It’s rare for a film to have the stink of reality about it, and there’s no particular reason it should. The business of film is all about escapism after all. So when a film does venture into territory that feels real, whether socially, emotionally, or otherwise, I get interested. And even when that film is not entirely successful, as is the case with Lakeview Terrace, I’m inclined to applaud the intent of the people involved.

Director Neil LaBute has a reputation for contentious material, usually scripted by himself. In this case the writers are David Loughery and Howard Korder. And thanks are due in a big way to Samuel L Jackson, who will hopefully bring along a larger audience to this (generally) intelligent story than it would otherwise get.

Jackson plays Abel Turner, an LA cop who takes a dim view of his neighbours’ interracial relationship. This is fascinating stuff to see on screen: popular cinema is not good on race, and to have a film predicated on an issue that requires incisive and empathic writing and performances takes courage of a sort that most people in the business of film will never understand.

Tropic Thunder raised valid questions about race through humour, as does Chris Rock in some of his more toe-curling routines. Here, the format is a thriller, and it’s this that ultimately proves the film’s downfall. But it’s still well worth seeing, for the sheer awkwardness of the concepts it deals with. The thriller framework is a way of getting a sizeable audience to confront those ideas: a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.

Should films be medicine at all? Perhaps not. But given the amount of vacuity on screens most of the time, it’s refreshing to see a film that has interesting angles on race. Jackson’s Republican cop is an all-too credible character, and the star’s inherent charisma makes it difficult to dislike officer Abel for the most part. But the more you see of him, the bigger an asshole he becomes, particularly when he strikes his teenage daughter across the face.

That smack is a no-turning back point if ever there was one. A shame then, that somewhere along the line the decision was taken to give Abel something along the lines of an explanation for his bad behaviour. That weakens the story, in the same way that if Vic Mackey of The Shield were to reveal that he was…I don’t know, forced to sing Mamas & Papas songs on a school camp it would be a massive ‘what-the-fuck?’ moment that dilutes his sheer shark-like repellence. Some people are evil, and there’s no reasoning about that. Attempts to frame their behaviour with cheap psychology only end up weakening them.

Anyway, that character misstep aside, Lakeview Terrace is still well worth watching. Maybe the subplot about a forest fire that threatens to destroy the community Jackson lives in is a bit contrived, both as metaphor for the character’s incandescent rage and an excuse for a finale in which the asshole cop takes on his lilywhite liberal neighbour Chris Mattson (played by Patrick Wilson) once and for all. And maybe the reconciliation between Mattson and his wife is too easily achieved. But you know what? I’d still rather watch an honourable failure like this than trite Hollywood product like — well, let’s go back all the way to the last entry and Clint Eastwood’s sadly disappointing Changeling — any day.

Get ready to board the Oscar train folks, Changeling is in town, and the buzz is that it’s a contender for awards. Well, I’m not massively fussed about that side of things, but I am interested in seeing what Clint Eastwood has to offer, on the basis of films he’s directed from Bird to Million Dollar Baby.

This time round, Clint brings us a true tale, researched and written by J. Michael Straczynski, most known as the creator of tv sf series Babylon 5. Word has it that the film was shot from the first draft of the script, and if that’s the case then Eastwood bears at least some responsibility for its many weaknesses.

Bottom line is, this is a great story with a weak screenplay. The material is solid gold, with Angelina Jolie as a mother whose son goes missing, only to have the police announce that they’ve found him and return her an imposter. That leads to a whole bunch of unpleasantness as Jolie’s character is incarcerated in an asylum, a reflection of the corrupt power of the Los Angeles police and weird attitudes on the part of the medical establishment back in the twenties.

All of which sounds like the basis of a fascinating tale. Problem being, it’s written on the nose throughout. There’s no nuance in what’s going on: Jolie is a loving mother determined to get her son back at the start of the film, and that’s exactly what she is at the end. Along the way she rages against the machine, and wins, and it’s all written more like a tv movie of the week than a piece of quality cinema.

