Glamorous And Exciting

I read the script to Snake Eyes, the new Nicolas Cage thriller that's currently in production -- if you must know why I went out of my way to get a copy of this script, check out the cast list; one guess as to who the bad guy is, and I'm sorry if this ruins it for anyone -- and I find myself thinking, $4 million for this script? Mind you, I think screenwriters should get every penny they can lay their little hands on, but...I didn't think this was $4 million worth.

But I did read it in one sitting, which is probably the sign of a good thriller. I thought the ending was weak though, but then I so often do. Endings are hard. They suck, in fact. When's the last time you came across an ending you really felt nailed it? The advice I keep hearing is know your ending before you start and then just keep working towards that. This is not bad advice, but no one I know takes it.

Today was spent working on the outline for my script. (Well, working on the outline and procrastinating via Civilization II: With A Vengeance.) There are two parts to outlining:

1. finding elements (the technical term is "scenes") that I want in the script;
2. and finding which order the elements go in.

This is not quite as easy as it sounds.

Should be fairly easy, though, you'd think. Just tell the story! Start at the beginning! Continue through the middle! End at the end! And it is fairly simple, once it's all over. Then you think, how obvious this all was.

However, up until that moment, you think, should the ex-wife spill the beans before the tycoon proposes, or after?

I'm trying to figure out what the best method of outlining is for me. Is it making an outline in Microsoft Word? Is it using Three-by-Five, the index card system by the makers of Final Draft? So far it's been a combination of both.

I start in Three-by-Five, but the layout quickly fills up several screens worth, and scrolling around becomes a pain. Clearly, what I should do at that point is print out the cards on the perforated card stock that BC Software (maker of Three-by-Five) and Avery labels make, play around with the cards in real-time, then enter the changes into the program. But I don't know what scene cards I want, and I'd be continually printing out new ones and tossing old ones.

When the number of scene cards becomes too unwieldy (which is about 50 cards), I export the whole thing into a text file and then read it into Word, where I make an outline out of it and start moving scenes around. This is tedious -- even more so to do than to read about, trust me -- but vital. Every so often, I then print out the outline, mess around with it on paper, then reenter changes.

Maybe I should start out with actual index cards.

Anyhow. What else is going on with me?

• I quit the Diary Critique List, becuase I wasn't enjoying myself on it and I wasn't participating. Both signs of an impending change needed. No, I still haven't posted the critiques I myself received on it eight-and-a-half million years ago, but I will. Any day now.

• I started reading Smoke And Mirrors, a critique of television by a longtime TV critic, John Leonard. This gentleman, who remembers the Golden Age of Television quite well, much much much prefers our current television, which he calls both window and mirror, and he pooh-poohs (in rather long, complicated, and oblique sentences) the idea that television is the root of all evil.

• I've been catching up on my Scenario magazines. I've subscribed to Scenario faithfully from the beginning (three years ago), but I've been less than diligent in reading it. In case you haven't heard of it, Scenario is a magazine that publishes 4 screenplays per issue, 4 issues a year. They don't print the scripts in script format, but I don't feel I lose anything for it; if I'm really curious as to how the script would look, I can always type it in, which isn't a bad idea to begin with.

• Hanging around with Darin. We eat lunch together, we watch TV together, we sleep together. It's kind of insular. But there's not much else to be doing, I guess. That would require us to leave our house.

• I wish I'd come down with whatever is dancing around the fringes of my immune system. I'm coughing, and my lungs are a bit congested, but not congested enough to make the coughing worthwhile. I'm trying echinacea again, but I'm not hopeful, because it didn't do much for me last time I tried it.

My big plan for the next few days is to picket Ceej to upload some damn entries. Of course, this is going to be tough seeing as how she's up there and I'm down here, but if she and Lance (or any of our other friends from up north) would visit us like they're supposed to it could be made so much easier.