Shot Lists

Shot lists are so. So. Important.

If you're a writer who can think in pictures, I envy you. I can think in pictures, but it's akin to someone tossing all the photographs out of their family album and scattering them all over the floor. It's difficult to make sense of it.

I think the best two pieces of advice anyone could give to a writer who seriously plans to film something is: Show, Don't Tell and Think In Pictures. That's really what this film thing boils down to. That's the "vision" crap those odd film people talk about.

A tough girl, a weak girl, a bad girl, a good girl, a shy girl, a wry girl.

If you can find it within yourself to wade through the detritus of lame female caricatures cluttering up Hollywood's film scene, you will discover that Paris Hiltonites and chicks with brains like Farrah Fawcett's hair are not necessarily the norm. The dozens of ideas of what a powerful woman is and how she should be portrayed in film and television are enough for several thousand essays, but it's been done, and I'm not going to do it in this post.

What I will do is mention that Hollywood, being an institution governed primarily by men, could evolve simple strides from the point it's at right now, by doing just two things:

#1. Recognize the talent of writers who write things out of the small spectrum of what is "acceptable" to Hollywood. We need fewer stories about sex politics and high school experiences and instead find interesting spins on topics like war drama/docudrama, gender specific character studies, experimental or abstract films, science fiction. Science fiction in particular is, I believe, an especially lucrative genre in current times. It is a fantastic venue for allegory, which has become a popular tounge amoung young liberals and the politically savvy crowd.

#2. Encourage women to take roles that are empowering for both themselves and for younger girls who will be looking for role models. An empowered woman doesn't necessarily have to hold a gun, either. It is so important for the new generation of young girls and women to see their gender portrayed in visceral, psychological roles where the characters are emotional and feminine but still possess the capacity take charge when it comes down to it.

To be fair, the same can go for men. I remember reading about Nicholas Cage complaining that single men have a stigma of not wanting or not being able to be a successful single dad. It's true, the paternal instincts of men are not really highlighted in great detail in film or television. But here's what's interesting. Men have created that stigma around themselves by catering to it in the real world quite happily. In a similar fashion, the woman's predicament is a direct product of a culture that thinks respecting women means objectifying them. No way around this. It is in the hands of writers to be intelligent about what they write and established actors to actively break these stigmas and stereotypes.

As a writer, I hope to do my share and contribute to the "cause". I don't consider myself a feminist or anything like that...I'd just like to write something good and create a character I can be proud of and that others might also be proud of.

Citizens of the World & Eulogy for a Pie Maker

<--Promo posters for TV shows that don't exist are what I do when I'm bored. Clicky for big version! Two new season 1 loglines for my baby, Citizens of the World and a eulogy for one of my favorite shows, now canceled: Pushing Daisies.

THIS PAGE IS LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK – On October 31st, 6 year-old Gabrielle watched her father ride off on his motorcycle, never to be seen again. This episode looks behind the events leading up to that day, revealing in the process the sinister machinations of a covert black ops organization and how they changed James' life forever.

THE DANGEROUS EPISODE FOR GIRLS – Intent on stopping the all-male cult of Singulatarians from sacrificing James to the sentient Sysco matrix (S1. E?), Gabrielle and Christian, with Mickey's help and some specialized Cipher Suit tech, infiltrate the cult, disguised as males.

The final synopsis was actually written for an arc planned for the second season, but it seems proper to introduce the origins of that arc before properly planning season 2. Season two will be going deep into Philip K Dick territory, so we won't discuss it too often until I'm sure about Season and definitely not until the pilot is completed.

Now to briefly mourn the passing of one the best shows on American television.

Pushing Daisies.

This peculiar and adorably macabre program airs on one of the best channels on American television, rivaled only by NBC, PBS, The Discovery Channel and The Food Network. While initially a little odd and maybe disturbingly off-beat, Pushing Daises quickly won me over with it's quirky but not altogether hopeless concept of a friendly neighborhood baker bringing the dead to life with a single touch. This, coupled with a quirky undead love interest (Ann Friel as Charlotte "Chuck" Charles), fantastic Wizard of Oz style execution, a slew of talented stars, a cartoonish ability to make an absurd plot believable, and most importantly, pie, created a TV show that was light years ahead of every currently running show on television.

