2014 Toronto Screenwriting Conference

I did not know what to expect from the Toronto Screenwriting Conference (it was my first one) but it definitely did not disappoint. I went there with the intention of learning more tools of the writing trade and becoming more educated on the industry behind it. By the end of the weekend I knew the difference between a procedural show and a serial one, and what writing “on spec” meant. Here are some highlights:

Eric Gilliland gave a talk on how to pitch a series show. He was formerly a writer on the Roseanne show and he recently pitched a pilot with Roseanne Arnold called Downwardly Mobile. It was unfortunately turned down by the networks but he also talked about the angst of having your pitch rejected. You could really see his passion and energy in his presentation which seems to be a must to have a successful pitch.

Ubisoft's Corey May and Darby Mcdevitt had a power point presentation on writing for video games but it felt like they went through it as quickly as they could. It was as if they believed the audience just wanted to hear about breaking in the industry but I was keenly interested in hearing about video games' approach to writing. Video games’ writers have a dry, conceptual way of talking about writing, similar to how coders would describe coding. Their process always starts with research and actually travelling to locations that inspire the game. This is why Assassin’s Creed is gloriously filled with intricate, factual details.

The legendary screenwriting team and couple, David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples talked about their illustrious film career. They wrote the screenplays for Unforgiven, Twelve Monkeys and Blade Runner. It was not educational but no one cared. It felt like being a guest in their living room while they regaled us with Hollywood tales and it was absolutely spellbinding.

Leonard Dick was a writer on House, Lost and The Good Wife. His discussed his experience on one hour dramas but of course the only thing I was interested in hearing was about Lost (I was a fan of House too but c’mon it’s Lost!). Who can forget the speculation that went on after every Lost episode and here was one of its writers recanting stories about its production. On every episode one writer would write the backstory and another writer would work on the actual goings on at the island. They would then get together to make it all work together. One of the secret’s of Lost’s success was they did not reveal too much about the characters, even in the backstories. Everything was shrouded in mystery whereas lesser shows explain every mystery, even within the same episode.

From a purely didactic angle, the highlight of the conference had to be Michael Arndt's two talks about Toy Story 3 and crafting "insanely great" endings. His Toy Story 3 talk was about Hollywood story structure through the “tentpole” moments. Yes, it was similar to the so called formulas you can read about in books but Arndt has his own personal analysis of how successful movies set up their payoffs and climax.

It dovetailed nicely with his second talk on Endings because the same values and stakes that are setup at the beginning are what will make the climax great. He analyzed the values and stakes involved in the endings in Star Wars: A New Hope and The Graduate. Despite already blowing everyone’s minds with his shrewd Star Wars/ The Graduate analysis, he further blew our minds by demonstrating how he used these very same priniciples in the script he wrote for Little Miss Sunshine. People were actually hollering and gave him a standing ovation. Who knew? Writers are not all tight lipped and reserved.

Will Sony Animation finally end Pixar's Oscar run?

The first thing that struck me when I saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was its cartoony character design and animation.
Sony Pictures Animation (like every other animation studio), has been in the very large shadows of Pixar, Disney and Dreamworks. However with its third animated film, S.P.A. seems to have found its identity. Sony Animation is a sister company to Columbia Pictures and both are owned by Sony.

Columbia Pictures produced the legendary U.P.A. Productions which broke from the Disney or W.B. Styles with its extremely stylized designs and animation. Cloudy seems to acknowledge that great legacy and joyously has some of the most stylized designs and animation yet in a 3d animated feature. Most animated features follow the Pixar model of “straight” and not too cartoony animation. Cloudy boldly embraces cartoony animation and breaks with the Pixar mould like U.P.A. Did with Disney style animation.

Cloudy is the perfect vehicle for S.P.A. to push the envelope since its premise of giant food falling out of the sky is a bit over the top. However, Cloudy stays true to its character development and story while embracing the caricature and tongue-in-cheek nature of animation.

"What is the number one problem facing our community today?" so asks the hero, Flint Lockwood as a child in class during show and tell. He is showing off a spray-on shoe invention but embarrasses himself in front of his class. Another child appearing to be the child version of Baby Brent (a spokesperson for the Baby Brent Sardine Cannery) is quick to call him a "nerd" (he resembles the nerd-calling Biff from Back to the Future).

