Howard Allen Q&A

CoyoteMoon Films' own Howard Allen is featured in a new Q&A at scriptmag.com. In it, he talks about the challenges of working in the film industry while not living and working in LA, how producing and directing films has given him new insights about writing for film, and marketing in the new economy, among other subjects.

Elizabeth Taylor

With all the talk about Elizabeth Taylor lately, one thing might have been lost. And it's something we screenwriters appreciate even when we don't know why we do.

Look beyond her celebrity, which is something related to movie-making in only the most sideways fashion. She understood celebrity, and in later years used it to help the fight against AIDS for example. She came from a generation that married their boyfriends which led to far too many marriages and More celebrity. Also, her emotion-driven lifestyle related to her skills in making movies in a sideways manner.

Look at her performances: from National Velvet through The Mirror Crack'd. Both amazing for completely different reasons. In the first, she became a Movie Star in her first role as a child. In the last, she became a self-parody in the role of a "movie star." The first one has more to do with the art of acting and the last to do with the art of celebrity.

But I want you to look at a later movie where she was neither brilliant/amazing nor amazing/horrifying. I want you to look at a movie where she had a role that should have been boring in a script that was boring by filmmakers who depended on a great music score and pretty pictures of the beach to fill the screen.

As a professional director and actor before I was a writer and script analyst, I want you to look at her abilities as an actor. Audiences of actors first noticed from National Velvet on that here was an artist whose commitment to her character was so complete and intense that it seemed effortless. All the intensity was there but none of the "work" was showing. Critics said, "Well the character of Velvet Brown was just ever so close to the personality of young Elizabeth Taylor." Critics are famous for this mistake.

Now look at The Sandpiper, the movie with the beach scenes and the great music score. Elizabeth Taylor gives the same commitment to a character here. Playing the home-wrecker girlfriend to the married preacher Richard Burton (her husband at the time), Taylor keeps you involved in a story that suffered from a melodramatic premise and a potful of writers (including Dalton Trumbo)--always a dangerous sign. Director Vincente Minnelli knew enough to let Elizabeth do her thing.

Her one-to-one connection with character leaps off the screen. Always. Every role. There's a fascination in this that goes beyond the strength and weakness of the material. Every writer whose work she interpreted on film--including William Shakespeare--owes her a couple thank-yous. She made unforgettable yet totally honest choices for her character that make the script eminently involving. She made a big difference in The Comedians too.

Try watching someone else do Martha in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and you'll know why writers--including Edward Albee--should thank Elizabeth and actors knew they were doing well just to keep up with her.



This post was written by Howard Allen.
Edited 3/31/11

Links

CoyoteMoon Films' Megan Guthrie has a new interview with Steve Holy at Lyrical Lifestyle. The interview can also be viewed on YouTube.

Anyone who has taken a screenwriting class from Howard Allen knows that the main character of a film is not necessarily the protagonist. John August explains in his blog here, with Ferris Bueller's Day Off as the example.

New project

CoyoteMoon Films is working on a new short film, "The Three O'Clock," and we've started work on preproduction. Last week, we held a meeting about the storyboarding of the film.



In attendance were Csenge Molnar (CoyoteMoon Films' storyboard artist), Howard Allen (CMF founder and director of the film), Jim Scott (cinematographer), and Megan Guthrie (storyboard artist and producer).



Howard Allen discusses some of the finer points of the script.














Csenge Molnar listens for ideas on storyboarding a scene.






























Megan Guthrie goes over the script.




Photographs by LR Simon.

Independent Spirit Awards

The recipients of the Independent Spirit Awards were announced on February 26, 2011. Here are some of the nominees and winners of the major categories:

BEST FEATURE
127 Hours
Black Swan (winner)
Greenberg
The Kids Are All Right
Winter’s Bone

BEST DIRECTOR
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan (winner)
Danny Boyle, 127 Hours
Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right
Debra Granik, Winter’s Bone
John Cameron Mitchell, Rabbit Hole

BEST FIRST FEATURE
Everything Strange and New
Get Low (winner)
The Last Exorcism
Night Catches Us
Tiny Furniture

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD
Daddy Longlegs (winner)
The Exploding Girl
LBS.
Lovers of Hate
Obselidia

BEST SCREENPLAY
Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg (The Kids Are All Right) (winner)
Debra Granik, Anne Rosselini (Winter’s Bone)
Nicole Holofcener (Please Give)
David Lindsay-Abair (Rabbit Hole)
Todd Solondz (Life During Wartime)

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
Diane Bell (Obselidia)
Lena Dunham (Tiny Furniture) (winner)
Nik Fakler (Lovely, Still)
Robert Glaudini (Jack Goes Boating)
Dana Adam Shapiro, Evan M. Wiener (Monogamy)

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Greta Gerwig, Greenberg
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan (winner)
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

BEST MALE LEAD
Ronald Bronstein, Daddy Longlegs
Aaron Eckhart, Rabbit Hole
James Franco, 127 Hours (winner)
John C. Reilly, Cyrus
Ben Stiller, Greenberg

