Start at the Beginning… and the End

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fractal art by Sven Geier

Eijo: Maniacs like me n’ The Schube tend not to do things in the conventional way, but there’s always a practical reason behind our whacky methods. One good example of this is that we like to write the beginning and the end of a script first.

Our thinking is this: the beginning and ending are the most important parts of a story in terms of audience impact (beginning: toss the audience in the deep end of drama and excitement — ending: send them home saying, “what a good story that was!”), and as such we wanna make sure to give those parts as much attention as possible.

We write a lotta drafts. Like, seriously A LOTTA drafts. So many that we tend to name them rather than number them. The first draft of Asylum, a rough assemblage of scenes The Schube and I had split off and written on our own and then stitched together, was called the Frankenstein Draft. Later rewrites included the Hellraiser Draft, the Zombie Draft, the Rawhead Rex Draft, and the Leatherface Draft. Our final version was the Pazuzu Draft (just like Mac’s OS X “big cat” names, we had us a theme).

Writing (and rewriting) is often compared to painting — you’re always adding a fresh coat to earlier work while spreading out to do new parts. So we just figured it makes sense that the beginning and the ending should get the most coats. It ups our chances of closing out a script at least as strong as we opened it. Plus, it combats the issue of writer fatigue. We’ve all seen movies where it’s clear everyone involved just fizzled out, lost their way, ran out of ideas, and threw together an ending that limps off the stage. Total bummer every time, and it’s one more example of how our methods are often built out of a desire to avoid the pitfalls that have swallowed so many writers.

The audience should probably experience a movie in chronological order (time-bending exceptions notwithstanding of course) but there’s no law stating the writer has to as well. Heck, I’d recommend writing that ending as soon as you can. Have real fun writing a wild closer that you find satisfying, then hone n’ perfect it while you go back and write everything leading up to it. Already knowing where you started and where you’re headed, you’ll be able to tighten up that middle section and aim it like a laser, barreling your audience head-on into the stunning conclusion. And as always, have fun!

On last week’s episode of Saturday Night Live, Florence + the Machine blew the roof off with the performance of their new single “Shake it Out.” Add in the choir n’ the percussion n’ the whole nine? Gives me chills every time.

Run! The Truth is Coming, and It’s Ugly!

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The Schube: Have you been watching FX’s “American Horror Story?”  If you haven’t, it’s often fantastic and frightening. But this post ain’t about the show — it’s about the scary people watching it.

At least several hundred viewers expressed their intense disgust and highly offended outrage when a recent storyline involved a Columbine-like shooting in a school. Their comments online ranged from saying the show “went too far” and “only aimed to offend,” to others touting “I haven’t seen it yet but now I definitely won’t.”

Huh?

The fact that addressing a topic in fiction based on a nightmarish true event like Columbine can still garner a public outcry in 2011 – especially in the horror genre, which has withstood centuries by providing us with catharsis and an appreciation for mortality – that’s the American horror story to me.

Most writers honestly don’t write scenes like these thinking, “Hey, this might offend some dumbass,” because writing fiction is (perhaps ironic to some) about writing the truth. And ugly truths, as it turns out, make for great drama. So that only gives us more reason take on the big questions, no matter how uncomfortable or outright painful they may be to sensitive folks.

Many of our best movies – especially the scary ones – are inspired by real horrors. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The Exorcist. Even Nightmare on Elm Street.There’s a reason those are successful. They use fake boogeymen to help us explore real terrors. We come out the other side alive, and better for it.

There’s an easy argument that folks on my side of the fence often make: Use your TV remote if you don’t like it. I disagree entirely. Get your little kiddos out of the room, sure. But don’t turn the channel. I mean, what else are you gonna watch? Some brain-dead show that doesn’t challenge you on any emotional level whatsoever?

I say stick it out and see what happens. Who knows, you might get the bejeesus scared outta ya…but you’ll probably survive. And if you’re lucky, you might even appreciate being alive a bit more, yeah?

Screenplay Structure: Actin’ Out

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Eijo: It’s perhaps commonly known that movies are made up of acts, so it follows that if you’re gonna write a screenplay you should probably think in terms of acts as well. But here’s a question: how many acts do you need?

If you’ve done any research into screenwriting, your answer is probably three. Certainly that is a popular choice, but in my own experience it’s actually one of the least effective ways to go. The Hulk (who’s damned insightful about such things for a gamma ray mutant with anger issues) recently wrote an excellent post in his blog FILM CRIT HULK! HULK BLOG! about the myth of the three-act structure. Great read — I totally recommend it.

Suffice it to say, the three-act structure is one of the key reasons why so many movies get boring in the middle. One problem is, the acts aren’t identical in size. The first and third acts are shorter, taut, packed with important events — that’s why even bad movies tend to feel focused at the beginning and the end — but the second act is as big as the other two combined, often creating a dead zone where not much of anything happens.

Despite the graph there referring to Act 2 as “the real meat of the story,” in reality it’s usually a big flabby mass of unimportant crap that’s little more than prelude to the (hopefully) exciting conclusion. Writers get lost in all the unmarked terrain, lose sight of the story and sometimes even the characters. It’s a mess. (Films that succeed within the three-act structure, like The Empire Strikes Back or Jaws, often feature three acts that are roughly equal in size and thus avoid the saggy-bottom second act problems others run into.)

As the logical progression in our quest to avoid dead zones in our scripts — which includes the “tentpole” method I mentioned in an earlier post — The Shube and I put a lot of thought into deciding how many acts we want to use. Each script has different needs, a different pace to it… a different shape if you will. For instance: despite the fact that it’s designed to play out like a spontaneous string of random events punctuated with bouts violence and madness, our screenplay Asylum is actually made up of four carefully-plotted acts.

We treat each act as a full story in itself, or like it’s an episode in a tv show with its own beginning, middle, and end. Then we put them all together and voila! One full screenplay. By taking on four short stories rather than one big one, we’re able to focus our plot n’ keep things moving without losing sight of where we need to go. Ideally this helps us avoid wasting time and pages wandering around in circles (I could list out too many movies that do this, but then again I’m sure you could too).

So how many acts do you need? Well, looking at acts as if they’re tv episodes, just ask yourself how many episodes you need in order to tell the best story. Get crazy — break your story into smaller stories, try different combinations, dream up smaller endings that’ll turn the story on its ear and send it careening in an all new and exciting direction, and as always: have fun!

Okie-doke, enough of my babblin’ — let’s get to the song of the day. Here’s “When I’m Small” by Phantogram!

That story ain’t gonna write itself, my friend

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The Schube: You know how it goes: You’ve got a full-time job, a family that needs your attention, a fairly busy social calendar, and a hangover or ingrown toenail to deal with. There goes all your free time.

How does anyone find time to write a book, a movie, a short story – hell, even a haiku?

monkey and typewriterI mean, I’ve been meaning to write this post for two weeks but have been too busy. Granted, I’ve been working on our next film script during some of that time – but mostly I was simply running around willy-nilly just like all of us, busier than a one-legged man in a rump-kickin’ contest.

That’s why I always understand when someone says, “I love to write, but I never get the time.” Yet there are ways to make it work if you really do love writing and want to do more than just dream of seeing your name in print or on the big screen.

Here are a few tips and tidbits that have helped me tremendously over the years:

  • Figure out what time of day you’re most creative, and adjust your schedule to write for even just one hour during that time. If that means setting the clock to wake an hour earlier before work, or staying up an hour later while your household goes to sleep, then so be it. Sure, it won’t be easy at first. But look at the title of this post.
  • We’ve all got a lot of “noise” coming at us every day – stuff unnecessarily stealing our attention like TV shows, instant messages, texts, you name it. When you write, try to turn everything off if you can. You’ll write at least one better page on your story in 20 minutes than you would in an hour with all that crap distracting and tempting you.
  • No matter how busy any of us are, there’s always an ebb and a flow to even the most hectic of schedules. Otherwise we’d be dead by now, right? The trick is to use those few little moments here and there to jot down a character detail or a plot twist, and stuff it in your pocket for later. John Grisham was a full-time attorney serving on the Mississippi state legislature when he wrote his first novel, A Time to Kill. I’ll never be that busy, so that’s always inspired me to know it can be done no matter what.
  • This last one is my favorite.  Eijo once told me that when we’re in front of the computer, facing our stories and hacking away, that’s not when we’re actually writing. The real writing comes in those moments when we’re staring out the window, lost in our imaginations and piecing our stories together without typing a single word. This has helped me countless times when I’ve been stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be, suddenly remembering I could lose myself in whatever tale I’m working on without anyone ever knowing.

And of course never forget our motto: “Write, maniacs! Write!” The world can always use more great stories.

Today’s song is hand-picked to help you get down to business on that story (or haiku). There ain’t no video to watch, so that’ll save you four minutes right there. Just click play and put it in the background while you open up a fresh new page to start writing.

Writing Journal: Best Laid Outlines

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Eijo: Alrighty, we’ve finally completed the new script’s outline and now we’re writing actual pages. Whew! Finally getting into the nitty-gritty of a scene, watching the characters play it all out, seeing how well things go. Were our plans right on the money? Or completely off-the-mark?

Really, an outline is just a theory of how a story could go, but you never find out if it’s actually gonna work until you’re writing out the scene — that’s when all the practical issues come up.

It’s too easy to write in outline form: “Taiheed snaps off pictures of the maniacs, learns clues about their ‘society.’” But then you’re sitting there, hands hovering over the keyboard, eyes locked on a blank screen, and suddenly the question arises: “What kinda ‘society’ are these maniacs supposed to have? What were we thinking!”

So I guess an outline could also be considered a set of goals for the story too, then. It’s the little workshop where you dream big before you have to get to work honing those big dreams until they make some amount of sense within the context of your story.

Just looking over our last script’s outline here, I see such pie-in-the-sky (and painfully vague) scene descriptions as “maniac attack!” and “endgame” and the poetically apt “clusterf**k.” At that planning stage, we don’t have a dang clue exactly how a maniac attack plays out, but we know it’ll be awesome. Anyway, that’s a plan and it puts The Schube and I in the often difficult position of writing a maniac attack only to have it come out as most certainly un-awesome. That’s what second drafts are for. And third and fourth and fifth…

So that’s where we are now. Turning our best laid plans into fully realized scenes — it’s a heady time, and more than a little intimidating because we’re really excited about the cleverly ghoulish things we’ve got planned for this one. Now we’ll find out if we’ve got the chops to make it work.

Song of the day comes from Little Dragon — I cannot stop listening to their song “Feather.” It keeps me going when the scene ain’t workin’. There’s something darkly cinematic about their style, and Yukimi Nagano’s voice rocks my world. Enjoy.

An Awkward Feast

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Eijo: Meredith said it was meatloaf but Drake knew better. The pale crusty mass crawled from one end of the plate to the other, leaving a wet trail behind it.  Expelling a low gurgling moan, it trembled as it oozed a chunky green substance all over the mashed potatoes.

This was not the sort of behavior Drake appreciated seeing from his main course. Struggling to pay some amount of attention to the story Meredith was telling, he curled his hand into a tight sweaty fist and placed it just under his chin to block the slithering meat from view.

Meredith broke into laughter.  “…and Carly nearly fell out! Lisa just stood there with this big grin on her face.”

Drake tried to laugh along. He was sure it was a funny story. They usually were.

“And then she just walked slowly away from the coffee machine as if nothing was wrong,” Meredith laughed. Shook her head. “So hilarious.”

Drake offered a weak chuckle. He made a move for his dinner roll but the “meatloaf” was already on it, thrusting, dribbling its dark digestive juices all over the bread.  The yeast began to bubble and melt.

Drake grimaced.  “God.”

Meredith looked up. “What are you just staring at it for?”  She stabbed her fork through the drooling thing on her own plate. It reared up. Whistled hollowly. “Eat.”

If he acted as if everything were normal, maybe she wouldn’t notice that he’d noticed that she’d served him a piece of living, breathing… something. Patting his round belly, he announced, “Well I had such a big lunch. Guess I’m just not very hungry tonight.”

Meredith popped a quivering chunk of the creature into her mouth.  Stuck her fork into the thing again. “C’mon, at least have a bite. I made it myself.”

“Nah. Better not.”

Meredith held her fork out to him, the cutest smile on her lips, the one he could never say no to. “Take a bite.”

Drake shrugged it off. “No, that– that’s quite all right.”

“One bite?” The fork approached.

“No thanks.”

“One teensy?” Closer.  “Eensy?” Closer. “Little bite?”

“Babe. Seriously. No.”

“Just one.”  The meat squirmed weakly, inches from his lips.

“No, I–”

“Baby, come on. For me.”

Smiling sweetly, she pushed the fork between his teeth. Before he could bite down, the meat wrenched itself off the tines, scurried along his tongue to the back of his mouth, and slithered down his gagging throat.

Writing Journal: Hold That Tent Up!

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Eijo: A few weeks into the new script and we’re rumblin’ along. We’ve got our beginning and our ending, as well as some bits n’ pieces of the middle (not yet in any logical order). And we’ve been taking the time to get our tentpoles in order. This has become one of the more useful steps in our process.

See, we noticed that too many genre films (be they horror or action or sci-fi or whatever) forget to put in the GOOD parts. Have you ever slogged through a bad monster movie where annoying characters spout crappy dialogue for what seems like hours, and finally thrown up your hands and shouted at the screen, “Someone show up and start killing these idiots!” …or is it just us?

There are several action movies I could name where very little action ever occurs, and it always amazes me how that even happens. I think about a pure genre film like a musical… imagine going to see a musical and waiting 90 minutes before seeing a single song n’ dance number? That would never fly in a million years, but strangely there are other kinds of movies that apparently forget to include the stuff the audience paid their tickets to see.

Looking to combat that sorta shoddy work (horror by and large ain’t literature, but it should at least deliver on the scaring and the maiming and slaughtery whatsits), we make sure to set aside some time and work on the tentpoles — the scenes or events that hold up the entire structure, the bits we’re always either building toward or coming down from. This part is always a blast because we put all story aside for the moment and just dream up the craziest stuff we can — scenes that work as well outside a context as within. During this period, absolutely anything goes. We dream big. Then we start honing the best ideas, testing them out, seeing if they fit comfortably within the script’s structure — if they fit the puzzle and continue to entertain us, then they go in the script.

Getting the perfect number of tentpoles depends on the story being written. Don’t want too many or they start cancelling each other out. Too few and the script suffers from dead zones where nothing of much interest occurs (commonly known as Act 2 in a lotta crappy scripts).

Our script Asylum has seven tentpoles — they aren’t all necessarily the kill scenes, but rather anything that’s a pay-off. It could be a character beat, or the perfectly positioned bit of gallows humor that offsets the violence around it. It can be a full scene or a tiny moment. But no matter what it is, it ensures our script keeps bounding forward without getting lost up its own tuchus in the intricacies of a rambling directionless plot.

The audience wants what the audience wants — whether it’s show-stopping musical numbers or bloody good ax murderin’s — and it’s our job to give it to ‘em. A job, by the by, we love to do.

Alright, today’s song is “Lady Bones” by Magneta Lane. Love this band. The video gets really cool toward the end when they’re performing in some awesome Dia de los Muertos makeup. By the way, that’s coming up on the 2nd, people — get your skull cookies ready!

Eijo and The Schube Join a New Family

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Eijo and The Schube are thrilled to announce that we are now professionally represented by ADA Entertainment Group, a talent management corporation currently in the process of bringing our creative projects to life on screen.

ADA Entertainment Group (formerly ADA Management Group) has a well-proven history of success in the field of horror, which even a casual reader of our blog will appreciate as a genre that blows our skirts up.

We’ve already been amazed by the level of attention, support, and enthusiasm we’ve received from the great folks at ADA.

Okay, this is the part where we get to sound all pretentious and say, “We can’t share any details yet,” but we can say we’re overjoyed that several of our longtime heroes and role models in the horror film industry have already expressed interest in our work.

We started this blog for several reasons, but perhaps the main one was to share in the everyday victories and defeats that come hand-in-hand with creative writing “on spec” (in other words, writing out of passion for the craft without a guaranteed paycheck).

The last thing either of us ever wants to become is a bitter old dude rocking on our back porch and saying with a scowl, “I coulda written a movie that people woulda loved! Hell, I coulda written me a novel too!”

After writing together as a team for more than a decade now — and having each destroyed several keyboards with our forehead — the forward momentum we’re gaining thanks to ADA Entertainment Group’s tireless efforts most certainly brings us great hope and promise.

The rocking chair on the back porch sits empty, but we know it’s there. We’ve still got plenty of work to do to make sure that when we plop down in it one day down the road, we won’t have a scowl.

Right now, we’re most definitely smiling.

Analysin’ Movies: Re-Animator

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Eijo: When it comes to success, how much does talent really matter? Or creativity? Or even good old fashioned know-how? According to Stuart Gordon’s gory campus satire Re-Animator, not much — as long as you’re ambitious. That’s right, all you need is the drive to succeed no matter what, and if that means you’re willing to cheat, steal, murder, and then re-animate the corpse of the man you just murdered… well, so much the better.

College sweethearts Dan and Megan may constitute Re-Animator’s emotional core, but the movie truly belongs to student Herbert West and his instructor Dr. Carl Hill — both of whom are already, by the film’s opening, quite mad with the desire to change the face of science, though West appears to be the purer researcher, a med student who aspires to eliminate death itself, while Dr. Hill is simply a career opportunist who wants renown and gobs of money (not to mention some sexy-time with Megan — the daughter of his long time friend, the Dean of the university Alan Halsey… eeeew).

West is played with stunning bravado by Jeffrey Combs, who’s career since has consisted of similarly quirky characters that tend to be mere shadows of Herbert West, a shame since he, like another talented and unfairly typecast performer who broke out in a classic horror film I can think of, Anthony Perkins, is capable of so much more (the key exception being the most recent Star Trek tv spin-offs, which have provided Combs with several outstanding roles that display his exceptional range despite layers of alien makeup).

Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West

West enters the film as the obsessive disciple of experimental brain surgeon Dr. Gruber, a madman himself who’s unconventional experiments in corpse re-animation lead to the creation of a green glowing “re-agent” that does indeed bring corpses back to life when injected directly into the brain — but after trying the re-agent on himself, Dr. Gruber’s eyes explode and then his skull bursts (this unfortunate conclusion to the experiment is the basis of the film’s opening scene, which is a hellified way to kick off any movie).

Though West clearly helped assist Dr. Gruber, it’s also clear that West isn’t responsible for the creation of the re-agent himself, yet he takes ownership of it all the same (Dr. Gruber of course isn’t alive to dispute the matter), which makes him quite similar to the talentless Dr. Hill — a man who has built his career by stealing the ideas of smarter men. Indeed, when Dr. Hill discovers that West possesses the method to re-animate the dead, the skeletal old codger sees dollar signs and immediately sets to blackmailing West in order to take the re-agent for his own.

And this is one of the many reasons why this movie is such a blast to watch — other than the fantasy element of the re-agent, the film plays things fairly straight for its first three-quarters, mining the bulk of its drama from the central conflict between two men with a distinct lack of scruples as they duke it out for the right to introduce to the world at large what is an incomplete and ultimately useless creation (after all, the re-agent turns corpses into insanely violent killing machines; where’s the scientific use in that?) — Dr. Hill blackmails West; West responds by chopping off Dr. Hill’s head with a shovel, and then re-animating Dr. Hill immediately after in order to see what happens — West’s overwhelming drive for more raw data is inspiring, if a little over-zealous.

West & Dr. Hill have a nice chat about science

Dr. Hill then surprises West by using his headless body to attack West and knock him unconscious — Dr. Hill’s apparent psychic ability to control his detached body, as well as the bodies of other corpses, is the point at which the film jumps fully into the territory of fantasy (the sequel, Bride of Re-Animator, goes even further when Dr. Hill’s head grows wings and starts flying around) — but here’s where Dr. Hill takes a sharp turn in his tactics; rather than publish his “findings” and make all that fame and money before West can stop him, Dr. Hill instead kidnaps Megan, straps her naked to an autopsy table, and sets about to molesting her. It’s one of those few examples in horror cinema (or indeed cinema at large) when nudity doesn’t feel exploitative. The audience is invited to squirm and cringe from an innate sense of empathy for Megan — how would any of us feel if we were stripped naked and licked all over by a pervert’s bloody grinning decapitated head? This scene is as close as I ever want to get to finding out.

