Failure

Fail in order to succeed

You may have noticed how much I admire John August. I think his screenwriting blog is a treasure, as are the glimpses of his vantage point throughout the making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Big Fish and his directorial debut, The Nines. I really enjoyed this article about what he learned from failure. I think we all have stories like this one, but it is only in hindsight that we can take these lessons. You can’t warn someone off of this mistake, that failure. You can’t protect people from a spectacular failure of their own, because to do so, would rob them of all the knowledge that comes with it.

I think the most I ever learned about directing a play came from the play that I screwed up so badly, I had to cancel it two weeks before opening night. Part of the problem was, half of the cast was not at all invested in the show and thus would skip rehearsals with no warning, come unprepared and three weeks before the show was to go up, had not memorized a single line. The small crew was equally unreliable, and my stage manager was a much more effective saboteur then SM. (He insulted cast members, fired two crew members without consulting me and “lost” all the set designs when they were due to our adviser.) Priority number one from that semester on was “find good people.” Whatever else went wrong in the future (and stuff did go wrong,) if you have an invested set of people, you can make magic happen.

This was the first and last play I ever agreed to direct without reading the script first. It was definitely the last time I let myself over-commit and pretend that I could direct, pull together costume design, makeup and set design and that the lights would just take care of them selves. Exactly one year after the cancelled show didn’t open, I directed an amazing production of The Laramie Project, a project that still tops my list of greatest achievements in life. Had I not failed so miserably a year before, I would not have held out for the best cast possible in casting, would not have worked so hard to outsource the sound production, special effects, prop management, costume design etc. The show was exhausting and emotionally draining, but people on campus, 3 years later, still tell me it was one of the best shows they have seen here.

Insult to injury

To pick up a woman, first put her down

I actually caught an episode of  “The Pick Up Artist” one afternoon while I was home sick.  I missed out on many of the “rules,” that this character, Mystery, had imparted to his protegees, but most of them had slick sounding nicknames or abbreviations, like “negging.”  The whole show made me feel dirty and uncomfortable.  Maybe I am not their target audience, but if a guy in a bar used almost any of the prescribed “negging” lines on me, I would close out my tab and head off to another bar.  Some of the most used lines included:

• (Girl turns away, clearly not interested in the guy.)  Don’t be rude baby, the conversation is over here.  (If she still doesn’t turn around, guy turns to his friend and says,) Is she always so rude?  She doesn’t have to be a bitch about it.
• (Touches a girl’s hair)  Your hair would be pretty if it wasn’t so long (or short, or curly or straight, you get the picture).
• In any other bar, you would be the prettiest girl in the room.
• (My favorite!) Guys invite girl and her friend to his VIP couch section of the bar, then proceeds to ignore the girl he is actually into, compliment her friend, then whenever girl he likes starts to talk, he would put his hand in her face or shush her saying “Hey, we’re talking here.”  At some point, he turns the table, puts his arm around the girl he actually likes and ignores the friend until she leaves.

Are girls dumb enough to fall for this?  Do we enjoy having a strange guy put us down with a backhanded compliment.  It was difficult to tell from the editing of the show how long the boys were at work and how many women they approached before one “set” agreed to hang out with him on the couch. There were clips of multiple sets of girls telling a guy to “f- off when he pushed a little to hard on the rude segue into conversation.”  One guy was told to stop swearing or the conversation was over; he called her a bitch and she walked away, to which “Mystery” (watching on a hidden camera) shook his head and said, “not worth it man, move on, find a good one.”  Clearly, a true pick-up artist has no use for women with any kind of limits or self respect.

Success in this episode included getting a girl’s digits or agreeing to move onto the next bar together.

I would also be curious to find out if the girls in the bar knew they were being filmed.   I wonder how that would influence their behavior- would they be more or less willing to be abused verbally on camera?

Comments on Commentary

I am skeptical when advertising for a new DVD claims to have “300 hours of bonus material.”  I have discovered that this usually includes three or four sets of audio commentary on the film by various actors, directors, writers, costume designers, musical directors, stunt teams or special effects teams.

As a writer, I have found commentary by some writers/directors to be illuminating, not only in reference to the film or television show in front of me, but to the writing process, creative solutions to common writers issues and even insight into what a life of television writing/screen writing looks like.

My favorite commentators include

• Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly.)  His commentary for the final episode of Buffy literally brought me to tears, it was so beautiful.  Also, he is extremely generous when it comes to explaining how the process of script to screen works.
• Marti Noxon (Buffy, Gilmore Girls) Has some great things to say about humor, why some jokes work, what she would change on  paper having seen the scene played out by the actors.
• The cast of The Office (US) Since many of them are writers and directors, they often talk about how the story broke in the writer’s room and then how it changed when one of the actors took the joke and ran with it.  It is interesting to hear the actors who aren’t on the writing staff try to guess which scenes are ad-libed and which are written; they are wrong almost 50% of the time.

Commentary I hope to hear (writers whose work I enjoy and have read their blogs/interviews that make me think their commentary will be interesting.)

• John August.  I have the newly released The Nines at the top of my NetFlix queue.  His blog (johnaugust.com) indicates that the DVD is full of great extras, like a script-storyboard-scene section that shows all three steps in the process.
• Shandra Rhimes.  Someday I will rent the Grey’s Anatomy Season One DVD.  I would love to hear her thoughts on the pilot, which I think is brilliantly structured and nuanced.  I am less interested in the commentary on Season 2 and 3, when the drama shifts from “I don’t know what the hell I am doing in life,”  to “complicated storylines based around sex.”
• Writers on “The Wire.”  Also planning on renting this show, as I have heard rave reviews about the content, the writing and the vision of the people behind it.

Commentary I don’t enjoy: I don’t want to single anyone out, but I will usually stop the commentary about 20 minutes into the movie if  one or more of the following criteria are met:

• Poor sound quality (I listened to one commentary that had a crying baby on it!)
• Actors talking about how great the other person is, aren’t they just wonderful, she is just super sweet, this one time in his trailer . . . I just don’t care, thank you.
• Directors/Cinematographers who start to talk about the different types of lenses/shots/cranes and how much each costs to rent/use/develop
• Long digressions into personal life stuff