The good people over at 800-CEO-READ just RSSed their 67th issue of Change This, an initiative which is all about the “big hairy business idea.” According to the editors of the program, the objective of Change This is to disseminate potential “game changing” ideas which don’t necessarily have a commercial bent to them, but which may have at some certain stage once the idea gains a considerable amount of traction. The various ideas promulgated by Change This – and there are dozens of them at this stage — are intended to get you zooming about your current best business practices and about some inspirational new mantras that have the capacity to fundamentally alter the way you do business or interact with your colleagues. The idea is to jettison the heavy, useless old, and warmly welcome the new.

Read the rest of this entry »

White Heat. The Wild Bunch. Saving Private Ryan. A trio of standout examples of sensational cinematic storytelling that have withstood the test of a century of international filmmaking. Onetime staid lines on a lifeless sheet of felled forestry which — when converted into Hollywood celluloid magic — became the studio tentpoles of their respective eras, memorable tales viewers repeatedly enjoy until today.

So what makes for rock-solid storytelling and how exactly does one go about writing a kickass script that someone, somewhere out there, will find so positively irresistable that the only thing left for them to do is cash in, cast up, kit out, and go produce that puppy?

What elements does a compelling story include to make it so positively magnetic? Moreover, is there a formula you can follow to help you, too, write good stories?

That’s the subject of today’s discussion as we cycle through the steps about how to pen that truest of film-worthy tales.

It All Starts With An Idea:

The three films mentioned above were at one time nothing more than the figments of someone’s fertile (or alcohol-drenched) imagination. Like the Biblical “something from nothing,” the writers of those and thousands of other iconic period films were just like you and me, sitting on a hard stool with either a pen, a coffee, or a snifter of well-aged whiskey in hand, dreaming about how to best combine the disparate elements of something which only they knew was on the verge of becoming next Great American Fable.

So where do good ideas hail from, you ask?

Well, to start, perhaps you’ve personally undergone an event so deeply meaningful that you feel others might gain something from learning of your experience first-hand? Something which has a universal aspect and appeal which others might almost instantly relate to because it cuts so close to the human condition that almost anyone could have been through them at some point in their lives. These are always the easiest stories to transcribe because they’re so “there,” existing on the surface so that they require almost little forethought. The only caveat here is not to make them sound too self-serving, otherwise they lose authenticity.

I’ve also found that reading daily and often — all sorts of reading, actually, and not just how-to books about the film industry or on Hollywood — are great for shaking up the memory and getting into your characters. Make reading anything you can get your mitts on a daily habit. And with today’s interwebs, audio podcasts and viral video clips also supply ample imagination fodder, so try to schedule in some listening time during your commute to work. Don’t forget to tap out your ideas as you receive them because ideas are often fleeting, as I’ve discovered myself.

Opposites Attract:

Another benefit to daily reading is that it trains your mind to pair seemingly disparate things into dizzyingly interesting combinations, the core of true story innovation.

For instance, I once wrote a screenplay called Crossover which told the story about a former South African heavyweight boxer from Johannesburg’s Soweto Township who injured himself in a local boxing match, only to later take up the more gentlemanly sport of fencing in order to slake his burning competitive spirits. For fun, I threw in a twist — the protagonist would become the protege of a diminutive former Hungarian secret policeman who absconded to South Africa at the end of Eastern European Communism with his daughter, a one-time orphan who knew nothing of her father’s past — and sat back as the sparks flew off the page. The script was full of romance, race, intrigue, and several curious historical tidbits which wouldn’t normally arise for the typical sports-genre film.

Be Audacious:

When drafting your story, this is hardly the time to apply your mental brakes. Let your wild thought-horses roam free! Think of the most astonishingly — and potentially silly — situations you can pit your characters in and carry on from that point. You might be surprised to learn where your story meanders once you settle into this kind of mode.