There is a 1950ies feel to Pushing Daisies--most likely deliberately...a certain agedness that permeates the shows characters and gives them a gritty yet incredibly soapy texture, if that description can be understood. It is the sensation of blowing the dust off of a preserved reel of I Love Lucy or Bewitched. Perhaps the avante garde expressionism of the show can be partially attributed to the addition of theatre trained actors such as Swoosie Kurtz, the ever adorable Kristen Chenoweth and Lee Pace, the star himself, who portrays the Pie Maker with a puppy-like recognition of his failure at being infallible, and yet, is the perfect panacea for nearly everyone he comes in contact with (dead people notwithstanding).

Bryan Fuller made anachronism as enjoyably silly as it is supposed to be, trussing his characters up in decade inappropriate wear and creating a world that defies any recognizable historical timeline, yet manages to leave the viewer feeling happily detached from a reality he/she probably doesn't enjoy that much anyway.

There is no pretension in Pushing Daisies, and certainly none of the "why so serious" urgency one may find in other seralized shows such as Heroes or Lost. The comparison to such shows, in fact, is unfair, considering Pushing Daisies' genre is storybook surreal rather than dramatic and plot focused.

It has the diversity of a sitcom, the action of a Mike Hammer episode and never once tries to be anything other than what it is. Another aspect of the shows beauty is how it's surreal beauty is not only fascinating to look at, but it serves the larger function of the world that the show exists in. It is altogether a happy accident of American engenuity that I will be very sad to see go.

Citizens of the World: Seven episode synopsi

The series pieces together slowly, despite the pilot episodes being in an indefinite limbo. When I write, it's as if I'm observing the characters from afar, maybe from behind bulletproof glass. They do a lot of things when I'm not looking, it seems, because my best ideas tend to be forgotten when I sit down to write. These are a few episode synopsi (that is the correct plural tense, I do believe) for "Season 1". The show, while riding on a general arc, is deliberately not like Heroes or LOST's running arc because the desired atmosphere of the show is an adventurous, Knight Rider type one. The determined goal of the characters remains a constant, but I want the viewers to be able to observe the society the characters live in, and be able to juxtapose it to their own lives, while of course being glad they don't have the CIA and various rogue orgs on their asses...

S1.E3 - J & G's INFINITE HAT TRICK – With Juan Gutierrez dead and their mission seemingly at a dead end, James and Gabrielle cook up a con to use the Pillbox as a cash cow. When the con goes wrong, they find themselves caught between the CIA and a ruthless group of cyberterrorists.

S1.E4 - AMBER ALERT – During the course of a violent anti-police protest, Gabrielle is kidnapped by a seemingly psychopathic individual named Carmichael who forces her to carry out a list of bizarre and dangerous demands.

S1.E? - SHUT THE DOOR THEY'RE COMING THROUGH THE WINDOW – When Gabrielle, James and Christian stop for fuel in a rural suburb, a military presence rolls in and lock the town into an unexplained and nightmarish quarantine. When the soldiers begin inexplicably killing people, James, Gabrielle and Christian, aided by a cyber-journalist and a blind photographer battle the lock down, discovering, in the process, who and what the soldiers really are.

S1.E? - THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VICTORIA JONES – When Gabrielle wakes up in Baghdad held hostage by unknown kidnappers, she is rescued by the mysterious Henry Carmichael who sends her on a surreal journey of self-discovery that Gabrielle refuses to believe.

S1.E? - (THE SENSATIONAL REVERSE BROTHERS) BASSACKWARDS – When James and Christian are taken hostage by a mysterious duo of faceless militia, Gabrielle must avert the kidnapping and ensuing mad-scientist machinations of an ex-NORAD geneticist by sleuthing though an world which has suddenly been altered by a machine which causes time to run backwards.

S1.E? - THE GREAT GUZZOLENE ROBBERY – When an old boyfriend of Christian's asks for her help to smuggle several tons of Puerto Rican gasoline into America, Christian finds herself on the run from her boyfriend's Godfather's oil running cartel.

S1.E? - I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM – During a heated chase, Gabrielle is trapped by a more pesky than usual WASP which, by a bizarre technical fluke, somehow transfers it's consciousness into her mind, leaving Gabrielle's body seemingly comatose, and her actual mind trapped in the cybernetic prison of an artificial military intelligence.

