More cool photos on Jenean's blog. (Amazing) doll wardrobe created by Julie Westphal of House of Pinku.
August 23, 2009
July 13, 2009
Tornado! and "Indie Heaven"
This morning I submitted two treatments for consideration for the screenwriting workshop the Memphis Film Commission is doing July 18 and 19 at the Paradiso Theater, called Indie Heaven .
One is Tornado, based on the novel of the same name, written by my late grandmother, Juanita Osborne. A very prolific writer (almost 50 novels published), Juanita lived in Memphis most of her life. Tornado was her first published novel, and it is awesome. It was the raciest of her novels -- thus published by ACE. The bulk of her other novels -- Southern Gothic mysteries all -- were published by Avalon, primarily a house that publishes young adult mysteries and romances and such.
My Grandma was a very sweet lady with a DARK imagination. I have long wanted to adapt many of her novels into screenplay form, and I would love to make movies out of almost all of them. Tornado is especially ripe for cinematic treatment, I think, along with, in no particular order, Walk with a Shadow, The Shrinking Pond, and Heiress of Fear. You can find all of her books on Amazon or Abe Books. They are short and weird and very fun. And scary. Think ... Flannery O'Connor meets Eudora Welty meets ... David Lynch.
My Mom and I own all the copyrights to her works, so they are fair game for my screenplay adaptations.
Tornado is about a girl who awakes in an old Southern manse with total amnesia. She was apparently flung there, from wherever her home is, by a tornado the night before. As she struggles to remember who she is, she comes to question the motives of the "kindly" family that's taken her in to recover from the trauma -- physical and psychological -- of the storm.
My adaptation, while trying to remain true to the themes and cool Gothic horror feel of the work, modernizes the tale and changes the setting from a rural former plantation to a Central Gardens Memphis mansion. (All of my grandma's works take place in or near Memphis, another cool thing for Memphis readers.)
The second treatment I submitted is Wishing Well, a story I've previously workshopped with Max Adams, Nicholls Fellowship-winning , Hollywood-produced screenwriter and writing instructor extraordinaire.
So I hope one (or both!) of my treatments is/are selected for this workshop. The producers conducting the thing are super-cool, Barry Jenkins and Mike Ryan, both with some ultra-fab credits to their names. I will enjoy meeting them this Sat.-Sun., and hope to see you all there as well.
November 23, 2008
Reviews: "Let the Right One In" and "Twilight"
Two Vampire Pics Like Apples and Oranges ... Blood Oranges
I've got a soft spot for vampire movies despite the fact that it's apparently easy to make a (sorry) suck-y one. Let the Right One In (2008, Tomas Alfredson) does NOT suck (in the, um, pejorative way). There is a marvelous old-fashioned fairy tale quality to this movie, something achieved in part because the main characters are children and in part because of the no-punches-pulled realism of the direction. I'm talking old-fashioned in the sense that fairy tales of the old school were often scarier and more "adult" than tales we would deem appropriate for children today. This is definitely not a kids' movie.
Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is an alienated 12-year-old boy in some stark Stockholm suburb in 1982. He is picked on rather brutally by some scary bullies at school. The monstrousness of this behavior is contrasted nicely with the kindness Oskar receives from new buddy Eli (Lina Leandersson), an actual monster who has just moved into the apartment next door. Eli appears to be the same age as Oskar, but, as we know, vampires stop aging at the moment they are "turned". So we get the feeling Eli has been 12 a mighty long time. She tries to teach Oskar to stand up for himself, which at first seems to prove effective but backfires horrifically in the third act of the film.
Both kids appear to live with single parents, but Eli's relationship with her male guardian is actually ambiguous and quite disturbing on many levels. Who is this man who procures vampire food for Eli in the snow-covered parks and underpasses of suburbia? If Eli is as old as we think she really is, it's doubtful this fifty-something fellow is her actual father. The alternatives are freaky and are left unexplored in the movie compared with the novel on which it is based; (I have not read the novel.) Like many adults (and a few unfortunate children), this "parent" may meet a gruesome demise before we learn the true nature of their relationship.
As I mentioned above, the physical horror of this film is presented in a highly effective visually realistic style. I'm reminded of David Lynch in the sense that the mundane is imbued with surrealism while the actually supernatural (is that an oxymoron?) is presented matter-of-factly. This accentuates the deftly-conveyed sense of dread Alfredson achieves in the film as a whole, and it provides many more genuinely scary moments than the average horror film--light years more than the average vampire film!
There is a sweet, haunting romance at the core of the film, providing an emotional center to what I believe is a classic in the genre. In puppy love, first love, every experience is heightened to a nearly supernatural level anyway, so this thread of the story, the real connection between Oskar and Eli, is the perfect story from which to hang a darker, archetypal fairy tale. The suspense and anticipation are nearly unbearably intense from beginning to end, so that the bloodshed, when it comes, provides a cathartic, primal, almost carnal release for the viewer. Highly, highly recommended.
Twilight
Silly. A cultural moment, blah, blah, blah. But silly.
