John August

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Watching OTMM

Follow Up, Indie

One Too Many Mornings, the Sundance movie I [wrote about last week](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/one-too-many-mornings), just debuted at Park City and online. I watched it — the $9.99 HD download — and would recommend it to many readers of this blog. It’s lo-fi funny, a mumblecore Swingers, with a refreshingly clear sense of what it is.

The movie’s achievably ambitious. The team figured out exactly what assets they had, and how to maximize those strengths. More crucially, they sliced away a lot of the cruft that usually comes along with shaggy indie films. There are no guns, no teary poems, no bad fathers. Its protagonists are a wuss and an asshole, but the script lets them be more than that.

And it looks great, largely thanks to its black and white photography.

Could anyone pick up a camera and make a movie like this? No. There’s talent required. But the film is great example of how little actual money you need to make an honest-to-God movie.

The film’s distribution strategy — allowing viewers to [buy it online](http://www.onetoomanymornings.com/), or [rent it on YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK91Gsx1ePE) — makes it simple for aspiring filmmakers to check it out.

“No signal” is the new air duct

Genres, Video, Words on the page

This terrific compilation clip by [FourFour](http://fourfour.typepad.com)’s Rich Juzwiak demonstrates what a hoary cliché it has become to explain why movie characters aren’t using their cell phones.

I plead guilty, having used the “signal goes away” variation as a major element in Part Three of The Nines. (I feel both disappointment and relief to have not made the cut.)

Unlike the [air duct cliché](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/air-vents-are-for-air), the cell phone problem can’t be solved by a simple vow of chastity. Cell phones are real things people use every day, so ignoring them is rarely an option for a movie set present day.

Don’t write movies in which characters would call for help. That’s probably the best advice I can offer.

Now that’s a gunfight

Genres, Words on the page

I’m busy working on Preacher, and it’s no spoiler to say that it features a gunfight or two. Last night, I [twittered to ask](http://twitter.com/johnaugust/status/2627321991) what people’s favorite gunfights were, Western or otherwise.

I got a lot of replies, but one name that kept coming up was Michael Mann. He consistently finds ways to send thousands of bullets flying while acknowledging the rules of physics. ((I have nothing against impossible gunfights like in The Matrix, Equilibrium or Wanted, but I’m trying to keep to keep this one a bit more grounded.))

I haven’t seen Public Enemies yet, but this clip shows the feeling he creates:

But when you’re talking about Michael Mann gunfights, you really have to discuss Heat. Here’s the showstopper:

I looked up Mann’s [screenplay for Heat](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Heat.pdf), to see what that looked like on the page.

Mann uses a lot of sluglines and short sentences to create the tempo of the fight. It’s chaos, and that’s reflected in the writing. He’s inconsistent with scene headers, and not especially concerned with establishing geography.

It doesn’t matter: action writing needs to create the feeling of an action sequence, not choreograph each bullet.

Bosko’s moving 90 degrees to the right, crossing the street. There would be no, there was no, and there never is any, warning. Neil Hanna and Schwartz with 12- gauges OPEN FIRE. World War III ERUPTS. Now we hear distant POLICE SIRENS.

CHRIS

is hit in the neck.

NEIL’S

FIRING 3-SHOT BURSTS that blow up Schwartz and a lamppost and hit a woman who falls over her shopping cart, shrieking. Hanna’s behind the lamppost.

BOSKO

across the street with his AR-180, opens up on the station wagon which takes HITS. A BLACK AND WHITE slides sideways and COP #1 with a shotgun runs across the street hollering at kids who stop and stare and drop school books.

COP # 1

Drop! Drop down!

CERRITO

over the station wagon roof FIRES a BURST at Bosko, then swings onto Cop #1 and fires, killing him. Cerrito jumps into the wagon.

THE STREET – WIDE: A BUS

The driver panics and slams on his brakes and his bus full of people stalls in the combat zone between Bosko and the wagon.

BOSKO (O.S.)

(screams)

Get the bus out of here...

