Writer-director

Over Easter, I had beer with a few high school friends. It's the kind of thing where you expect to account for the last 20 or 30 years of your life. Even though the broad strokes are already known. Graduated from Film and TV Production at Humber, did a lot of volunteering and being unemployed, and kept writing and making my little movies even while taking on a job as a security guard, which I thought would be temporary. ************** Some helpful and supportive thoughts and ideas were offered. I won't mention one business plan which might easily be used by others. But along with that came the opinion that a person has to decide whether he/she is a writer or a director. I keep remembering what one of my instructors said to me as graduation approached and he asked what I planned to do. He asked, "So you're going to pass yourself off as a writer-director." Since this was someone who might still be able to mess with my grades, I must have said something polite instead of, "Better than passing myself off as writing and directing instructor." He must have failed upward because he became head of the department. I could have also said, "Yes, I'll pass myself off by writing a screenplay and then directing it; that will surely fool people into thinking I am a writer-director." :):):):):);):):):):) What I have been seeing typically for years is that many directors develop their own projects. If they have found an already written screenplay, it is considered a draft and they will want to "work with" the writer or just walk away. It is like the old joke of producers or executives lining up to take their turn pissing on a script. It's not like I have people lining up with excellent scripts for me to direct. But I have participated in readings over the years and given detailed notes on many scripts. It is enough to know that you either click with something or you don't. I may not have time to see every story idea through to completion. I have too much in my inbox anyway. I have directed another writer's work and the process was the process. Once a script is ready, it can basically be locked. Especially after group readings and storyboards have drawn out possible areas of improvement or necessary tweaks. All of my own scripts go through that process. And once I have drawn it out and had to meditate on each beat of the story or of a scene, I can relax as long as everybody else is open to actually looking at my plan rather than just trusting the whims of the day. ________________________________________________________________________________________Being the writer and the director does not mean that I do "everything." I have had a few people offer me scripts to "produce" which they would want to direct, but that is like hiring me to do many of the chores I only reluctantly do for myself or for which I have waited years to delegate. I would be the wrong person to finance a film, given that it is mostly guard income I survive on. But I have had to do just that many times. Even if you get a producer, you have to have that awkward talk about whether you both understand the duties and responsibilities of that post. If suddenly the director has to recover funding that had not been properly locked down while a project is near or in progress, that could be a disaster. If you start revising a script because it has to be done with no resources, you are wearing the producer had and Murphy's Law is not co-writing and co-directing. There are a lot of opportunities or windows to shoot something I have let go by because now I am not as naive and certain of my destined path. But for me it is a matter of keeping an eye on the expected final result. A compromise on one end of the time-line will have its result on the other end. Each crew member is important. Each is a link in the chain. ________________________________________________________________________One logistical snafu and nothing can nor should be shot without the necessary element. I have in the past accommodated people leaving early from a big shoot and I've had to shoot around them to disguise the fact that they were not present. At that point, the best shots for those moments may be lost. Except that I was in the habit of doing storyboards and it helped the re-organization considerably. What may be lost is subtle. A room full of people has a certain energy. At this point I've caught on to how certain shots can't be easily achieved in reality. Even a 360 degree pan of people might not give the smooth other-worldly mood necessary and build viewer confidence in the project. So those elements become part of preparation. Too much emphasis these days is on simply "covering" the content of a scene, and assumes that it is two people talking. I am going to blog about this in more detail. But on the subject of writers handing over their scripts to a director, each project is its own. If I have written a stage play, I am oddly open to someone or several someones directing and re-staging it however they like. Perhaps because of the expectation that plays will be remounted or go on the road indefinitely. A movie is rarely remade. Even if it seems like the Seventies and eighties are being raided constantly for remakes. Also, part of my interest in directing a script is its potential for necessary invention and use of cinema language. So many movies are just master shot, over shoulder of everyone, close-up of everyone, and the scene from top to bottom. Flipping a burger. In those cases it seems like the director's role is merely symbolic or a matter of reviewing whether the actors are sticking to the plan from rehearsal or casting discussions. Jon Favreau has said that often studios would give him storyboards and say "just