Noah Henry Morriss

This is the character list for John Carpenter’s The Thing. It opens the script.

The screenplay was written by Bill Lancaster who only wrote a couple of things to my knowledge. That’s a shame because I think the script for this movie is perfect.

I love this character list, it’s got such a pop to it. The descriptions being so terse and brief give it a weird dread feeling. Like reading an obituary.

And in terms of character, really these descriptions are all that are needed. They give it all. You can read one of them and instantly get a strong feeling for the character. What a great jumping off point.

This is one of those things that’s never exactly seen on screen, it’s something to help the actors, the production, the general atmosphere of the story. It heightens everything, clarifying some of the broader character decisions perhaps, in a very simple, direct fashion.

It’s a great example of simple communication. The characters are defined in as few words as possible, and it still works.

Sometimes you don’t even realize that the way you are operating is actually making things more of a challenge than they need to be.

The short films that I’ve been producing with my buddy through our production company have been going great. We’ve got no budget but we have some equipment and the drive to make some cool stuff.

Yesterday some footage got shot with our camera during the day on a beach and it looked great! The sunlight made everything look incredibly crisp and it was very impressive.

I then realized that a majority of our projects had been shot either at night or in a poorly lit room, and while they look good… they don’t look quite as sharp as these images.

One of the major elements of equipment that we don’t really have access to is good lights, so we improvise and use lamps. This is usually a challenge, non-professional lamps don’t quite give off enough light and can’t be directed as well as professional setups.

We’ve managed to make it work so far, but it’s been a headache sometimes, and I’m realizing this could all be circumnavigated by avoiding the whole conflict.

If we shot during the day, we wouldn’t really have to worry about light, not really. And then we could always achieve that level of sharpness that we’re looking for.

It’s silly because it seems that we aligned exactly with the one thing that could cause problems. It’s sort of that “Don’t think about a pink elephant” type of thing.

Anyway, try and recognize how you’re making things more difficult for yourself. The absentminded self-sabotage.

These screen-grabs are from a scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. To my knowledge, it was a last minute add on as there was no scene that wrapped up Indy and Marian’s story.

I love the scene. It gives the feeling of an Indiana Jones movie that was never made. Something that takes place in New York or D.C. and that’s more like a spy thriller or classic noir or mafia based.

The set, the clothing, the lighting. It all gives a very specific feeling that’s not in the rest of the film.

Patton Oswalt’s book Silver Screen Fiend has a chapter devoted to movies that were never made. I think this would be a good addition.

There are lots of movies and books that I really enjoy, that mean a lot to me. There are a lot less movies and books that I intensely wish I had made. That I wish I had been a part of.

It can feel like the creator was in my mind and made something specifically for me. Like they somehow used my being to build it.

Part of me gets depressed. The things that feel specific to me have already been reflected in ways that likely surpass any level of skill I’ll be able to achieve. That feeling that someone got there first.

The other part of me understands that this discovery is important. That something within these special pieces explains something about me. That my intense reaction of jealousy is actually a guiding bolt.

I complain a lot about being lost, but finding these is like finding a map. It’s just about understanding how to use it.

So you have to know why you react the way you do. What is it that connects you to it so directly?

This requires study and patience. It requires revisiting over and over, doing hard reflection, not shying away from definition.

Grab ahold and don’t let go.

I’m reading Robert Rodriguez’s Rebel Without A Crew, his book on how he made El Mariachi for $7,000 as a 23-year old. It’s pretty interesting. He works so fast.

It takes the form of a journal, I’m not sure if he wrote it as he was working on the production or if he did it in hindsight. It seems like he logged it while he was working, but I’m not too sure.

Developing the script, filming, and post-production take a matter of months. He works very spontaneously. The idea to make a movie is formulated in March of 1991 and he’s done editing it in November… so nine months for an entire feature. An action picture at that, not just some mumbly sad thing, it’s a genre story.

He writes the script in June while living in a hospital as a test-subject and they shoot it in August for twenty days. He edits it over the next three months.

I just want to know how they were able to do all of this within such a short time period.

He mentions that he is using this movie as a stepping stone. His expectations are fairly low, he just wants to sell it straight to video so that he can make another one. This doesn’t mean that he puts less effort into it, it’s just a lot less personal.

He knows what kind of movie he wants to make, specifically one that fits within the guidelines of what is usually purchased inside of the genre. He understands the audience, the market, and how to make a better film than his competitors.

Steven Soderbergh recently gave this quote on genre in the wake of his ghost-story Presence and his spy-thriller The Black Bag:

“I just feel everybody wins if you’re respectful of the pillars of what that genre is. You can load this thing up with anything you’re interested in.”

I love to hear about filmmakers who really understand a specific genre and really make it work for them. People like David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, Patricia Highsmith, Dashiell Hammett, Phillip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin… people who know how to “respect the pillars” while also loading their stories up with something more.

Rodriguez’s book is very good. It makes it seem accessible, but more importantly is emphasizes some of the elements of filmmaking that are necessary in order to get a job done.

If you don’t make a movie, you don’t make a movie.

I’ve been thinking about these two movies recently. How they’re stylized so differently and are still so similar.

It’s a great example of two great directors taking the “same”* material and doing two completely different things with it.

*I know that the stories are two separate books, but the story structure is practically the same. An FBI agent hunts down a psychopath with the help of another while dealing with personal issues.

If on a project your find yourself unable to move forward, unable to find anything exciting to incorporate next, it’s likely that your inspirational reserves are empty. 

I find this happens in the halfway point for most projects that take a significant period of time. All the ideas and elements that I wanted to implement have been added to the first half, and at this point I won’t know how to continue.

If you try to force it, using the dregs that are left at the bottom of the jar, you’re likely to burn out and ruin all your hard work. It’s hard to bounce back to a project when you’ve smashed it over the head a thousand times with a hammer trying to get it to work.

So it’s time to refresh. It’s time to collect more things to incorporate, steal more, research more, explore more. 

It seems a touch counter intuitive to halt in the middle of a project just to go do more research. I’ll be driving around at 90mph and then all of a sudden have to slam the brakes. It can be a little jarring, but I guess that’s how it goes.

A lot of writing advice stems from running through the first draft as fast as you can. Getting to the end of a story so that you can begin the editing process. I find this a little awkward. I don’t like to rush things too much, and whenever I try this the second half is always much, much lamer than the first.

I need something to spin the project in another direction. Something that I wouldn’t have expected, and that sense of discovery generally comes with looking in places that I wouldn’t have expected.

If your research is only with the confines of what you’ve already established, it won’t feel refreshing. It’s only when you marry one topic to another completely separate topic that you find something… different.

So, to get that boost, to find your way out of that endless cycle that can be the middle, look somewhere else

and then take it back with you.