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For those of you who've never read Watchmen, this is an interesting way to experience it. The link takes you to iTunes, where you can download an animated version of the graphic novel's first chapter, complete with narration and music.
"Mostly, we authors repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and so moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.
"Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald in "One Hundred False Starts" Published in Saturday Evening Post (March 4, 1933)
I finally signed up for a Netflix account as an easy way to gain access to movies when Tim and I need to study. I thought it might be...fun...to post my queue here. Some of these movies are related to a script we're working on, a lot are not.
The Big Sleep, Stray Dog, Point Blank, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Assassination of Jesse James, Grand Illusion, Blue Velvet, Brazil, Shampoo, The Last Detail, Repulsion
I came across a NY Times review of a new book on Godard, w hich reminded me of one of my all time favorite quotes (by Godard, of course): "All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun." I then asked Tim if we'd written any movies in which guns don't make an appearance. The short answer: no.
The writer whose career me and Tim would most like to emulate at this point in our lives is David Koepp. Big, cinematic movies, many times working with directors...plus, he gets to direct every once in a while, too.
I will always be grateful to David for responding to a note I wrote him after seeing STIR OF ECHOES in 1999. I have the note posted on the wall of my desk (yes, my desk is so much of a structure that it has walls). I'm not entirely sure that I have a succinct reason for keeping it there - maybe I think of it as inspiration, or as of a reminder of how far I've come (somewhat far, not far enough) since I was a college student at NYU, or of how to remain gracious in success...either, or any, way it means something to me.
Here's an article about David from Variety. I've copied and pasted after the jump as well.
Sitting in his tidy Manhattan high-rise office, the uberwriter/sometime director seems as far removed as one can get from the world of Hollywood blockbusters.
But that's exactly the universe that Koepp -- one of the industry's highest paid and most in-demand scribes -- inhabits as he cranks out screenplays for some of the highest-earning franchises in film history, while simultaneously pursuing his smaller-scope directing ambitions. From his Gotham perch, the one-time UCLA film student has become Hollywood's go-to guy, answering Steven Spielberg's call to revive a beloved franchise 19 years after its last showing ("Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull") or Sony's plea to fix a problematic script ("Da Vinci Code" prequel "Angels & Demons").
With a nearly $5 million per script quote and the ability to attract choice talent to his modestly-budgeted helming projects, Koepp enjoys the best of both worlds.
He may be the man who penned such box office behemoths as "Spider-Man," but in conversation it's hard to differentiate him from any other middle-aged urban dad. Oozing an aw-shucks Midwest sensibility and devoid of any of the usual writer neuroses, Koepp, 45, seems more comfortable talking about his three young sons' camp exploits than his enviable salary as a scribe.
"I was raised a nice Catholic boy in Wisconsin -- I learned you don't talk about money," the Green Bay Packers fanatic parries when asked about his per-screenplay asking price. Instead, he gladly shows off his 30-odd drafts of "Crystal Skull" neatly stacked on a shelf in his Upper West Side workspace that lacks the fancy art or typical trappings of success. Instead, a framed Kurt Vonnegut quote serves as decoration.
Frequent collaborator Spielberg concurs that Koepp -- with whom he also teamed on "War of the Worlds" and two "Jurassic Park" films -- doesn't focus on the financial rewards of the business.
"I've never had a money conversation with David," says Spielberg, who cites "War of the Worlds" as his favorite Koepp collaboration. "I've never had a tough negotiation with David (or) with his representatives. David isn't about money. He's about the story, the idea, the possibilities. He just happens to have been involved in some of the biggest franchises in history, from 'Jurassic Park' to 'Spider-Man' to his uncredited work on 'Men in Black.' David has been touched by great success, but his natural inclination is to tell small stories."
