Sometimes I love getting sick. When else can you loaf around in bed, do nothing, and get sympathy for it?
The other day, feeling horrible, I was faced with all the possibilities on Netflix. Would I watch an action thriller? A romantic comedy? I immediately was drawn to horror and started to watch BURIED with Ryan Reynolds. About five minutes in, when I realized he was never going to leave the coffin, I bailed.
I was about to put down the PS3 controller when I accidentally toggle sticked to “Movies Based on Books.” Hmm… how about a whole day of Edith Wharton? Anyone obsessed with Masterpiece Theater knows there is a certain narcotic value to watching these period pieces where lives are destroyed over finger sandwiches. And so I settled in for THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, which I’ve seen approximately nine times.
Daniel Day Lewis, check. Michelle Pfeiffer, check. Fabulous fancy food, check. Impossible love, check. In this film, Michelle plays the Countess Olenska, a beautiful, but sullied woman, married to a cruel man in Europe, and due to the conventions of her time, unable to get a divorce. Daniel DL plays Newland Archer, a good guy, about to marry the young, beautiful, but vapid Mae (Winona Ryder.) As Newland tries to protect Olenska from scandal (she’s the cousin of his future wife) they begin to fall in love, and no matter how hard he tries to hurry up his marriage to Mae, nothing can stop their love. Nothing, except Society. Painful shots of them staring at each other at dinner parties, him unbuttoning her glove during a stolen moment in a carriage, them trying not to kiss. Newland begs her to come to his place, Olenska says yes, then returns his key when Mae tells her she’s pregnant.
As I watched all this “apartness” I realized what great dramatic tension can come from the power of distance in a story.
Of not letting people be together. Of keeping them separate for the sake of maintaining exquisite rising conflict in the narrative.
At the end, I was sobbing furiously (as I had been the previous nine times.) I wanted to shout at Newland, “Go up those stairs, Dammit! I don’t care if you’re old fashioned. You’re only 57 years old!!” But no, he walks away. The much more dramatic choice, I’m aware. It maintains the power of distance.
Exhausted, I grabbed some Kleenex and toggled to another Edith Wharton fave, ETHAN FROME. Liam Neeson stars as Ethan, a poor farmer who dreams of being an engineer, but makes the mistake of marrying the nasty Xena (the fabulously gaunt Joan Allen.) When pretty young Mattie (Patricia Arquette) comes to take care of Xena who’s ailing, guess what happens? Of course she and Ethan can’t be together. He’s married. So he stares at her. She stares at him. Xena tries to pretend nothing’s going on.
When Xena leaves to go see a doctor, all hell breaks loose. The family cat shatters a treasured dish, Liam touches the embroidery Mattie is working on, then later, they kiss.
When Xena comes back early and tells Mattie she has to leave, Mattie and Liam decide to kill themselves on a snow sled (why can’t we have climaxes like this in today’s movies?) Anyway, they race down the hill, head for a tree and BAM.
We cut to the future. Now Liam is hunchbacked and club footed, taking care of his wife. And just when you thought, “Wow, Mattie was sure lucky to die,” we find out she’s NOT dead. She’s living with the two of them and now Xena’s taking care of her.
So much worse than being buried in a coffin like Ryan Reynolds.
As I turned off the set, blew my nose, and drank another Emergen-C, I wondered, “Wow, is this even possible now? To have a romance film set in contemporary American society where two people have some moral compunction about cheating or betrayal?” I started spitballing scenarios. Maybe if it’s set in Amish country? Or a Fundamentalist Christian household…. Oh wait, forget about that one.
Aside from Romantic Comedies, where the things keeping people separate are deceptions, or irrelevant significant others, what modern stakes could possibly keep people apart to the degree they’re kept apart in Wharton’s novels?
Maybe if the two people had sex they would die?
Or their children would die?
Or they would become ugly?
Is it even possible to create distance between characters now when our culture is all about immediate gratification?
I can’t stop thinking about that amazing scene in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE where Daniel Day Lewis peels off Michelle P’s glove. And that’s all that happens.
If they had full on sex, it wouldn’t be half as satisfying.
It’s because they’re close. But a million miles away.
Why do we love bad movies so much? Why do we laugh and scream about how terrible the acting was (that accent!) or how lame the plot became (a cell phone can be used to stop a meteor, really?) The first bad movie I remember seeing was “Roller Boogie” with Linda Blair. It was REALLY bad. There’s nothing quite like a disco film set in a roller rink, starring Linda Blair, especially when there are no demons trying to possess her.
