Movie reviews and thoughts on writing · 9:45am Mar 25th, 2023
I flew to Los Angeles and back this week*, and watched several movies on the plane.
I'm on record talking shit about people who only watch TV/Anime/movies—never reading—and then inflict prose upon the New Column. However, that's not to say there aren't great writing lessons to be learned from movies, so long as it's part of a balanced, good-prose-heavy diet.
TL;DR: Bullet Train, In Bruges, Ocean's 11 (2001 version), John Wick: watch them.
Long version:
I watched Bullet Train and hot damn, that's now one of my favorite movies. I'm going to have to watch it at least one or twice more to catch all the plot twists and complexities of the double and triple crosses. A++ movie, and an excellent example of writing where nothing is what it seems. Also a great example of using unusual ways to characterize—the character Lemon, for instance, is an assassin who obsesses with "Thomas the Tank Engine", which prima facie makes no sense, but the writers leaned into this so hard it actually works brilliantly. Brad Pitt's master thief character, Ladybug, was also an interesting take on "action hero" in that he (1) refused to use a gun and (2) was a neurotic obsessed with therapy. Again, they made it work by leaning in. Awesome movie, top notch writing. And I think a writing lesson I'm putting in my master gdoc of learnings: "When giving a character a bizarre, unusual, off-trope trait, lean into it HARD, don't be half-assed or trepidatious."
I re-watched In Bruges and was once again astounded by the writing, particularly the dialogue. I'm going to have to find the script or transcript online and copy it down; I've found that, when writing a new FiM character for the first time, I copy down their lines from the Wiki into a gdoc to get a feel for their voice into my fingers. I think running In Bruges's excellent bantering dialogue through my fingers might teach me something... Anyway, In Bruges is a brilliant black comedy, if you like black comedy.
Besides excellent writing, In Bruges also looks brilliant. This movie's Bosch-inspired gothic nightmare imagery has also been encouraging me to drop prompts like a my little pony picnic in the style of Hieronymus Bosch into Stable Diffusion, and the results are... disturbing:
I also re-watched the 2001 version of Ocean's Eleven because I love heist movies, and similarly, the dialogue and banter are top-notch. I might have to type out the transcript to get the feel for the writing into my fingers to improve my own comedy dialogue.
Finally, I also rewatched John Wick 1 on the plane, which is also an all-time favorite. This series (I haven't seen Four yet) are excellent illustrations of "show don't tell." The assassin subculture that John lives in is complex and fleshed-out, but no narrator ever stops and explains it to us. The movie simply shows us John living in the assassin culture and challenges us to figure it out. Good writing!
Anyway, I can't recommend all four of those movies highly enough, if you haven't seen any of them.
* Boy, are my arms tired.
I'd kill for a MLP Heist Story from you. Heist stories are among my favorites, or just Thief tales in general, and hearing about a fellow appreciater of the craft warms my cold heart.
5719753
You may have read it already, but if not I'd reccomend Rambling Writer's The Amulet Job https://www.fimfiction.net/story/451065/the-amulet-job
I will admit that a few of my 101 Idiotic Plot Concepts were written with you in mind, and the idea of you writing a Heist is brilliant.
Of course, you’d probably do a SockNo heist of Sweetie Belle raiding her sister’s drawer for sex toys…
5719758
It'll certainly be a CMC heist, if I write one, although I would picture some dread artifact from the catacombs below Canterlot Palace. (Possibly Luna's Dildo of Power.)
Taking a film class or two is useful for a new writer, but in parallel with study of actual writing. There are aspects of film-making which are similar to, but not identical to techniques and effects on the page. There was a literary craze in the high modern period for cut-and-paste that is similar to montage, and you could argue that wildly purple or brutally sparse description styles are an expressive continuity similar to that between baroque and expressionist mise-en-scene.
But in general, the difference between writing and film is that the eye is intimately engaged in film - no matter how brutally you strip down the stage, no matter how simply you edit your cuts so that it looks like a single take, it's still a stage, still a 24 fps continuity, however choppy the latter, however undecorated the former. The written story is like Vonnegut's cradle - no cat, no cradle. Just the words, alone. You have to describe the cat, with words alone. You have to build the cradle, with words alone.
Can they smell that someone hasn't been cleaning the litter box, or is it a long-haired, loved, pampered pet? Is it a new piece of furniture, or can they see the wear on the cradle, the claw marks? What is the cradle lined with, has the cat displaced an infant, or are they a replacement on tear-stained, unwashed blankets?
All that constructive tissue aside, most of the material you'll find on character and dialogue will apply, across media. I've found David Mamet's memo from the set of The Unit particularly useful for scene construction, for instance.
5719763
Holy smokes, that's a good find, thanks for the link!
5719763
Dave also spells out the difference between television and pure prose in much the same way as Socks did, but of course from the other direction:
5719759
Aw. I think it'd be fun. I mean any kinda heist with you would be fun as heck. Especially considering you clearly get what makes a Heist tale click.
5719758
REVERSE heist. Sweetie tries to put the toy BACK before Rarity notices that it's missing.
5719764
I don't know whether to compare this to "Waiting for Godot," or to the "Bechdel-Wallace Rule."
I think that rule of Memet's can be broken in prose if one does it right, though.
'if one does it right'
5719788
99% of the "Character 1 and Character 2 discuss topic..." stories in the New Column are shite. So it's rare.
Edit:
In fact, if the word "discuss" (or synonym) is in a fic's description, I refuse to click, unless it looks like a parody / aversion.
(Example: "Character 1 and Character 2 discuss how to dispose of the body.")
5719790
"So are you saying if I put my uninteresting thoughts and opinions into the mouth of a popular character like Rarity, that won't make an interesing story? WAAAAAAAHH!"
Edited to add: "Wait, I ALSO have a book of knock-knock jokes!"
Seems heist movies are all the rage now: I watched The Bank Job yesterday. Also, I once planned an EqG heist story where the girls use their magical powers to rob a bank, but it never went anywhere.
5719817
"Bank" is too obvious.
Possible alternatives:
5719825
More possibilities:
5719825
I get the feeling those two are connected.
5719826
From the Collection: