Scene Play

In class we were asked to read screen plays and write the scene play in the form for production. I picked to be an Art Director for Chinatown (1974).

Chinatown- Screen Play

1. OPENING SCENE LAYOUT:

In a dark room.

- Cuts to a man in a suit and hat with a flashlight looking at photos and dropping them on the ground as he goes through them. -

Crying in the distance

-Man looks up and points flashlight to where the sound was coming from. –

A man starts yelling and shouting where the crying was coming from

~ End Scene ~

2. OFFICE:

The office is small with a work desk in the middle with a bookcase that fills the wall that is behind the desk. There are many half dead houseplants are though out the office. On the desk there is fan that is on to keep the room colder. On the side wall next to the window are pictures of movie stars.

~Curly -in a suit but as sweated through it.~

~Gittes -in a white suit and is sitting at the desk~

-Scene opens with Curly coming in the office of Gittes and drops the photos on Gittes’ desk.-

-Cuts to Curly- sweaty and looks like he ran there.-

-Cuts to – Curly looking at Gittes. But Gittes just sits there and lights a cigarette with his lighter. -

-Cuts back to Curly- Curly start to sob, Punch wall and kick wastebasket at the same time.-

The photos on the wall are now askew.

 -He starts to sod again and slides along the wall where he punched it. He sides on to the blinds and sinks slowly on to his knees.-

-Curly is weeping heavily and bites into the blinds.

-Cuts to Gittes- Who is still sitting in his chair-

GITTES: “All right, enough is enough… 
you can't eat the Venetian blinds, Curly. I just had
'em installed on Wednesday.
”

-Scene cut to Curly, who is getting on to his feet slowly, crying-

-Cut to Gittes who is reaching into his desk and pulls out a shot glass. He selects a cheaper bottle of bourbon from several fifths of more expensive whiskeys. Gittes pours a large shot. He shoves the glass across his desk toward Curly.

----Will be continued-------

Week 8? The Medium is the Massage an Inventory of Effects

For this week we had to read a short story called The Medium is the Massage an Inventory of Effects by Marshall McLuhan. When you go through the story it is more about images coming together to tell a story. When I read through this is "book". I have to go over it so i could try and understand it. I felt that is was a "book" with a lot of images and text that "goes" with the images.


I did not understand any of what was going on in this "book". The images that Marshall McLuhan put through out the "book with text, for me does not make much since to me. Even with the text it still  did did not make any since and did not help me to understand. I am not sure what to go off on with this reading.

Lolita

"I now think it was a great mistake to move east again and have her go to that private school in Beardsley, instead of somehow scrambling across the Mexican border while the scrambling was good so as to lie low for a couple of years in subtropical bliss until I could safely marry my little Creole; for I must confess that depending on the conditin of my glands and ganglia, I could switch in the course of the same day from one pole of insanity to the other—from the thought that around 1950 I would have to get rid somehow of a difficult adolescent whose magic nymphage had evaporated—to the thought that with patience and luckI might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force de l'âge; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert—or was it green rot?—bizarre, tender, salivating Dr. Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad."


In this last two weeks we have been reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. When I was first told that we had to read Lolita I had no idea what it was about and had no idea that it existed. Then my teacher told us about how this book was going to be “disturbing” and is not like a normal book. That it is mean to make your skin crawl.  I did not give it much thought and I started to read the book.

Right off the bat I was shocked.

“WHA! What?… What is THIS?” Was what was going through my mind as I red more and more of the book? This is one crazy book. I older man wanted to have sex with little girls and the very descriptive of all the little girls that he like and wanted to have. I think I was on chapter fourteen when I had to stop reading this disturbing book. I did not want to finish the book, but I had to for class.  

In the last class that we had I was up to chapter 31. My teacher broke us up in to groups and asked us questions about the text that we have read so far. One of the questions was the book “real”. Do you think that the main story line is a true story?