FYI, the only reason why I would divulge such detailed information about this show is because if any producer ever steals the concept, this blog, as well as several dated and locked documents on my laptop will be undeniable proof of the true author. Of course, should I be the one to produce the show, this blog and all spoilerish evidence will promptly disappear.

Hi, my name is Victoria Jones, and...

...I like nefarious corporations that seize control of hapless consumers with mind control, don't you? I also love how corporations try to use us to get them more money without us actually knowing. You think that burger you're chewing is so innocent and tasty? Think again, simpletons. It's a conspiracy brought to you by the FDA, Medical Institution and the Fast Food Industry. Nobody's out to help you or make you feel better. It's all an insidious ploy to take you for all you've got, and when your pockets are dry, they'll toss you aside like yesterday's meatloaf. Never operate under the delusion that corporate society actually cares about you. You'll wake up one day and smear the ketchup off your face and believe me, you won't like what you realize.

It's interesting how the public seem to earn money for everyone but themselves...our jobs are being outsourced so Chinese people can work for pennies in shitty conditions so our bosses won't have to pay us spit. Yet we The People of The Empty Wallet are supposed to rush to the mall when the next IPhone comes out. Silly! You can give away your spleen for free but the minute you need an operation, it'll cost you 5 large. Absurd! It's like the System wasn't even built for us, it was built for...THEM.

And the funny thing is, when the rare event occurs that we actually find ourselves getting paid anything tangible...it's for all the wrong reasons. You're a mobster. You're a junkie pushing drugs. You're illegally trafficking organs. You're killing people for a faceless corporation. You're fuckin' rich, that's what you are. It seems as if the only way to make it in this dumb society is to work for them...and eventually become them. Corrupt. Immoral. Something Other.

Loss of identity. Is that really what it takes to survive in this world?

Eleven Fifty One, coming soon to a blog near you...

Musings: Remakes and The Industry

Quantity vs Quality. I think we know where Hollywood stands on this. Tinsel Town: The land of the mass produced, excessively advertised, star riddled abominations to the creative arts.

I keep forgetting that this isn't the 50ies anymore, not that the 50ies in Hollywood were terribly different. Stars were just paid less and not nearly as hassled as our modern starlets are. And the movies were either bad, good or avant garde. I keep imagining if a moviegoer from the 20ies or 50ies were to step into a 21st Century theater, what would her impression be? Shock? Awe? Horror? If Saw or Gladiator were showing, she might swoon on the spot. But it's interesting to contrast between the grainy, concept obsessed ye olde days of cinema and the drive through, "how much will this make us?" attitude of modern filmmakers.

Not to say all filmmakers are so very inept. But what else could it be about besides money? With such a slew of remakes such as The Pink Panther, The Stepford Wives, Rear Window (aka Disturbia), Psycho and now The Women and The Day The Earth Stood Still looming upon us, what can be said about the people who've seen fit to remake these classic favorites? It cannot simply be for the thrill of giving a working concept a shiny new veneer. It cannot simply be that no one in Hollywood has any more ideas of original, interesting, thought-provoking characters in wonderful, exciting new environments.

Could it?

I was asked a question by some young filmmakers once during an impromptu street interview, why did I want to go into video production? At the time, I didn't know quite how to answer (it was a pretty spur of the moment thing and I'm terrible with on-the-spot questionnaires) but as I thought more about it, it came to me. I'm SICK of seeing bad movies. I'm SICK of seeing my favorite actors portraying rubbish characters in rubbish stories. I'm sick and tired to death of crap being rolled out on the conveyor belt, and even more horrified to watch the helpless general public paying money to see it. I hate seeing people visit crappy movies, wasting precious dollars that they should be saving for the upcoming Depression, and coming out of the theater dumber than when they went in!

Stories were intended to entertain and educate. In the fashion of Aesop, they were meant to teach morals. The modern purpose of movies have been to either educate, thrill and always, entertain. Movies take our minds off things, or make us feel better about things, or make us ponder things. Movies have the potential to be extremely powerful. Like our history books, they can fabricate the truth, or rectify it. In the age of visual media, they will become more important than ever as a pulpit for political propaganda, as a forum for analysis of social issues and as visual codeine to alieve the pain at the pump, or at home or anywhere else.

A friend of mine once made me question my decision to go into film, because as he put it, I was too good for it. I should and have the capacity to be something greater, like a doctor, someone who heals people. I thought about it for a long time because I was worried that he was right. Maybe filmmaking was worthless and useless in the long run. I would be helping society much better as a medical practitioner, someone with strong ethics and a love for humanity.

