John August

John

Does Corpse Bride have a happy ending?

Corpse Bride

Corpse BrideI know you were brought in late on [Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride](http://imdb.com/title/tt0121164/)
and from what I gather, weren’t responsible for much
of the story, but I’m curious about your thoughts on
one particular story element.

Is the ending a happy one for Victor?

The way it plays, it seems as though it is intended to
be a happy ending for him when he winds up with
Victoria, but from the audience’s perspective, I’m not
sure we see evidence that he would be happier with
Victoria than he’d be with the Corpse Bride. The
inclusion of the scene where Victor connects with the
Corpse Bride while playing piano with her is of course
necessary to propagate the plot, but seems to indicate
that he’d be just as content living among the dead as
he would be with Victoria.

— Rob
Los Angeles

You point out one of the real challenges with Corpse Bride. Generally in a fairy tale like this, you’d be really clear about which woman the hero is “supposed to” be married to at the end.

At the start of the movie, it seems pretty straightforward: Victor meets Victoria, and both of them are surprised how much they like each other. Corpse Bride seems like a monster when she first appears, but is quickly revealed to be funny and sweet. She’s rotting, but not rotten.

As we worked on the story, Corpse Bride kept becoming more and more likable, to the point where we started to wonder exactly the question you ask, “Shouldn’t, maybe, Victor end up with Corpse Bride?”

The solution wasn’t to diminish Corpse Bride, but rather to beef up Victoria. Over the drafts, we made sure to give her more initiative (such as escaping the mansion to plead for the Pastor’s help) and make her situation more dire (the wedding to Barkis was a surprisingly late addition).

Through it all, we never wanted to back away from what was unusual about the story: it’s a love triangle in a kid’s film, and you’re sort of rooting for all three characters.

Corpse Bride’s decision to stop Victor from drinking the Wine of Ages (added in the last draft) is less about saving his life (after all, death isn’t so bad) and more about seeing herself in Victoria. It goes back to want-versus-need. Corpse Bride wants to be married, but what she needs is to free herself from her self-imposed curse. While we’re deliberately unclear about the exact cosmology of the afterlife, the Land of the Dead seems to be a kind of goofy Purgatory. Her transformation at the end would seem to be the next step in the process of life.

But is it a little wistful? Yeah.

And I wonder if that lack of clearly happy ending limited the upside to the film — which I have to say, performed much better than any movie called “Corpse Bride” could be expected.

But I wouldn’t change it. To me, it’s nice to be able to show kids a movie where everything resolves well but not perfectly. I think it’s more honest to show that you can be happy and sad at the same time.

Four quadrants of screenwriting style

Words on the page

I’ve gotten a few questions from readers who’ve gone through the scripts in the [Downloads](http://johnaugust.com/downloads) section, many of them asking about my use of “we,” as in…

We hear SCRAPING as something behind the door moves closer.

Who is “we?”

I use this “we” all the time, and I’ve never really thought about it much. I guess it means either “you and I” (the reader and the writer) or “we the audience.” But which one?

Sort of both. The example above feels like it’s from the audience’s point-of-view. But in many cases, I’m using it more as the creator, such as…

As the pickup ROARS away, we reveal...

TWO BURNING SCARECROWS.

I love “we.” To me, it helps include the reader, giving the sensation of watching a movie, rather than just reading words on a page. But you should know that a fair number of screenwriters loathe this use of “we,” arguing that it’s always possible to write the same moment without it…

The pickup ROARS away, revealing...

TWO BURNING SCARECROWS.

In the end, there is no right or wrong. It’s just a matter of preference.

This got me thinking back to college, when I first had to take a [Myers-Briggs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator) personality type test. If you haven’t taken one, it’s definitely worth the twenty minutes, because it has an interesting way of breaking down personality along four basic axes. (Note: plural of “axis,” not synonym of “hatchets.”)

Even with different sets of questions, I come out pretty reliably — if not always strongly — as an ENTJ. It’s worth pointing out that Myers-Briggs-style assessments aren’t trying to say “who you are” as much as what your preferences tend to be.

I think the same characteristics can be found in screenwriting style. Different screenwriters have different preferences, some more strongly rooted than others.

The following is pretty top-of-my-head, so please chime in if you can think of better descriptors for what I’m talking about.

→ Literalist versus Impressionist

The Literalist believes that screenplays should only include what can be seen or heard, since that’s the only information which makes it up on the screen. The Impressionist is willing to bend or break the audio-visual barrier. He may write about things which cannot be filmed, or which reference things outside the world of the movie. (Such as, “Mendoza’s Ferrari is almost as hot as the one I’m going to buy when I sell this script for a million fucking dollars.”)

