Month: December 2019

Murphy’s law or: That’s setlife, baby!

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/ˈmɜːrfiːz ˌlɔː/ Murphy’s law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”.

You know the beginning of a 90’s movie? You have this upbeat, poppy music (‘There she goes’ or maybe something from Placebo), the setting is revealed, the sun comes up, the universe of the main character is revealed through a smooth dolly shot.

It’s four in the morning (you get up early, to catch that early light). On other mornings, this light would feel harsh, unwelcoming, but in your state as a director who is going to start their first shooting day, it is the most beautiful light you’ll ever feel prickling on your thumbs, erm… skin. Before pocketing the call sheet some nice assistant printed out for me, I skim it with pride, this is what I worked and fought for what feels like an eternity. I step in front of the door and fill my lungs with that cold air, that is soon going to heat up.

A tracking shot is used to show me driving from my home to location, on a field in the middle of nowhere. A few tents and a few scattered people in black waiting for crafty to put the coffee machine up, they look like a classic Satan’s cult, but in a Midsommar’s setting.  I get out of the car, the music stops. The First and the DP say hi. ‘Do you want to have the good or the bad first?’ the First asks. The DP and I lock eyes. ‘The bad, of course.’ ‘Well, the bad is that it looks like we don’t get the cherry picker here on time, so we’ll have to ask production to book it again for tomorrow, or we could inverse the shots 2.4 and 1.2 and  we’ll have a free spot at 17:00 sharp to shoot the cherry picker scene, but we’ll only have a window of 18 minutes, before we have to do the unit move.” I say: ‘It’s all going to be fine. I need coffee.’ I head to the crafty tent, they follow me. I impatiently wait for the thick excuse they call coffee here to run into my plastic cup (that was before green shooting). The coffee machine makes the exact noise Christopher Nolan used for his ‘Inception’-trailer and has henceforth been used for every sci-fi-trailer ever. ‘What are the good ones?’ ‘The good ones are that there are none. Yet. Ah and maybe that the producers aren’t coming today. Only tomorrow for the crew picture.’ ‘I see’, I say.

I turn around to my DP. ‘How are you?’ ‘Broke, tired, without hope for the better in the present nor the future and scared that the first is not going to be happy about this.’ He inclines his head to the right, where about a 10 extras chase each other in their animal costumes. ‘Pretty sure, he won’t.’ The First sees the scene and runs over, call sheet and walkie talkie frantically waving. We look at each other and chuckle. I take a sip of the blissful, horribly sweet coffee.

‘How are you? Ready for this?’ I look straight ahead, watching the First chasing the extras into their tent and shouting into his walkie –talkie where the fudge the extra casting is? I light a cigarette, take a deep drag: ‘Gonna find out, won’t we?’ The DP gives me a pat on the back and heads to the best boy, who seems to roll up cables instead of installing them.

That’s when the music starts again, camera zooms out, the set in its whole glory is revealed, technical crew running around, actors standing around in their bathrobe and hair rollers, trucks coming up, when the music is interrupted by a little, squeaky voice:  ’The boom is not here.’ The sound engineer is standing next to me. ‘Well, where is she?’ ‘Car accident, but she is alright. Only mild concussion. She is going to come in about two hours, had to talk to the police, some asshole on a cherry picker ran into her, can you believe?’ I put out my cigarette in the sad rest of my coffee. I wave a hearty wave at the first, who still chases gorillas, zebras, elephants and one big butterfly. ‘Soo…’, Sound says. ‘MOS?’ I nod. ‘Yepp! MOS’ Cut to black screen containingo the opening credits. This and this production company proudly presents:

‘Murphy’s law, or: Anything that can go wrong on a set, will go wrong. A romcom/coming-of-age/slowburn thriller-dramedy based on real events. No animals were harmed during this production, except Dave, the fly. But that’s another story.’

‘Don’t start to write, it’s a trap!’ Baudelaire, 1867

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Writing about writing is probably the lamest thing a writer does. It seems very important to us to explain to people how hard writing is, comparable to drunk people who have to communicate that they are drunk (and worked hard for it). So, to defeat that cliché once and for all: Here is a piece about (screen)-writing.

You can find an endless stream of screenwriter tips, screenwriter books, screenwriter tutorials, screenwriter mugs and T-Shirts, but it always seems to me like this meme ‘how to draw an owl”. First you carefully start to outline the eye shape, the pupils, the eyelashes and then- you draw the rest until it looks like an owl.

Real ProTip: Before you start writing, do clean your house, re-arrange your books by colors and/or genre, ask the dog if he is a good boy and has to go outside (both times: Yes!), catch up with seven to twelve Netflix-series, bath in the blood of 12 virgins by moonlight, then but only then, you can start to write.  Maybe the dog has to go out again. But then.

I think, everybody has this terrible fear of the white page. This fear, let’s call it Earl, feeds from the following:

*fear of not being able to write down the idea you have in mind

*fear of not being able to write at all

*fear that the idea/characters/storyline turns out to be complete bs

*fear of you’ve written your shitty idea out, give it to a trustee (friend, producer, fellow screenwriter-producer-friend) and he/she/they say it is complete bs and why do you call yourself a screenwriter and that maybe you should look for a different job, maybe hand-model?

*fear of not being able to finish

Earl is an a-hole. A big one. Don’t listen to Earl. Tell Earl to fearl off. The trick I’ve found very useful to get rid of Earl is the following: You don’t have to write a whole script, or story line, character development or even scene. Just write for 15 minutes.

15 minutes is not that scary.  15 minutes you can fit in between anything: between meetings, between dog-walks, between a hot-dog-bun, between your ears. 15 minutes is do-able. Often I the write more than 15 minutes, sometimes I just set it aside and continue to stare at goats. I then look at it the next day. Sometimes I am relieved, because it turned out pretty okay and sometimes it is complete shite. But hey, no one saw it, except you (and maybe Earl) and you can just erase it and write another 15 minutes. You can not always write, but you can always work. And word after word after word, your treatment becomes alive. And you can join the writers’ ranks by chanting (in D):

“I hate writing, I love having written. (So fuck off, Earl.)”

                                                                          Dorothy Parker