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Ashley Bell, The Last Exorcism
Dale Dickey, Winter’s Bone (winner)
Allison Janney, Life During Wartime
Daphne Rubin-Vega, Jack Goes Boating
Naomi Watts, Mother and Child

BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Bill Murray, Get Low
John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone (winner)
Samuel L. Jackson, Mother and Child
John Ortiz, Jack Goes Boating
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right

BEST FOREIGN FILM
The King’s Speech (winner)
Kisses
Mademoiselle Chambon
Of Gods and Men
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

ACURA SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD
Mike Ott, Littlerock (winner)
Laurel Nakadate, The Wolf Knife
Hossein Keshavarz, Dog Sweat

The Academy Awards get most of the attention each year, but the films nominated for Spirit Awards will usually tell you stories that you might find more challenging, more interesting, and more satisfying. The complete list of nominees and winners of the Spirit Awards can be found here.

Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman turned 65 today, February 21. To today's film audiences, he is probably best known as Snape in the Harry Potter franchise. While one of his earliest big breaks was as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, not long after, he starred in Truly Madly Deeply, a sweet romantic story about loss and life. If you've only ever seen him play villains or other sorts of dodgy or unlikeable characters, this film will introduce you to a kinder, gentler, and no less interesting Alan Rickman.

Recommendation

CoyoteMoon Films recommends Pilar Alessandra. She is well known as a screenwriting instructor and script consultant. She has a writing program called On the Page and she has a series of podcasts as well.

Free Film Screening at the Crossroads

From Victoria Westover at the University of Arizona:

Free Film Screening: Sci-Fi Meets Immigration Debate in Award Winning Sleep Dealer

University of Arizona Department of Spanish and Portuguese presents

FREE SCREENING: Sci-Fi Meets Immigration Debate in award winning film

This screening is part of the 21st Annual Graduate and Professional Symposium on Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literature, Language, and Culture

SLEEP DEALER, 2008, USA/Mexico, 90 mins.
In Spanish with English subtitles
IN PERSON: DIRECTOR ALEX RIVERA (Q&A and post screening reception)

Friday, February 18th, 7PM
Grand Cinemas Crossroads
4811 East Grant Road (Grant & Swan)

Adventurous, ambitious and ingeniously futuristic, "Sleep Dealer" is a welcome surprise. It combines visually arresting science fiction done on a budget with a strong sense of social commentary in a way that few films attempt, let alone achieve... - Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times

Gorgeous, intelligent, and intensely imaginative, Alex Rivera’s stunning first feature, Sleep Dealer, is set in a near future marked by airtight international borders, militarized corporate warriors, and an underground class of node workers who plug their nervous systems into a global computer network that commodifies memory.

Memo Cruz is a young campesino who lives with his family in a town fighting for its life, the small, dusty farm village of Santa Ana del Rio, Oaxaca. A private company has hijacked control of the area’s water supply and is selling it back to the village at outrageous prices, provoking the mobilization of aqua-terrorist cells. But Memo couldn’t care less about Santa Ana. He loves technology and dreams of leaving his small pueblo to find work in the hi-tech factories of the big cities in the north. He dreams of becoming a node worker and learns how to build his own transmitter, which he uses to hack into the lives of others and live vicariously. One night, he stumbles across a transmission destined to pave the way to the city of the future, but in a way Memo could never have expected.

Burning with visual energy and originality, Sleep Dealer is a fascinating and prescient work of science fiction that is as politically engaged as enjoyable to watch.
— Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival

ALEX RIVERA is a New York based digital media artist and filmmaker. His first feature film, SLEEP DEALER premiered at Sundance 2008, and won two awards, including the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Rivera is a Sundance Fellow and a Rockefeller Fellow. His work, which addresses concerns of the Latino community through a language of humor, satire, and metaphor, has also been screened at The Berlin International Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, The Guggenheim Museum, PBS, Telluride, and other international venues.

www.sleepdealer.com

This event is made possible with support from Confluence A Center for Creative Inquiry; Hanson Film Institute; Center for Latin American Studies; The Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Program;and the Department of Gender and Women's Studies

If you're in Tucson on Friday, make time for a free screening and meet the filmmakers.

ScriptDoctor has a Blog

ScriptDoctor has a new blog located here: scriptdoctorcom.blogspot.com/

We hope writers and anyone interested in film will find it helpful and informative.

For Your Inspiration

Howard Allen recommends reading this article in The New York Times to learn about writer Peter Morgan's process as well as how films get made. The last couple of paragraphs (included below), says Allen, should inspire writers to find filmmakers like Clint Eastwood and Ron Howard.

“Clint is incredibly instinctive,” Mr. Morgan said, “and he’s anti-neurosis. It’s like antimatter. He’s totally without neurosis. The set of ‘Hereafter’ was one of happiest places I’ve ever been. It comes from trusting yourself and eliminating fear.”

Referring to Ron Howard, who directed the film version of “Frost/Nixon,” he continued: “Ron is the same way. He’s completely at home on a movie set, and I think it comes from practically growing up there. He and Clint are rather like sailors from a bygone century. They come into port every now and then, but really they live on the ship. They’re seafarers.”

But really, go read the whole thing.