My group was on the fence about it. Some of the story line made since and could be believable. But then there are some parts and how he words them that make you feel like he is not telling you the truth. For an example he brings up the reader and reminds you that this is a journal and only his thoughts. Also you can get the feeling of parts on the story that you know that he is hiding things and they do not make since if you break them down. For me I believe that this book is not real because I do not want it to be real because it was so discussing and how the main character talked about the little girls.

I feel that the book got more and more “odd” and harder to read. The part of the book that really shocked me was when Dolly and the main character are in the hotel with the flower convention and a church retreat. It was when he gave Dolly sleeping pills and drugged her so he can have his way with the little girl. It seemed so easy for him to give her the pill and that he was tricking doctors to give him strong sleeping pills. Also the other odd, crazy, and mind blowing part of the book is how he talks about or says about Dolly, “Lolita.” I find it really hard to read the parts on how Dolly “wanted” him and “made love” with each other. It was disturbing in how he describes all of it.

My over all thought about Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov was that it is a disturbing book. If you want to read a book that will make your skin crawl.

 I will never read this book again. *o*

Pulp Fiction Week~

For the Pulp Fiction week I read Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key. The Glass Key is about Ned Beaumont who is a gambler. He is not a detective, but a political fixer for construction magnate Paul Madvig. The setting is in a depression era that you feel as you read the book. Ned Beaumont is very unlucky through out the book.

In the story Ned Beaumont finds the body of Senator Henry's son. Madvig wants Ned Beaumont to interfere in the D.A.'s investigation of the body. Ned Beaumont wants to “sink” the “corrupt senator but Madvig gets in the way by backing the senator.

Ned Beaumont goes to New Year to collect a gambling debt, but gets beaten up and then more drama unfolds.

I had to read this book tice to understand what was going on in it. I found out that after I read it again the story was easier to read a fallow. 

A Screen Play with some Gatsby

A screen play based off The Great Gatsby 

__________________________________________________________________

FADE IN:

EXT. WILSONS STORE – MID DAY

In the cold snow of north Maine, a old run down garage with an open sign swinging in the wind.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. WILSONS STORE – OUT SIDE - MID DAY

MICHEALIS, Greek, coffee shop owner, mid 20’s young, strolls over.

MICHEALIS, enters shop, now on main floor of the garage, finds George Wilson sick.

WILSON, white, garage owner, mid 30’s, really sick, sitting in his office chair.

MICHEALIS

Wilson, you should go to sleep.

WILSON

No… no, I can’t. I will miss a lot of business

From upstairs at CRASH and THUD on the floorboards. Micheals looks up—

WILSON points up.

WILSON

 I’ve got my wife locked in up there.  She’s going to stay there till the day after to-morrow, and then we’re going to move away.

MICHEALIS

Why what happened? Why does she need to be locked up?

WILSON stands up.

WILSON

Michealis what did you do at 6 o’clock on Tuesday? Or 7 o’clock on Saturday or Friday?

A WORK MAN walked past the garage door, on his way to MICHEALIS' shop.

MICHEALIS

Sorry but I have to go, Wilson. I will come back later.

MICHEALIS leaves the garage.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. MICHEALIS STORE – OUT SIDE – DUSK

MICHEALIS go out of his store, and looks over at the garage.

MRS. WILSON (O.S)

Beat me! Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!

MRS. WILSON, white, wife of Wilson, late 20’s early 30’s.

MRS. WILSON, runs out of the garage, waving her hands.

Two cars come into view ( a yellow and black one)

WILSON, goes to the door.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. WILSONS STORE – OUT SIDE

CARRAWAY (O.S)

The death car. as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then dis- appeared around the next bend.

People walking in and out of the frame, to see what happened.

POLICEMAN, talk to MICHAELIS.

MICHAELIS

I think it was a light green car…. But it was too dark to tell.

The other CAR was over to the left had it’s driver by MRS. WILSON’S BODY

MRS. WILSON lying on the ground, snow thick with blood around her.

FADE OUT: