August 8, 2009
Yesterday we saw a movie that just opened this week. Kathy and I met Deena Bean and Frank the Tank down at Harkins 16. Don't want to give the title because I don't want to spoil some of the delicious plot twisting fun, but remember, not so long ago, when, if a woman smoked in a movie, it meant two things: she was evil, or she was loose? (and most likely both if it was film noir.) Then we went through a phase where if a female was promiscuous, she deserved to die (Jaws opening with pretty girl stripping off and running into the water to tease the guy on shore), then there was the iron clad law of screenwriting where the love interest (the girl who the hero wants but can't quite connect with) has to save herself for the main guy. Well, a couple recent movies are really messing with those old tropes. In Funny People, the "innocent" girl is shy and as you are watching you think to yourself, "Well, she's not having sex for the next two acts," but, no, there she is sleeping with the wrong guy in act two and she still gets Seth Rogen at the end, in spite of "sleeping around." Amazing. This is what you get when women run the studios. Actual non-cardboard cutouts. Ha.

Anyway, in the movie we saw yesterday, one of the female characters lights up a doobie and I automatically thought to myself, "Well, she's dead." But, as it turns out, another female character is on crank and she, along with her boyfriend, are the bad guys, or gal, in this case. Interesting evolution of storytelling, and, of course it mirrors the culture. In ten years perhaps we'll see a Sandra Bullock romance that opens with her mainlining Mexican Black Tar and having sex with the Glendale chapter of the Dirty Dozen and it will have a happy ending (she inherits a meth lab and nobody thinks she can run it but, Boy, does she show those sexist bikers!).

Like they say in Sun City, "Happy is relative: the less relatives you have close by, the happier you are going to be."

The other very clever development in movies is (and I realize this will probably give away the title) is the usage of inside screenwriting lingo that you never could have used 25 years ago, but today, with everyone writing a script, or knowing someone who has, there is an exchange about a "red snapper," and another character, says "No, I think that's a red herring." The beauty of the scene is that the character who uses the red snapper line is, in fact, a red herring. Get it? Too clever by half, you say? Well, maybe, but here we are.

Worked yesterday on more sketches:

Only got seven sketches done, but they are honest and I'm doing what I can with the time I have.

"A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it."
—William Penn (not a screenwriter or a friend of Dick Cheney's)