John August

John

Anthony Minghella

News

I was very surprised and saddened to read that writer-director Anthony Minghella [has died](http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8VG2U900&show_article=1). His adaptation of [The Talented Mr. Ripley](http://imdb.com/title/tt0134119/) is both justly acclaimed and criminally under-appreciated: every shot, every line, every performance is dead on. Every time I watch it, I’m filled with envy and self-doubt — a strangely empowering combination when seen through the lens of Minghella’s needy and murderous hero.

Minghella himself couldn’t seem more different. The two times I sat down with him, he was funny, charming, and much too polite to make me feel stupid. Both occasions were award-season panels, potentially awkward sessions in which filmmakers are asked to talk about their movies in relation to each other. But I could only gush about how much I loved his work, and pitch him my plan to do a mash-up of the Aliens quadrilogy with his Ripley. (It’s still on the to-do list.)

Just this week, the trades announced that Minghella was doing a series with Richard Curtis based on [No 1 Ladies Detective Agency](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117982157.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&query=Detective+Agency), which had already shot its pilot in Botswana. Here’s hoping that project and his other work can make it to the screen. But I already miss all the other movies he won’t be making.

Scripting a short film

Genres, QandA, Story and Plot, Words on the page

questionmarkI’m about to get cracking on my submission for a prestigious short screenplay competition. I wondered if you had any advice specific to writing shorts? If you were judging a shorts competition, what would you be looking for?

— Kirsty
York, UK

A short film, like a short story, can’t waste any time. You need to give us your principal characters and establish their motivations immediately. There’s very little stage-setting before you get to the inciting incident and the ensuing complications.

The hero’s fundamental problem/challenge/obstacle needs to occur by the time you get to the 1/3rd mark. So, if your short is meant to be three minutes long, the big event needs to happen on page one. If it’s a 10-minute short, it happens around page three. It’s not that you’re worried about your reader getting bored before then — if you can’t entertain us for three pages, there’s a problem — but rather that if you delay any longer, your story is going to feel lopsided: too much setup for what was accomplished.

Beyond that, I wouldn’t worry much about traditional structural expectations. Funny almost always works better than serious for a short, because there’s not enough time to create the narrative movement you expect in drama. But there are exceptions. [The Red Balloon](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048980/) for example. And I loved Walter Salles’ chapter in [Paris, je t’aime](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401711/), which was simply a sad rhyme. ((That said, it probably wouldn’t have stood out in a script competition.))

So think funny, or poignant — but only if French.

I’ve put the script for my 1998 short film God up in the [Downloads](http://johnaugust.com/downloads) section. ((The short is a bonus feature on The Nines DVD.)) It’s 30 scenes in 11 pages. A lot of story happens, quickly. But many successful shorts take the opposite tack: they’re essentially just one joke, fully exploited. Todd Strauss-Schulson’s Jagg Off is that kind of short, as are most of the SNL and Will Ferrell videos you’ve seen.

For the competition you’re entering, however, I’d be careful not to submit anything that felt too much like a comedy sketch. If I were a judge, I’d be looking for a script that doesn’t seem like it could end up on Saturday Night Live. (Or the British equivalent.)

Good luck!

Saturn Award nomination

Awards, Projects, The Nines

[Matt Venne](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1107639/) emailed me this morning to point out something I would have otherwise missed: The Nines just got a [Saturn Award nomination](http://www.saturnawards.org/nominations.html) for its DVD.

It’s a cliché to say, “It’s an honor just to be nominated,” but really, it is. And surprising, too. The Nines isn’t an obvious choice at all.

The Saturn Awards are all about science fiction, and while The Nines ultimately fits in that category, the viewer doesn’t really understand why until the last 10 minutes. When we were doing press for the movie, I called it “stealth sci-fi.” Hearing the logline, you wouldn’t guess it goes into [Star Trek](http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Remember_Me) territory. (I’m spoiling very little to say it does.)

So, my thanks to the nominators, who obviously did watch it and get it.

Pack-saddles to listen

Projects, The Nines

After reading this Italian blog review of The Nines, I’m convinced that the translation technology behind [Babelfish](http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr) is actually Icelandic singer Bjork.

I confess. They are remained struck by lightning from the film The Nines, of which for other I do not have news regarding the distribution in Italy. To the foreign country it is already exited in DVD. Which thing has of special The Nines?

Beh, is an independent film that it knows to astonish with one apparently simple weft, but much deep one. Three episodes in which the same actors they interpret various parts, in some way tied. It will be only discovered to the end. A film that leaves numerous interrogated to you and that it deserves of being discussed and see again.

Which thing alloy The Nines to the net? The director and scripteriter of the film, John August, have a blog. In its blog he has published the audio comment to the film, bonus that in kind he only finds himself on the DVD, free of charge. He has commented the escape of the film in the exchange circuits rows with sobrietà, convinced that it is only a good for the film that is seen and that if of it speaks.

In order to promote the film it has been opportunely launch a competition in order to realize a trailer beginning from “social” some material puttinges to disposition of the navigators. The sonorous column is simply sublime. Pack-saddles to listen to the topic of Alex Wurman in order to convince itself. In Italy, but that it has participated to the Festival of Venice 2007, probably nobody has seen this film and is a true sin. It deserves.

**UPDATE:** The original author noticed the link, and wrote up his [own English translation](http://luca.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/the-nines-a-movie-you-have-to-see/).