The only one to understand Flint and his gift for invention is his mother who gives him an “official lab coat”. From then on, his goal or motivation is to become a great inventor but sadly goes from failure to failure, like his walking television, flying car or ratbirds.

Flint lives in Swallow Falls, a sleepy fishing town island. Its only industry and food source is sardines. However one day, the world realises sardines are “gross”. From then on, food and the town becomes "grey" with blandness. To “save” the town, an adult Flint invents a food-making machine, the F.L.D.S.M.D.F.R.. All it requires is water and out pops whatever delicious food one desires. The machine resembles one of the droids from Star Wars IV: A New Hope (its blueprints look suspiciously like the logo of Canadian hamburger chain, Harvey's.).

Swallow Falls' diminutive Mayor Shelbourne wants to put the town on the map, however its clear his real intentions is his own aggrandizement. In a scheme to create "sardine tourism” the town is re-opened as as "Chew-and-Swallow" and a ceremony to open "Sardine Land" is held.

During the ceremony, Flint goes to the town's power plant because his food making machine requires "17,000 more gigajoules" which is surely a nod to Back to the Future's often quoted “jigawatts”. In yet another supposed failure, he looses control of it and ruins the town's ceremony.

Moping over his latest failure under a dock, he meets Sam Sparks. Sam Sparks is an intern weather girl who seems to recognize the value of spray-on shoes or a talking monkey device. She is intelligent but hides it under a perky exterior. All of a sudden, it starts raining cheeseburgers and the colourful food clouds literally bring colour to this grey, desaturated town.

Mayor Shelbourne approaches Flint about making the food continue to fall so he can make the island a major tourist destination for cruise ships. It is clear the mayor is Flint's antithesis; where Flint wants to invent things to help his home town, the mayor wants to use the town for his own aggrandizement. Flint makes a Faustian deal with Mayor Shelbourne and the island becomes gentrified with stylish food-themed stores like “Bibs” or “Cumin”.

In order to romance Sam Sparks, Flint makes a jello palace, much like the unforgettable scene from Edward Scissorhands when he makes an ice wonderland for the girl. Flint discovers Sam's true nature as a science and weather nerd. In a makeover reversal, Flint ties up Sam's hair in a jello scrunchie and puts her glasses on her.

Flint's father is symbolic of Swallow Falls' humble past as a sardine fishing town. His only desire for his son is to work with him at his bait and tackle shop. He doesn't understand or seem to approve of Flint's high-tech, inventive lifestyle. Flint takes his dad to "The Roofless" a high end chic restaurant, that was probably alien to a man like Flint's father. Unimpressed, Flint's father notices the steaks are unusually large but Flint is too dismayed by his father's lack of approval to notice. In a Hitchcockian sequence, Flint walks home and finally realizes the hotdogs are sinisterly large.

The mayor convinces Flint to go ahead with the grand “re-opening” of the town. Tourists in cruiseships from around the world are showered in giant shrimps and hams. Mirroring the original “Sardine-land” opening, this time Flint is the hero and Baby Brent must give up his golden scissors to cut the ribbon.

The ceremony is again ruined but this time by a giant spaghetti twister. Sam Sparks who had forewarned the danger calls it a “perfect food storm”. The chaos is captured by hand-held camera shots (that S.P.A. pioneered in Surfs Up, a first for 3d animated cartoons)

Earl the cop, who is voiced by Mr. T has a relationship to his son, Cal that is a contrast to Flint's relationship to his father. Theirs is openly communicative where Flint's father speaks in fishing metaphors that Flint never understands. At the ceremony, Cal goes to the “Kid's World” area to gorge on limitless candy. He becomes ill and is rescued by the sound of a giant celery stick being broken.

Flint builds a ship to fly up to the food making machine to plug in a kill code but the machine has become a meatball deathstar and it attacks them with pizza slices (reminiscent of alien ships from Independence Day). The food has apparently mutated into “super food” that is genetically engineered to protect the machine. Flint and his team enter the core of the meatball deathstar and are attacked by giant roast chickens.