NEIL

shielded by the green bag of money which has taken hits, FIRES at Hanna and backs to Chris.

HANNA

pulls Schwartz to cover.

CHRIS

dazed – holding his bleeding neck while Neil FIRES into the parking lot...

PARKING LOT

...hitting Casals getting out of his car. Casals sits down as if stunned.

MAN

pulling his car out of the lot ducks behind the wheel and crashes it into a parked car.

EXT. BANK – CERRITO

CERRITO

(to Neil)

C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!

Neil can’t rake it through the incoming FIRE from Hanna and Cop #2 to the station wagon and Cerrito and knows it.

NEIL

(to Breedan and Cerrito)

Go!! Go!!

ON STATION WAGON

Breedan floors it.

HANNA

re-emerges, kneels and PUMPS SHOTS into the station wagon.

BOSKO

rounds the bus with the AR-180 and OPENS UP

STATION WAGON

draws everyone’s FIRE. Breedan ducks and pilots it through the gauntlet.

NEIL

has taken off down the sidewalk, supporting Chris. TIGHTEN. He runs in among crowds of civilians. He knocks over a man, breaks through. People are screaming, staring, shocked.

INT. STATION WAGON – BREEDAN

getting BLOWN APART by Hanna, Bosko, and Cop #2 falls over the wheel and then is thrown back.

EXT. STREET – STATION WAGON

tires are BLOWN OUT.

It spins across the street on steel rims and crashes sideways into a parked car on the east side of Hawthorne.

INT. STATION WAGON – CERRITO

shot three times, holds his abdomen and bails, returning FIRE. Breedan, like a rag doll is half over into the rear seat and still being hit by more rounds. We HOLD on David Breedan. He’s dead.

CUT TO:

EXT. SIDE STREET – CERRITO

east up a side street past people who stand on their lawns and stare – traumatized.

WIDER

Bosko and Cop #3 chase Cerrito. Cerrito FIRES a long BURST. They can’t fire back because of the people.

CUT TO:

EXT. SAFEWAY – TRACKING NEIL + CHRIS – DAY

and the money – running, skipping and dodging past all manner of pedestrians, newspaper coin boxes, fruit vendors and parking meters. People dodge, scream and fall down. It’s chaos.

TRACKING HANNA

a half block behind, chasing Neil – pushing through the same people.

HANNA

(shouts at pedestrians)

Get down! Get down!

EXT. SAFEWAY PARKING LOT – NEIL + CHRIS

Neil – supporting Chris – throws a lady, who was getting out, back into her Olds Cutlass. He dumps Chris and the money in the back seat and turns on Hanna.

NEIL

extends the collapsible stock braces on the roof for accuracy and FIRES over the roof of other cars and through people at Hanna closing in 5o yards away.

CUT TO:

EXT. SAFEWAY – HANNA + CIVILIANS

who panic. SHOOTING. Windows EXPLODE. A lady holds her ears and shrieks. A newspaper coin box SHATTERS. A man’s bag of groceries explode milk and eggs everywhere. He goes down.

HANNA

doesn’t have a clear shot and drops, dragging people down with him.

NEIL

behind the wheel – burns rubber pulling out of the lot over curbstones and through a fence into the alley.

For another example of scripting a gunfight, I’d point you back to the Alaska pilot. You can see the gunfight [here](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/alaska-the-satchel-boy), and read the script in the [Library](http://johnaugust.com/library).

The labs, day four

Sundance

hikeTwo meetings, a good hike and a chocolate shake made for a good day at the Sundance lab, my last full day before flying home tomorrow afternoon.

[John Gatins](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0309691/) made a good point today about his work and his job. “His work” is writing, and “his job” is all the attendant meetings and drama it takes to get his work on the screen. It’s a helpful distinction, one I often make between the craft of screenwriting (the words on the page) and the profession of screenwriting (making a living at it).

As part of a partnership with YouTube, a crew has been shooting interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff with the filmmakers. I’ll be putting up those links as they come.