4 posts tagged “movies”

After “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction,” every young person wanted to be the screenwriter/director to pen and shoot the Next Big Thing. I certainly was sucked into that. As were all the other goateed jokers hanging out at Starbucks with a laptop or a fountain pen.

But Verbal and I were going to do it. He took film classes; I had a screenwriting class under my belt. That class, which was a hell of a lot of fun, yielded a screenplay that got unexpected praise from my professor and a minor award to boot. Verbal and I were going to be the next Tarantino and Avary (before they had their falling out).

Always talking and thinking movies back then, we would – whenever we struck on something noteworthy, some bit of dialogue, some idea for a shot – say, “Put it in the movie.”

This line comes to me still. Even if that dream is even further remote now, dialogue often pops into my head for no good reason, total non-sequitors. It’s as if my brain were working on these things without my knowledge. And when complete, a little door would open at the side wall, and out pops this little sound file, almost zero in size. A two-liner, maybe four.

Heck, I should be mad that my brain is wasting CPU on this – when it should be remembering things like, What were those other 2 items I was supposed to buy at the drug store? and Quick, name this person who is just about to approach you and call you by name! But the rest of my consciousness seems to justify this creative little noodling as, “What I don’t know won’t hurt me.”

Being a huge fan of Raymond Chandler and a big fan of Cary Grant movies (though by no means a very deep one), these bits of dialogue are often in the film noir vein. And yeah, we all know that everyone and their brother thinks they can write film noir dialogue, or that mile-a-minute Thin Man banter that is the precursor to David Mamet, including myself, and we all know it sounds like crap half the time, including my own.

But it sure is fun thinking that whatever sound byte pops out of my brain while I’m washing dishes is worthy enough to be dropped into a movie. Hell, it sure sounds and feels good enough, goddammit.

Back when I was serious about short-story writing, dialogue was often the thing that came to me the quickest. Everything else was a dental extraction. I fancied myself pretty good at dialogue. But that was all relative, namely because all the remaining elements of the stories were pretty shoddy. Structure? Arc? Point? These stories were often trite little young-man-with-a-girl-problem stories, or something that sounded too much like Hemingway, or something that sounded too much like John Fante, or – when I’d gotten drunk on Chandler or Tarantino – sounded too much like watered-down tough-guy blather.

Occasionally, I had something. Once I had something that won me another $25 award, and once I turned someone’s family folklore into a story about young men in the aftermath of WWII asked to track down a tiger that was terrorizing a nearby village. And once I nailed that young-man-with-a-girl-problem story – one chapter of it, anyway – that, to this day, still rings like the purest bell.

Well, anyhow, this was all a long-winded lead-in to two little nothing bits that popped into my head while – yes, of course – I was washing dishes this evening. I’m giving you just the lines, no context. For that’s how it comes.

{1}
Person A: “Hey, don’t shoot me. I’m just the messenger here.”
Person B: (Grunts.) “There’s plenty else we’d shoot you for. So shut your piehole.”

{2}
Person A: “Jack! Damn, look at you! Looking good, man. A little thin though. What they been feeding you?”
Person B: “Oh, you know. A steady dose of crow.”
Person A: “So that's it! Tough.”

Yeah, I know, not very good. A let-down. But hey, we’re all David-Mamets-in-training.

Maybe this is what DJs will be spinning in 2012... I'll take a stab at explaining what a reacTable is, but I invite you to see the demo [Quicktime]. A reacTable is like a touch-sensitive lighted table, on which you place special device nodes of different shapes. Each node has a different function: one keeps time, one controls pitch, one controls frequency, etc. And through a very cool interface, you can create beats and music using the "controls" of: node choice, their relative positioning, their functions played against those of others, and (my favorite) hand-controlled "ranges." An example of the latter is like touching the table next to a node and drawing it away - a motion represented by a lighted circle increasing in size - resulting in an increase of the node's volume or influence. [reacTable on flickr].

It looks sorta easy to use (once you learn the which and how of each node), though complicated to explain verbally. Which is what a good interface should do.

I want to play with one! But it looks like I have to visit a lab of a Spanish university to touch it.

All these modern interfaces (see: iPhone), I just can't get enough!

