Friday Free-for-All: Ryan Reynolds makes some kid's day at Comic-Con

This has been making its way around the internet this week, but in case you didn't see it here's Ryan Reynolds making a kid's day at Comic-Con. While on the Green Lantern panel, Ryan is asked by a young fan what it feels like to say the Green Lantern oath.



Interesting side note: when I went looking for this video last weekend, the search terms "Green Lantern Comic Con" returned one instance of this clip and four separate videos of Blake Lively's appearance on the panel with titles that indicated there was some sort of wardrobe malfunction. (I didn't watch the videos to confirm.) This proves that as much as comic book geeks will go crazy for the Green Lantern oath, boobs always win in the end.

Calling all pro writers and bloggers - an update on the collaborative writing project

At present, I have 18 people ready to go for the collaborative writing project discussed in this entry. That's enough for two teams, though if I get an influx of people in the next few days, I'll expand that to three.

A couple people have written in with suggestions that they'd like to see an "all-star" team made up of screenwriting bloggers. I haven't asked any other bloggers directly, but I absolutely would welcome their contributions. I might even send some emails to my counterparts and see if there's any interest.

Perhaps this idea is too ambitious for the first go-round of this experiment, but I'd love to get a true all-star team made up of working screenwriters. I know there are a few who read this blog regularly, and if you fit that criteria we'd love to have you. If anyone has a direct line to any pro writers, please email or tweet them this blog post.

In brief, here's the idea and the rules:

- the product is a screenplay written round-robin style 10 pages at a time.

- there will be no treatment or plot breakdown. Each writer picks up where the previous one leaves off and is free to send the story in any direction they wish.

- "Yes, and..?" style of improv is suggested. In other words, a writer cannot unfairly "deny" or undo details that have been established by previous writers. Shocking twists that redefine those earlier details are, of course, encouraged.

- I will write the first ten pages. From there, each writer will have a week to produce ten pages when their turn in the rotation comes up.

- Each writer takes only one turn.

- Multiple teams may be working at the same time. The only common element is the first ten pages. Otherwise there is no creative overlap among the scripts or the writers.

- Have fun and be creative.

Pros, I recognize many of you are extremely busy. I'm hoping that you'll find this a fun and freeing exercise, and perhaps one that other writers might find educational. We've seen what writers can do when they have a plan - now let's see how they handle being written into a corner.

You can reach me at zuulthereader@gmail.com.

Reader mail: Public domain and Is there still a place for romantic comedies?

Jordan asks:

I recently came across a public domain superhero that has not been used in mainstream media for quite some time that I would be interested in reviving in some form. Before I start on the script, though, I would like to ask if any good can come from pitching a public domain story. I don't have to pay any options and neither does a studio. If the studio wanted, they could take a look at the project, decide to pursue it, and then then dump me in favor of another writer. I know you talked about how writing a parody script is essentially useless, so could the same be said for a public domain property?

I am also working on a spec at the moment, so could it be beneficial to show them original material if they are interested in the project?

I tend to think there's nothing wrong with mining the public domain, so long as you keep a few things in mind. In the case of a superhero, it's probably most useful if the character in question is familiar enough to audiences to have some branding value. If it's EXTREMELY obscure, there might be a benefit to writing it up as a completely original spec rather than a public domain adaptation. (On the other hand, adaptations have been hot for a while - but mostly in cases when there's some name recognition value.)

The most important thing: make absolutely sure that the character you're dealing with is in the public domain. There have been so many copyright extensions over the years that there's always a chance that character is still owned by someone. Disney has been very good about lobbying to extend copyright protection because they NEED to maintain ownership of Mickey Mouse, who first appeared in the 1920s. Superman didn't come along until 1938, and as he hasn't fallen into the public domain yet, I'm unsure if any other superheroes have. (Though I suppose it's possible assuming the owner had no interest in maintaining their rights.)

As a friend reminded me in this post, the public domain isn't always cut and dried.

As for the studio stealing your idea, well... that's the risk of working with characters you don't own. However, if they were blown away by your take, it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to just buy your script and put you to work instead of hiring another writer to come in and do it on assignment. (Think about it, as a newbie, you're going to be cheaper, even if they eventually boot you off the project and hire another writer for rewrites.)

As for original material, I'd say it can't hurt you, so long as it's as solid as your adapted material. Heck, my strategy might be to use the adaptation to get the meeting and the contacts, then see if there's anyway to capitalize on that to sell your original script. Don't go into any such meetings pushing both scripts, but be on the lookout to mention that you're wrapping up a new script. If they express interest in anything else you've written, don't be shy about mentioning the new one.

Romantic at Heart asks:

With the foul stench of Bromance in the air, is there even a place for traditional male/female romantic comedy anymore? And if you do take the time to write one, does it have to be jaded and sarcasm laden, or is there still room for a "Sweet Home Alabama?"

