Charlie's Angels

Go, while you can get it

February 28, 2012 Charlie's Angels, Go, News

The deal between Starz and Netflix expires March 1st, so if you have any titles you’re eager to watch online, get cracking before they disappear.

You can see a list of what’s going to be lost here.

Among my movies, that includes Go and the first Charlie’s Angels. The Nines and Titan A.E. will still be available.

When might Go come back to Netflix? Or for that matter, Corpse Bride? I have no idea. Filmmakers get no advance warning, so if you see a film of mine suddenly become available, let me know.

Writing fight scenes

July 19, 2011 Charlie's Angels, QandA, Words on the page

How much should one describe a fight scene in a screenplay? How specific should you get? What do you leave for the director/choreographer to figure out?

— Evan

Always remember that you’re writing a movie, not a screenplay. Even though you only have words at your disposal, you’re trying to create the experience of watching a movie.

When two characters are talking, that’s easy. Dialogue is straightforward.

When two characters are fighting, that’s hard. Action sequences are the most difficult and least rewarding things a screenwriter writes, but they’re essential to many movies.

I’d direct your attention first to a scriptcast I recorded: Writing better action.

My advice there applies to any situation in which characters are running around, doing things.

Keep sentences short.

Use sluglines to break things up.

Keep our attention so we’re not tempted to skim.

When you have two characters fighting, you’re not going to write every punch. Rather, you need to get specific on how this fight feels different than every other movie fight. What is it about the style, the environment, the stakes and the story that makes this battle unique to this movie and this moment?

The original script for the 2001 Charlie’s Angels sequel (then called Charlie’s Angels Forever) called for Alex (Lucy Liu) and The Thin Man (Crispin Glover) team up in a generic suburban house in Las Vegas.

Here’s what the minimal version of the scene would look like:

INT. HOUSE – DAY

Alex and The Thin Man take on a dozen CARULLO FAMILY THUGS, smashing the house apart in the process.

When every goon is down, Alex disarms The Thin Man. A tense moment, then they suddenly kiss.

ALEX

Who are you?

It’s short, and you’ll find examples like this in many screenplays, including some that have been produced. But it’s cripplingly unspecific. As readers, we have no idea what we’d actually see on the screen.

Will it be scary? Goofy? Gruesome? Realistic?

The actual scene I wrote was a lot longer:

INT. BEDROOM – DAY

TWO THUGS open the closet doors, pawing through racks of dresses as they look for their prey. But they haven’t yet checked

UNDER THE BED,

where a knife-wielding hand suddenly lashes out, cutting one thug’s Achille’s tendons. The goon SCREAMS as he falls. Gun in hand, his partner flips back the comforter to carefully look underneath.

But there’s no one there.

Confused, he glances up just in time to see the Thin Man kick him across the face.

Hearing the commotion, two more GOONS crowd into the room.

Ripping the clotheshanger pole from the closet, the Thin Man uses it as a quarterstaff. Not only does he take down those two thugs, he also drives it

THROUGH THE WALL

to peg ANOTHER GUY in the hallway.

INT. KITCHEN – DAY

Still holding Chico the Chihuahua, Alex takes on one THUG after another, using all the tools at her disposal. One guy gets hit with the freezer door, while another gets a face full of flour and a frying pan to the head.

Alex may not be much of a cook, but she’s great in the kitchen.

Needing both hands free, Alex puts Chico into a ceramic cookie jar. A beat later, the dog pokes his head out from under the lid, wanting to watch the fight.

Rolling back over the counter, Alex swings a hanging plant to knock out a pursuer. Be it a waffle iron, rolling pin or barbecue tong, anything Alex touches becomes a weapon.

INT. BATHROOM – DAY

A THUG goes flying through the glass shower door, which SHATTERS. Wrapping his hand in a towel, the Thin Man grabs a large shard and uses it as a glass sword.

INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY

On the table, the iMac’s progress bar shows that Betty’s interminable download is nearly complete. Alex faces two more thugs. She kicks one through the wall. Just then we hear...

AOL VOICE

File’s done!

Alex picks up the iMac and SMASHES it into the second thug, who goes down. Just when she thinks she’s finished, she hears a

SHOTGUN PUMPING

behind her. She turns to face one last thug, the LEADER. He keeps both barrels trained on her.

THUG LEADER

Kung-fu this, bitch.

Alex knows she’s toast. But just then, we hear a THWICK!

The cut was so fast we didn’t really see it, but then the Thug Leader’s head separates from his body. Both parts fall, revealing

THE THIN MAN,

who carries his improvised glass sword, now blood-stained.

Half a beat, then Alex rushes him. She spin-kicks and SHATTERS his sword, which falls to pieces on the floor.

Both unarmed and extremely dangerous, Alex and the Thin Man stare at each other, face-to-face, not sure what happens next.

Suddenly he grabs her, pulling her in for

A PASSIONATE KISS.

She doesn’t fight it -- at least not at first. But then the adrenaline wears off, and she pushes free.

ALEX

Who are you?