Koepp adhered to that basic instinct with "Ghost Town," a quirky dark comedy about a dentist who has a near-death experience during routine surgery and gains the ability to communicate with the dead -- with nary a dinosaur, flying saucer or archeological expedition in sight. Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni star in the $19 million film, which Koepp co-wrote and directed for Spielberg's DreamWorks.
"Ghost Town" proved to be a stark contrast to "Crystal Skull," which Koepp diplomatically notes "had three guys with very strong opinions" in regards to Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford. In fact, Spielberg says the whole "Crystal Skull" process was more daunting than the pair's previous collaborations.
"We both felt the pressure of that," he recalls. "We were a little more constrained by a story that we were not going to wander too far afield from. So, it was a little more structured. David and I found a lot of room to invent things that were never in the original story. That was fun for us. Any time you can invent things that aren't handed to us on a silver platter, that's when the creative relationship becomes much more of a popcorn relationship for the two of us. You can smell the popcorn coming out of David's computer when David's coming up with original concepts."
As "Ghost Town" is readied for release, Spielberg now finds himself in an awkward position: If "Ghost Town" soars, the scribe might not be available to pen Spielberg's next tentpole.
"I want him to succeed so much that I'm willing to sacrifice the working relationship between a writer and a director to be able to capitalize on the new working relationship between DreamWorks and David as a director," Spielberg says. "I'm perfectly willing to give up David writing for me if he starts to consistently succeed as a director."
Spielberg and other franchise-makers need not fear. Koepp -- whose previous helming credits include the Johnny Depp starrer "The Secret Window" and the supernatural thriller "Stir of Echoes" -- insists that he is capable of directing only one film every three or four years.
"Directing is terrible for your personal life," he says, citing Spielberg and Ron Howard as the only two people he knows who manage to helm without major home-life upheavals. "Right now, the thought of directing is abhorrent to me. (The urge) will come back in a few years."
In the meantime, there are other blockbusters to tackle. Following his eleventh-hour draft of "Angels & Demons," Koepp vowed to take the summer off. After that, he will be available to lend his writing talents to the next studio in need, a contemporary Ernest Lehman, as William Goldman noted. (Lehman is the writer behind such cinematic classics as "West Side Story," "North by Northwest" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.")
Just don't ask Koepp to leave his New York digs to work on location.
"I don't spend time on set," he says. "I spent a few days on 'Indy' because it was so iconic. I wanted to see the set. But being on set can be an ugly process. No one wants a word cop."
But fortunately for Koepp, every studio needs an able wordsmith.
Because I spend a lot of time studying professional sports (basketball mostly, at the moment), I end up reading articles and blogs a normal person would never end up reading. My fascination with the competitive spirits of athletes hopefully drives my own competitive spirit with other writers and filmmakers...one of my greatest disappointments is that there is no way to outright beat another artist at his own game - box office doesn't count...the closest thing may be rewrites or adaptations, which is part of the reason I enjoy them but that's another blog post altogether.
This long preamble is a setup for the blog I read this morning from Eric Musselman, the former head coach of the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings. It's a jack from an article in the Harvard Business Review discussing, in Eric's words, "how the best of the best get better." I've copied and pasted his post after the jump - or you can click on the link above.
I confess: I'm not a regular reader of the Harvard Business Review. But my sister is and she recently passed along to me an article from the HBR by a former professor of "elite performance psychology." "The real key to excellence in both sports and business is not the ability to swim fast or do quantitative analyses quickly in your head; rather, it is mental toughness. Elite performers in both arenas thrive on pressure; they excel when the heat is turned up. Their rise to the top is the result of very careful planning—of setting and hitting hundreds of small goals. Elite performers use competition to hone their skills, and they reinvent themselves continually to stay ahead of the pack. Finally, whenever they score big wins, top performers take time to celebrate their victories."
Bloc Party is one of my favorite bands and this is their new video, which is directed by Ace Norton. Ace makes creatively weird videos (typically). Also, you have to love the line "I'm sitting in SoHo trying to stay drunk."