Even the unscrupulous West knows enough to be, if not disgusted, at least put off by Dr. Hill’s actions: “I must say, Dr. Hill, I’m very disappointed in you. You steal the power of life and death, and here you are trysting with a bubble-headed co-ed. You’re not even a second-rate scientist.”

What follows is a blood-soaked tour de force that shows us exactly how awkward it would be to fight off a horde of angry naked corpses, but also displays West’s commitment to discovery in the face of his own death — as he’s being crushed to death by Dr. Hill’s over-grown intestines, West takes a moment to grab the bag containing all of his research and throw it to faux-hero Dan, who’s busily running for his life. The politics of discovery is nasty business, the film seems to say, and the victor is not the smartest guy in the room, but the guy who’s left standing after all the blood has flown.

‘Please don’t vomit in the theatre. This is a historic building.’

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The Royale's Human Centipede cupcakes

The Schube: So I took a trip this weekend to The Royale, an indie retro grindhouse theatre in an old building in downtown Mesa, Ariz., and now I’m kicking myself for not having checked out this place sooner.

The 48 seats in the place were about three-quarters full for a showing of the horror fan’s litmus test/endurance challenge that is “The Human Centipede 2: The Full Sequence.”

While the movie did just what I expected – left me wanting to wash my eyes out with bleach – the Royale itself was like some kind of magical little portal that David Lynch might have filmed as a metaphor for heaven in one of his flicks.

A few highlights: Before the movie starts, about 10 minutes before showtime, they play trailers for old-school schlock films and grainy B-movies, along with 70s commercials for various retro candies and sodas (which is the main thing they serve at the concession stand). I was a bit worried because the sound was a bit muffled and only seemed to be coming from one or two of the speakers. But I thought, maybe they’re intentionally trying to recreate that old Alamo Drafthouse-style experience with this bit. Yep, bingo.

Then a dude who works there comes in and the house lights go up. He gives a welcoming little speech to get everyone in the mood, and tells us that there is to be absolutely no checking voicemails or texting during this flick. (No one did.) He goes, “Last night, a guy passed out because this movie was too much for him. If you’re squeamish, prepare to be squeamed. The bathrooms are located behind the screen, back that way. Please don’t vomit in the theatre. This is a historic building.” And strolls out cool as you please, like he just dropped the frickin’ mic.

Then movie starts right up. And it’s pristine, great 5.1 surround sound, full bass, 1080p digital projection, the whole bit. This is what a modern grindhouse cinema looks like: embracing all the sleazy, low-budget atmosphere of its roots, and using modern technology to make the experience even better.

Interestingly, between each grainy old 60s and 70s trailer (likely piped in via dvd or blu-ray through a projector), there’s that little box that pops up on screen where you can see that they’re switching back and forth between “HDMI,” “game,” “dvd,” etc., the exact same way Eijo and I have to do on our own home theatre systems when we show old trailers before movies. I couldn’t help but think: This is the 2011 equivalent of the old-school test pattern, the scratchy film reel’s 3-2-1 countdown screen, the little audio and visual pops and clicks we used to get from yesteryear’s Alama Drafthouse stuff.

This Saturday, The Royale is showing a new high-def transfer of Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie” on the big screen. I mean, who else is doing that? (And where else can you see a zombie fight a shark underwater?)

Bonus points for being located across the street from Evermore Nevermore, a curio shop that has everything from a limited edition artist’s print of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 poster to a huge steampunk section where local artists are selling their stuff on commission — including a real framed butterfly that someone has intricately turned into a little mechanical device where, if you crank it, the butterfly opens its wings.

I know this kind of stuff ain’t for everyone. But for those of us who embrace the gloriously weird and culturally subversive, you’ll find a lot to wrap your arms around here. Check it out when you can.