there are a lot of people here, and they want to talk to you.
The quote of the day:
"After I leave a restaurant I say <snapping fingers> I forgot to listen to the other tables."
I set the alarm for 7:30 and actually got up then. My brain told me that the two of us were going to have to have a chat about this behavior and not to expect cooperation in the future. Nevertheless, I stumbled out of the hotel room and made it to the 8:10am session on Dialogue.
Paul Schrader (surprise) didn't make it, but the other panelists did: John Landis, Brian Helgeland, and Andrew Kevin Walker. (Note from 10/8/98: Father Geek reported on Ain't It Cool News that Schrader was there. He is mistaken.)
Landis told a hysterically funny story about working on Trading Places and shooting a scene in a black bar with 75 black extras and every crew member is white. The script called for an actor to call Eddie Murphy a "jive turkey," which Landis thought was ridiculous--no one would say that; it was some white writer's idea of what a black man would say. So he turned to the extras.
LANDIS
(to extras)
Excuse me, you guys are black.
CREW
We're going to die.
The extras quickly told Landis that what the guy would call Murphy was "motherfucker," and that's how they did the scene.
Of course, everyone mentioned the time-honored way of finding dialogue: stealing it by listening to others in public places. Which is why Andrew Kevin Walker's Quote of the Day struck me as so funny--I've certainly done the "write down other people's conversation thing," but I sometimes feel like I've got to do it constantly.
So then came the Anti-Heroes panel. Helgeland and Walker stuck around for this one and were joined by Turk Ripkin (the moderator) and John Lee Hancock, writer of A Perfect World and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Of course, no one could define anti-hero satisfactorily--at what point does it lapse into villainy? Helgeland defined the anti-hero as someone who does something heroic but not in a heroic way, instead doing the action for himself.
All of the movies discussed mentioned male anti-heroes. The woman next to me muttered, "What about women?" and I said, "You should say that." She demured. So I raised my hand and said, "You've primarily--you've exclusively mentioned male anti-heroes. We've been sitting here and have only come up with Thelma and Louise."
I was amazed by how many people turned around or leaned over or just said out loud, "Great question."
Cool. Work my ego.
The panel managed to come up with Gloria and To Die For, and someone in the audience mentioned The Long Kiss Goodnight. (I disagree with that--I think Geena Davis is clearly a conventional hero in that flick.) But there was some debate about those characters even. The woman next to me said (again, softly) that there are no female anti-heroes because people don't want to believe that women have a dark side. I don't know about that, but there is no tradition of the female anti-hero in American mainstream cinema.
Guess who's written a female anti-hero script? <takes bow> The panel, despite its lack of focus and inability to reach agreement, did give me quite a few things to think about, and it shook loose a couple of the stumbling blocks I've been having on my rewrite, so right there the conference was worth the price of admission.
The woman who'd suggested the female anti-hero question to me asked me what I wanted to do for lunch, and I mentioned Schlotsky's Deli, but first things first: I had to find a bathroom. By the time I came out, she'd disappeared. Oh well. I ran into a guy I'd met the first day, and he and I and two other guys went to the Hickory Grille for lunch. We discussed what we were doing and the conference and...well, I can't remember what we talked about. It was nice meeting new people though.
I had to dash out of lunch to get back to the Driskill for my one-on-one pitching session.
One of the big features of the Austin conference has been these sessions, where you can pitch your story to a professional (producer, writer) who will then help you with the pitch. It's not an opportunity to pitch to sell, although evidently there were plenty of people who thought that's exactly what these were and were disappointed when they didn't get a million dollars and a jet ride to LA.
This year, you had to know about the existence of the pitching sessions in order to sign up for them. Everyone I talked to--including the three guys at lunch--hadn't heard of the one-on-one sessions at all, and they were upset at missing out.
I was upset this year because the person I pitched to was a script analyst, not a producer or writer. The analyst was very nice, but evidently she didn't give anybody I talked to particularly critical advice. I don't think pitching is her milieu--I think she was looking for clients.
Well, it was worth doing, if only to keep me doing it.
By the time I got out of my pitching session, all of the afternoon sessions had filled up. The conference, in its infinite wisdom, decided to move the Children's Film Festival (films made by children--!!!) from the Paramount Theater into the Driskill Ballroom, or the largest session room available. They moved the sessions planned for the Ballroom into a much tinier room, one-third the size.
I ran into Pooks and Mary, and we went to Starbucks to get coffee and talk about balancing being a writer and having a life. Pooks kept telling us how being a writer and being a Mom were very compatible: in fact, all of the writer-moms she knew found writing to be their "salvation." Pooks mentioned the word "salvation" so many times that I could tell Mary was having the same reaction I was: is it that bad? Right now balancing the two seems impossible, but Pooks kept trying to convince us it can be done.