When Flint finds the machine, it has become powerful and dangerous like the Voyager satellite from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In a scene reminiscent of Attack of the Worlds, Flint tries to not to move as the device attached to a long fluid body seeks him out. When all seems lost, Flint epiphanises the way to destroy the machine is by using one of his so-called “failed” inventions; his spray-on shoe can.

They return to the island to a hero's welcome, like Luke Skywalker's return from destroying the Death Star. If it seems like there is a lot of science fiction movie references, I believe it is by design. One of the themes of Cloudy is being different or a "nerd". Science fiction movies like Star Trek or Star Wars is traditionally considered nerd fare.

The movie ends with Mayor Shelbourne. He is alone in the middle of the ocean on his sinking food boat. Having eaten most of it away, his greed for food and money is the cause of his own demise. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a morality tale about the political economy of food. It carries on a cinematic discourse about food started by Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me which literally changed the balance of power in the fast food industry. Are problems like obesity and mutated food, a “hurricane Katrina”-like perfect storm that we are not prepared to handle?

Flint invents a machine, the F.L.D.S.M.D.F.R. that will instantly create whatever food you want from simply adding a relatively cheap ingrediant, water. Is this not the alchemical goal of all those crazy infomercials, i.e. to invent a machine that will instantly make food from nothing? At what cost do we consume gigantic steroid induced meat and genetically engineered produce? The F.L.D.S.M.D.F.R takes on a life of its own, like its red one-eyed brother, Hal (from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey). It grows and develops mutated “super” food to protect itself. Just like the capitalistic machine that drives the food industry, it becomes a self-serving monster that becomes a danger to the very people it was intended to serve.

"What is the number one problem facing our community today?" is the question Flint asks his classmates at the very beginning of the movie. Food may or may not arguably be the number one problem in the world but it is inspiring to see movies like Cloudy (animated or not) ask that question.

WALL-E

Wall-E is Pixar's masterpiece. It is the culmination of the essence of what it means to be Pixar. Created by George Lucas as the first computer animation studio, Pixar was bought by Apple computers before being sold to Disney. From its inception, Pixar as its namesake implies, has been about technology (pixels are the computer animation equivalent of dots of paint or ink). One of the on-going achievements of Pixar has been to push the envelope on the technology of computer animation with each and every film. However, in spite of all that high-faluting binary code, every Pixar movie opens with a humble, hopping lamp. Wall-E is Luxo Lamp Jr. grown up and self-actualized.

Pixar's history began with the short film, Luxo Lamp Jr. which is why it eminently opens every Pixar film. Luxo Jr. was created at a time when a fully computer animated feature film was a fantasy. Luxo Jr. showed the potential of this new art form; that Disney's animation principles could work in this new high-tech paradigm. Despite Pixar's aspirations to technological achievements, they will always be in the service to empathetic, well-animated characters, i.e. appealing characters that will be suited to the art of computer animation like toys, hopping lamps or robots.

Wall-E starts with a lone, solitary robot who diligently works away at compiling and piling garbage. The robot is disturbingly commited to his work as we realise his job is futile; it appears he is the last survivor in this post-apocalyptic world. Like Camus' myth of Sysiphus, Wall-E mindlessly repeats his function to stack garbage. His condition is absurd and the only way it is broken is by the arrival of a visitor.

A ship arrives and delivers an egg which turns out to be a female robot, Eve. Eve is shiny, white and minimalistic like an ipod or Mac computer (there are many nods to Apple like Wall-E's familiar Macintosh start-up chime). She is "high-tech" compared to Wall-E's ancient, rusted body of bolts. Her mandate is much more elevated than Wall-E's garbage collecting; she must find an organic life form, i.e. a plant. It is the first plant to grow in this toxic world and she must take it to her mother ship.

The first half or third of Wall-E is a film within a film. Like a fine concept album, it flows hypnotically and continuously as a single piece without any breaks. It is about the end of the world as we know it. Without saying a single preachy word, it is a bigger indictment of capitalism's environmental destruction than Al Gore's An Inconveniant Truth.

