More Writers Strike Fun

Yesterday, an exec punched the gas to get through the picket line and ran over a writer. That's the exec's car, and the writer's shoe. The writer got a broken leg. The exec'll probably get two years in the gulag.

Unfortunately, even though I live right by Paramount, the writers are only striking from 9-to-5. I'm out the door by 7:30am and back home around 10pm usually. I'm missing out on all the fun chaos.

This shit's already getting outta hand. I'm hearing from people all over town that the studios and networks are just shutting down shows and producing deals. They're using this as an excuse to clear some house, citing force majeure.

Carrie

I've been catching up on old school horror lately. Partly because of all the remakes going on -- I want to keep the originals fresh in my head. And partly because I realized I just hadn't seen some of these movies since I was a kid.

I watched Prom Night last week. I loved it. Prom Night is every late-70s/early-80s slasher trope combined. It even has the obvious red herring, a kooky gardener who gives high school kids the fish eye while he trims the bushes.

And I watched Carrie last night. This is Brian DePalma at the height of his abilities, adapting a Stephen King novel (his first bestseller, if that puts a date on this picture) with horror sensibilities of the period in full effect. This ain't chocolate and peanut butter. This is chocolate and peanut butter and blowjob.

Carrie also gives us the feature film debut of a young TV actor named John Travolta, whom you may recall from his role as Vinnie Barbarino on Welcome Back Kotter.

This is of interest because, according to the special features, George Lucas and Brian DePalma cast for Star Wars and Carrie on the same day. Actors would come in and audition. Lucas took the people he liked, and DePalma took the rest for Carrie. So there is an alternate universe in which John Travolta would have played Han Solo.

The movie opens with a girls' volleyball game. Carrie (Sissy Spacek) is immediately tagged as a pariah and a klutz. Then we go into the girls' locker room, a scene involving copious nudity. But it's not played for exploitation. The tone is "nymphs in the garden," very slow and steamy and dreamlike. And then we get this horrible scene in which Carrie's persecuted. It's a perfect example of the inherent cruelty of high school girls.

She's rescued by a kindly gym teacher. One of the girls feels bad, and tries to make up for it by getting her boyfriend Tommy to take Carrie to the prom as a way to make up for her part in everything.

(The guy who plays Tommy was originally up for Luke Skywalker. He didn't get Luke. He got Tommy. He relays this fact with a distinct, what-the-fuck undertone of karmic THAT COULD'VE BEEN ME!!!)

These characters reminded me that, despite all the death and horror, King frequently loads his stories with multiple "good guys." His world is dark, but not without lights.

Most of the movie is a high school drama. The acting is excellent. The writing's great. I loved the directing -- there are some seriously awesome shots in this thing. Even simple stuff has an added layer, like the kid on his bike weaving between trees. Just fucking cool.

And then you get the prom, which is still in everyone's collective consciousness.

This may sound like a huge "duh," but it wasn't until that scene when, purely at random, I'd decided to watch two classic horror movies that revolve around bad proms. I wonder if there are any others, so I can make a trilogy out of it.

I also watched the original trailer. According to the trailer, Carrie is adapted from the bestselling novel by "Steven King." Good times.

Query of the Day

"I wrote a screenplay called [title removed to protect the innocent; includes two typos] It is about a pimp name Ryan. Ryan is the main character in the sccreenplay. Ryan works for another pimp name Lanady. Ryan brings all the money that he gets from his hoes back to Lanady. Ryan has problems with another pimp because Ryan got his hoes working on the pimps block. Ryan then has problems with the american mob because the american mob wanna sell drugs on Ryan block. Ryan then falls in love with his main hoe. Ryan gets involve with a strip club and becomes partners with the strip club owner. Ryan bumps into a crookied cop and starts paying off the cop to stay out of jail."

Train of the Dead

This dude fell asleep on a train on Halloween. He was made up as a zombie. The other passengers thought he was really dead and called the cops.

Good thing they didn't shoot him in the head.

Writers Strike

I live close to Paramount. As left for work, I passed the studio. I saw a bunch of security guards, but no one was picketing.

I work down the block from the WGA building. As I came into work, I saw one camera crew doing a report.

In my little corner of the town, it seems pretty quiet for the moment.

I was on set all this past weekend. Warner Bros Saturday, Fox Sunday. I was pleasantly surprised to find out base camp was in the parking lot next to the Fox 2000 building. Almost every time I've been on the Fox lot this past year, it was for a meeting w/ Fox 2000 re: DK. Whenever I go, I take a little stroll on their New York street set because I think it's neato. Yesterday, I was on the New York street for the first time for its original purpose of shooting a scene set in New York. Too much fun.

I bailed early yesterday so I could make it into the office today and get the music nailed down.

Time to work...

Annie Hall

I finally watched Annie Hall. I liked it.

There are people who would read the above lines and smack their foreheads in horror at my obliviousness, much in the way I might react to someone telling me they ran across this movie The Exorcist on HBO and, know what? It was actually pretty good!

But, what the hell. Annie Hall swept the Oscars at the same time Star Wars was coming out. Being I was still in the low single-digits, age-wise, you see where this is going.

Long/short, Annie Hall is the kinda movie that is massively influential without my ever knowing. The whole time I was watching this flick, I was ticking off all the later movies and shows that borrow from it: When Harry Met Sally, Ferris Bueller, The Wedding Crashers, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld, any given romcom set in NYC, etc.

Woody Allen plays a version of himself. He runs across this sweet girl from the Midwest named Annie Hall. They dig each other and start dating. She likes how smart he is. He likes her golly-gee innocence, which is so different from his own smarmy, neurotic, uber-intellectual Manhattan pretentious bullshit.

So, naturally, he does everything in his power -- by financing her "adult education courses" and analysis to "get in touch with her feelings" and pounding his bullshit craziness into her -- to turn Annie Hall into one of the tribe. Once she's just like Woody and all of his awful friends, they begin hating each other. And Woody hates himself.

It's also a really funny movie, very brash and sexy. The writing's amazing.

I'll be honest -- I've never had much interest in Woody Allen. But I realized one day I was judging this guy's entire career from face value, just like the knuckleheads who think every horror movie in the world is like Friday the 13th Part V.

Annie Hall is my first Woody Allen film. We're off to a good start. There's still that whole pretentious Manhattanite thing going on that fills my mouth with bile and my mind with images of attacking Hansen brothers. But, like Larry David's stuff, I can deal with it because, like Larry David, Woody Allen is using these characters to show just how wretched the entire scene is. I can get behind that.

Maybe next I'll figure out who this Fellini fella is I've heard so much about...

On Set

Yesterday was a 24-hour shoot day.

We got there at dawn of Halloween, and worked through to the dawn of the new day.

It was a lot of frantic mayhem on my end for the first 13 hours or so. Movies are born of chaos; they don't want to be made. But it's that same energy that makes them powerful. So all you can do is fight the inevitable chaos and hope you come within the 90th percentile.

I'm in the office today, catching up on the work I haven't been able to swing while in production. Back on set this weekend.

So far, so mostly-good...