Noah Henry Morriss

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.

I just read Ed the Happy Clown and the edition that I had contained a running commentary on its creation. Cartoonist Chester Brown mentions that the comic was mostly improvised and that he used the structure of writing/drawing a panel a day without a full script to rely on.

The result is an exciting and out-there story with constant twists and turn. As the story progressed and neared some sort of conclusion, Brown does mention steering the story in a certain direction and have a plan of sorts to lead towards, but for the most part he uses the improv technique.

For a while in college I would spend my weekends scratch building a robot. I had a large bin of recyclables and broken toys that were great material for this. I’d usually start on Thursday night and then would spend all of Friday-Sunday finishing it. They were great weekend projects and a ton of fun to figure out.

But a specific routine would occur whenever I set out to work on one. The first thing that I’d do on Thursday night, the deciding factor on whether or not I’d be putting together a robot or finding something else to do, would be rooting through my materials and seeing if I could find a capable headpiece for the bot.

By capable I mean one that spoke to me. If I couldn’t find a good piece, then I knew I wouldn’t be able to put together a robot. It just wasn’t going to work.

I might spend a few hours on Thursday night looking, and when I found the right one I always knew it and the rest of the robot would fall into place. It was like that one piece set up all the others that followed it. All I had to do was find that leading piece.

There were a few occasions where I’d try to bullhead my way through without finding a good piece and the project would always fall to pieces. It wouldn’t work and I’d always shelve it as an unfinished.

I like to relate other processes that have worked for me creatively in the past to different mediums, and I wanted to see if I could relate this to writing.

In terms of a story, the headpiece is the climax. It’s what everything leads to and what the resolution relates to.

It’s the bank heist. The kiss. Finally enacting vengeance. The confrontation with the super villain. The big moment.

This might seem obvious to some, but to me it’s a bit of a revelation. My writing tends to get hung up, and realizing that I need to spend less time on the opening, or the catalyst, or the mood, or the genre… and that I should be spending time figuring out what things are leading towards is an eye-opener .