Ten Manipulations: Still Sick

The fever is all gone but the cold seems to have settled in my throat. I've seen a lot of phlegm in my time, but the stuff I just hacked up is the nastiest, crustiest phlegm I've ever encountered.

In spite of all this, things are rushing along. In spite of Ernest and I having creative differences. He asked if he could "re-write the script," which, after a shouting match that devestated what I had left of a voice, I discovered he probably didn't mean in the incredibly insulting way it sounded. Ernest has an impeccable sense for truth in characters, as all fine actors do. He does not have a great vocabulary or understanding about giving feedback to writers. Example: At one point he said that the script reads as if it has no passion. I told him that's impossible unless he doesn't know how to read with emotion. My writing style is very clean. I intentionally go light on the parenthetical acting directions known as 'wrylies,' as in:

DON
(wryly)
A plague upon them. Let the reader bring their own sense of emotional valence -- and more importantly subtext -- which has been in abundant health and which all the actors we've brought in (and Ernest) had no problem discovering after reading through any scene on its feet. Give me a break! And where, pray, else might passion be inserted? Certainly not in action lines. I keep them purposely short and clinical so the story's focus stays on the characters and doesn't judge them, or usurp the art of the eventual director. Scene headings, perhaps?

INT. JOHN'S STUDY - PASSIONATE

Maybe I should annotate the script like a conductor with Italian phrases. Fortissimo. Pianissimo. Appasionata.

I tried to explain that the script is just a blueprint for the finished film, and that we will always be working on it and shaping it. He says he understands. But clearly, he doesn't understand how to put the vague generalities in his head into specific, actionable criticisms. Example: There's a scene he wants cut. But after talking in circles and finally getting out what he doesn't like about the scene, it's a dialogue exchange of three lines. When pressed about the hardest work of writing, the structure, the thing we have to plan the film on, he can't find a single problem. That because the final annoyance structure-wise was put to bed in this last draft when I brought back Cherrelle and completed Charlie's arc. I could give two shits in a ditch about specific lines of dialogue since I'm still working with the original plan of using extensive improvisation. He can 're-write' the dialogue all day long.

More importantly, do the scenes work? Do the characters have clear goals and clear opposition to those goals? Yes. Are they visual? Yes. Are they dramatic? Yes. Will any script ever have everything? No, not even Angels in America.

So there you have it. That's my venting on Ernest. I can't really take this seriously since its happened nearly every time I've given him a draft. He starts getting nervous and he calls me or writes me a confusing email and then the whole thing ends up blowing over. I try very hard not to have an ego about things, but I believe in my abilities as a writer and my sense of passion. This is a story I care deeply about and want to tell.

On a more positive side, I joined in on a meeting between Brandon and producer friend MS that went through everything we need to start thinking about in the budget. MS iterated most insistently that we can't put together a true budget until we know exactly how we're going to shoot. But since we're going to be limited in the money column, it helps to know where corners can and shouldn't be cut. It won't be our wildest dreams, but at the discussion stage it's thrilling to think that this could really actually happen.

We've got a meeting scheduled for 1:30pm this Sunday in the Tisch Common room. Hopefully I'll be phlegm-less by then.