At The Mountains of Madness

Hello,

Happy new year and all that.

Not quite sure what to say, aside from the fact that I am finally lifting weights again (after being a sloth) and just read a second screenplay of the year.

The first was Vlad by Charlie Hunnam. I am by no means a reviewer, but I decided to track a draft down after listening to him on the Nerdist Podcast. The greatest part of the script by Hunnam is the air of the situations, he makes you feel the characters reactions and it struck me as something that should not be taboo.

Let me explain. In university, one of our lecturers was focused on writing so well that a director could not take credit for your work. I don't agree with this, it should be about making the film the best it can be. Perhaps it feels like overstepping your boundaries as a writer. I can see parallels with Hunnams approach that focuses on the actors behaviour.

It left me with a questions: do you worry about writing other people's roles to their annoyance?

I think it should be put out there and if it doesn't work as a project rolls forward, then it should be discarded. If it works, it works, if not, oh well. 

You could write an action scene that will not work and the experts come in and sort.

I'm clearly no reviewer, because I didn't say what the premise was. Vlad the Impaler origin story.

At The Mountains of Madness

I own a massive hardcover book by HP Lovecraft, I barely got through a few of the stories. I wanted to talk about this screenplay to someone, but I don't know who. I didn't think a scary script actually existed, seriously scary. A film I would love to see. It is basically a bunch of sailors and scientists in 1930 going on an expedition to the Antartic and lots of unexplainable things occur and nobody can do anything about it. Just really fucking scary. 

I believe the draft I read was co-written by Guillermo Del Toro and was close to being made with Tom 

Cruise,  but it fell through.

Like I said not a reviewer. I took a lot from reading these screenplays. Mainly because I over complicate things in my head, making the entire process much harder than it needs to be.

It also gave me faith that I can write something good.

I think that is what I get most out of scripts isn't story structure or character development. It is more in the way of the style of writing from each script and finding a new way to approach screenwriting.

Good shit.