Where is it going?

I love to write. Screenplays took over my life about 10 years ago when I decided to try and write my first. It was a full feature length script about two brothers and a heist. I still think of rewriting it and sculpting off the rough edges. It has possibilities. But I so often become terrified that I'm not telling a real story.

There are just some movies that you can either tell where the story might take you or you can tell where the plot is going to end up. Is there a difference? Yeah, I'd say so. If you have an idea where the story might lead you, then you haven't been given all the information. It keeps you invested in what the characters are doing and you want to see how the story will develop. Are you wrong about Mrs. Hackenburger's involvement in the murder of Count DeMonay? Many movies make the tragic, and now seemingly formula, mistake of setting up the movie in the first 30 minutes and dragging you along until it's predictable end.

Like that piece of crap movie that my son and I saw, Hills Have Eyes 2. I let my son make that mistake. Will he make it again? Probably so, but not with his own money. That floating turd of a movie didn't even meet the previously stated requirement of taking 30 minutes to set up the gag we'd eventually be drug through. We already knew what it was about. It was about deformed, mutant people killing innocent, yet stupid, trespassers in visually horrific ways. The premise, hardly enough to be considered a plot, has been set. Insert gore and shock value. There should be a new category for movies like this. Because they don't fit in horror. Maybe just calling them gore. Not even good for a grindhouse type experience because they aren't slasher films.

I was recently on a website that I really enjoy called First Showing where I read a post about the site's creator/writer experience when he saw Disturbia. Seems he went to an art house cinema and found himself with a Dollar Movie nightmare. Here's the link: Film Projection Movie Quality.

Anyhow, it spurred me to find a review of Disturbia. Normally, I read a few of them, just to see what critics have to say. I don't live and die by a critic's review of a movie, but I do admit it has some bearing on whether or not I go see it. Most critics found that Disturbia, while well made and well paced, was a cinch to figure out after 30 minutes. Slated at 106 minutes running time, that leaves 76 minutes, not including the 4 to 6 minutes of credit time to basically try and get your seat's worth out of the 8 to 10 bucks you just plopped down to see it.

My wife wants to see the movie, so we'll most likely go. I actually still have some desire to see it, despite my belief that it's a mall-bunny adaptation of Rear Window. You never really know until you go and see it, you know?

I've spent the last week thinking about how critical the writing process is. About how there are some people out there who don't just want to be given the entire story. About the real movie experience that my kids and even people my age, never got or don't remember. About what a real movie, despite how crappy the production value or shitty the acting, can bring.

I remember lobby cards and murals and the big to-do that meant you were at the movies. I remember drive-ins, the first 3D movies and when a bucket of popcorn cost $1.25. But I remember when a story was what you got when you saw a movie. Not a set-up. And they use millions of dollars to do it.

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