As a fimmaker and story teller, one always wants to (or should want to) have a socially responsible message underlying their film. The problem with that is it is extremely hard to do without coming off as patronizing or preachy. Kudos to Pixar for making an "environmentally friendly" cartoon, i.e. addressing one if not THE pressing issue facing us today. The way Wall-E achieves this is by making an environmental disaster sublime in the tradition of Edward Burtynsky. It is a computer animated illustration of the infinite possibilities of corporate waste. Simultaneously awe-inspiring, it is horrifying. By engaging our imagination at what is possible, Pixar engages our conscience. We do not feel preached at; we are simply presented with awe-inspiring images of garbage and how we interpret them is our own perogative.

The rest of the movie becomes a space opera with nods to Kubrick's A Space Odyssey (the red eye of Hal is reborn) and perhaps Logan's Run (the depiction of a future orderly, bland society without problems or humanity). Wall-E and Eve must try to save the last plant from earth from the evil master computer from destroying it. In doing so, they unwittingly become the saviours of robot-slaves as well as of the humans (since the plant is the last vestige of humanity's tie to earth).

Wall-e is an ominous warning about what the corporatization of technology may do to mankind. The name Wall-E has a resonance with the uber monster of capitalism, Wallmart. In the future, it seems all of capitalism's aspirations have been realised. The trend towards monopolization and corporatization has resulted in the world being run by a single corporation that runs and rules the world. We are amused and somewhat dismayed by finding out "Wall-E" is actually the name of the organisation that has taken over mankind. Wall-E, the robot actually does not have a name. He is one in thousands of units like him built to handle garbage, branded with the ubiquitous logo, "Wall-E".

JULY, 2003 ~ JOHN K AND THE ART OF MENTAL ILLNESS

Ren & Stimpy is a critique of the accepted norms of good taste of status quo cartoons as well as of today's society. Ren & Stimpy attempts to make beautiful that which is base, vile or taboo. Beauty in Ren & Stimpy is defined as that which provokes laughter. All that is base, vile or taboo can easily be shown to be such because of the repressive nature of society. Ren & Stimpy is truly a psychoanalytic cartoon. When I say that, I don't mean in the clinical sense; Freud probably made greater contributions to the art world than the health world (for example the entire Surrealist movement owes its existence to Freud). The repressed world of the collective psyche is the murky foundation from which Ren & Stimpy shows grow like bacteria. Ren & Stimpy is an opera of mental health succumbing to the libido. In visual imagery that only the art form of 2d animation could, Ren & Stimpy sets free our deep, dark thoughts locked up in our subconscious as laughter.

"THE REN AND STIMPY SHOT"

The greatest technical innovation of Ren & Stimpy is its use of the microscopic extreme close-up. Extreme close-up shots are a weakness of 2d animation (the flat nature of 2d animation doesn't do well blown up to a large scale and therefore it isn't used alot). Ren & Stimpy however pushes it as far as it will go, i.e. to reveal abhorrent skin imperfections of the character. This should probably be known as the "ren and stimpy shot" in film lingo. Ren & Stimpy is an expression of the child's bewilderment and microscopic gaze at the world through the body. Up close, the skin is porous, hairy, and full of imperfections. It secretes fluids and it smells. The body is not a porceline thing of perfection; it farts, burps and does other embarassing things.

POSTMODERNISM IN ANIMATION

Disney movies often have in-jokes. They will show a Disney character from another Disney movie faintly in the background like Belle walking through the streets of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The specific departments will try to immortalize themselves through caricatures of staff members or other ways like the infamous SFX cloud in THE LION KING. While Ren & Stimpy does similar in-jokes, it goes further. Ren & Stimpy makes reference to other cartoons in a postmodern play of cartoon iconography. For example, take the episode of John's second coming, courtesy of Spike TV, REN SEEKS HELP. On the surface, it is about Ren's trip to a psychologist and his description of his childhood spent torturing a frog. However, the frog is very similar to the Al Jolson frog from the most heralded of Looney Tunes episodes, ONE FROGGY EVENING. Is this an accident or coincidence? Stephen Spielberg described this Chuck Jones episode as the "Citizen Kane" of animation. John K is subtextually telling the world what he thinks of Stephen Spielberg's animation appreciation. John K is the one torturing the frog not Ren and that's not just any frog, it's Chuck Jones' Al Jolson frog in a Ren & Stimpy episode. Although, it was his childhood friend (albeit object of sadistic abuse), he can't bring himself to kill the legacy. Finally at the end of the show he shoots a gun through its mouth. The show ends abruptly with the familiar Looney Tunes rings around John K characters. This may appear to be John flipping the bird to Looney Tunes, but the whole show is actually John's tribute to the late Chuck Jones in the highest compliment that can be made by an animator (note: this episode may have been in production before Chuck Jones' death. One of John K's heroes is the late Bob Clampett who had an infamous war with Chuck Jones. This episode may actually be John K's continuation of the "war" on behalf of his late mentor.) Nevertheless, this is a story about animation through an animation and yet to most viewers, it was a hilarious display of mental breakdown in an entertaining way. This is the "genius" of John K: his ability to tell an entertaining story while at the same time thumbing his nose to the powers that be. As Ren & Stimpy did in its original heralded run, the new episodes are displaying the semiotic dexterity of playing with cartoons as signs to be referenced as cultural icons in ironic situations.

FEBRUARY, 2002 ~ MONSTERS INC. MOVIE REVIEW

Monsters are a symbol of childhood fears. What are children afraid of? They are afraid of being left alone, especially by their parents. When one or both of a child's parents go to work during the day, mystery and anxiety must set in. If one of the parents work long hours and have little time to spend with the child, the anxiety and fear will be greater.

There is a fascination and a certain anxiety of children with the adult world: where do adults go during the day? As children we learned from the Flintstones that adults carried lunch boxes to a construction site, punched in their time cards (rocks) and loved to hear the horn signal lunch time or the end of day. Just as the title indicates, the Monsters exist in an Incorporated world like that of the Flintstones. "We scare, because we care". This catchy slogan and the ubiquitous eye logo is as capitalist as Mcdonald's golden arches. Let's be clear. This is not the Latin quarter of Victor Hugo's Paris. The world of the monsters is a clean, ordered city of hardworking money-makers. They rent appartments and eat in posh sushi restaurants named after the special effects great, Ray Harryhausen.

Mike and Sully are monster partners in the business of scaring little children during the night. In the Alvar Aaltoesque space of their corporate factory, Sully enters doors to become transported to a child's bedroom. He attempts to scare the child into screaming which is captured and measured by the monsters' factory. Apparently children's screams are the energy source of this nonsensical city. However, during one of Sully's work ventures, one child (appropriately named Boo) accidentally goes through the portal into the world of the monsters. As we have already learned through one mishap at the factory, if any child's things happen to get through the doors, chaos insues. It seems children and anything they touch are deemed so toxic in this world that special ops crews are brought in when a sock is accidentally stuck to a monster (this particular scene in my opinion is a subtle hommage to E.T.). Thus, children (if they make it through the portal) evoke fear in the monsters, which is a complete inversion of the traditional child monster relationship. When Boo enters the world of Mike and Sully, she is like Godzilla entering Tokyo or King Kong loose in New York.

Monsters Inc. is a reversal of the child's fear relationship to the adult world. The adult world of corporate jobs, sushi restaurants and systems of control (the aforementioned bio-hazard corps and police) is metaphorically embodied by the world of Monstropolis. Here, children get the last laugh. In this animated world, children are the so-called Monster, powerful and destructive and capable of inciting fear and hysteria. After all, isn't the adult's main purpose in raising a child to make them an orderly member of society? Colouring outside of the lines and breaking things are anathema to an adult. In the fantasy world of Monsters Inc. children are feared and capable of creating havoc on the world of adults.

SEPTEMBER, 2001 ~ SHREK MOVIE REVIEW

For the record, I respect and love the achievements of Disney in the world of animation. If this review seems critical of Disney it is only because I believe that this film is a critique of Disney's lofty position in the animated world. It is a complete inversion of all things Disneyesque: the sacharine, the happy and the large-eyed. Shrek focusses on that which is repressed by Disney: the grotesque creatures of fairy tales who have no dimensions other than to be villainized or slain.

