The Road Not Taken

Some of you who read this blog (who am I kidding; no one reads this blog) might be aware that I try to write screenplays on the side. I hold down a 9-to-5 job (ok, it's more like 7am to 8pm) that pays the bills. I play boardgames and watch movies. When inspiration strikes me, I write. Of course, since I'm writing in these weblogs of mine, I'm not writing for my screenplays, which is delinquent of me but screenwriting takes more effort than I can channel after a day of wrangling with Sarbanes-Oxley and financial projections. Here, I can just vent or muse.

whl over at The Screenwriting Life talks about how people he used to work with charge/earn astronomical sums for their time, likely working similar hours to myself or more. He gave it up, along with all the security, to have more time to write.

Sometimes I wonder about the choices I've made. I know that I can write, and do it well. I know I have stories in my head and in my heart that want to be placed on the page or screen. But as fate has it, it's not my only love. Unlike whl, I actually enjoy much of what I do for my day job. I also enjoy writing, and it's my dream to be able to write and direct feature films as a career. But I guess I'm lucky. Even if that's not in the cards (and I haven't completely written it off, given that I'm still clutching to the fragments of work that I'm still adding to laboriously), I still have something I enjoy doing to fall back on.

That's not a small thing. I'm thankful for that.

Serenity

Why is this seemingly the hottest movie that every geek is anticipating?



I guess I'm going to have to get this to find out huh?



Perhaps, after we polish off the last of Lost S1.

Small screen in, big screen out

Singapore Airlines has run out of movies for me to see. The last film I saw on the plane was Fever Pitch, and I'm not going to bother panning that bit of crap. Jimmy Fallon may get the big bucks, but he's not fit to carry the muddy boots of Tom Hanks, John Cusack,or even Hugh Grant. When you don't even like the lead in a romantic comedy, that's trouble.

Anyway, home viewing of films has ground to a halt. Let me introduce the culprit:



This show had a lot of hype, which was what prompted me to pick up the season 1 DVDs. It's amazingly lived up to the hype for the most part. I enjoy the writing and editing, which violates almost every rule in the book. There are too many characters, too many storylines, too many plot mechanisms, a huge number of flashbacks and generally too much going on. When this is the heart of your show, you risk diffusing interest over too many characters and issues and run into the danger of no one caring about any of them. LOST is able to avoid this pitfall with nicely-textured characters, a speedy pace and brilliant editing.

The danger remains that as the relationships of the characters develop, and as the main storyline unravels, that the whole thing will devolve into an overly-complicated mess. In fact, I'd bet on that eventually happening. After all, they're all stuck on an island. As soon as we all know who they are and how they got there, much of the story might be expected to center on the island and its mysteries.

Despite that risk, I'm happy with the journey and am in no hurry for the show to get to the point. At least not for the moment.