Though I am not directing the short film I wrote, I find myself dissecting and considering films and their stories from the inside out, more than I ever have before. I am watching as many short films as I can, all the while considering the film we are producing, and what needs to be done with our story and what must be avoided in order for the thing to work.Many of the short films I’ve viewed lately come that close to working, but then something makes me twitch or cringe ever so slightly, and it’s all over. For the rest of the film, I try to find redeemable elements within the story, but there is no redeeming the false moment my physical being rejected. My being cannot accept overt falseness. My desire to be a screenwriter/filmmaker wants to forgive the filmmaker, so I might be forgiven, too, I suppose. But then again, I think it would be better to demand more of our selves, rather than crossing our fingers and hoping for a pass.
After watching a good, first time film by Owen Wilson's and Wes Anderson's, BOTTLE ROCKET, I concocted a list of my perceptions of the differences between a good film and a bad film. I will spare you the redundancy and length of my original list but at it’s core, here it is:
Good Film: Not one moment, not one look, sigh, gasp, is ever wasted. Nothing is in the frame or kept that doesn't apply to the moment.
Bad Film: have gratuitous "stuff" that means nothing. It seems like some things are there, because the director thought it looked "cool."
Good Film: No cheese. Characters are genuine. Good actors/characters don't know what they are going to say, do or how they are going to react -- they just react. They say what they need to say within the reality of the moment.
Bad Film: Limburger Cheese. Makes the audience cringe, maybe only bits at a time, but that’s like the kiss of doom for a story. Characters are two-dimensional. Nothing the actor does is organic or within the moment. Pass-the-salt scenes are performed as though they are only pass-the-salt scenes. The actor/director thinks the moment is unimportant, and so it is.
But the stinky cheese comes within the big moments: The audience is bored with the trivial and then Whammo – all the stops are pulled out for the Big Important Scene, i.e. The Climax. Yuck. It’s like wanting love from a whore. Love wasn’t there when the money was exchanged. Love won’t be there when the climax comes. The scene is cheese. The film is false.
Good Films: keep the audience watching. The audience is riveted from O to 120 minutes and beyond into the credits.
Bad Films: bore the audience. If the film is only 3 minutes long -- it can still be boring and suck. If the film is 120 minutes long, and ten minutes into the film, the audience is bored, that is a scene that should have been cut.
There are no incidental, meaningless moments. No just "for art’s sake" crap. This is true in life, but it is terribly obvious on film. Every moment counts. Even if the character is doing nothing but pouring a cup of coffee -- the audience should feel the dramatic tension underlying the seemingly small moment.
Oh, and there had better be a string of tension, pulled taut, from beginning to end.
My rule # 1: If it feels like cheese, or makes me cringe even the teensiest bit, it's cheese.
Do it again, fix it, change the line -- make the cheese go away.
So, what can I do to insure this little short of mine, uh, ours will be good, and won’t stink of cheese?
Nothing. It’s out of my hands. I send, Jon, who is directing, list after list of things to think about and consider, but if he chooses to ignore my lists – that’s his prerogative. He has his own ideas about the story far beyond mine -- at least I hope so. Now my story is in his care. All that matters at this point is that it is coming together. If people hate it or love it – it doesn’t matter. We will be one step beyond theory and opinion. We will have learned something, becoming real ourselves simply by the Doing.