There’s no light and shade to suggest Jolie is deserving of anything other than canonisation for her devotion to her boy as she takes on the powers that be. Compare to Erin Brockovich, where Julia Roberts gets to portray a three dimensional character whose less polished traits only endear her to us all the more, and who plays a more active role in facing down the corrupt authorities. Maybe Jolie’s character, Christine Collins, really was saintly and focused the whole damn time, but the story would have been a bit sparkier if she’d at least threatened to fall off her perch at some point.

It all looks just dandy and convincingly of its era, but that’s not too difficult with a big budget and some digital shenanigans. There’s an old time sheen across the whole thing that threatens to anaesthetise the audience, but thankfully a couple of unusual performances kept me awake. John Malkovich provides one as a crusading priest, which he brings his usual intelligence and unusual choices to. The other is a murderer, Gordon Northcott, brought to something like life by actor Jason Butler Harner. I think his acting was good, but something about his portrayal of the killer brings to mind the cartoon character Snagglepuss. At any rate, it’s certainly distinctive.

Quite how such promising material ends up so vanilla I couldn’t tell you. But it’s a reminder that Clint’s tastes are sometimes unreliable, albeit tuned in to commercial success: witness his adaptation of the execrable Bridges of Madison County
and his choice to perform alongside an orangutan on a couple of occasions. If anything, that suggests my own aesthetic needs to be more akin to Clint’s if I’m after a lasting career. Hmm…anyone on for a tale about a woman who reconnects with her war-traumatised fiance by getting him a pet lemur? Queries to the usual email address.

It’s been a productive day, my co-writer Scotty Clark and I having pretty much nailed the final chunk of the horror story we’re developing. The process has been highly enjoyable, and if all collaborations were as straightforward as this one I’d be doing more of them. Three is plenty, mind, and part of the trick is choosing your partners wisely.

It helps that Scotty and I are on the same page regarding how to go about developing a story. We’re very aware that there’s a wealth of detail to be discovered as we flesh out our characters and put dialogue into their mouths, but right now the job is about creating a story for them that will be fun to watch on a cinema screen. Along the way, we’ve got a few moments that will provide twisted humour, ideally so that 14-30 year old males can relate their favourite scenes to mates over a beer and get that demographic along to the cinema, or pick up the DVD later on.

All of which assumes that we’ll get the film made. And that’s something else Scotty and I have in common: blind enthusiasm for what we’re doing. Sure, we’re aware that statistically developing films is an exercise in futility, and that we may as well devote our attentions to a Mars expedition. All very well. But there is precisely zero point in coming up with concepts when you’re thinking like that: instead our output has been characterised by good (albeit dark) humour and good old fashioned pluck.

Will we get the film made? We’ll certainly have a bloody good go at it. I’ll definitely be showing our treatment to a production company I’ve already established a good relationship with. They’ve got a few features under their belt already, and if they’re into ours it could conceivably be the one that wins them some decent money, instead of the awards their projects normally garner. Hey, maybe it could do both…but this being a genre piece, that’s unlikely.

All of which adds up to a pleasantly optimistic piece to be writing this time round, the 200th since this blog started on New Years Eve last year. There are other reasons to feel good too: by Christmas I should have definitive news on what could be a multi-stranded project on a substantial scale that could keep me very busy for a year or more, and maybe even become a staff job…not that I’m sure I want such a thing. We shall see: it’s all very exciting anyway.

The animation projects I’m developing are coming on well too. Andy Tudor and I had a great meeting recently that gave us both a bigger sense of the story world we’re creating, and I had useful advice from a couple of friends working in animation on how to take the concept further. Next up, more flesh on the bones of the second animation project, a collaboration between Corrina Rothwell and myself. It’s lovely to be playing with three such talented creators: all that remains, as is so often the case, is to add money to the mix.

