John August

John

Today’s trends are tomorrow’s clichés

Film Industry

Eric D. Snider looks at [patterns in 2012 movies](http://www.pajiba.com/seriously_random_lists/the-films-of-2012-miscellaneous-important-statistical-data.php#GKZ6GjlA9YV1V6Oc.99). Some highlights:

> Movies in which a man puts his fingers in another’s man mouth: **21 Jump Street, American Reunion, The Three Stooges, Holy Motors**

> Movies in which archery is prominent: **The Avengers, Brave, The Hunger Games, Moonrise Kingdom**

> Movies in which someone vomits during a public performance, and then sees video of the incident go viral on YouTube: **Pitch Perfect, Here Comes the Boom**

> Movies in which John Goodman swept through the place, did a couple scenes, and instantly improved the film by at least 20%: **Argo, Trouble with the Curve, Flight**

The ideal 2012 movie would have featured John Goodman as a vomiting Friar Tuck in a modern-day retelling of Robin Hood.

Sprints, marathons and migrations

Broadway, Psych 101, Television

This week, I’ve been working on a feature, a TV pilot and the stage musical of Big Fish. It’s gotten me thinking about the nature of different forms of dramatic writing.

Writing a TV pilot is a **sprint**. It’s only about sixty pages. You can easily write an act a day. Sure, there are outlines and notes and rewrites, but everything happens incredibly quickly, and if you can’t write fast you shouldn’t write TV at all.

Writing a feature is a **marathon**. You might have a few sprints along the way — the first act, those last ten pages — but it’s ultimately a bit of a slog. Like a long-distance runner, you have to pace yourself and accept the page-after-page, scene-after-scene grind. When it come time to actually make the movie, it’s the same experience: seemingly endless, but the finish line finally comes. Just like many sprinters can’t run a marathon, many TV writers struggle when facing a feature.

Writing a stage musical is a **migration**. Race analogies fail. You’re covering distance, but there’s no real finish line. Like pioneers crossing the plains, you may have a destination in mind (Broadway), but you’ll be making many stops during the trip, setting up camps that may turn into towns, before eventually hitting the trail again. Along the way, people will come and go from your little community. And if you finally reach your original destination, that’s still not the end of the journey. You’ll go back on the road with other stagings of the show. As a writer, you have to make peace with the unfinishability of a musical.

As I mentioned on the podcast, one of the goals for this year is to accept that I’ll probably be writing some form of Big Fish for the rest of my life.

I suspect other art forms have a similar sprint/marathon/migration triad:

* You can sprint through a short story, while a novel is a marathon, and a franchise like Harry Potter is a migration.
* “Rapper’s Delight” is a sprint, *Paul’s Boutique* is a marathon, and hip hop is a migration.
* One painting is a sprint, a gallery exhibition is a marathon, and cubism is a migration.
* In coding, perhaps that Flash game is a sprint, Karateka is a marathon and building Gmail is a migration.

If you think of others, by all means [tweet ’em](https://twitter.com/johnaugust).

Frankenweenie on video today

Frankenweenie

With the news that home video is finally [growing again](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-home-video-revenue-no-longer-falling-20130107,0,5751239.story?track=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=71043), it’s the perfect time to point out that Frankenweenie is available today in the U.S., in both spinning plastic and digital versions.

The disc version comes in a bunch of different flavors — none of which I’ve tried firsthand. The basic DVD is just that. There’s a four-disc combo that includes Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and a digital copy, and a two-disc version with non-3D Blu-ray and DVD. (All links to Amazon.)

Digitally, the movie is [on iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/frankenweenie/id570830865) in both HD and SD incarnations. On the Mac and PC, the digital version includes special features, such as a new Sparky short.

Amazon has the [digital version](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AOOIIVA/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=johnaugustcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00AOOIIVA) for purchase and rental, with HD available on Xbox and other platforms.

Animated movies don’t pay residuals like live-action movies, so you won’t be directly contributing any green envelopes in my future. But the more people who see it, the more likely it is we’ll be able to keep making odd little movies.

Eric Goes West

Video

In addition to all the design work Ryan Nelson does for this site and our various apps, he’s also a bona fide Movie Person.

He and his wife Amy produced a terrific short called [Eric Goes West](http://ericgoeswest.com) that played Slamdance last year as part of anthology called Holiday Road. The short is now available on its own:

(You can [embiggen it](http://vimeo.com/29244588) over at Vimeo.)

I love that Ryan, Amy and director Dee Austin Robertson simultaneously followed and ignored the standard advice for filmmakers:

1. The used what they had. They’re sailors, and they had a boat. That boat became the set, and the centerpiece of the story.
2. They shot on open water, which is a terrible idea. And yet it gave them tremendous production value. It looks expensive, but it was actually just really difficult.

After you’ve had a look, be sure to tweet [@ryannelson](https://twitter.com/ryannelson) to tell him what you thought.