I’m in Manhattan, about a block away from today’s actually-not-a-bomb scare. So I can verify that in real life, people do say this phrase.
But in movies, maybe they shouldn’t anymore.
/via Scott Murphy
QandA
Do you tip studio valets?
I don’t know what to do with the valet guys at studios when I go in for meetings. Do I tip them? How much?
— Van
I follow the keys rule: If at any point they are touching my car keys, I tip them a buck or two at the end. But I never know whether they expect it.
When you’re valet parking at a restaurant or an office building, you tip. You’re paying for parking, so it seems natural to tip the guy who brings your car back. It’s a pretty thankless job, so a small monetary acknowledgement of their efforts feels right.
But it’s more ambiguous when you’re on a studio lot. You’re not paying to park there. Generally, the only reason studio lots have valets is because they’re trying to fit more cars than the parking lot can really accommodate.
Yes, they’re providing a service, but so is the executive’s assistant who is bringing me water, and it would be weird to tip her.
I guess I tip studio valets because it’s the same job no matter where they’re doing it. The guy parking cars on a studio lot is functionally the same guy doing it for a restaurant. I would hope he’s getting paid better, but I don’t know. So I tip him.
To my recollection, Sony used to have a sign saying tips were not accepted — but then the sign went away. And at times, even fancy screenwriters get banished to the dungeon of self-parking across the street at the plaza, so I’m feeling flush and happy any time I can drive through the Madison gate.
At Warners, I follow the keys rule. The valets at the executive building will often point you to a spot rather than take your car, particularly later in the afternoon.
Dreamworks has a tiny parking lot, but the guys in charge feel like security rather than valets, so it would be odd to tip them.
As far as agencies, I tip at UTA. If I can help it, I never park at CAA. It’s the most expensive garage in Los Angeles. When parking costs more than lunch, something’s wrong.
Don’t make the feature version of your short
I had coffee today with a writer-director whose acclaimed short film got him many awards and meetings all over town. And deservedly: it’s terrific, a labor of love that took several years to make.
He said he was finishing up the screenplay for the feature version. I told him to focus on something else instead. You shouldn’t make the feature version of your short.
This seems like terrible advice. After all, it’s easy to think of several acclaimed filmmakers who expanded upon their short films, including Neill Blomkamp and George Lucas.
But having worked with many emerging filmmakers through the Sundance Institute and other programs, I’ve encountered a lot of [silent evidence](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/silent-evidence) that suggests it’s a pretty bad idea. ((Silent evidence: You’re only seeing the movies that got made and released, not the ones that didn’t.))
1. **Great shorts are great and short.** The perfect haiku isn’t improved by rewriting it as a sonnet.
2. **You will burn out on the idea.** Having already made the short, do you want to spend several more years making it again?
3. **Show what else you can do.** A career isn’t one movie, or one idea. Even if you make the movie and it turns out great, you’ve still only told one story so far in your career.
4. **Safety is paralysis.** It’s less intimidating to expand on something familiar. But you need to push against your boundaries.
Your first feature project should ideally be in the same class or genre as your acclaimed short, but not a retread. If you made a charming short about blind leprechauns, write a feature about kleptomaniac crows. Let the connection between projects be your ambition and sensibility, not a single storyline.
Go was originally written to be a short film — but we never shot it. Had the short version been made, I can’t imagine going back to write the full thing. I would have been too hamstrung by my original choices, and the scenes that had already been shot.
Worse, I wouldn’t have felt the same things the second time through. You don’t get your first kiss twice.
Writing for 3-D
As more of our big summer movies go 3-D, Steve Zeitchik wonders [how it affects screenwriting](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-3ddirector-20100425,0,2986021.story):
> But even as Hollywood goes z-axis crazy, many directors and writers are questioning the stampede. While they express a general enthusiasm for the form, they say executives don’t always grasp all the complexities of adding that extra dimension. As the 3-D storm continues to gather, they point out that 3-D will affect much more than whether a filmgoer picks up a pair of glasses: It will change what films get made, and even the very nature of cinematic storytelling.
I think that’s overstating it.
In the short term, yes, the rush towards 3-D may affect the kinds of movies that get greenlit. But the underlying “nature of cinematic storytelling” doesn’t tend to change much even in the face of tremendous technical innovations. Color and widescreen were both huge changes, but their impact on story and screenwriters were very minor. (Sync sound was obviously a Very Big Deal, since it allowed characters to speak.)
I’m currently writing a film which is designed to be black-and-white and 3-D. Reading the script, you’d never know it. A few times, I’ve had to remind myself not to describe things as red. But beyond a joke at the outset, I never needed to acknowledge the 3-D — just as I never mention the dolly or color-timing in scene description.
For screenwriters, 3-D is something that may come up in a pitch, but will have very little impact on the written word.