I'm waiting for devices from Minority Report to get commercialized. Especially Tom Cruise's workstation, so I can get up off my lazy susan and stand up at work, while wearing a collarless leather jacket.

Smart interfaces - bring it on! (And bring down the price!)

...So we'll be leaving for Japan for a +2 week vacation on Thanksgiving day (Nov 23), and to start cleaning up my act, I gave myself a haircut and started to brush up on my Japanese. But how do you brush up something that's essentially nonexistent? (Much like brushing up my brush cut, which in its current state is thinning out quickly.)

I took 3 Japanese classes back in 2000-2001, and have tried to pick up more from watching Japanese soap operas and news programs. So it's no wonder I've plateaued. I just haven't put in the time to make serious progress.

Just this week, I found that I'd forgotten simple words like "friend" (tomodachi), much to my panic. And for years I have been trying to remember the difference between tsukuru (to make), tsukeru (to turn on), and tsukau (to use). Good luck to me getting it right in the next 8 days.

But, you do what you can. Gambaremasu! (I will try!)

So back to my hair. I had been wanting to grow it out as a last stand. I had dreams of looking like a Japanese rock star. But like many dreams, this one died hard. But, to my pleasant surprise, I happened to watch Infernal Affairs and was suddenly inspired to look like Andy Lau.

Infernal Affairs is one kick-ass movie. I won't go into it, so as not to spoil the plot. But this cops-and-gangster movie rips on all levels, mainly because the actors rock all parts - from the leads to the supporting players. Tony Leung is always engaging and is my new hero; he adds delicacy to the gangster, not by the obvious motivation to balance out the character, but by the understated act of slipping a human being into the cinematic staple.

This was my first Andy Lau movie. The man is a bastard, for he's arresting, handsome and looks like a million bucks in a tight and tailored suit. So, even though I have no suit to match, I cut my hair in emulation because, well, sometimes aspiring to be someone else just might help pull yourself up a notch. I'll take motivation where I can get it.

Here's a well-balanced review of Infernal Affairs from my favorite Hong Kong movie-review site [lovehkfilm.com].

By the by, I have little desire to see Martin Scorsese's The Departed, which is the American remake of Infernal Affairs. Though I love Scorsese and most of the cast, I want to savor the original a while. And I don't see very many movies nowadays, so it's not any great restraint.

Having a Mr. Orange monologue in your head is like having a butterfly knife in your pocket.

Sometime after high school, when I was a mere amphibian in the social evolutionary timeline – that is, I was just learning how to talk to people – I found a handy crutch in film. Now, I’m not the first person to image themselves as their favorite celluloid character. And it sounds downright childish and geeky. Which it may well be. But in a way, it served as useful practice. And as a result, in musical slang, it gave me chops, as in speaking chops.

Here’s how it worked. I’d memorize lines from my favorite character. I’d rattle it off either to myself, or to sympathetic friends, at any odd moments. Mainly one- to two-line passages, or an occasional monologue. None of this had any actorly quality to it – just the words verbatim, with an attempt at the actor’s inflections.

What good did this do? It was just like learning a musical instrument. Take guitar. The cliché is that every rock guitarist starts off picking the intro to “Stairway to Heaven.” Figuring it out, repeating it over and over, only makes you better, given you have discipline and improve a little more each day.

The same goes with movie lines. For a person not accustomed to speaking, reciting movie lines over and over, feeling the strength of delivering sure words, only makes you a better speaker.

What did I practice with? Not a lot. Andy Garcia in Dead Again and Jennifer 8. Mickey Rourke in Barfly. Various bits in Diner. And the treasure trove: any given character in Reservoir Dogs.

Having a Mr. Orange monologue in your head was like having a butterfly knife in your pocket. Just feeling the metal in your hand – just having that tough-guy talk right at the tip of your tongue – gives you some kind of power, or illusion of it. Which is sometimes all you need to muscle through some messy situation with clear, succinct speech that cuts through the bullshit and resolves the mess quickly.

It’s probably questionable whether this really did any great good. Even now I hardly make a positive first impression with my speech. (Even my boss said so.) But I certainly would be farther offshore in the primordial waters of the inarticulate had I not leaned on film.