A manager I used to know once referred to romantic comedies as "perennials." At least, in this manager's estimation, romantic comedies would never go completely out of style. I'd like to think there's still room for a rom-com that isn't jaded and sarcastic. A rom-com with a great concept and enjoyable characters will always sell.

Tuesday Talkback: Collaborative writing project

I've been toying with a little writing experiment that would involve contributions from my readers and I'm curious to see if there's any support for this. Back in school, did any of you ever do a "round robin" writing exercise? The way it works is that one person starts writing a story, and then hands it off to the next person in their group after a predetermined limit is met (either a paragraph, a page or a chapter.) Then that person picks up and sends the story in whatever direction they like before passing it on to the next person. Collaborative

My idea is to try something like this with a screenplay. I'd write the first ten pages, doing my best to toss enough balls in the air that the following writers would have plenty of material to work with. Then, each writer after me would pick up, adding ten pages to the total and advancing the story as appropriate. There'd be no master plan, no treatment, no previously agreed-upon plot. This would work best if each writer tried their best to work within a three-act structure and be mindful of how the story usually "needs" to advance at the point they're dealing with within the three-act structure.

Aside from that, there'll also be a "non-denial" rule in place. This is common in improv. What it means is that you can't deliberately contradict something that's been put into play. In improv, if a character says, "Boy, life is great here on the moon," another character cannot say, "You're wrong, this is Alabama." Also, there will be no revisions allowed to previous pages. Each writer is bound by what has come before.

Ideally, I'd have at least eight people willing to participate, and each writer would have a week to turn in their ten pages. If I get a lot more than eight, then I might start two groups going at the same time with the initial ten pages. If so, that could lead to some interesting results, as we'd see how two groups starting with the same initial premise could end up with completely different results by the end.

If the results are interesting enough, perhaps we'll even toss the script up on a peer review site that's unaware of the screenplay's lineage. It'll be an interesting experiment in seeing if those reviewers detect any odd blips in story construction and characterization.

If you're interested in being a writer in this little game, shoot me an email at zuulthereader@gmail.com. Tell me a little bit about yourself and the movies you like too. If we have more than one group going, I might try to mix up the writer's roster a bit.

Reader mail: Family friendly franchise movie

Hank asks:

I just finished the 1st draft of a family-friendly action script. It takes place @ disneyworld, incorporates all their theme parks, and features a seldom seen character owned by Marvel/disney.

1. Is this bad? Limiting the possible buyers...but creating something that cross markets both marvel and disney? (shoot...have I asked this before?

In short, yeah, you've pretty much limited your buyers to one, and to top it off, this sort of cross-promotional deal is something that most often is developed in-house.

2. My characters are a bunch of uber intelligent 15 and 16 year olds. I feel like I'm writing them "just this side of adult" is this a feel thing or is there a rule-of-thumb when writing younger characters?

I ask because I have a friend who wrote a tween-targeted piece and it ead (to me) like a "saved by the bell" episode. Now, I love the Zack attack as much as the next guy....but....y'know?

I totally follow where you're coming from, but if you're going after tweens rather than teens, the Saved by the Bell model is probably where you're going to want to aim. In that case, even though your characters are older, your audience is going to be in elementary and middle school, so the tone has to be appropriate for them. After ala fifteen year-old on 90210 is probably going to sound a lot different from a fifteen year-old on Hannah Montana.

It sounds like you're writing it family-friendly but also want to appeal to teenagers. The trick with teenagers is that if you write them sounding too young, you get the Saved By the Bell problem, but if you make their dialogue too mature, it sounds equally silly in the manner of early Dawson's Creek.

The older your audience, the "closer to adult" you'll want to write the teens. In other words, if you're aiming for the elementary and middle school audience that saw High School Musical you'll want to keep them pretty innocent and un-nuanced. If you're going after that teen viewer, you'll probably have to give them a little more edge and maturity.

"Just this side of adult" sounds like the safest way to play it. Just don't neglect how your story's tone and especially the maturity of your viewer can determine this.

Friday Free-For-All: House of Secrets - the best damn comic shop in LA

With Comic-Con this weekend, I figured it was time for an appropriately-themed post. I ask you, why is Wednesday different from all other days?

If you're a comic geek like me, you know that Wednesday is "New Comic Book" Day. Each week, you'll find comic book stores filled with regular customers on that afternoon, particularly during the lunch hour. You'll marvel (see what I did there?) at the guy ahead of you in line who has a stack of comics as thick as a phone book and a tab well over $150. You might even ask him if it's been a few months since he was last there, only to have him say, "Well, I missed coming in last week, but other than that I've been in every Wednesday for a while."

For the record, my pull account stands at roughly a half-dozen books a month.

