In the Blink of an Eye

Books on Film

In The Blink of an Eye

by Walter Murch

Walter Murch was an editor on ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘The Conversation’, ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ and a bunch of others. This book is based on a lecture he gave on editing.

It’s a short book (146 pages) and only about half of it is based on the lecture. The second half is about his thoughts on moving over to digital editing. Despite the short length I’d still call it essential reading for anyone interested in filmmaking.

I saw one review on Amazon where someone was complaining that it doesn’t actually teach anything about editing apart from ‘one trick’. That’s a complete misreading of it though. He’s not trying to teach a bunch of editing ‘tricks’ but talking about an overall philosophy and I’d say the book is probably more valuable to a director or DP than to an editor.

The book is short so I can’t really get into too much detail so I’ll end by saying I loved this book and consider it essential. Buy it!

Screenwriting 101 Film Crit Hulk

Books on Film

Screenwriting 101

Film Crit Hulk

What kind of name is ‘Film Crit Hulk’?

Okay so, this always leads to an awkward introduction. This guy is easily my favourite person writing about movies right now. He works in the film industry but can’t reveal who he is so he writes anonymously under the guise of The Incredible Hulk. This includes writing in ALL CAPS and also kinda writing in ‘Hulk Speak’. He’s pretty eloquent though and at this point the hulk speak is pretty much just referring to himself in the third person. If you think being eloquent goes against the Hulk persona though, it doesn’t. Read up on the comics ;)

He also has a good reason for writing like that in that it effects how people actually take in what he’s saying. Without getting too much into it what ends up happening is that people pay more attention to the text (instead of just skimming) and they engage with the actual ideas more than how it’s written. Also, just the very idea of having a character known for being a giant rage monster advocate for sincerity and humanity and being nice and cuddly effects how people view things in terms of what’s on the surface and what’s underneath.

The writing can seem a bit much to take in at first (his articles are also super long) but I’ve been reading his stuff for years now and I can read his stuff so easily now I don’t even notice the style. I can easily read his stuff for hours at a time and often do just re-read a bunch of his articles in a row.

So anyway, what’s the book about?

It’s about screenwriting! It’s also very much about storytelling in general. A huge section of the book just deals with what most other screenwriting books don’t even bother with; what even is a story? Why do we tell them? How do you find a story to tell?

Other books, and screenwriting advice in general can also end up giving you a lot of ‘rules’. “Here’s the structure you need to follow. Here’s what you have to do. Here’s what you absolutely aren’t allowed to put in a script.” It’s all bullshit of course. Just look at any interview with a working screenwriter where any of these rules come up and they just laugh them off. Some people even try to claim they’re not telling you what rules to follow but giving you ‘principles’. “I’m not saying you *have* to do it like this, but all these successful films seem to follow this rule so…” They usually don’t give you a good reason for *why* to follow these principles except to point out a bunch of good movies that seem to follow them or to just shrug and say “hey, they just *work*”

Enter Hulk. He spends a good part of the book just tackling two of the most common things that screenwriters are told to follow ‘Three Act Structure’ and ‘The Heroes Journey’. He actually takes them apart, dealing with how they actually work and what effect they have on a story. His plan is take stuff that often end up becoming restrictive and instead make them freeing.

There’s a lot more too! It’s honestly the best thing about writing I’ve ever read and I’d call it essential reading for anyone interested in writing or filmmaking. I’d even recommend it to anyone that is just interested in movies in general. It really is great and I’ve read it 3 times since I picked it up just over a year ago (I even read it twice in the past 3 months!)

What a minute Paul, you’re not a working screenwriter! How can you know that this is better than any other book about writing? If something like ‘Save The Cat’ speaks just as confidently as this Hulk guy how can you know to recommend one over the other? Even if Hulk really does work in the industry how you know he knows what he’s talking about?

Well, I’ve been interested in writing and specifically screenwriting for years now and I’ve been paying attention to what kind of advice people have been giving about it for over 10 years now. If you pay attention that long and you specifically listen to the differences between what working writers say and what ‘script gurus’ say then you start seeing patterns. A lot of it comes down to aforementioned ‘rules’ and ‘principles’ and how they are talked about. Any ‘rule’ or ‘guideline’ should only exist to serve the story you are telling. It shouldn’t be just there because it ‘just works’ or whatever. You start learning the difference between actual advice and what’s essentially the writing version of snake oil buzzwords. Plus ‘Save The Cat’ is a fucking joke and any writer that’s talked about it has nothing good to say. If you can find a single good screenwriter that praises it I’ll buy you a house. (*)

Okay so I’m interested…

Great! Well, the great thing about this book is that it’s a pretty cheap ebook. It’s only £2.99 on Amazon. You can get it (here)

There’s more too! Since people people genuinely have issues with the All Caps stuff buying it means you get both an All Caps version and a regular text version. You don’t have to take all my praise at my word either, you can read a section from the book (here). In this excerpt he talks about Three Act Structure.
You can also check out a bunch of articles he’s written online (here). Enjoy!