I've come to wonder if filmmakers and doctors aren't so different. They both start out young, excited and wanting to change the world. And out of both groups, some become twisted and jaded, losing their creativity and love for originality in favor of money....or losing their humanity and love of helping people in favor of money...

- Marian

Refresher Course and PRT 1: Citizens of the World - An Overview and Teaser

Goodness, the last time I posted in this was quite the longest time ago, wasn't it? I had a lot to say back then, but I didn't seem to know quite HOW to say it. It's interesting to see younger versions of oneself online...the internet is a bit of a time-machine in that aspect. If you've been on it long enough, you can practically chronicle your life. My e-mail address itself starts it all out for me. I was 9 when I first got it, and I remember exactly where and exactly when.

I can't really remember how I first got into screen writing, though I remember why I did and where I did. I also remember one of the first screenplays I wrote. The Man In The Mirror was inspired by my obsession with dopplegangers (that has now progressed to an obsession with alternate realities) and was actually pretty good for a starter script. Another script I wrote which I never completed was a story about a young man with a mysterious (and possible supernatural) mental problem and a love-hate relationship with his desperate mother and persistent psychiatrist. I think I had a lot of good ideas back then now that I think about it...they still come intermittently now-a-days, and I take the time to scrawl them in one of my many notebooks, but my attention span has shortened. I have a lot of "works-in-progress". I'm now more eager to step behind the camera and film them than simply sit and write them.

Something new I've been working which I will now naively tell everyone and his brother surfing the internet about is a series called Citizens of the World about two accused terrorists, a secret government agency and a dangerous computer algorithm. Already I've said too much, but with any luck, whether I create/produce/direct it or not, it will soon be a TV show airing at 8:30-9:00 PM Fridays on NBC. My dear mother would waggle her finger at me for this post, for she is mortified at the thought that a television concept concocted by me should be stolen by a fat billionaire producer who will not credit me for the idea, and proceed to turn the concept into a hit that bleeds money that should rightfully be mine. Do I care? A little, I guess...but somehow, whether I am credited or not, I would surely prefer to see something interesting and thought provoking on TV, which is steadily becoming clogged with a detritus of mind-numbingly banal reality shows, and what's most horrible about it all is that it's fake reality and not real reality. Anyway, it all depends on who gets his/her hands on it in the end, doesn't it? Hmm. Maybe I should go indie.

As you can see I live in somewhat of a dreamworld when it comes to my writing career...but what writer doesn't? Here I digress...

Citizens of the World was originally designed to be the star-making show for a young, cool, hip female lead and an older male actor who'd been around the acting block a few times. It is based in a futuristic setting where society and government are flawless after decades of mistakes and economical sabotage. Our characters find themselves suddenly swept up in a massive conspiracy that should not be. An algorithm that should not exist is created, quickly threatening the balance of power in the government, particularly between a branch of the CIA and another, more sinister, secret branch that nobody outside of a small group of tight-nit CIA agents know about. Besides all this, our lead characters who, stranded helplessly together by fate, and initially cannot stand one another, discover something surprising about each other, which changes things completely...whether for the better or the worse is yet to be found out.

I will end this post with a small excerpt from the pilot episode of this series, which is in it's second draft and will soon be posted online via Simply Scripts for all to see at some point. I hope to make many more revisions to tighten it up, but until then, I will plot out where this series will go some more. It's looking to be quite exciting already, I can say that with no vanity whatsoever. It's sort of my personal project that I have no fear of sharing with whoever will stumble upon this blog. And if someone who is interested in the concept should be interested in bringing it to life, that will be very interesting, for me personally.

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James drives. Long silence. He checks his wound. Blood is seeping through his shirt. It’s bad. He hides it. Goes for the touch-screen dashboard and turns on the radio. Crooning Country.

Gabi’s face, still aimed out of the window, scrunches. Not her cup of tea.

THEN --

RADIO
-- we interrupt this broadcast to briefly bring you some breaking news out of West Virginia. Fugitives are on the lam today after what appears to be a botched attempted terror attack on a South County Hilton. Sources say that a middle aged caucasian male was seen running through the halls of the ninth floor of the hotel moments after gunshots rang from one of the suites on the level. A series of highly-concentrated explosives were later found by investigators in the suite, along with the bodies of --

James frowns at the bouncing wavelength line signifying the radio on the dashboard screen...

