Twentymiglia
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
A movie is coming out next year that really sounds like fun. It’s a Hollywood blockbuster type of production. Maybe it’s some Marvel picture. Maybe it’s the next installment of Star Wars. In any case, the teasers and trailers have primed you for this event.
Then December (or July) rolls around. You see the film and it is BIG. I mean, the soundtrack rattled your fillings. The 3D graphics sent a jet engine splashing into your White Russian. It was everything you hoped for except for one thing…the story sucked. So bad in fact that when you watched it on cable a few months later, you couldn’t even finish. Then you come to find out that it set a record for tickets sold.
This show deserves a few more subscribers. Graveyard is a “series in miniature” about two guys working at night having existential conversations. These episodes average two minutes in length, but the writing is funny and smart. They’re already up to season three. Check it out.
It’s is probably one of the most famous screenwriting classes of all time. On the spectrum of experience, it falls somewhere between international flight, marathon, therapy session, and college class. Were the 33 hours of lecture informative? Was it worth the money? Are the disciples of McKee studying the secret of good writing? Here’s my review of Robert Mckee’s Story Seminar.
What is to be said of George Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations except that the number, though even, is odd.
Actually, 36 is not quite accurate, as each situation is broken down into sub-groups. Whatever the number, it is clear that Polti (born in Rhode Island and moved to Paris) wanted his generation to see some opportunity in the more negelected dramatic situations. He hoped situations such as “Being Upon the Point of Slaying a Daugh- ter Unknowingly, by Command of a Divinity or an Oracle” or “A Fatherland Destroyed” or “Hatred of Grandfather for Grandson” could find a modern expression. He wrote:
Such an examination, which requires only patience, will show first the list of combinations (situations and their classes and sub-classes) at present ignored, and which remain to be exploited in contemporaneous art, second,how these may be adapted.
Ambitious (desperate) writers will do their best to make the most of Polit’s catalog. But I will tell you there is far too little written on his wikipedia page. Anyone sad that all the good entries have been written should scramble to their nearest university library.
Sometimes I go through periods where I hate music. The noise. The intensity of emotion. It makes me looney. So then I go through a period of listening to podcasts. But just as night follows day, I get sick of people talking. At such times, I need fresh music.
Yesterday, I discovered Los Angeles based TV Girl. Check them out here. Their sound is new, but still familiar somehow. Modern, but generous. Also, I am kind of a sucker for albums with a theme. In this case, it’s sex. Their PG-13 lyrics are smart, funny, and incisive.