The film Hancock comes to mind. Remember John Hancock, played so convincingly by star Will Smith? This was a picture about an urban superhero in desperate need of a personal rebrand, because, well, the old Hancock — despite being superhuman — was a downright jackass. Rather than leap tall buildings in a single bound or save old ladies from being trampled upon by out-of-control tractor-trailers, Hancock would spend his days destroying public property or being sauced off his gourd on park benches, telling off little kids when they’d jeer at him for being such a listless layabout.

If I’m not mistaken, when’s the last time you heard about a drunkard unlikeable superhero — jaw-droppingly casted as an African-American, no less — turning life’s corner and making a comeback?

Draw Three-Dimensional Characters:

Remember that heroic characters aren’t always good, and that not every villain is consistently bad.

True, all stories have protagonists and antagonists, but just as in real life good guys do indeed have foibles and bad guys also strangely possess redeemable qualities.

A good example might be 2007’s Mr. Brooks, in which Kevin Coster plays the role of Earl Brooks, a mild-mannered family man who has a fetish for death — in fact, for murder. During the day, Costner’s Brooks is the picture-perfect captain of industry; at night, he slips into his assassin’s garb, dons his leather gloves and silencer, as he prowls around town in his SUV in search of a killing spree.

While it’s definitely an extreme example of the antihero phenomenon we’re discussing, Costner’s portrayal of Earl Brooks was eerily attractive in an Andreas Baader of Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang or Che Guevarra kind of way. As the film progresses, our repugnance of Brooks’ bloodthirsty habits lead to a paradoxically strange likeability, and if you haven’t yet seen the film it’s likely one of the better examples of what the three-dimensional character phenomenon is all about.

Also, try to draw out characters others can readily relate to in order to make your stories more everyman-ish. History is great for this. Study it and the newspaper for better insights into what made past or current Greats — or so-called “Greats” — into who they were and why posterity later cannonized, lauded, or besmirched their reputations in the manner it did.

Was General Douglas MacArthur the true Liberator of Japan as history remembers him to be? Why not (one possible answer: he was as much of a dictator in post-war Japan as he was its savior)? And, sure, while Bill Clinton may be remembered as the clever statesman he was, the man retained certain — shall we say — proclivities that weren’t necessarily becoming of the Leader of the Free World. On a more contemporary note, Fidel Castro is considered our nation’s Enemy Numero Uno, yet why has he remained so popular in his native Cuba, a nation struggling under the crippling weight of the US-led economic embargo?

Answers to these sorts of questions show that not everything is what is seems. Neither in life, nor in story.

The act of writing good a good story is agonizing even for the most seasoned of screenwriters. Following just a couple of the above steps, however, will make coaxing them out a more routinized process and at the end of the day the quality of your stories hinge upon how significantly they diverge from the mainstream.

Anything else is just groping at low-hanging fruit, and none of those stories ever made the grade or could be called truly good.

The key is to always keep at it but go against the grain.

While the production and distribution sides of the film industry have been receiving the motherlode of Hollywood press coverage during our trying economic times, it’s been Tinseltown’s writing establishment (hellooooo?! remember us?) which been silently going about its business to coax the conversation towards content.

So here’s a snapshot of the current ethos: since bums-in-the-seats cash has been hard to come by for the usual cinema-going public, who seem perfectly prepared to access better — and cheaper — viewing options online anyways, Hollywood’s efforts should now emphasize spinning truly compelling tales. For those fence-sitting Average Joes whose disposable incomes have taken a shellacking throughout 2009, perhaps reverting to the tried-and-true techniques of scribbling deeply-moving tales might be just the thing to get people out of the house and into the theater to catch a good ol’ romping flicker picture.

Yep, so today we’re going to discuss how “content is king.” I’ve selected three recently-viewed films to reinforce the “royal” message, and following each review I’ll list three bulleted reasons why each of the following films can take ownership of the lofty “content is king” moniker.

The Lost City (2005)

This stellar Andy Garcia-acted and directed family saga depicts the four generations of the fictitious aristocratic Felloves, helplessly caught up in the turbulent maelstrom which is washing over late-1950s era Cuba. Andy Garcia plays Fico, the eldest of the three Fellove siblings and the debonaire head man of Havana’s El Tropico musical theater (modeled after the storied Tropicana from the island’s gangster era). Fico’s been uncomfortably observing the monumental changes taking place around his city, a capital on the verge of imploding.