JAMES
(incredulously)
-- explosives?!

RADIO
-- one civilian and several police officers who had been shot to death with projectile weaponry. The suspect proceeded to survive a desperate jump from a nineth floor window of the Hilton.

JAMES
-- fuckin’ crazy --

RADIO
A getaway car driven by a unidentified female then led authorities on a high speed chase through Virginia District Fourty Four. The pair managed to lose pursuing police, and have disappeared somewhere in Middletown County. The ditched getaway vehicle was discovered last night at a car garage, and recently, an Orson Brother’s Carpet Cleaning van has been reported missing from the same garage. If you see or have seen this vehicle, please take caution, and report it to the local police department immediately. Authorities have revealed the fugitives to be armed and extremely dangerous.

And that jams it. You can almost feel hearts sink. Red Foley resuming singing Peace In The Valley.

Gabrielle -- just staring right at him, ever since “bodies”. James feels the stare -- doesn’t respond to it.

EXT. FREEWAY - TRACKING ON THE VAN - DAY

The cleaning van cruises down the freeway. Passes by an expensive looking BLACK SEDAN.

I/E. BLACK SEDAN/FREEWAY - DAY

The driver, an insurance agent named FRED, drives on -- also listening to his radio...

TALK-RADIO HOST #1
...nine, seven, zero -- once again, that is a white Orson Brother’s Carpet Cleaning Van, plate number 6-B-J-9-7-0. If you have seen this van, please contact...

-- Fred notices something that looks familiar -- that white van cruising up ahead. He looks back at his (incredibly high-tech looking) dashboard radio, as if for instructions --

TALK-RADIO HOST #2
...the subjects are armed and dangerous. Do not -- this is very important -- do NOT attempt to apprehend them yourself, please call local enforcement or if you’re on the road, which I’m sure a lot of our listeners are, please call RED HOTline, R-E-D, HOTline, that number is seven-three-eight-four-six-eight.

TALK-RADIO HOST #1
I think we should make it clear that we’re not encouraging anybody to be a hero...

TALK-RADIO HOST #2
Of course not Stan --

-- Fred digs out his cell. Dials and drives.

TALK-RADIO HOST #1
-- we want to make it very clear that it is extremely important not to approach these people, they are terrorists -- extremely -- extremely dangerous...

FRED
Hello? Is this the Roadside Emergency District HOTline? I think I’ve got those fugitives out on the road. Southwest of I-657. Yeah, that’s the van.

I/E. CARPET CLEANING VAN/ROAD - DAY

James peers into the rear view mirror, eyeing the traffic behind them.

JAMES
Fuck, our plates are in the open. Someone’ll have spotted us...

Meanwhile, Gabrielle, sick of country, switches the radio channel and finds some nice banal political talk radio.

TALK-RADIO HOST #2
...real fungus among us, Stan. And -- I was remembering something Dwight Thompson was saying earlier this week in the Times that...in this day and age -- we’ve come so far from things like Vietnam and Iraq and Iran. 20 or 30 thirty years ago, people wouldn’t have been at all surprised to hear of somebody losing it and blowing themselves up a federal building --

TALK-RADIO HOST #1
Not at all.

TALK-RADIO HOST #2
They would have gone on with their lives, let the government handle it. Which it admittedly rarely did well...

TALK-RADIO HOST #1
Well government reaction time isn’t really the issue Glenn --

TALK-RADIO HOST #2
-- yeah -- but that’s not my point though, what I’m saying is today, twenty-one-oh-five, we as a country cannot -- WILL NOT tolerate these kinds of things happening. We have advanced to a point where these sorts of, risks to society, we cannot do it anymore, we grinned and bore it for over 10 fucking decades, we went through god knows how many presidents, only one who finally realized that if we want to be safe as a people -- as a nation, we need to make order the norm instead of fear and pessimism and paranoia. The atmosphere must be clear of that kind of negativity, the government must operate for the people instead of against the people, the corporate machine must work for the people instead of themselves, society must be perfect --

James switches the radio off. Gabrielle looks at him questioningly.

JAMES
Spare the rod, spoil the nation.
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That's it. Blog ya later.

- Maryam