I’ll be back at Paramount’s Van Ness gate Monday at 5:30 a.m. I suspect I’ll be moving to other studios on other days.
The History Boys
I saw Alan Bennett’s The History Boys yesterday at the Ahmanson, and liked it quite a lot.
I think it’s important for a screenwriter to keep up with current plays, because the two art forms continue to influence each other. For example, at least in this staging, many pieces of connective tissue were pre-shot on video as montages, letting the story get off the stage for brief moments. There was also a flash-forward that would seem familiar to anyone who saw the third season finale of Lost.
A writer can get away with quite a few things on stage that are tough to pull off in movies. In the second act, a character remarks to the audience that since things seem to be going so well for everyone, the rules of dramatic irony dictate a sudden reversal. Which of course comes.1
A more clever use of dramatic liberty is a scene in which one teacher tells another about a conversation he just had with a student. The conversation and the re-telling of the conversation take place simultaneously. It makes sense on the stage. It would be a mess on film.2
Perhaps because they’re not photographed, plays take place in less naturalistic universes. They’re impressionist. So you forgive — barely — a scene in which students enter class, take their seats, have a heated discuss, and are then dismissed by the class bell. I don’t know much about the British school system, but I feel certain that their class periods are longer than five minutes.
The class bell rings a lot, frankly. I suppose that’s because the stage relies on entrances and exits, but it gets repetitious. But it’s a minor complaint, and a play worth checking out.
- In script jargon, this is called “hanging a lantern on it.” You address the plausibility problem by highlighting it. ↩
- The big problem isn’t with continuity of time — film viewers have gotten quite a bit more sophisticated in that regard. The challenge is that a scene in a movie takes place in a distinct location: you’re either in the classroom or the teachers’ lounge. On stage, the scene can be in both places at once because the audience is creating the environments internally. ↩
Updates and changes
I’m moving a few things around at the site, so there may be some broken links and other navigational hiccups for the next day or two.
Strike, day 25
I nearly went over to Burbank to join colleagues at the Gay Gate (NBC), but decided to stay local at Paramount. Irene, a fixture on the 5:30 a.m. shift, pointed out that the key to passing three hours is to have at least two in-depth conversations. As a group, we never reached consensus on our discussion of which was more miserable — filming in rain, or filming in snow — but there was unanimity that a certain blonde actress in her 40’s is an evil megalomaniac who should be avoided at all costs.
Jonathan Auxier, a screenwriter and novelist from Vancouver,1 came seeking advice about adaptations. Samantha Goodman told tales of the Nurses pilot she did last year. Al Gough and I talked comic book properties. And like that, it was done.
There’s no picketing scheduled for tomorrow.
One of my strike captains2 forwarded a link to a YouTube video that I resisted clicking for many hours. Based on the still frame, it was clearly a white guy (WGA Boi) rapping about the WGA strike. That combination felt insurmountably terrible. Even with a shield of irony, I predicted myself being annoyed or embarrassed by its existence. But too my surprise, the video is neither annoying or embarrassing. It threads a needle of impossible danger.
I got a Housewife but she ain’t Desperate
‘Cuz she knows that Marc Cherry is handlin’ shit
See it here.