After Starbucks we headed over to the Omni for the Doing What It Takes Roundtable. I hadn't made it into any of the other roundtables, because they were filling up 45 minutes ahead of time, which is crazed. There were producer roundtables, writer roundtables, and another type of roundtable too (Diane looks for notes, does not find what she's looking for). There are 12 tables and 12 participants, and they move from table to table answering questions on whatever topic.
We got in a long line that had formed outside the door and gabbed some more. Eventually they let us in, and we snagged one of the front tables. Pooks and Mary knew who they wanted to get and made a wish list. Because those two were so prepared, we got a couple of the people they wanted. There's your lesson: be prepared.
Our round table chatters were:
- Barry Yorgrow and Amy Sohn, two independent filmmakers who had films in competition at the Festival. Neither of them got into filmmaking directly; both got into it by other means (he's a performance artist, she's a columnist for the New York Press.
- Matt Gross, Kopelson Entertainment: He wants movies that create an urgency to go see the movie. He asks, "What is the poster?" and "What are the 3 big scenes?" when evaluating a project. This is, you have to admit, a good way to think about whether your project is one of the tentpole movies studios are always looking for. (A tentpole movie is the major blockbuster of the summer that the studio is banking on, and it's usually part of a franchise. Godzilla is a failed tentpole movie.)
Mary asked him, "What are you looking for?" and he mentioned a few things. He specifically said, "No period pieces." Then, when mentioning one of their major projects in development is a movie based on the Hindenburg disaster--the poster is the Hindenburg, complete with swastika, flying by the Statue of Liberty, and yes, they already have the script--Pooks asked, "Isn't that a period piece?" He said, "You weren't suppose to notice that."
- Mark Fluent, InD 500 Films: He got into filmmaking after 10 years in banking. He talked some about making indie films for $1m. to $5m. They have a couple ready to go out and a couple in development, and of course they're always looking for material. His goal is to make his company like Good Machine or the Shooting Gallery (two smaller, well-respected, independent production companies).
- Doug Belgrad, Columbia Pictures: He wanted us to know that it's all about concepts--the original, the castable, the familiar with a new twist. His advice to writers for working with studio execs: find creative execs with like minds (oh, okay), find merits in what they're saying, listen to your inner voice about the integrity of your piece and don't go changing something just because someone asks you to, and don't get defensive. He couldn't emphasize that one enough.
One of the problems I noticed with the participants in the round table discussions--the peasants, not the professionals rotating from table to table--was that when they get their chance to talk, they go on at length. I've noticed this at every conference I've ever gone to. It's like, "Finally! The spotlight's on me! I can go on and on and on." I felt like saying, Cut to the car chase already. People at our table went on at length about their projects, taking up my precious round table time. I really resented it. But what's a girl to do?
The closing party was held at Antone's and started at 5pm. The sessions didn't end until 5pm, for crying out loud. I said, "Who planned that?" I bagged the party, choosing instead to go up to the hotel room and nap for an hour before heading out to dinner with Darin.
We visited Darin's friend Pace and his wife Jana and their two little kids. Last time we saw them, the oldest, PJ, was just a baby; now he's 4 and very energetic. Pace barbecued steak and chicken and we had fajitas for dinner. Darin knows Pace from working with him at Apple; they might have known one another before, when Darin was in Texas.
We got back to the hotel around 10:30pm. We discovered, just as we were pulling up to the 7th Street entrance, that the Valet parking had been moved to the Brazos Street entrance. Well, maneuvering around downtown Austin on a Saturday night is not easy if you have to go anywhere near 6th Street, which on many weekends, including this one, gets blocked off so that pedestrians can walk up and down the street drinking copious amounts.
Darin went straight to the room, but I went up to the bar to see what was what. The bar was densely packed, much more so than any other evening. I managed to find Pooks and Ruth though. Pooks said that Ruth was talking to a USC student and I should go introduce myself. So I did. Turned out that Kai is a Production student who went to college with one of my Screenwriting buds and knew Linda. Linda had mentioned Kai to me several times, in fact, so it was kind of funny to finally meet him in Austin.
We must have talked for 90 minutes. It was 12:15 by the time I headed upstairs. He told me about being an actor in London and what the Production program was like and how some of his acting buds have done really well for themselves. I, as I am wont, babbled incoherently. But I'm comfortable with doing that now. Since he doesn't live that far from me in Los Angeles, perhaps I will see him every so often.
Darin and I were married 5 years ago. Whoo hoo. No, we didn't do anything special to mark it: I guess that's boring, but I'd rather have a good marriage that I appreciate every day than a special occasion once a year.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com