Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Talk about short, if not so sweet...

Okay, kicking Stasi out of Carli's Kills, except for two scenes, made it easier to finish this draft...but shortened it. After all the adding and cutting and dumping and including, the script wound up being 80 pages long. Normal rule of thumb -- one page equals one minute...but if I work it out right in my timing, considering I'm only a quarter as detailed as I normally am in the action bits, the project should wind up at about 90 minutes.

I do have a couple of moments later in the story that will need to be set up in the first part, and I think I want a bit more of Zeke's background. But then, other aspects of the script don't quite hang together, yet, so the next pass will be to clarify and streamline the story, making sure I have everything I need for it to be properly told.

I get the feeling part of the problem is that the one-word theme of the story is shifting...but I'm not sure to what. Francis Ford Coppola once said, "When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In The Godfather, it was succession. In The Conversation, it was privacy. In Apocalypse Now, it was morality." Of course, Coppola also said a script should be like Haiku, which is the exact opposite of Tolstoy, so maybe I'll take this as just his opinion.

Still...I was thinking CK was all about redemption, but it's not happy with that. It seems to be more about guilt, which combines with the idea of punishment. Which is rather moralistic. I sort of know why...but is that workable? I'll have to let that stew in my brain for a while before I dig deeper into it.

Lately, when I think of Zeke -- whose name has become Robert Ezekiel Lindstrom, for some reason -- I'm picturing this guy: Darcy Oake. He's a Canadian magician who did some very cool stuff on "Britain's Got Talent" and made it to the finals. Dunno if he can act, but he's got good camera presence. Of course, he'd have to fake missing a leg, but that's easily doable for a magician.

And just to be clear, I'm posting this image of his hot little self just so no one will think I'm really as deep as I think I am.

2 comments:

Michael said...

How can you expect me to read all that with that beautiful man drawing my gaze away?

JamTheCat said...

See -- proving shallowness can be fun...