Category: Scripts

Isolating Tensions: Foreground & Background in “Children of Men”

November 28, 2014 / marielcalloway

The world in P.D. James’ novel The Children of Men differs vastly from the onscreen realm that we see in the 2006 film adaptation. The basic premise remains the same: widespread infertility has halted the birth of human babies for nearly twenty-five years and Oxford professor Theo Faron, along with the rest of humanity, calmly and apathetically awaits the end of the world. With some minor changes in characterization, the screenplay and subsequent film build from the same starting point but enact one striking change. In the film, futuristic England is transformed from the wistful and nostalgic hills of peaceful Oxford to the chaotic and explosive streets of a xenophobic London.

Planned Obsolescence

April 18, 2012 / marielcalloway

It’s been reported that some kind of remake and/or prequel is in the works for Ridley Scott’s 1982 cyberpunk film Blade Runner. As a fan of both the film and the original novel I find this somewhat troubling but also rather amusing. It seems that no other story has had such a complicated history with the freedom of creative expression, and now it seems they want to open this can of worms yet again.

Dystopia

March 6, 2011 / marielcalloway

While waiting in the security line at Newark Airport last December, I had a minor revelation. It was a terrible line, probably the worst I had seen in my 4 years of flying home from the East Coast, so there was not much for me to do but look around and taken in the sights. That’s when I noticed the signs.

They’re at every airport, the helpful “baggage claim” or “terminal” placards that help you find your way during what is an unavoidably disorienting experience. I stared at the “C-2 Security Checkpoint: All Gates” display board for a while before I recognized the distant echoes of authoritarianism in signage, and its relationship to screenwriting.

Information Dump, or Why “Inception” Lost Best Original Screenplay

March 2, 2011 / marielcalloway

Okay, that’s unfair. Inception didn’t win Best Original Screenplay because the Academy preferred The King’s Speech, and with good reason. It was a great film built upon the foundation of a powerful script. (Why Hans Zimmer didn’t win Best Original Score is beyond me though…)

The most common criticism I’ve heard regarding the execution of Inception was that it felt like too much of an information dump. Nearly everyone I spoke to who disliked the film cited this as a reason. Even among those who did like it, they found the numerous explanatory sequences to be draining and a hindrance to the action of the film.

Here’s my reaction: I honestly didn’t mind. I realized that there was a sea of exposition to wade through, but it didn’t bother me. Christopher Nolan created a complex alternate universe and then did his job as screenwriter. He made the rules of this new word accessible to his audience so that we could suspend disbelief. I see nothing wrong with this. It is the task of every writer who dabbles in speculative fiction, where the traditional logic is lost in favor of more fantastical approaches to looking at the world. So where did Inception go wrong?

Why Screenplays?

March 1, 2011 / marielcalloway

I suppose that would be a good place to start. I’m not sure that I can really pinpoint when my interest in film developed, but there is a definite moment where the screenplay became a distinct object of appreciation for me.

In 7^th grade I took a class called “Media” and one of our assignments was to write a screenplay. Our teacher gave us a brief rudimentary lesson in formatting, spacing, indentations, capitalizations and the usual. I had always enjoyed writing stories, so at that point the screenplay became a way for me write stories visually in a form that did not care so much about the traditional features of prose literature—diction, imagery, syntax and the like. I was naïve then.