While I’ve included a lot of specific ideas about what kinds of things we’d see (shower doors, closet rods), I’ve left a lot of room for the director and fight choreographer to be creative (“Be it a waffle iron, rolling pin or barbecue tong, anything Alex touches becomes a weapon.”).

The scene as written gives a sense of what the final scene will feel like, even if a lot of the details change. That’s what you should be aiming for in a fight sequence.

WTF is a beat sheet?

July 19, 2010 Charlie's Angels, Ops, Projects, QandA, Treatments

First, thanks for telling me to buy a new car. (I did.) Second, what the frak is a beat sheet?

I’ve taken screenwriting, short-story writing, and novel writing classes. I’ve taken filmmaking classes. I’ve read several writing manuals. Writers and professors all love to talk about the importance of beat sheets. While they are apparently the single most important thing a writer can ever do, they never show examples. And I’ve heard multiple definitions, from a one-sentence description of each scene to a detailed breakdown of every action in the script.

I’m beginning to suspect conspiracy. I don’t think anybody really uses beat sheets. They claim to in order to sound responsible, much like the myth of flossing. Can you post an example of a beat sheet and blow this mystery out of the water?

— Nick T.

Beat sheets are a form of outline. Each major plot point gets its own bullet point (or occasionally, a number). That’s it.

They can be a helpful way of discussing the storyline of a movie.

PRODUCER

What if Shoe and Dog’s dance number at Marvin Gardens came before Race Car discovered the Community Chest? We could get rid of these three beats, including Top Hat and Thimble’s knife fight.

SCREENWRITER

Did you know Inception wasn’t based on anything?

In the Library, you can see a minimal beat sheet that Jordan Mechner and I did for our never-shot pilot Ops. It includes a column showing which characters are in any given scene, and which one of us was going to write it.

For the first Charlie’s Angels, I did a series of beat sheets as we debated and formulated. This one shows a pretty close approximation of what I ended up writing for the first draft. Numbering the beats ended up being a huge help for conference calls.

(Trivia: You’ll notice there’s a villain character named “Lucy Liu,” which far predates the actual Lucy Liu being involved with the movie. That villain character was ultimately played by Kelly Lynch, while Lucy was later cast as the third angel.)

Note that beat sheets are also commonly written after there is a draft of a screenplay. I’ve asked my assistants to do a beat sheet of a script I’m about to begin rewriting so that I’ll have a roadmap of how things are arranged.

Monsterpocalypse, and why some projects get announced (and others don’t)

June 10, 2010 Big Fish, Charlie's Angels, Monsterpocalypse, Projects

As announced today, I’m going to be writing a big movie version of Monsterpocalypse for DreamWorks, based on Matt Wilson’s kaiju-themed giant-monsters-smashing things extravaganza.

Wilson’s creation — published by Privateer Press — imagines the modern world under siege by super-sized creatures of every stripe. Giant apes, terrasaurs, planet-eating extraterrestrials? Check, check and check.

Plus robots. C’mon. You need robots.

Many of the elements are still being locked down, so there’s obviously a lot I can’t say about the movie yet: the plot, the players, what the humans are doing in all of this. Will every possible monster be in it? Logic would say no, but I can’t give you a list.

What I can talk about is why the project is getting announced today, while so many others are kept under wraps.

Shouts and whispers

Most of the projects I work on stay under the radar until very close to production. That’s intentional. There are huge advantages to being out of the spotlight.

Particularly with properties that invite media and/or fanboy speculation, there is a real risk of putting the cart before the horse, and having to manage public perception before even finishing the first draft.

That was certainly the case with Charlie’s Angels. From the moment Drew Barrymore signed on, we were constantly battling expectations and fabrications about what a disaster the movie was going to be. Gossips were convinced the actresses would fight, because everyone knows you can’t have more than one female character in a movie. It was an exhausting part of an already difficult project.

Compare that with Big Fish, which over the course of its long gestation had much bigger directors (Spielberg, Burton) but a lot more breathing room. No one said a thing about Big Fish until the trailer. That let us focus on making the movie.

As an extreme example, consider Cloverfield. Secrecy served that movie well.

Another great advantage to keeping a project out of the public eye is the fact that most movies never happen. I’ve got a sizable list of those never-weres, including Tarzan, Shazam, Barbarella, Fantasy Island and Thief of Always. All were announced in the trades. All went through multiple drafts. None of them got made. But they still linger on as “what’s going on with…” questions whenever I do interviews.

So why not play it low and quiet with Monsterpocalypse?

Because there was simply no way to keep a lid on it. As detailed in the article, Monsterpocalypse potentially affects many other tentpole movies at other studios in a way that’s certainly newsworthy. And while I’m hardly the biggest element in this, Monsterpocalypse will take me off the market for a year or so, and make it pretty much impossible for me to direct a movie in the near future.

So an article was going to be written regardless. Announcing the project allowed DreamWorks the chance to have some control over how the story got out. That’s the main and best reason to announce something.

Monsterpocalypse has been the fastest a movie has come together in my career, and I’m ridiculously excited to start writing it. But I’m also ridiculously excited to be writing the other things I’m working on, most of which have been kept very quiet.