The first movie I walked out of was “Grease 2.” Yeah, I know, but I really liked the first one. For the first time in my tender youth, I realized that it was possible to waste precious minutes of your life.
So it was with some pleasure that I watched REMEMBER ME a few weeks ago on Netflix streaming. Yes, it’s called REMEMBER ME. And indeed I will, although not for the reasons intended by the filmmakers.
There was no reason to watch this movie. The fact that I didn’t recognize the title, did not bode well. And when I saw that it starred Robert Pattinson, well... Yet, there I was, curled up on the couch, watching the title sequence. “It stars Chris Cooper,” I kept repeating to myself, “It stars Chris Cooper…”
Here’s a brief description of the plot , “A romantic drama centered on two new lovers: Tyler, whose parents have split in the wake of his brother's suicide, and Ally, who lives each day to the fullest since witnessing her mother's murder.”
REMEMBER ME started out badly. What did the main character want? Nothing. And so there was no forward movement in the plot. Who was trying to stop him? It seemed the father (played by Pierce Brosnan) was the bad guy, but couldn’t really stop him from anything, because there was nothing Robert P was trying to do. This resulted in many scenes where RP smoldered at his dad and his dad smoldered back. For some reason there’s lots of smoldering in bad movies.
A love interest. This is always a hopeful sign, but in this particular case, the “lie” set up in the story, which is intended to throw the lovers apart in ACT II, made no sense at all. Why did RP even ask her out in the first place? And yes, there was a horrible “romantic” water fight scene. I rest my case.
Irritating characters. This is always a classic sign of a bad movie, and Pattinson’s motor mouth best friend, with his way too clever lines, made me want to kill someone.
Rising conflict. None. Until the little sister gets her hair cut off by some nasty sixth grade girls. It was then I started wishing she was the main character.
But finally, as we lumbered towards the climax, came the plot point that made this movie truly and irrevocably dreadful. During the earlier badness, my teenaged son had come into the living room and sat down next to me. We’d giggled at the terrible dialogue, the lousy plot. But then came the moment when I stood up from the couch, and screamed at the TV, “NO!!!!!” My son got scared for a minute.
It seemed that the writer figured Pattinson needed an arc. So after he trashes the girls who hurt his little sister, tells his girlfriend the truth about why he inexplicably asked her out, he then goes to the top of the world trade center to meet his dad.
At this point, my heart started to race, because I could not believe the writer was about to do what I thought he was about to do.
Then, the little sister sits in her classroom and we pan across the blackboard, which says Sept 11, 2001.
“No!!!!” I shouted again. My son started to laugh. “NO!” I screamed.
This was so out of left field, so wrong, so awful and so OFFENSIVE that I was literally driven to caterwaul. The screenwriter was attempting to somehow make his movie meaningful and important by turning Pattinson into a victim of 9/11.
We have a winner folks—worst screenwriting choice EVER!
Nope, not even Chris Cooper could save this one.
In fact, this film made me long for the halcyon days of “Roller Boogie”, where I could laugh at Linda Blair skating around in a unitard, or “Purple Rain, where I hurled Raisinettes at Prince’s face in a theater in Westwood.
As we turned off REMEMBER ME, my son said, “That sucked.”
We both laughed. Indeed. And I guarantee, for that reason, I’ll never forget it.
MY FAVORITE BAD MOVIES OF ALL TIME
1. Plan 9 From Outer Space
2. Remember Me
3. Roller Boogie
4. Showgirls
5. Purple Rain
6. Grease 2
7. Black Swan (I never bought that it was “intentionally” campy)
8. Twilight
9. The Happening (my friend calls it The Crappening)
10. Pearl Harbor
MY FAVORITE “REMEMBER ME” REVIEW QUOTE: “If this movie is playing at a theater near you, you might want to consider moving somewhere else.” A.O. Scott
Dawn Prestwich is a highly regarded television writer, and all around fabulous woman! With writing partner Nicole Yorkin, she has written for such diverse shows as "Chicago Hope", "Flashforward", "Carnivale", "The Riches", and is currently Co Executive Producer on the new AMC series, "The Killing." She agreed to answer a few questions about what it’s like to be a television writer, and how to hone your skills in preparation for entry into this fast paced world.
Thanks Dawn!
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I had always been a writer, a storyteller. But I knew that I wanted to be a writer, professionally, when I realized during my first job in Hollywood (personal assistant to a talent manager) that nothing can happen in this business without a script. It’s really all about the script. There’s power in the word. I wanted that power.