It begins (before the credits) with a fairy tale book that Shrek is reading on the toilet and reveals what the plot is. Shrek rips a page out of the book to wipe his rump with to let us know what Dreamworks is going to do with traditional Disney style fairy tales. After Shrek has been attacked by village people, we find out that fairy tale creatures (many of whom are Disney characters like Pinocchio) are being captured and taken to a camp. We are later informed that these fairy tale creatures have been imprisoned by a Lord Farquaad to Shrek's swamp in a kind of fairytale prison camp.

Shrek, after meeting Donkey goes to Lord Farquaad's castle to protest the invasion of his swamp. Much to his and our surprise, the castle bears an uncanny resemblance to Disneyworld: it has parking, a ticket queue complete with turnstiles and a cardboard-facade appearance to its architecture. There is a humorous scene where Lord Farquaad is trying to get the Gingerbread Man to reveal where hidden fairytale creatures are in true Scarface fashion: he has already broken off his legs and is threatening to take away his jelly buttons. The Lord Farquaad we discover is a tyrant over the poor fairy tale creatures. He has captured the Magic Mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and coerces it to reveal whether he is king. The Mirror informs him that he won't be king until he marries a princess, and thus he holds his competition to find his champion.

After soundly thrashing Lord Farquaad's men in a WWF styled fight, Lord Farquaad bargains with Shrek to rescue the princess in exchange for a deed to his swamp. Shrek goes to slay the dragon with his sidekick, Donkey who provides comic relief with humming and inane conversation. The dragon however is not just a typical monster to be slain; it is an amorous female with a personality. It has become smitten by Donkey and there is a gender reversed scene of King Kong playing with Jessica Lange.

Along the way back to the castle, there is a scene which literally pokes fun at the uber Disney movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The princess has just woken up and is outside singing a duet with a bird. The bird and the Princess exchange librettoes much like in Snow White but in Shrek, the Princess's high pitch is enough to blow up the bird. So she decides to cook the bird's eggs for breakfast.

Unlike the pre-fifties ideal of lady qualities as epitomized by Snow White (modest, squeaky-voiced with fastidious domestic abilities) Princess Fiona burps, eats rats and sports a mean karate kick; she is a strong individual woman (even when being rescued she is pro-active in her search for her "true love's first kiss"). Although Shrek has a happy ending, it is yet another subversion. Contrary to the Disney status quo the princess does not become beautiful after her kiss from Shrek but retains her ogresse-like features. Shrek ends in an Austen Powers singalong which is rock music, not an adult contemporary anthem. Just as Donkey is not like Eddie Murphy but is Eddie Murphy to our collective ears, one can see that Shrek was made to be a part of mainstream culture in its endless references to popular culture. Although epitomizing certain values of their times, Disney movies of the Golden Age were timeless in their intentions.

Disney has a monopoly over all the famous fairy tales. To create an animation now based on any of the Grimm Brothers' stories would be an infringement of copyright over Disney. Dreamworks has found a way to animate a fairy tale despite and in spite of this while at the same time subverting the Disney empire over the imagination.

20.10.03 ~ THE OTTAWA ANIMATION FESTIVAL

the highlight of the festival was definitely meeting john canemaker who signed books and hosted his own selection of films. congratulations to pasquale, normand and the other teletoon winners.

04.10.02 ~ 06.10.02 ~ THE OTTAWA ANIMATION FESTIVAL

the highlight of the festival was the JOHN KRICFALUSI retrospective where he showed some unreleased material. BILL PLYMPTON was also at the festival, as was animation blast's AMID AMIDI.

13.09.02 ~ THE TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL

i only saw one movie, the sweatbox. it was a documentary about the making of disney's emporer's new groove, which actually was a completely new movie risen out of the ashes of another project, kingdom in the sun.

the launch of my blog!

hi all,

i'm going to migrate my news section to this trendier way of keeping a web journal. therefore, even though these events already happened i'm reentering them at the present date. please feel free to leave comments and drop me a line!

thanks.