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!