Some cities and towns are so small that the customers have no choice. They have to go to the solitary shop in the region. More fortunate customers have multiple stores in their area, which means they have a choice to make - which one do they patronize?

Choosing a comic shop is like choosing a regular bar or a barber; it's not something to be taken lightly. It's a somewhat personal choice arrived at by weighing a variety of factors. The store I went to back home was considered one of the best in the country at the time I moved to L.A., and I almost considered it irreplaceable. For a few years, I switched to mail order. The service I used had such huge discounts that as long as I was buying a dozen or so issues a month, I was saving a lot of money even with having to pay for shipping.

Alas, a few years back I dropped a lot of titles and it was no longer cost efficient to order them. That meant I had to pick one of my local stores, and between the Hollywood and Valley areas, I had plenty of options.

After checking out five stores in the area, I settled on House of Secrets in Burbank. Don't believe what anyone tells you about any other stores in the L.A. area - this is the best. No one can match them for customer service and discounts. As a regular buyer who might not always be able to make it to the store on New Comic Day, a pull account is very important to me. For those not in the know, it basically means that your shop will set aside a copy of whatever's on your list, be it Batman, Spider-Man or Red Sonja.

Plenty of people will tell you that the Golden Apple on Melrose is the greatest shop in LA, and I admit, it's a nice sized store with a lot of inventory and some great people - but they don't do pull accounts. Meltdown Comics on Sunset is another well designed store with a lot of space. When I asked the guy behind the counter if they offered pulls, he kind of sneered at me and said, "Only if you're buying 15 titles a month."

I checked out Legacy Comics in Glendale, but didn't even get to ask my question because the douche working that day was engrossed in a game on the other side of the shop and looked put out every time he had to move over to the cash register to actually help a customer check out. Yeah. I really was motivated to go back there. Frankly, Legacy is one of the worst comic shops I've ever had the misfortune to enter.

House of Secrets not only had a no-minimum pull, but there was a massive discount if you got one. If you just tell them, "Pull every issue of Justice League and Avengers," or whatever titles you want, you get 20% off. If you're willing to go to the extra trouble of making a list from the Previews catalog each month - including the order number for each specific issue you want that month - you get 25% off.

This store has one of the best staffs I've seen. Paul, the owner, is a really friendly guy and extremely helpful to new customers. Most days you're likely to find him and Eric behind the counter and these guys are about as far from the Comic Book Guy stereotype as you can expect. It's clear they love their jobs and enjoy interacting with their customers.

But what really sets the store apart is that they're welcoming to (*gasp*) girls. I've heard plenty of horror stories about girls being looked down upon by other comic shops when they come in and start asking "ignorant" questions about Iron Man or Elektra. It seems like the result of stores developing into their own communities - but having gone so far that it's like wandering into a small Internet BBS and asking a newbie question. Instead of help and encouragement, the newbie is met with mockery, eye-rolling and attitudes so severe, they just get the hell out and don't come back.

Well, House of Secrets has at least one woman on staff, and let me tell you, Amy is probably more knowledgeable about comics than several of the geeks I know. I admit, my tastes are pretty mainstream as comics go (superheroes, mostly). From conversations I've overheard while in the store, she's pretty well-versed in a lot of the more complex and respected works. A major geek who accompanied me to the shop once remarked, "She really knows her stuff!"

So newbies and women, you have nothing to fear from the gang at House of Secrets. If you're looking to get into comics or are just trying to find a new store to patronize regularly, head on over to 1930 W. Olive Avenue in Burbank. It's on the corner of Olive and Lamer.

And in case you're curious, they didn't ask me to write this. In fact, not only do they not know about this post, they don't even know me as The Bitter Script Reader.

Reader mail: What's in a name?

Beth asks:

I'm writing a screenplay in which a character is thought to be called one name for the first act, after which it's revealed that his name is actually something else. For the dialogue tags and descriptions, is it appropriate to change the name used at this point, thus potentially confusing the reader, or should I keep the same name throughout, thus cluing the reader in to the twist before the other characters (and audience) know?

I actually had a slightly more complicated version of this problem in one of my specs, so here's how I dealt with it:

Let's say the name we know him by in the first act is "Greg." Just call him "Greg" in the start. I got even trickier with my naming and introduced the character as "MAN" until someone called him by the name "Rick." Then, in the next dialogue header, I referred to him as "MAN/RICK," and "RICK" in every subsequent instance until it was revealed that his name wasn't Rick, it was "Steve." At that point, I had the next header call him "RICK/STEVE" and then wrote "Note: from this point on, the character we have referred to as Rick will now be called Steve."

You could probably simplify that a little bit, or vary the method, but I found that to be effective. I wouldn't use his "real" name until it's identified as such to the characters, though.