shoot this." Or he has hired the animator from Samurai Jack and the first style of Clone Wars cartoon to "direct" on paper the movements and framing of a battle in Iron Man 2. To be honest, the proper application of cutting and shooting is the key to my love of movies. MANY articles and interviews I've studied pay lip service to storytelling and visual elements but then run a camera merely recording conversation - as Hitchcock said, "pictures of people talking." Ironically, I am poised to do something that simple perhaps just because I have no production team and nothing to pay them so I will be writing like the wind and confining everything to the simplest location for the sake of. . .well not just savings of money but the Aristotelian unities of time, place and conflict. Then at least I won't be doing my "first feature" when I tackle the larger project I have been developing. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________I would LOVE to have a decent income. I would LOVE to have more of my titles from the past 10 years on imdb. I envy an enemy of mine who was savvy enough to start a film festival and once it was recognized by imdb simply put her own film titles up there - even at least one I know to be some sort of inside joke (a so-called doc that isn't anything more than an interview of her boyfriend). Much of my play and my passion has gone into preparing projects that at least were my own and/ or had an interesting element. I would be doing more for other people, but in my nerves I feel I am out of place in that capacity. If you advise anyone else on directing you are pissing up a rope. Everyone thinks he or she can direct, so this may not be unique. I won't co-write the work of others, so the idea of working on someone else' script to direct is not on the immediate horizon for me. Maybe after I've gotten my stuff out of my system. Most projects I should have done in my twenties or thirties. I know how sane I felt immediately after completing a film shoot in late 2003 and my brain felt more free to write. I got a lot of good work typed up, and some that still needs to be fixed up. I would certainly give certain scripts to another director and let them stage them and even cast them while I am directing one of my other scripts. As long as I'm not expected to pay for the pride of being a writer-john. I haven't given in to the vanity press. For now all I can do is be thankful for the people who have taken an interest in what I am doing and have helped. _______________________________________________________________________________You know, as I recall, the Canadian Film Center had its Feature Film Projects that as a rule only budgeted for an individual to be paid for one of the positions he or she held. This meant that it made great economic sense for the writer to also be the director. I know that if I were merely surrendering a script I would consider my job done. It would be all over but the compromise. So better to have me doing something, actually directing. As a producer I would be a liability because there are producer-minded people who could be going to bat for the project. You need a load bearing member of the team to be the producer. Obviously the cinematographer and first A.D. are essential. People expect a producer to be production manager as well. There are many positions that I have occupied, but the only one where I feel I am actually the best for the job (for the money) is writer-director. Even then, when directing it is to an extend acting if the scope is large. I wouldn't want some pip squeak wandering along and sizing me up and trying to spread dissent in the ranks. George Roy Hill was much like a general. Apparently so was Milius (who is recently featured in a great doc by Chop Shop). But I tend to be more quiet and hope to plan enough in advance that we don't miss anything. It is a cause for concern that I have not climbed up the imaginary ladder of the DGC for be a PA/AD, then a 3rd AD, then a 2ND AD, with payments and minimum numbers of hours on set in between. Unless I get in straight as a director, I might have to forget about union shoots. I can't be playing that game at age 45. I pretty much have to stick to what I am doing. ___________________________________________________Every now and then you will see a directing credit like Vincenzo Natali on Hannibal that you recognize and you can settle in and watch more carefully, but for most shows it just seems arbitrary who comes in to direct. The shows have good image quality, so the shooters know what they are doing, but I think it will only be taken as a grouchy position to evaluate the quality of TV directing or movies at least in an open forum. I need to be doing this more often, though I have no love of logistical tensions and politics. I feel like I am getting back into it and starting over each time. I keep seeing posts (by female directors) saying there are not enough female directors. I can understand someone boosting the stock of something they've got. But the one thing definitely needed is more excellent directors and a better image for directors. There is clearly an impatient view of directors by and large and a perception that they are all doing something by rote that is so standardized that they are redundant. Whether it is me or someone else, we need to see the DIRECTING evaluated as directing and not so much for content and politics. Some films are more fun to watch than others. The writing is often a meandering mess, which might make it closer to life but also makes the proverbial natives restless. Anyone can do it, so why am I merely wasting my time blogging on a Saturday when my time and my ind are my own? I am either hyper-ambitious, or hyper-apathetic.

