Sometimes a Good Notion

Script of the Week: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

I have been plugging away at this year’s Black List Scripts waiting for something to inspire me.  Last night I read the brilliant A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness based on the novel by the same name and the same author.  I consider myself to be a pretty good audience member, I typically laugh on cue, cry on cue, etc. I commit emotionally to what I’m reading, giving myself to the material no matter what it is. I can tell you that I have not cried like this when reading a script for a few years (not since The Muppet Man).

The story as described in the Black List logline: An adolescent boy with a terminally ill single mother begins having visions of a tree monster, who tells him truths about life in the form of three stories, helping him to cope with his emotions over his dying mom.

Connor is a whip smart teenager in a tragic situation.  We have met him before in countless movies.  The difference here is that Connor dreads the little moments of empathy that people shoot his way; he detests the compassion and caring.  He is a young man desperately in need for his experience to be over.  In that silent desperation, he summons a monster.  A horrible monster that threatens him with the thing that Connor fears the most, the truth.  “I will tell you three stories.” The monster tells Connor. “Stories are the wildest things of all. Stories chase and bite and haunt.  And when I have finished my three stories, you will tell me a fourth, and it will be the truth.  Your truth.”

The stories are simple parables that play out as short shadow plays throughout the film. They add a distinctive visual element to the writing of an already unusual and beautiful script.

I spend my semesters encouraging my students to write visually. I tell them to write the picture … write the picture.  But what I liked most about this script, was that instead of relying on the strength of the picture, it relied on the power of the spoken word.  This is a film about the stories that we tell each other in order to understand our experiences. It’s quite a formidable trick to pull off.

Someone please make this movie ASAP. 

Catch of the Day: Harry Belafonte on Steve McQueen

I thought this tribute speech was a very appropriate way to start the year and hopefully the beginning of a term where I can post much more than in previous years.

The power of cinema is an uncontainable thing and it’s truly remarkable, in its capacity for emotional evolution. When I was first watching the world of cinema, there was a film that stunned the world, with all its aspects and art form. They did a lot, at that time. The film was done by D.W. Griffith, and it was called The Birth of a Nation, and it talked about America’s story, its identity, and its place in the universe of nations. And that film depicted the struggles of this country with passion and power and great human abuse. Its depiction of black people was carried with great cruelty. And the power of cinema styled this nation, after the release of the film, to riot and to pillage and to burn and to murder black citizens. The power of film. 

At the age of five, in 1932, I had the great thrill of going to the cinema. It was a great relief for those of us who were born into poverty, a way we tried to get away from the misery. One of the films they made for us, the first film I saw, was Tarzan of the Apes. [Ed note: The movie is called Tarzan the Ape Man.] In that film, [we] looked to see the human beauty of Johnny Weissmuller swinging through the trees, jump off, and there spring to life, while the rest were depicted as grossly subhuman, who were ignorant, who did not know their way around the elements, living in forests with wild animals. Not until Johnny Weissmuller stepped into a scene did we know who we were, according to cinema. 

Throughout the rest of my life … on my birth certificate, it said “colored.” Not long after that, I became “Negro.” Not too long after that, I became “black.” Most recently, I am now “African-American.” I spent the better part of almost a century just in search of, seeking, “Who am I? What am I? What am I to be called? What do I say? Who do I appeal to? Who should I be cautious of?” In this life, when we walk into the world of cinema, we use the instrument that is our ability to try to give another impression of who and what we were as a people, and what we meant to this great nation called America. I’m glad that Sidney Poitier should step into this space right after the Second World War, and new images of what we are as people, certainly as men. 

A lot’s gone on with Hollywood. A lot could be said about it. But at this moment, I think what is redeeming, what is transformative, is the fact that a genius, an artist, is of African descent, although he’s not from America, he is of America, and he is of that America which is part of his own heritage; [he] made a film called 12 Years a Slave, which is stunning in the most emperial way. So it’s a stage that enters a charge made by The Birth of a Nation, that we were not a people, we were evil, rapists, abusers, absent of intelligence, absent of soul, heart, inside. In this film, 12 Years a Slave, Steve steps in and shows us, in an overt way, that the depth and power of cinema is there for now the world to see us in another way.

