On the one hand, I don't see that the two are mutually exclusive. To the other, when it's time to write, I prefer to sit down and write; what I do not like to do is entertain silly stories about work, get up to see a replay of Brett Boone's home run, or--and this is important--fix the computer every time I need to use it. It's quite distracting when you perform your dutiful saves to protect your work and Word collapses randomly during the save and eliminates a certain quantity of work. I would prefer that my hard work be put into the writing, and not the maintenance of the writer's equipment. One cannot do insanely great work on a crappy, unstable OS.
The screenplay format looks like an easy way to tell a story. I'm gonna give it a try. It's requires only 120 pages and looks like fun.
Screenplay is a wonderful way to tell a story; it does, however, create an interesting condition whereby the writer is constantly
that much more conscious of the audience, and that is sometimes problematic. I tried writing a couple of stage plays; I had good ideas, but I didn't have enough of a functional knowledge of theatre to understand the relationship to what I was writing to what the audience would see.
* Neil Simon:
Brighton Beach Memoirs is a good one to read because it was both a play (Matthew Broderick as Eugene Jerome) and a movie (Jonathan Silverman), and without a whole lot of changes to the script itself. Any of his
Suite plays (New York, Hollywood, and Plaza, I believe) are good because they're conceptual formats.
Little Me, which I believe is Simon's first play, bleeds with Too Much Effort.
God's Favorite is brilliant, and
Prisoner of Second Avenue is jaw-dropping. You could probably find these books in a public or college library, if not readily available somewhere like Powell's.
* Milcha Sanchez-Scott:
Roosters is a weird, cool little play. It's even more fun to watch than read, because there are usually chickens wandering around the inside of the theatre.
* Terence McNalley:
Lips Together, Teeth Apart; I have never watched the movie of this; it would spoil the powerful memory of this play as performed by the Pentacle Theater, west of Salem. That performance was, end of story, the best theatrical production I've ever seen in the sense that it was rock-solid top to bottom.
I bring these up, Bowser, because I believe that they will help you figure out what you want
do with your 120 pages. I should also mention Miller's
Death of a Salesman, which has exceptionally exacting instructions for directors, including a second volume of notes on stage production that I've never read, and only ever seen twice. And I thought I should throw the move
Closet Land at you, since it was a play first and I forget the writer's name.
And a dumb little note: the 1980's demonstrated that your 120 pages, written entirely on wit, will get you an 88 minute film. You can draw that out an extra thirty minutes if you choose to make your audience think, either with a minimialst script and many notes on visual presentation, or else with the best dialogue you can give 'em.
Go for it, though. You could write the next
Pi or
Closet Land or some-such. And you'll find it far too much fun to be allowed.
But I gotta run ... M's and Yanks today.
thanx,
Tiassa