Hehe. That last line indicates the perennial dilemma of the gigging writer: how to attach finance to fun. I love what I do, and it’d be nice if decent fees were part of my life on a more regular basis. But if it were all that straightforward, everyone would be doing it, and the cinema and television would be awash with brilliantly realised content. And yes, that was a herd of zebras that just passed your window when you looked up, snorting in disbelief…

Writing isn’t just one thing, it’s a whole bunch of processes. You need to nail them all in order to produce a script that sizzles.

First, there’s the matter of getting your basic concept right. One way to go about this is to come up with a 25 word pitch, or a poster design. Here is the core of what you are putting together in order to persuade an audience to give up a night doing whatever they generally prefer to spend some time gawping at your brainchild. It needs to tantalise with a mix of the familiar and the exotic, reminding them of something they remember fondly while promising an element of novelty.

Next, you have to be able to plan a story that will entice an audience to follow its twists and turns for 90 minutes or more. That takes some doing, especially in that tricky second act. In which case using a structural model that doesn’t acknowledge a second act can help. John Truby’s system has 22 elements, and in his deconstruction of Russian folk tales, Vladimir Propp noted that stories featured up to 31 parts. Find something that works for you and the genre of story you’re relating.

It’s interesting that in doing the planning of a story it’s possible to do so while staying dissociated from the characters. Some people prefer to be utterly engrossed in their characters from the earliest stage, but personally I find that this can detract from telling a story, which is what the character exists in relation to. And human psychology being what it is, once you’re inside the story and know what route the character has to take, it’s easy enough to find justification for any course of action that happens: people do the strangest stuff, and for reasons that make sense to them if noone else.

I’m reminded of the recent terrifying tale of a woman who died as a result of her road rage: she was so angry at the vehicle she’d targeted, and its driver, that she refused help offered while her car was in flames. A glance at the day’s papers, or a reflection on some of the more curious behaviours you’ve seen people get involved with, will confirm the undeniable fact that people do indeed do weird shit for no apparent reason. Getting them to do whatever’s required for your film to work really isn’t that hard.

The actual writing of the script is where all that character empathy and dialogue skill comes into its own. Up until now the characters have more or less been puppets. Now it’s time for them to live and breathe. And, contra the previous paragraph, that may involve some changes between what you’d anticipated happening and what actually does transpire: we’re in that mysterious part of the process where characters can seemingly come to life for us, and tell us how they think and feel, including the fact that they want to do something other than what we first had in mind for them.

First draft is all very well…but that’s the start of the process. Now comes the business of soliciting feedback from people whose opinion makes some kind of sense. Please note that this does not include the type of acquaintances who are pleased that you’ve written anything at all. Finding discerning and honest feedback is a task of its own. People who can provide it are to be treasured. If necessary, pay for script reports from people who seem as if they may know what they’re doing. You’ll find some online, for sure, though not necessarily from people billing themselves as providing script reading services. And if you seek the latter, ask for feedback from previous clients: it works in the same sense that some people do while others teach.

Having gathered feedback, you have to decide what to do with it. Some of it will make sense to you. Other parts may go against what you intended in the first place. You’re the ultimate judge. It may well be that with some retooling your sensitive family drama set in 1950s Yorkshire could become a science fiction epic with greater box office potential, but if you’re not a sincere fan of science fiction epics then you’re probably best advised to steer clear of the form.

And so it goes. You’ll reach a point at some stage in all this that you’ll be able to send your script out to industry people, and the same comments apply. If you’re lucky, some of those reading what you’re doing might be interested in meeting you, about existing projects or potential ones they wish to initiate.

At least some of the preceding paragraphs will strike you as common sense. Which is fine. The longer you’ve been playing with this kind of stuff, the more common sense it will appear. But it’s exactly the kind of common sense that I lacked when I was starting out on this road, and if some of what I’ve said strikes a chord with at least a few of you, then this exercise in stating the potentially obvious has been worthwhile.