Personally, I’m pretty much a Literalist, although I’ll generally allow myself one sentence of unshootable information upon introducing a new character.

→ Completer versus Fragmenter

The Completer writes in complete sentences, like this one, with a subject and a verb. The Fragmenter? Nope. Won’t. Not his thing.

I’m a Completer. While you’ll occasionally find a fragment in my action sequences, I’m generally not a fan of rapid-fire word shrapnel. My aversion to fragments makes it very hard to do surgical rewrites of certain screenwriters’ work. I either have to adapt to their style — or more likely — rewrite every sentence of action.

→ Filmist versus Readerist

The Filmist writes screenplays that are intended for filmmakers, using specific film terminology (such as camera movement) and a minimum of fluff. The Filmist makes no concession to the non-professional. The Readerist writes for a more general audience, attempting to convey the feeling of cinematic devices without explicitly mentioning them, sometimes abstracting them to a literary “we see” and “we hear.”

I’m clearly a Readerist. I avoid mentioning the camera, and will even throw a “we” before a “CUT TO:” just so it reads a little better. But it’s worth noting that the classic screenplays, the ones that became the movies you loved, are almost all Filmist.

→ Show-er versus Teller

The Show-er attempts to include every important action in the story, while the Teller would rather forego some detail to convey the overall gist of a scene or sequence. Taken to the extreme, the Show-er would list every punch in a fight, while the Teller would leave it as: “They fight. Maddox wins.”

I’m a Show-er. For me, an action sequence is collection of a dozen smaller moments, and to breeze over them with a sentence or two is disrespectful. With a script, I’m trying evoke the feeling of having watched a movie, and that includes the action.

However, many of the top writers do compress action sequences, arguing that the only thing more boring than writing a long action sequence is reading one.

So, by my own system, I’d come out an LCPS LCRS. You?

Without their scripts in front of me, I’d put [James Cameron](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000116/) down as an LCFS. [Shane Black](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000948/) is probably an IFRT, but it’s been a while since I’ve read his stuff.

And again, this is all very work-in-progress. (I’ve already changed terms, messing up acronyms.) If you can think of better criteria for looking at screenwriting style (other than “good” and “hack”), please share.

Good Night, and Good Luck. And Good Job.

Meta

murrowOver the weekend, I went to see [Good Night, and Good Luck](http://imdb.com/title/tt0433383/) at [The Arclight](http://www.arclightcinemas.com/). I liked it a lot, not only for its strong performances, but also its complete disregard for anything approaching traditional narrative structure.

The screenplay, by [George Clooney](http://imdb.com/name/nm0000123/) and [Grant Heslov](http://imdb.com/name/nm0381416/), is full of good dialogue — much of it apparently drawn from transcripts. What it doesn’t have are other Syd Field essentials, such as character arcs, reversals, and clear motivations.

Stripped of such niceties as backstory and personal lives, the characters are left only with The Issue: challenging [Joseph McCarthy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy) and his destructive campaign against supposed Communists. Much like [The Crucible](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible) can be read as an allegory about McCarthyism, Clooney’s movie draws parallels with the current between the media and the government (replace “Communist” with “terrorist” et voilà¡). But to the script’s credit, it works without this “meta” aspect. Execution matters, and it in this case, it’s executed terrifically well.

In its thematic austerity, it feels more like a play than a movie — and the fact that it’s entirely interiors adds to that sense. Some people may not like the film for that reason, and that’s valid. But the claustrophobia worked for me. Had it gone outside, I think I would have applied more “movie” expectations to it. By keeping it close and focussed, I never worried about what I was missing.

What happened

Geek Alert, News

On Sunday morning, I woke up, fed my daughter, and read the Los Angeles Times. There was a good article about Joss Whedon’s Serenity, which managed to shoot in Los Angeles at a reasonable budget, largely because of smart planning.

Yet another reason to admire Joss Whedon.

I headed out the office to blog about this very article. But when I clicked over to johnaugust.com, I was alarmed to see that instead of the familiar brad icon, I was instead greeted by a colored screen and the text, “BunnySlippers ownz u.”

I’d been hacked.

I’ve had my share of technological frustrations with the site over the years, with comment spam and servers going down. But this was different. This was the first time an individual had broken into the site and destroyed things. It was a defacement, like finding someone had spray-painted graffiti on your house.

But it was also more than that — this hacker had gotten into the system, and rooted around. For all I knew, he was still there, waiting for me to fix things just so he could mess them up again. How much had he really gotten to? Had he been able to trace back from the server to my home computer, my Amazon account, my PayPal?

I was pissed, but I was also unnerved.

Had it been my house, rather than my website, I would have called a locksmith to change the locks. The digital equivalent was changing the passwords, which I immediately did. I also shot off a support ticket to the web hosting company, asking if they could help me figure out what the fuck happened.

Then I started cleaning up.

I’m a big believer in the [broken windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Windows) theory of policing, which stresses taking care of the small incidents of vandalism to forestall greater crime down the road. So the first thing I did was to replace the hacker’s splash screen with a simple “be back soon” page. (You can see it [here](http://johnaugust.com/sitedown.php).)

I then backed up my entire site, along with the database. From a quick look-through, it didn’t seem like any major damage had been done. I could have started the site up in a just a few minutes, but I was concerned that the same hacker could have brought the whole thing down again. I needed to know what he did.

I should explain now that the hacker’s name was not BunnySlippers. This is my [Josh Friedman-esque](http://hucksblog.blogspot.com) pseudonym for him, because I don’t want to give him the ego gratification of this long article using his chosen handle.

BunnySlippers sounds lame, so I think it fits.

I googled “BunnySlippers” and found he was listed on [Zone-H](http://www.zone-h.org/), a site that tracks defacements. It’s like a leader board for script kiddies. The ethics behind Zone-H are obviously questionable, but that’s not the issue here. What I quickly learned is that BunnySlippers had hit a lot of sites at exactly the same time as mine.

This was a huge relief. It meant that he wasn’t targeting my site out of some grudge or special interest. Rather, I just happened to have some vulnerability he was able to exploit. In all likelihood, he’d never even been to the site. He’d written a script that crawled around the internet, looking for a certain configuration to exploit.

But what was that vulnerability? I had a list of the other sites he’d hit, but they were all offline, like mine. But by using [archive.org](http://archive.org), I could pull up old versions of those sites. I quickly saw that most of them were using [WordPress](http://wordpress.org), the software that drives most of this site.

So I upgraded my WordPress installation to the most recent version. It was kind of painful. I’d held off doing it for a few months, because I knew it would break certain features, like comments and archives. (Although in fairness, the Archives were already pretty useless.)

In about an hour, I’d gotten the site working pretty well. There are still some significant things to fix, but it’s at least usable.

The question remains, will the site go down again? Maybe.

The truth is, I don’t think you can really stop someone who’s determined to hurt you. As I’ve learned from every horror movie, psychos are relentless. You shoot them, and they come right back — if not today, then in the unnecessary sequel. That’s part of the reason I’m not stomping my feet and cursing BunnySlipper’s name. Antagonizing him isn’t going to help.

With the help of my web hosting company, I’ve been able to learn a little bit more about my defacer, and how he did what he did.

Warning: From here, things get a little technical and jargon-laden. I’ll try to pretend I’m writing for CSI, where I immediately explain what the big words mean, even though the actual characters would never need to.

It turns out the weak spot was a file called “xmlrpc.php.” It’s a web service that helps move data, and is part of the standard WordPress installation. Its vulnerability had been [documented](http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/php-xmlrpc-remote-code-execution-vulnerability-affecting-popular-blogging-and-cms-platforms-like-wordpress-1512-and-lower-postnuke-drupal-b2evolution-tikiwiki-etc/), but I’d missed it. BunnySlippers had used it to overwrite the file “index.php,” the main file which generates all the pages on this site.

By tracing BunnySlipper’s [IP address](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ip_address), we can see that he’s Brazilian. (Or at least, his computer is in Brazil.) Following other threads, I’ve found pages that suggest it’s not a single person, but a crew of three people. Hidden in a subdirectory of a German website, you can even see their logo.

Yes, logo. That’s where the graffiti analogy really comes back into play. This guy, or group of guys, isn’t trying to break into air traffic control, or steal money from a Swiss bank account. They don’t perceive themselves as malicious. It’s about getting the respect of others in their community, and recognition for their incredible computer skills.

But do they deserve it?

Using a known exploit to deface the start page of johnaugust.com isn’t such a feather in one’s cap. Other than wasting my Sunday afternoon, it didn’t really accomplish much. There was no political agenda, no artistic statement. It was just annoying.

It was graffiti. And now it’s gone.