..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

"You sure got an imagination, son. Back when I came in, they had a way of squeezing that imagination right out of you. And they did it with one question. When you went to court, and you stood there in front of the judge trying to come up with crazy stories and excuses and alibis for your crime, they asked you this one quesiton: 'True? Or not true?' These days they just ask 'guilty or not guilty' and there's room for creativity between those words. 'True or not true?' Now, that's a whole different story. It's just one or the other..."
- Old dude from Brickhouse - my prison script that didn't win Project Greenlight


watching Mamet's "Spanish Prisoner" last night and i think he was cheating when he wrote it. i'd seen that movie before and was underwhelmed but i'm a glutton for punishment so i rented it again and this time i saw him stacking up all the clues before the big (yawn) twist and i noticed something this time...he cheated. here's what he did:

he wrote the script backwards. he wrote the big twist, the little twist before it, then sprinkled the first third of the movie with clues. every few minutes you get a slow meaningful close-up on the main character's glasses, his Boy Scout knife, the videotape, the photographs, the red folder, the FBI business card, the tennis book, the candlestick and Mr Mustand and the secret entrance through the bookshelf and on and on and on and on. basically every object that is shown later as a plot point or close-up in the last third. this is called cheating. i'll tell you why. because writing a script that way is lazy and it's bullshit. there is no mystery that way, you simply have a giant stack of clues that are rationed out at the end. that's just someone saying early in the movie, "here's my nuts, they will be important, look for them later." no wait, actually it's like having a movie where someone is choked with my nuts, THEN earlier in the movie we realize that the camera was down my shorts for five mintutes for no apparent reason. it's backwards writing and i realize now, as i type this, that my logic (as well as my balls metaphor) made more sense when i was thinking about it yesterday but whatever. he cheated, that's all i really wanted to say. he didn't write a mystery, he stacked up clues backwards and called it a twist because he dribbled them back through the pages of the script like a drooling mongoloid when he was revising it. how do i know this? i was there. i saw him do it.

also been thinking about courtroom dramas and courtroom thrillers and that lame courtroom climax that is tacked on to what, at first, seemed like a decent movie. i think i understand why there's this urge to watch that nonsense. as an experiment, i left the channel on Court TV while i did push-ups and cleaned the toilet and it turned out the trials were infectious and i suddenly realized why:

it is because, in a trial or courtroom setting, horrible crimes are decribed slowly and carefully and in great detail, as if someone is reading a true crime book to a five year-old. the lawyers dumb down their talk for the absolute dumbest person on the jury (imagine pulling twelve random people out of their cars on the street and asking them some questions, chances are they're gonna be fucking stupid) and they feed their worst instincts and morbid curiousity in the most obvious ways possible. you know how you walk up on a crime scene (or even a drunk-and-disorderly scene) and the cops are like, "nothing to see here?" well, when you click on a trial, all the sudden you get to see everything you wanted to see and hear everything you couldn't hear at that crash site or behind that bar when the cop (who of course was just as curious as you were when he answered the call) told you it was none of your goddamn business. it's rubbernecking, pure and simple. this probably isn't some great revelation but i think it helps us understand why there is this urge to end every movie with a stupid ass courtroom finale. it's autopilot, just like the killer muttering "you're not worth it" then suddenly POW he's forced to kill the bad guy anyway because of the gun he had hidden in his shoe. it's just shit that's been seen before and easily used when all the ideas run dry and what better way to wrap things up that to slowly and carefully explain the facts to the audience when you can't successfully do it with drama or action. you're like Doc in "Back to the Future 2" when he flips over that chalkboard and maps out the plot for the dunces in the theater because it's just easier that way. of course for the worst of the bunch, a movie that is nothing but a trial, like Grisham's crap and all his knock-offs, we're talking about even more of a crime against imagination. every phrase, every revelation, every bit of suspense, every single moment in that courtroom is happily served up like an overflowing shit sandwich because it real easy to make and people wil gooble that shit down because it's a shortcut to thinking. it's like Mamet's movie, here's the clues (held up high in plastic bags) and here's how they were used. here's the Hostile Witness! Objection! Murder Weapon! Surprise Witness! Overruled! Final Argument! Guilty! Not guilty! The End! not only are all these words and phrases shitty book titles, they are substitutes for dramatic moments in situations that could have taken place outside the courtroom. in good fiction, and real life, you don't need to substitute the moment with an easily recognized word or phrase to lead the idiots through the story. you can use an arsenal of ideas instead, and anything that happens outside of the courtroom is already infinitely more creative.

my friend "G" (which does not stand for "Original Gangster") that i went to see "Kill Bill" with in Cleveland happens to be a lawyer and i hope he tries to defend his profession and it's effects on literature and film. i don't think he can do it. i don't think he'll even try. neither will "S," that other lawyer i know down in Florida, because he's still brooding about losing his last trial when they pulled the oldest trick in the book, also known as the "Lazarus Maneuver":

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you looked behind you, then, for an instant, you thought the victim was still alive, and therefore, you must acquit!"

i can't get enough of that one. it was a brilliant tactic used in an 80s courtroom thriller by the dude who directed "Porky's." or maybe it was just a dream i had. hey! found a sale on cds with cracked cases up at the record store. brand new stuff, all that's wrong is it got stepped on in the warehouse, so they marked 'em down to 4 bucks each. i bought a bunch. some bad. some worse. got the one Sex Pistols album i only had on tape. Natalie Merchant's green and orange cd that i used to see everywhere about 5 years ago, some Prince! (watch me make the symbol with they keyboard: O+>), Type O Negative, "World Coming Down" just in time for Halloween, and the Desperado soundtrack, even though i already have it i felt like i was rescuing a puppy from the pound. i'll find him a home.

also, that "Enter The Matrix" game i was all excited about finishing? not good. i don't know what i was thinking. too easy. should have been called "Enter The Matrix...For About An Hour." waaaaay too short and too many movie cut-scenes in between the action. also, there's a part where you rescue Jada Smith and the game won't let you shoot her instead. in a post Grand Theft Auto world, this in inexcusible. speaking of: let's have a moment of silence for 8-Ball, the partner you're supposed to be working with in GTA3, and the man who just couldn't seem to movie fast enough for me and kept getting popped in the back of the head on every mission. actually, i couldn't help but to shoot him every time he smiled and opened the door to greet me. how many times did the screen say "You've Killed 8-Ball! Mission Failed!" i don't know. too many times to count. the world can be unfair sometimes. here's to ya 8-Ball (beers clank together) you'll be missed...

::: david - 12:30 PM [+] :::
...