writing and insomnia and Southland, oh my!
Aug. 4th, 2009 04:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Can't sleep! Probably because I am on vampire time. And because I walked over to Tom's Restaurant and had like three cups of coffee and a bunch of greasy food at midnight while I tried to figure out my screenplay.
Which I guess I could stand to talk about some more. I'm in this screenwriting class about adapting prose into screenplays, which is actually very enjoyable. We pick a short story and then adapt it twice -- once faithfully or closely, and the second time liberally. I chose Neil Gaiman's "We Can Get Them For You Wholesale," and I've done the former, aside from a few edits I want to make. The second run has been giving me problems; I was going to take it from an alternate POV, but it was boring me because it was making exactly the same point as the original, only in a less interesting way. But then I was stumped, because, really, it's hard to riff on a story that is both very humorous in a black way, and truly creepy in an 'end-of-the-world-everybody-dies because humans are deep-down all kind of murderous' way. You can't really take the killing-the-whole-world thing any farther, so you have to make it smaller and more personal; you have to make it the end of someone's world rather than the end of the world. Either that or you go full-on dramatic-apocalypse, but that's harder to pull off in a short, and didn't really fit with the average-Joe element of the source.
But I had an idea! And made lots of notes! I also stayed in Tom's until they were shutting down the place, whoops. Anyway, the thing that sparked it is this awesomely weird and creepy 1968 Fellini film (not a short, but not a feature, and I am not Fellini's hugest fan but I really like this one) Toby Dammit that we watched in my Film Theory class, so I started thinking about driving, and then about Edgar Allen Poe's "The Imp of the Perverse," and apparently my subconscious is way ahead of me, because I'd forgotten that Poe also wrote the piece that inspired Toby Dammit ("Never Bet the Devil Your Head"), so now I'm going to re-read both and re-watch TD before I polish the short.
(Also, and I am kind of embarrassed to realize this, but I am pretty sure my brain went to the "radio DJ character!" place because
ignazwisdom's bad influence has me reading Ryan/Simon AI RPS and pondering things like Ryan Seacrest's radio-host voice. But I'm also pretty sure that SPN and Dean Winchester have had a hand in the dude's characterization. *sigh* WHATEVER, IT'S WORKING. Maybe I will post here when I'm done, now that I've gone on and on about it.)
Anyway, I really just wanted to post about Christian Bale and Kermit the Frog having a lot in common, and how much better my life is thanks to that post. :D
Oh! And the other thing, now I remember. When I couldn't sleep last night, I decided to rewatch the first couple of eps of Southland (WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL WATCH) and make notes. Voila: spoilers for Southland 1.01-1.02.
1.01 Unknown Trouble [Pilot]
- I wonder if the "What are you, Canadian?" joke isn't a shout-out to Due South. I feel like it has to be. :)
- "You know who my father is?" "Why, your mother didn't tell you?" <333 Cooper!
...and then the way he kicks the guy's legs apart when he pushes him against the hood? Yeaaaaah.
- Aww, I love how Cooper's all "hell yeah she should join SWAT!" and then starts bragging on her awesomeness to Ben. :D And god, Dewey is obnoxious. (Huh. I wonder if the name is another DS ref.)
- I like the way Ben McKenzie acts this first day on the job -- he's always watching Cooper to see how to play things, or to see if he's doing it right. It makes the times when he does something on his own (like that much more interesting. And then, of course, there's always Cooper watching him back, assessing him.
- Hee, more Canadian jokes.
- for some reason, Russell's weird thing about subtly hitting on victims/damsels-in-distress really creeps me out. Well played, Tom Everett Scott.
- God, Tammy annoys me. I mean, I kind of like that you can see why they're still together in a messed-up way, but I really wish she would take up less screentime.
- I <3 Janilla. She is such a sweetheart. :)
- Ewww the dog-eaten corpse. D:
- "What's his problem?" "There's a lot of theories on that"
- I didn't like Moretta at first. He's too straight-and-narrow (although v. pretty). I liked that what we learn about him later helps explain why he's such a straight arrow.
- Hee, Cooper yelling "SHOW ME YOUR TITS!" at the undercover vice cop. Props to Michael Cudlitz for somehow making that not-creepy. I like that he says he trained her, and that she gives him a peck. It tells you something about Cooper before we even get to know him (and, IMO, she clearly knows she's not his type). The look on Cooper's face when Shawna tells Minivan!Guy to clear out is interesting.
- They use a very shallow depth of field and focus-pulls in this show's camerawork. I like it.
- I love that moment when the bottle hits the windshield, and Cooper's soft little "Okay..."
- Michael Cudlitz has really nice arms. Just, you know, to state the obvious.
- Ben McKenzie sure has that show-no-emotion-clenched-jaw-but-vulnerable-eyes thing down to an art, doesn't he?
- Regina King rocks pretty damn hard. I love Lydia and her mom's relationship.
- I couldn't help but think of Homicide when the missing little girl story played out. :( Poor Bayliss.