(*) - not legally binding

Hollywood Rat Race - Ed Wood - Book Review

Hollywood Rat Race

-Edward D Wood Jr

My favourite movie is ‘Ed Wood’ so imagine my surprise when I’m in a used book store and I happen across ‘Hollywood Rat Race’ a book written by Ed Wood himself! The back of the book says that it’s part how-to manual, part memoir but it’s not exactly that. Which was disappointing, but it’s interesting none the less.

Written around 1964-65 and only published in 1998 what it is is a guide for young actors of how to make it in Hollywood. A lot of it is pretty sound advice too, do as much as you can before moving to Hollywood , learn as many talents as you can and be wary of any “producer” whose offer seems too good to be true. They’ll take money for shooting a screen test he says, but not bother putting any film in the camera. He also advises you to be a character actor instead of a star. Stars fade but a good actor will always get work.

Where the book really comes alive though is when he goes on a tangent or starts talking about his own life. He really genuinely loved movies and Hollywood, he even devotes a chapter to the fact that some people hate the industry but he doesn’t understand how they can (he thinks communists are involved though). He says he loves all of it and writing of every kind too. Not long before writing this book he wrote a documentary for the military and ended up finding it really interesting. He also talks about some of his friends and the people he admires and how much he loves doing stuff for them, writing movies just so they have a part or organising a public appearance of Bela Lugosi because so many people thought he was dead. He tells a story about how he once rented a house right across the street from the Warner Brothers lot just because of where it was and because it had a nice pool. The apartment itself was tiny (according to Wood you could only enter the bathroom sideways) and cost loads but as long as nobody came inside he could have loads of Hollywood people over and it made him look good.

There’s a real element of sadness that hangs over the whole thing though. Asides from the fact that he’s a passionate filmmaker who’s now famous for being among the worst is knowing how he spent his final years. This was written at a time when the future of Hollywood was uncertain, business was going down, television was being seen as significant competition, and fads like 3D weren’t working. It would be a few years until the likes of ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘Easy Rider’ ended up revitalising Hollywood so when he wrote this the only thing that seemed to be working for Hollywood according to him were ‘nudie pictures’ which Wood looked down on. But this was at the point in Wood’s career when it was all going downhill for him. He was drinking more, his suffered from depression and was so poor he ended up having to make the soft core porn films he looked down on so much as well as writing pornographic novels. Maybe his talk of how much he loves every part of writing was him steeling himself for this new stage in his career and maybe all his talk about sleazy producers and who hard it is to make it in Hollywood comes from bitterness about how he ended up. He was proud enough of his work that he says “Orgy of the Dead” (a movie he wrote based on his own novel and which was released right before this book was written) might end up being remembered as a ‘classic of it’s kind’. All it’s remembered now though is as being the bridge between the horror and sci-fi stuff he made before it and the porn he made after.

Thirteen years after he wrote this, evicted from his apartment and staying in a friends place he spent the whole weekend drinking and after going to lie down he died of a heart attack. Two years after his death the Golden Turkey awards called his the worst director of all time and his cult following started.

It was interesting read but you’d probably have to have some affection for Wood. It would have been a lot more interesting if it was a guide for filmmakers instead of actors. There is a lot of bitterness but there’s some sweetness in there once he starts talking about the people he likes which I found really endearing. He also mentions angora sweaters 13 time. I counted.

Book Review - ‘Dreams & Shadows’ - C. Robert Cargill

Book Review - ‘Dreams & Shadows’ - C. Robert Cargill

Robert Cargill is more well know as Massawyrm on AICN. He’s recently branched out in

other types of writing with the movie Sinister and also this, his debut novel.

‘Dreams & Shadows’ takes the idea that all the various faeries and folklore from around the world are real and all live together in a separate fairy realm. The story follows two human boys, Colby and Ewan who end up getting mixed up in it and each others lives. 

Colby is a young boy who has a chance encounter with a genie and is granted his wish to ‘see everything’. This includes being brought to the fairy world where he meets Ewan, a young boy who was stolen as a baby and replaced with a changeling. Their meeting sets off a chain reaction that could change the whole balance of the fairy world.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s very readable and I’m a sucker for stories about folklore. I honestly had a hard time putting it down sometimes and flew through it pretty quickly. There are some issues with it. There are some points where it gets bogged down in long monologues but I guess you can kind of get away with it a little more in books. Unfortunately some of the monologues that are supposed to be deep are not quite as deep as they seem to think they are.

I still recommend it especially if you are a fan of urban fantasy. He signed a deal for two more books in this series and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.