Then there are Fico’s brothers Luis and Ricardo, both of whom become irreversibly enmeshed in the revolutionary thicket encircling Havana, yet who seem to respond to the impending changes in markedly different ways. Ricardo takes to the Sierra Maestras to link up with Fidel’s roving “barbudos,” or bearded ones, as he, Che, and their motley coterie incubate their eventual assault on Cuban toady Fulgencio Batista’s Havana presidential stronghold in an effort to topple the corrupt dictator. Brother Luis, however, is more circumspect. While he shares the younger Ricardo’s “Cuba Libre” longings, he remains wary of Fidel’s lofty socialist-cum-altruistic pronouncements, opting instead to align himself with a splinter left-wing outfit which has fatefully chosen a more immediate and violent path to oust Batista from the palatial precincts (their three minute-long assault sequence shot at 40 frames per second in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, is alone worth the cost of the DVD’s rental).

What makes Garcia’s The Lost City so compelling is how its plot weaves dizzyingly between one Fellove generation to the next: from Fico’s tribulations as El Tropico’s owner being visited upon by American gangster Meyer Lansky (in a standout Dustin Hoffman-cameo) making him “offers he can’t refuse” as the pressure-cooker which is 1959’s Havana comes rapidly to an uncontrollable boil, to Ricardo’s confused tango with Fidel’s rebels, to Luis’ severing himself off from all family contacts as Fidel’s fateful palace assault day approaches, and meanwhile to their father Don Federico Fellove’s observing all his sons’ suffering during these tragic days, at once sympathizing — then censuring — them for their collective misguided ways.

The Lost City’s content is king because:

• it deals with issues of newsworthy relevance to a US-filmgoing public. With the Cuban embargo now a fixture for over five decades, the film digs to the core of the bitter rivalry, telling why the island nation remains such a hot button obsession of the United States’, almost “docufiction-like.”

• writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s exquisitely-crafted screenplay has almost zero plot holes. His dialogue is tight while the film meanders along comfortably at an almost reasonable two-and-a-half hour length to sustain a viewer’s interest while not simultaneously alienating said viewer. Plus, the Fellove sibling rivalries are entirely believable as the film captures the zeitgeist of the times exquisitely.

• Garcia casted masterfully. Most of the actors had at least one Cuban member in their family, if not being Cuban outright, and — like Garcia admits in the “making of” mini-documentary — one cast member could even tell of his family member’s murders which occurred at the hands of Fidel’s rebels, such was the closeness of the material to the people who brought it to life onscreen. Music also acts as a “character” in The Lost City, but what movie about pre-1960s era Havana can rightfully call itself a Cuba film without at least a smattering of the raucous, disengaged spirit of the times?

American Meltdown (2004)

American Meltdown’s plot deals with an increasingly plausible storyline — how an obscure nuclear power-generating facility located just a stone’s throw away from California’s huge US population centers can be violently overtaken by a band of domestic rogues hellbent on reenacting 9/11-style mahem.

The story — shot in Kiefer Sutherland-eque 24-style — demonstrates how inter-departmental power-play rivalries continue to exist between the US’s leading intelligence communities despite what we now know about the September 11th tragedy and how this continues to plague America’s preparedness plans to counter other potential — more devastating — terrorist threats to its shores.

US-Canadian uber-actor Bruce Greenwood steps into the limelight portraying FBI Agent Tom Shea, the point man called in to cool the situation once California’s San Juan nuclear generating station has been forcibly overtaken by Arnold Vosloo’s Arabic-speaking brigands. Lest you think this is another one of those shlocky and predictable Arab-bad guys/Yankee-good guys flicks with the usual slew of shoot-em-up-bang-em-up fare, you’ll want to take a closer look at Meltdown before you render your final say-so. There’s a nifty little plot twist to this one which I think you’ll appreciate, and for a small L.A. local shoot — technically “on location,” but being so close to Hollywood it was almost akin to a studio backlot number — Meltdown assembles a capable cast of supporting players who perfectly frame Greenwood and Vosloo.

