This from Daniel Wallace, the author of Big Fish:
Big Fish is taking over a small town in Alabama (link). And in this spirit when, just the other day, someone caught another one of those big catfish you hear about. They took it to the hospital and put it under a catscan. I am not making this up. Here is the proof just sent to me. A catfish, catscanned.
Had there been a wedding ring in that second image, I would have called bullshit.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the production notes for The Nines. The document will end up being about 20 pages, detailing the backstory of how the movie got made, from inspiration through editing, along with everyone’s bios. It’s part of the press kit for the film, helping the journalists at Sundance remember who the hell was in the movie they saw three days ago.
Ultimately, we’ll end up formatting the notes in Word or Pages, but for raw text I lean heavily on TextMate, which is what I use for all of the writing for the site. It’s unbelievably powerful, if occasionally maddening.
It’s deliberately, refreshingly bare-bones and retro. When you open a window, it takes over your entire screen, including the menu bar. All you see is the words, complete with a blinking cursor. Perhaps nostalgic for my years writing on an old Atari, I’ve chosen a dark blue background with almost-white 18 pt. Courier. Give me a kneeling chair and a dot-matrix printer and I’m in junior high again.
Other writing applications are picking up this full-screen meme — honestly, it’s hard to figure out why it took so long. Apple’s Pro apps (Final Cut Pro, Aperture) have had no qualms grabbing every available pixel of real estate, although they don’t completely banish the common interface elements. (Except for Shake, which also requires a blood sacrifice to Ba’al.)
The big-screen treatment is the digital equivalent of closing the kitchen door when company comes over: Never mind the mess in the sink, let’s have a nice dinner.
WriteRoom 2.0 is in beta, but there’s nothing spectacularly different or better than plain old 1.0. Either version is worth checking out.
As for the inevitable question: Could I write a script with it?
Yes, no, maybe.
I’ve actually had conversations with two gurus of web markup about creating a simplified screenplay markup that could be imported into “real” screenwriting applications like Final Draft. WriteRoom and its ilk support tabs and external scripts, so it’s conceivable to build a system like ollieman’s screenwriting with TextMate bundle.
But for now, I have an actual paid rewrite to be doing, and it’s a Final Draft job. Sigh.
Today’s LA Times has a lengthy article about Clive Cussler’s lawsuit over SAHARA. It’s a fun, gossipy read, partially because I’ve had beers with many of the people involved:
For those who don’t have time to read the article, I’ll summarize the moral: be very careful when adapting the work of living authors. Particularly when they go on about how much they hate Hollywood.
Cussler had unprecedented and frankly unconscionable control over the adaptation. He bitched and bullied and couldn’t be placated. And if the resulting movie was less-than-stellar, well Mr. Cussler, three fingers are pointing back at you.
But on another level, I get it. Screenwriters are used to seeing their material altered, mangled and reinterpreted. Screenwriting is part of a process, and the craft can only support medium-sized egos.
The novelist, on the other hand, is God. And God doesn’t like to be told he’s a crotchety old jerk who’s been coasting on a mediocre franchise for years. I sympathize with Cussler’s dilemma: he wanted a big movie to bring new readers to his books, without any risk of the cinematic version replacing his literary one. Dirk Pitt has black hair, damnit! It says so here on page two! He wanted Hollywood on his terms.
Have fun with that lawsuit, Mr. Cussler.
My own experiences with adaptations have been more positive. (How couldn’t they be?)
For A WRINKLE IN TIME, Madeleine L’Engel functioned through a trusted producer, and while I had some significant disagreements over what plot points really needed to stay or go, at least I wasn’t arguing with the author. BIG FISH was a love fest from the start, with author Daniel Wallace so intrigued by the screenplay form that he became a screenwriter himself. And CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY was made with the blessing of — and little interference from — the Roald Dahl estate.
What lessons should an aspiring screenwriter take from the SAHARA debacle? For starters, remember that the unhappy stories get press simply because of the train-wreck factor. Most times, the author and screenwriter have a decent relationship — if they have one at all. A smart novelist remembers that the existence of a movie doesn’t change anything about the book sold at Barnes and Noble. And the smart screenwriter remembers to praise the author at the press junket.
The good folks at Sundance just sent out the screening times and locations for The Nines. Their [website](http://festival.sundance.org/2007/festival/festschedule.aspx) doesn’t show the schedule yet, but I presume it will be up soon.
**Sun. Jan 21, 9:30 pm**
Eccles, Park City
**Mon. Jan 22, 8:30 am**
Prospector, Park City
**Tue. Jan 23, 9:00 pm**
Sundance Village
**Sun. Jan 28, 3:30 pm**
Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City
The first Sunday is the premiere, and by far the largest theater — the same place we premiered Go in 1999. That’s the place to be if you want to see John hyperventilate. The subsequent screenings are generally calmer and more intimate, though I don’t know how intimate I’ll feel like being at 8:30 in the morning with a hangover.