How did you break into television writing?
After sitting in a little office for 4 years writing screenplays with strong female characters that no one wanted to read, my writing partner Nicole Yorkin and I decided to write a spec TV episode, just to see if we had the chops to do TV, as a sort of a last ditch effort, you know? If it didn’t work out, she was going back to journalism, and I was going back to writing short fiction and hoping to get published somewhere. It was a THIRTYSOMETHING spec, and surprisingly enough, it opened doors for us like nothing else ever had. Ed Solomon recommended us to a showrunner (Beth Sullivan) who was looking for people she might not have read. She read us, next thing we know, we’re writing a show called THE TRIALS OF ROSIE O’NEILL. We never really stopped working after that.
What does a showrunner do?
The showrunner is in charge of the whole shebang. The buck stops there. The showrunner does everything from breaking all the stories in the writers’ room, guiding the creative direction of the show, writing and re-writing the episodes, taking complete responsibility for them creatively. She hires the directors, and works with them closely on the creative direction of every episode, is responsible for the post production of all the episodes, responds to notes from the studio and network. She/he has to worry about staying within the constraints of the budget, managing all the different people involved in making the show, and generally never sleeping at night. As John Wells once said to us, “It’s the toughest job in town.”
What do you think are the most important skills for a television writer? How can a person go about developing these skills and finding a job in television?
Okay, beyond being a writer who writes with an eye to character, you must, first and foremost, play well with others. A writers’ room is a team of writers all striving to make a show—that means every single episode—great. Or it should be. If writers know that they tend to be loners, or don’t like to hear other people’s opinions about their words, they might think about sticking to screenwriting, or novel writing. TV is fast and furious. That’s why it’s a team sport. You need a lot of brains tracking the story, bringing their best ideas and experiences to the room to improve every episode. At least, that’s the way it is in hour drama.
I’m not sure how you develop that. It just depends on how you work, and what works for you. I’ve known a few writers over the years who just can’t tolerate the group process and they’ve gravitated back to features, because being on a writing staff is just not their thing.
How to get a job in television? Keep working on your writing. Write and write, and get better and better, to the point that the scripts you have written pretty much do the work for you. They will sell you, you don’t have to. Make sure the first page of your spec is brilliant and compelling, something that immediately sucks a reader in. Think of it this way, when people are reading your script, they DON’T WANT TO BE READING IT. So REWARD THEM with a wonderful reading experience. Because then they will love you and know that recommending you will make them look smart. See? That’s your script doing the work. And no, it’s not hard to get read by people in this town. Opportunities arise. But you’d better be ready to repeat that same reading experience over and over again with each subsequent script you write. Because you have to be able to do that when you are on a show.
You’ve written for some amazing, and very different shows. The Killing, Carnivale, The Riches… How do you shift your writing style and perspective for each project?
I don’t know. You just do. It’s actually one of the best parts of writing for TV, the need to switch gears every now and then. Keeps you from getting bored or rote in your writing. Nicole and I have been doing this for more than 20 years now, and I think we actually kind of relish the variety. We love a new challenge, to write something we’ve never written before, in a style that is new, and maybe even a little scary to us. It’s what keeps us engaged and excited about the work.
How do you and Nicole write scripts together? What’s your process?
All partners do it differently, but basically, Nicole and I write every word out loud together in a room. It’s a noisy process. Even if we’re in Starbucks. And we’ll argue about the words or ideas. And it can get heated! But that’s because we really, really care about the work and we want it to be great. We generally break the story together, then throw it up on the board in the writers’ room and let them kick the tires and make it better, then we go off and write for a couple of weeks (if we have the luxury of a couple of weeks, sometimes it’s less than a week, depending on how things are going on the show), then turn in a first draft. On THE KILLING, which Veena Sud is running, we turn the first draft in to her and the writing staff. The staff makes notes, and Veena will decide which notes she wants us to take. From there, the script gets re-written by us, and the next draft goes to Veena, and ultimately the studio, for more notes. Changes are made, if necessary, and then it goes to the network, which will usually have a few notes, as well. That’s the process, pretty much.
What’s a crazy, little known fact about the television industry?
People who pitch well often can’t live up to the promise of the pitch. Great sellers are rarely great writers. It’s a different skill set.
All time favorite TV show?
Mad Men, In Treatment, The Wire, Thirtysomething, MASH, I Love Lucy