American Meltdown’s content is king because:

• fighting international terrorism continues to remain the current US Administration’s bete-noire and with the US’ military involvements (some would say adventures) in both Iraq and Afghanistan coming to very slow disengagements, another film that gets people thinking about domestic security concerns closer to home might be just what the doctor ordered. Whether you agree with the premise or not, the question the filmmaker seems to be asking us to decide for ourselves is whether the United States needs to embroil itself in several international policing actions just because it has the physical wherewithal to do so?

• Meltdown gets its message across without being overly preachy. What the Barber brothers — co-screenwriters Larry and Paul — are attempting to convey here is that almost nothing of what the US mass media broadcasts is truth. The film is more of a plea to Joe Public to engage more of his critical thinking skills and not to digest what the Administration is feeding us hook, line, and sinker.

• as the war in Afghanistan becomes the nation’s main focus once again, the film seems to be suggesting that even more bizarre scenarios like the one depicted in Meltdown are on the cusp of playing out (no spoilers for those who haven’t seen it)?

Va, vis, et deviens (Live and Become, 2005)

During the mid-’80s, the Israeli government conducted what would eventually become known to the world as “Operation Moses,” a frantic but sharply-organized military airlift of thousands of persecuted Ethiopian “Falasha” refugee Jews from their internment camps in Sudan across the Red Sea to Israel. While this shocking story in and of itself is little-known outside of that small circle of Middle East watchers, Israelis, and other insiders, the even lesser-known tale is what eventually became of those would-be black immigrants and how they fared in the years following their hasty evacuation from their African captivity.

Live and Become is an excellent little 2003 film helmed by Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu shot in both Israel and France and showing what life is like in the Jewish State for citizens of the darker persuasion. The plot follows the trials and tribulations of the young Ethiopian Shlomo, who arrives in Israel under mysterious circumstances who then is adopted by the Harari family.

Some of the perplexing questions the film engenders deal with the perennial Israeli concerns about who, in fact, is a Jew, and whether or not the nation’s Ethiopian citizens are in fact full-blooded members of the Jewish faith while simultaneously being full-fledged citizens of the country, what with all (read: military) entails. The film depicts Israel’s continuing struggle with who in the country can be safely said to be persona grata versus who are members of the out-group. It also raises some disturbing questions about Israeli race-relations that will definitely challenge some of your possible pre-existing perceptions about what Jewish people look or act like.

Live and Become’s content is king because:

• any film which dares to confront your notions about people in society is well worth watching.

• race relations are hardly confined to the traditional bastions of the United States, Western Europe, or South Africa and it may therefore be rather instructive to observe how certain other global societies are dealing with their domestic color issues, if only to — once again — challenge your pre-existing thinking on the issue.

• a film about Israeli race relations which doesn’t focus exclusively on the on-again off-again Arab-Israeli contretemps is a subject well-past its cinematic due date (the film came to market only in 2003).

The Lost City, American Meltdown, and Live and Become.

Three stellar examples of films that offer moving, educational content to their viewers and that clearly demonstrate how meaningful, well-parceled, and idiosyncratic content is absolutely key to separating the cinematic men from the boys in the world of celluloid entertainment.

Many thanks to Wayne Turmel for originally introducing me to the good people at 8CR, Todd Sattersten (formerly), Jack Covert, and especially Jon Mueller. Here’s the first in a new series I’ll be writing, called Angels Abroad.

From a federal penitentary in Florida, Conrad Black weighs in with his opinions about China’s rise.

My favourite passage from the article:

“China has a centrally directed economy, and calculates growth rates as a func…tion of production, not spending; and production is deemed to occur when it is commissioned by the state. Thus, all Chinese predictions of economic growth are self-fulfilling: The central economic leadership orders production of toasters or submarines and announces construction of roads and sports stadiums, and the anticipated costs are added to the GDP at once.”