Dexter, Deb, Death, Done

Dexter TV series ranked for storytelling: Season 2 Bay Harbor Butcher Season 1 Ice Truck Killer Season 4 Trinity Killer Season 5 Jordan Chase and Lumen Season 6 The Doomsday Killer Season 3 ADA Miguel Prado and The Skinner Season 7 Isaak Sirko and LaFuerta closes in Season 8 Brain Surgeon Much of what was wrong with season 7 and 8 comes from Season 6 Where a therapist we never hear from again manages to steer Deb Into believing that the reason she has “chose the wrong men” or “unavailable men” all her life is not because her father spent so much time either at work or off with Dexter on projects or hikes but because deep down she is romantically in love with her foster brother Dexter do to his being a perfect man. This was a jump-the-shark moment. As Henry Winkler has often clarified, his own show Happy Days continued to have episodes he was proud of and had great ratings even after he literally jumped the shark on water skis, but the term survives. Dexter continued to have many high-points despite the distraction of this Deb-loves-Dexter element which did not feel organic. Show runner for seasons 5-8 Scott Buck claimed that it was going in that direction and had been talked about, but I suspect it is the kind of punchy thing a writer’s room would interject to make each other laugh especially since actors Jennifer Carpenter and Michael C. Hall were married for a couple of years so the issue of them together might occur to the writers but it is also insane and felt imposed. Was Harry Morgan more attentive to young Dexter than to Deb? Yes. Did she dream of earning his respect? Yes. Sigmund Freud session done. Now, just how unavailable were the men Deb chose as boyfriends? Were they married, gay or none of the above? Agent Lundy appeared to have control of his own time and ultimately offered her a chance to come with him when he got an assignment up North. Saying no to the snows of the Arctic is not a self-destructive rejection of intimacy. And when she med Bryan Mosier as Rudy in season 1, she was choosing a man who appeared in all respects to be a successful and kind person who helped the handicapped. When she fell for her CI the musician, that was simply a woman in her twenties having a sincere moment with a guy and then only breaking off once her job actually put him in harm’s way. The thing with Joey is perhaps poor judgement but Joey is a fellow cop like her father and only a bad choice because he was her work partner as well. Finally the question is whether Dexter is indeed perfect, even as perceived by Debra in any of the 5 seasons that preceded Deb’s “breakthrough” in therapy? Most of her interaction with Dexter is snark and scolding and arm punching common to siblings. Even in seasons 7 and 8, this is reverted to when it suits the script – boilerplate brother-sister banter. This element made the show too busy and alienated much of the audience, no doubt offending adoptive or foster families which would psychologically – especially as adults – have people categorized in their unconscious as to the level of trust or nurture they belong to. I don’t know if novelist Jeff Lindsay has weighed in on that departure, but it compromised Debra (spelled Deborah in the books) taking her from real person with ambitions who was going through therapy as a condition of work after a shooting to a professional and skilled actress reading a script because Scott Buck said so. The appeal of Deb is her earthy sanity in contrast to Dexter’s control, his facade, and his mental illness. That he could hide in plain sight is not a blemish on those around him. I don’t think Deb needed the layer of sudden high school crush tension to make the other plates she is juggling dramatic – being promoted to Lieutenant, finding out her brother is a serial killer, helping to cover his crimes, finding out he loves Hannah who is herself a serial killer, surviving Hannah’s attempted murder of her, trying to stop her brother from killing her boss who has evidence that links her to murder, deciding in a pinch that she has to shoot her boss, feeling unexpected grief for killing someone who has sabotaged and talked down to her for years, having a breakdown from guilt, finally – for once – actually choosing a fully undeserving lover and learning to snort coke, deciding to kill her brother, saving her brother, meeting a new psychiatrist friend of the family she now has to have sessions with, and eventually having Hannah as a houseguest and helping to facilitate her escape. Pretty much all she went through seemed like an organic human reaction to insane circumstances few people have to absorb all at once. But that “in love” switch was just a case of bad writing infecting otherwise good material. Monday Morning quarterbacking of TV and movies goes on indefinitely. I like Dexter, enjoy the novels and the series, and appreciate the production quality and performances. Much of the writing has been solid, but that will be the focus of my unsolicited remarks here. The show goes off the rails from time to time but its cast and crew are so game that we might be distracted from the idea that Dexter has been at his game for some time when we first meet him and he is supposed to be smarter than most of us. The initial concept is that he is a serial killer who targets serial killers who have slipped through cracks in the justice system. But the show strains our patience from time to time by pushing beyond those sympathetic stated objectives and having him often discover