I realized that I had accidentally hit every beat of a FIRST ACT. I completely missed my target of getting to all the beats needed to make a sound, readable story in ten pages. Heck, the mentor for the story was even introduced on page eight, and the turn into act two was expressed. DANG IT! I didn’t mean to do that.

Accepting my fate, I went ahead and thought about the next things that needed to be done. Fun and Games, Dark Night of the Soul, and the Finale. The damn thing is, I hit them all and more. The “B” stories come to fruition right at the page they should, they team up and war against the Antagonist at just the right time and find that one of the “B” story characters is the key to defeating the bad guy. I didn’t set out to make this a movie but damn it...

Why am I mad about this, you may ask. Well, I need a short film to shoot not ANOTHER screenplay to finish. I have about fifty already. But this one is way ahead of the game. The only downfall of this screenplay is that it is more of a Rom-Com than anything else. I’ve never attempted one of these before, and I am not sure it is a good enough story to actually spend all the time it takes to write.

I guess I’ll keep pluggin along. Maybe it will turn into something interesting a draft or two into it.