John August

Search Results for: characters

Inner struggle is not plot

QandA, Story and Plot

questionmarkIt seems a lot of my scripts revolve around a character’s inner struggle and their inner demons creating destructive physical reactions (acting out). My question is: What if the main character’s motivation is finding their way because they are lost? Isn’t this a purely mental obstacle?

I know you say to make these obstacles physical and simple but this is the complete opposite. Any help would be appreciated.

— Dallas
Staten Island, NY

Write a book. Or a song. Or a poem.

Sure, many great movies feature characters struggling against their demons, or attempting to find themselves. But it’s invariably played as subtext against a more external conflict — the one that actually drives the plot. You need to be able to point the camera at something.

There’s nothing wrong with internal struggle. Just pick a medium that can handle it.

Crowdediting The Nines

Projects, The Nines

Norman Hollyn, head of the editing track at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, has a [blog post up](http://filmindustrybloggers.com/theeditor/2009/04/10/crowdediting-working-with-a-lot-of-other-people/) about “crowd-editing,” the post-production equivalent of crowdsourcing.

> Right now, the Advanced Editing class at USC is made up of 11 students who have each taken the dailies of the feature film THE NINES (the really interesting and compelling, Ryan Reynolds/Hope Davis/Melissa McCarthy film directed by John August of whom I’ve spoken about a number of times) and are cutting it into an alternate version of that feature film. I assigned a different section to each of the 11 back in January.

> All of them read the script and we talked about the plot, the characters, the subtext, the arc of the story — in short, all of the things that go into editing the film. We were visited by John and his editor, Doug Crise. Then the students started cutting together the film, one scene at a time. We watched scenes in class and I gave notes, along with the class. At one point, about six weeks ago, we finally had the entire film assembled and watched it in class as a full-length first cut of a feature film and stepped back to critique it.

This is the cut I now have on DVD, which I’ll watch this weekend. I’m fascinated and a little terrified to see what they’ve done.

As I said when I debuted the film at Sundance in 2007, I would like to make all the source material for anyone who wants to recut it, assuming legal and logistical hurdles can be overcome. The [trailer competition](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/trailer-winners) was a start. This semester’s project at USC has been another helpful trial run.

Referring to famous people

Directors, QandA, Rights and Copyright

questionmarkI’m writing a comedy where two main characters are discussing Michael Bay films. One hates the man and his work, the other is more neutral.

Is this okay and considered “fair”, to talk/discuss/rant about a person like Michael Bay (or Uwe Boll, or Nicholas Cage etc.)? Do you need permission from them?

— James

Feel free to have your characters discuss Michael Bay. Say good things; say bad things; say what you want. It’s pretty hard to cross into libel territory when you just have dialogue about somebody famous like Mr. Bay. Consider what South Park or Family Guy get away with every week.

Is it “fair?” I’d say that as long as it’s funny, you’re fine. When it stops being funny and is simply mean-spirited, you risk alienating your reader. Go and The Nines refer to some real people, not always in a flattering way, and I’ve gotten no objections.

Where you get into trouble is when you take potshots at someone who is not a public figure, like that weird girl in health class. Not only is it legally unwise to call out Millie Walker by name, it’s also unconscionably lame. So don’t do that.

Back to Mr. Bay for a sec: Keep in mind that there’s a difference between referring to a real person in a movie and making a movie about that person.

If you were writing a bio-pic of Michael Bay (Born in Slow Motion: The Michael Bay Story), you would need either his cooperation or significant legal reassurance that whatever protections you were counting on (public record, parody, whatever) could really hold up in court.

Gender-specific douchery

Video, Words on the page

In this [YouTube clip](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWUcVj31QaM&feature=PlayList&p=FC7BDC8774187EAE&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=53), Jonathan Coulton gives some backstory on the Portal videogame before performing “Still Alive.”

COULTON

This song is sung by one of the characters in the game. She’s an artificial intelligence, and she’s kind of an asshole.

That got a laugh, and for good reason: we so rarely refer to women as assholes.

And I don’t really know why. There are many gender-specific terms for hateful men and women, so it’s surprising that one which should be equally-applicable is almost always used for men only.

And yes, I got the sheet music to “Still Alive.”