a culprit previously unknown to the justice system and failing to give police a crack at prosecuting that person first. It is after all Florida, as Dexter takes eight seasons to finally admit, and the state will administer the death penalty to any serial killer it can convict. He has managed to phone in crimes, like the houseboat and poison gas incident in season 6 without disguising his voice and with nobody questioning the source of the report. He could cleverly submit names. In season 3, he stabbed Miguel’s brother by accident but at least he made the effort to get some information to Debra about Frebo’s relation to a female victim. Ideally, Frebo’s address could have been quietly supplied and he would have avoided any partnership or complicity with Miguel when caught red-handed after personally killing the guy. Travis Marshall/DDK was allowed to go free early on for babbling about The professor, but Dexter could have fed the name to police and maybe Taken a photo of him. As someone supposedly close to the apparent Big bad (as it seemed at the time) he would have been of interest. Arthur Mitchell/Trinity could have been killed in the woods by Dexter, And did not have to be saved from suicide by him, and early on the Name, as well as that of his church and this charitable home building organization could have been supplied and would have saved lives. When he thought to get Rita out of the country for a second honeymoon it would have harmed nothing to spell out the urgency and respect Murphy’s law by telling her that a serial killer learned his name through the precinct and may be stalking anyone helping investigate his case, so he is taking some sick days. The lie of most story structures is that you can have an all-bets-are-off level of crisis. If the most nihilistic thing happens, or it is sustained, people can tune out or numb to it. So they can float the jeopardy of little Harrison, but he will be okay – otherwise what is at stake but the more abstract good Dexter and company might still do for as-yet undetermined characters down the road we may not care about. The death of Rita was a shock, and it is good to see her still alive in the books. But its aftermath changed the defining qualities of Dexter as a character. Season 5 is about a disoriented Dexter babbling and feeling blame, exactly in the condition that he claims in voice-over in the final episode, finally being able to feel but wishing he was numb again. Well, that arc was already met at the start of season 5. Meeting Lumen and the plot structure provided by the barrel girls and rounding up each of the rape-club members ending with Jordan Chase has built-in gravity and trajectory. I would have however liked to see Michael C. Hall host SNL and make a skit spoofing the locker room scene where Jordan leaves him alone and he has time to open his kit, sample blood from the vial in the locker, and then PUT IT ONTO A SLIDE??? Before Jordan returns. Why not pull out a microscope or a computer and run the DNA right there? I liked Jonny Lee Miller as Chase, though I understand from Hall’s Kevin Pollack interview that “one guy Lumen and I had to kill couldn’t stand being on the table and kept saying I hate your show. . .” and that could only have been him. When he was announced as the new Sherlock Holmes on Elementary I was unsure I could get that villain out of my head. But Sherlock is a different kind of jerk and Elementary is quite good. Season 5 seems very self-contained and there is closure of a sort at the end. They at least got close with Dexter and Lumen kind of getting a break from Deb without her seeing them. But at least the season has a theme of healing versus letting go. Season 6 appears to have a theme of faith, true to the tradition of a detective struggling with something personal that aligns with the caper or case at hand so that one counterpoints or informs the other. The Doomsday Killer has a twist that some people claim to have seen coming. I admit I did not. This is owing to the fact that I was also reading Jeff Lindsay’s novels and in those the Dark Passenger gives Dexter a sense of who someone is. In the series he chalks it up to lizard brain or predatory instinct. But there is a moment where Travis Marshall is let go and Dexter from then on believes him whenever they meet. I feel that is a cheat. Even though Travis might be so deep in denial that he believes the Professor is calling the shots. The episode was well timed with some of the hysteria that was leading up to 2012 and the Mayan December 21 whatever. If not for Deb’s psychiatrist and the “in love” nonsense, the season would have been pretty solid if not entirely cohesive. It seems to be about Brother, then Brian taking over for Harry as a conscience/hallucination, which should have reinforced even more the special problem of Travis, and then it was onto the politics of Deb’s promotion amid the investigation of DDK. The altar being used as Dexter’s “table” for DDK is great, as is the cliffhanger of Deb walking in and seeing the stab. Season 7 is already a hodgepodge as Deb helps burn the church and Dexter in his haste for the first critical time since his “waking up tired” sequence from season 3 fails to be anal retentive and his “idiot check” which should have the blood slide as the number one priority seems to allow him to bump it into a floor grate. This is a little too easy, as is LaGuerta finding the slide after the fire. But the old rule is that if something makes life easy for the protagonist