I was five when I saw Tarzan of the Apes, and the one thing I never wanted to be, after seeing that film, was an African. I didn’t want to be associated with anybody that could have been depicted as so useless and meaningless. And yet, life in New York led me to other horizons, other experiences. And now I can say, in my 87th year of life, that I am joyed, I am overjoyed, that I should have lived long enough to see Steve McQueen step into this space and for the first time in the history of cinema, give us a work, a film, that touches the depths of who we are as a people, touches the depths of what America is as a country, and gives us a sense of understanding more deeply what our past has been, how glorious our future will be, and could be. 

I think that the Circle Award made a wise decision picking you as the director of the year. I think we look forward in anticipation to what you do in the future. But even if you never do anything else, many in your tribe, many in the world, are deeply grateful of the time and genius it took to show us a way that it should be. Forever and eternally grateful to say that we are of African descent. Thank you.

New & Notable: SecretProjectRevolution

Directed by: Madonna & Steven Klein

The film contains some beautiful photography by Steven Klein, it’s enough of a reason to watch. However, what is most surprising is Madonna.  She strikes me in this as not being totally self-aware, but just self aware enough.  Madonna tells us that she wants to start a revolution, but people do not take her seriously.  She isn’t willing to admit that people do not take her seriously because she’s Madonna, not because she’s a woman.  But at least she is aware of the uphill battle she faces, which is more than I can say about other people with an equal amount of influence.

Madonna is reminding us here of what she is always reminding us of; that she is the “unique and rare and fearless” person she wants us all to be.  She is expressing herself, for better or for worse as she always has. I think, for the most part that this is a admirable thing.

It will be interesting to see what this new platform Art For Freedom @ artforfreedom.com  turns up.  Their mission is  to EXPRESS YOUR PERSONAL MEANING OF FREEDOM AND REVOLUTION IN THE FORM OF VIDEO, MUSIC, POETRY, AND PHOTOGRAPHY.  

Individual artists will have the opportunity to showcase their work through the project.

New & Notable: Born Sweet

Directed by: Cynthia Wade

Born Sweet is an intimate portrait.  The filmmakers here are able to get simple truths from their subject about the nature of life and hope.  The surprising aspect is that these truths come from a 15 year old boy living in a remote Cambodian village.   Vinh, the film’s subject, has contracted arsenic poisoning from a contaminated well.  He will be terribly sick his entire life and fend off death every day he wakes.  This is his fate. However, Vinh is not resigned to accept this.  He is willing to find hope in unlikely experiences and discovers, if only for a brief moment, that there is power in believing there is a future where he can dream and perhaps even love.

The filmmaking here is both deft and bulky.   The director, Oscar winner Cynthia Wade, understands the inherent drama in this boy’s experience. She relishes in quiet moments where the symbolism coming from the sights and sounds in Vihn’s life are plentiful and meaningful.  The first five minutes of this film are powerful, and some of the most compelling documentary filmmaking I have seen in a short film in a while.  However, the film is sluggish as the filmmaker relishes these moments too much and for too long. The pacing, though deliberate, simply bores.    It was also surprising that the information explaining how the boy came in contact with the poison was presented as a series of titles.  Wade clearly had access to individuals who could have answered the basic journalistic questions that needed to be asked.  Presenting the information in interview format would have helped to break up the monotony the film sinks into.

Script of the Week: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil & Vile by Michael Werwie

This might sound like a cop out…, but there is no practical way to talk about Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil & Vile by Michael Werwie without spoiling it altogether, so I won’t.  Other readers and reviewers have done so online, but I suggest that you stay clear from any site that reveals the story’s intricate details.  It’s just that good.   Werwie demonstrates his adeptness here with gusto. The script manipulates us expertly; it guides our hands through the experience, and when it fully reveals itself in the last three pages you won’t know what hit you, even if you suspect it all along.

The only problem I see here is that the film, its release, and its success depends on total secrecy.  If you walk into a theater knowing what you are about to see, the illusion Werwie has created simply won’t work.  That’s a tall order in today’s Hollywood.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil & Vile was 7th on the 2012 Black List and a Finalist of the 2012 Nichols Fellowship.