- I am sorry, but I hated reading Beloved, I don't give a damn how many people drool over Toni Morrison's writing. *hands*
- Aww. Sometimes you can tell Ben McKenzie is from Texas. :)
- LOL Richter the Drug Dog watching them have sex
- <3 Cooper's note in the logbook. I love him :)
2.02 Mozambique
- Ben pays very close attention to what Cooper says. And Cooper is so looking out for him when he's trying to cut down his ego. <3 And then he busts out that question about where he learned to shoot totally randomly at the end of this rambling story? Oh, Cooper. The entire point of the story was so you could ask that question after the punchline. And then Ben fucks with him right back, and Cooper relegates him to the backseat, and Ben just takes it with a smile. This is their relationship in a nutshell. <33
- I really could care less about Detective Salinger.
- Aww, Janilla.
- Cooper being a hotass again and knocking a dude to the ground with just a shoulder charge. Yeaaaah.
- I have to say, that baby crawling into the street makes for one hell of a visual.
- when Russell's going on about the possible reasons the baby's out there, and Cooper's all, "Or maybe God dropped it down. You know, from heaven." :D
- Cooper's interactions with the meth-head informant guy crack me up. :) I wonder what their story is. MC does a good job of selling that they have a history of some kind.
- AWWW, JANILLA. She's so excited about the Explorers program.
- I love that they have Lydia use a girly voice when they're trying to get the boyfriend to open the door. Well played, my friends. :)
- "Hand me the less-lethal," what a way to put talk about the sandbag gun.
- I really liked the mother character. You like her, but you're not really sure she's perfectly trustworthy, so you can see both Lydia's side of the argument as well as the social worker's.
- Cooper watches Ben. It's really very interesting.
- Oh god, Chickie's speech SUCKS
- The way they do the off-screen dialogue for phone voiceovers without that phone-sound filter is very strange. I'm not sure why they made that decision.
- I like that Ben doesn't tell Chickie the rest of the story when she asks. That would've been an easy, cliche, fire-up-the-string-instruments way of addressing it, and I'm glad they didn't go there.
- Seriously, Janilla, stop being so damn cute.
Yes. As you can see, I am a very insightful person at 4am. This does not mean any of you are any less obligated to watch this show. MAKE IT SO, NUMBER ONE.
(*needs a John Cooper icon*)
Which I guess I could stand to talk about some more. I'm in this screenwriting class about adapting prose into screenplays, which is actually very enjoyable. We pick a short story and then adapt it twice -- once faithfully or closely, and the second time liberally. I chose Neil Gaiman's "We Can Get Them For You Wholesale," and I've done the former, aside from a few edits I want to make. The second run has been giving me problems; I was going to take it from an alternate POV, but it was boring me because it was making exactly the same point as the original, only in a less interesting way. But then I was stumped, because, really, it's hard to riff on a story that is both very humorous in a black way, and truly creepy in an 'end-of-the-world-everybody-dies because humans are deep-down all kind of murderous' way. You can't really take the killing-the-whole-world thing any farther, so you have to make it smaller and more personal; you have to make it the end of someone's world rather than the end of the world. Either that or you go full-on dramatic-apocalypse, but that's harder to pull off in a short, and didn't really fit with the average-Joe element of the source.
But I had an idea! And made lots of notes! I also stayed in Tom's until they were shutting down the place, whoops. Anyway, the thing that sparked it is this awesomely weird and creepy 1968 Fellini film (not a short, but not a feature, and I am not Fellini's hugest fan but I really like this one) Toby Dammit that we watched in my Film Theory class, so I started thinking about driving, and then about Edgar Allen Poe's "The Imp of the Perverse," and apparently my subconscious is way ahead of me, because I'd forgotten that Poe also wrote the piece that inspired Toby Dammit ("Never Bet the Devil Your Head"), so now I'm going to re-read both and re-watch TD before I polish the short.
(Also, and I am kind of embarrassed to realize this, but I am pretty sure my brain went to the "radio DJ character!" place because
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
Anyway, I really just wanted to post about Christian Bale and Kermit the Frog having a lot in common, and how much better my life is thanks to that post. :D
Oh! And the other thing, now I remember. When I couldn't sleep last night, I decided to rewatch the first couple of eps of Southland (WHICH YOU SHOULD ALL WATCH) and make notes. Voila: spoilers for Southland 1.01-1.02.
1.01 Unknown Trouble [Pilot]
- I wonder if the "What are you, Canadian?" joke isn't a shout-out to Due South. I feel like it has to be. :)
- "You know who my father is?" "Why, your mother didn't tell you?" <333 Cooper!
...and then the way he kicks the guy's legs apart when he pushes him against the hood? Yeaaaaah.
- Aww, I love how Cooper's all "hell yeah she should join SWAT!" and then starts bragging on her awesomeness to Ben. :D And god, Dewey is obnoxious. (Huh. I wonder if the name is another DS ref.)
- I like the way Ben McKenzie acts this first day on the job -- he's always watching Cooper to see how to play things, or to see if he's doing it right. It makes the times when he does something on his own (like that much more interesting. And then, of course, there's always Cooper watching him back, assessing him.
- Hee, more Canadian jokes.
- for some reason, Russell's weird thing about subtly hitting on victims/damsels-in-distress really creeps me out. Well played, Tom Everett Scott.
- God, Tammy annoys me. I mean, I kind of like that you can see why they're still together in a messed-up way, but I really wish she would take up less screentime.
- I <3 Janilla. She is such a sweetheart. :)
- Ewww the dog-eaten corpse. D:
- "What's his problem?" "There's a lot of theories on that"
- I didn't like Moretta at first. He's too straight-and-narrow (although v. pretty). I liked that what we learn about him later helps explain why he's such a straight arrow.
- Hee, Cooper yelling "SHOW ME YOUR TITS!" at the undercover vice cop. Props to Michael Cudlitz for somehow making that not-creepy. I like that he says he trained her, and that she gives him a peck. It tells you something about Cooper before we even get to know him (and, IMO, she clearly knows she's not his type). The look on Cooper's face when Shawna tells Minivan!Guy to clear out is interesting.
- They use a very shallow depth of field and focus-pulls in this show's camerawork. I like it.
- I love that moment when the bottle hits the windshield, and Cooper's soft little "Okay..."
- Michael Cudlitz has really nice arms. Just, you know, to state the obvious.
- Ben McKenzie sure has that show-no-emotion-clenched-jaw-but-vulnerable-eyes thing down to an art, doesn't he?
- Regina King rocks pretty damn hard. I love Lydia and her mom's relationship.
- I couldn't help but think of Homicide when the missing little girl story played out. :( Poor Bayliss.
- I am sorry, but I hated reading Beloved, I don't give a damn how many people drool over Toni Morrison's writing. *hands*
- Aww. Sometimes you can tell Ben McKenzie is from Texas. :)
- LOL Richter the Drug Dog watching them have sex
- <3 Cooper's note in the logbook. I love him :)
2.02 Mozambique
- Ben pays very close attention to what Cooper says. And Cooper is so looking out for him when he's trying to cut down his ego. <3 And then he busts out that question about where he learned to shoot totally randomly at the end of this rambling story? Oh, Cooper. The entire point of the story was so you could ask that question after the punchline. And then Ben fucks with him right back, and Cooper relegates him to the backseat, and Ben just takes it with a smile. This is their relationship in a nutshell. <33
- I really could care less about Detective Salinger.
- Aww, Janilla.
- Cooper being a hotass again and knocking a dude to the ground with just a shoulder charge. Yeaaaah.
- I have to say, that baby crawling into the street makes for one hell of a visual.
- when Russell's going on about the possible reasons the baby's out there, and Cooper's all, "Or maybe God dropped it down. You know, from heaven." :D
- Cooper's interactions with the meth-head informant guy crack me up. :) I wonder what their story is. MC does a good job of selling that they have a history of some kind.
- AWWW, JANILLA. She's so excited about the Explorers program.
- I love that they have Lydia use a girly voice when they're trying to get the boyfriend to open the door. Well played, my friends. :)
- "Hand me the less-lethal," what a way to put talk about the sandbag gun.
- I really liked the mother character. You like her, but you're not really sure she's perfectly trustworthy, so you can see both Lydia's side of the argument as well as the social worker's.
- Cooper watches Ben. It's really very interesting.
- Oh god, Chickie's speech SUCKS
- The way they do the off-screen dialogue for phone voiceovers without that phone-sound filter is very strange. I'm not sure why they made that decision.
- I like that Ben doesn't tell Chickie the rest of the story when she asks. That would've been an easy, cliche, fire-up-the-string-instruments way of addressing it, and I'm glad they didn't go there.
- Seriously, Janilla, stop being so damn cute.
Yes. As you can see, I am a very insightful person at 4am. This does not mean any of you are any less obligated to watch this show. MAKE IT SO, NUMBER ONE.
(*needs a John Cooper icon*)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-04 09:43 am (UTC)I have no idea how I'm supposed to feel about this, but I don't regret it, despite the dressing-down I got from my mother re: being late to get home.
I really wish I didn't have to go to class tomorrow, as I would call you in the middle of the night. I'm sorry I didn't call you last night, but I took a Benadryl Sat. night and I was out right up until I had to go to work Sunday. :///
Why are you not here, where I can flail in person? :(((((
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-04 09:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-04 09:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-04 09:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-04 03:13 pm (UTC)But actually I am just commenting here to tell you that I tried to go to that Mexican place with the 2 for 12 margaritas we went to the other week and it is GONE. Like, not closed for health reasons, but took down the sign, cut away the awning, locked and padlocked gone. Weird. I shall have to look elsewhere for cheap margaritas in this hood now.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-07 03:46 pm (UTC)That is so bizarre, I have to say. o.O
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-04 05:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-07 03:47 pm (UTC)