then it is wrong but if it makes him squirm then it is an okay coincidence because it is Murphy’s Law in action. The game-playing between LaGuerta who we intellectually know to be right and Dexter who we understand to be the criminal is fascinating because we maintain our sympathy for Dexter even when he plans to kill LaGuerta. We know she is being underhanded and baiting him, and for all this time I have wanted Deb to kill her but when the moment of truth comes it is a mark of good storytelling that while they give us what we want we can also feel the great remorse of Deb which according to the writers really came as improvisation by Jennifer Carpenter. She gave it a depth and morality that I wouldn’t have demanded. I see that I have come to the end of Season 7 without mentioning the gay Russian mobster who is referred to as a “Terminator” and who is in fact a memorable character. He is used well as an unexpected confident for Dexter as the notion of a relationship with Hannah McKay is considered. But even as he opens his mind and there is “hope” for him, he still chooses the unromantic path of turning her in. Debra is yet again in the hospital, and although Dexter goes to the trouble of running a test on the water bottle that caused her car crash and finds it tainted he only turns her in for the poison pen the crime writer chewed on. In the next season, when Deb mentions that Hannah poisoned her she means that she knocked her out in season 8. It is not made clear that Dexter ever let her know that Hannah allowed her to almost die in a car crash by passing out. Hannah is great looking, but is not someone that fans warm to. She is duplicitous and an opportunist. I would not be surprised if she got her own spin-off, but her influence on Dexter in terms of priorities is disastrous to the appeal of his problem-solving character. Her escape is cleverly done but I feel like the season is so fragmented that it may have a “hope and love” theme but she either has too much focus or not enough. I almost think that she could have been combined with the stripper Joey is interested in so she is at least connected to the club and its mobster owners and there could be more direct antagonism with Joey. It does not seem of a piece. Season 8 starts out well and with shocks and high stakes for those who have been following. For anyone just starting to watch, it would not have anything to pull them in. You have to know what a straight arrow Deb was before giving up and sinking to the motel and coke level. There are excellent twists and turns, and Dr. Vogel is a fascinating new angle. I found myself looking up the Mama Cass song that Oliver Saxxon listens to, and even trying a sing-along version which turned out to be harder than it looked. And yes, I did that alone with no witnesses to my horrible singing. Why I would look for and listen to over and over a song that a psycho listens to over and over, I’d rather not know. How many times has Deb ended up in the hospital on the show? Season 3, then season 7 when she passed out behind the wheel thanks to tainted water, then the gunshot in 8. I wonder if it is true that “Spyware works both ways” and someone can hack into the drive of the computer sending it and download files. I wonder – like most people – why Dexter couldn’t stick to his epiphany that someone the POLICE HAVE can get the death penalty in Florida. His confrontation with Saxxon is excellent, but unlikely. Why couldn’t Dexter just legally decide the plug would be pulled, and let Joey know Deb had made her wishes known when Camilla from records was on life support. She had said if she is ever hooked up don’t leave her like that. I expected that clip to be all over youtube but it wasn’t. There is no logical explanation for Dexter surviving hurricane Laura. Nor for his belief that everything wrong happens because of him. To believe in a curse is to believe in fate, which is the same as miracles. If he knows he doesn’t have to kill again, he might not meet shady characters. How much of the damage was purely because of serial killers? How much better off would Harrison be as he is raised by Hannah, a serial killer with no code of her on and whose only ethos comes from her love for Dexter and the promise of a future? My prediction and hope is that there will be a movie in which Dexter is plagued by a new hallucination, in the form of Deb instead of Harry. I would have ended the last moment of the series with her voice-over saying, “Hey, fuck-tard” and him whirling around and—cut to credits.” That’s if he was in the woods at all. She should persuade him to abandon the lumber and go to Argentina and look in on Harrison. Autor Jeff Lindsay when asked said if he had to pick it up Dexter would ditch the lumber and sell Insurance in California. Clyde Phillips show runner from seasons 1 to 4 said he would have ended the show with Dexter getting lethal injection while the ghosts of his victims watch from the gallery. Compared to those options, the show ended better than that. I think it would be nonsense to feel the need to kill Dexter after rooting for him through 8 seasons. Dexter is largely us. Vicariously. Unless he is doing stupid stuff like those that end the series finale. I mean to read Dexter’s Final Cut by Jeff Lindsay, which is about a movie being made at the precinct and having to advise on it. I don’t think it is intended to have the meaning of “final novel.” Jeff Lindsay also has a Marvel Comic version of Dexter on the go, which I mean to snap up soon.