Blogus Groundhogus

For years I kept hearing that screenwriters are storytellers. Screenplays are stories told with pictures. Story is the most important part of a screenplay. Blah blah blah.

When I was a newcomer to the field this all struck me as odd and inaccurate and skewed. In thinking about my favorite movies I would rarely think of the overall story. Story seemed almost incidental to the good parts of a movie. Instead I thought about great characters, or great lines, or great scenes. When I saw a movie I rarely took away the whole pie; I only took away the best slices of the pie.

My goal as a screenwriter was, then, to write great and memorable movies, and the way to do this was to create wonderful slices of pie. After creating the slices, then I merely had to arrange them in a reasonable order and shave and craft them into a 120 page pan.

The result was enlightening. (more…)

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The most useful thing I do every day is probably eating. I also consider working on a screenplay to be useful, and finishing one even more so.

The most useless thing I do every day is to play the drums.

I’ve come to drumming fairly recently. I’ve played guitar forever, tickled the ivories on and off, and even gained a beginner’s proficiency on flute and saxophone. For all of this a person might think of me as a talented musician, but that person would be thinking wrong. I am a music lover, a true amateur, with very little of the talent or discipline necessary to elevate myself to the level of “accomplished,” or even “kinda good.”

But music flows through me, and any time I am at a party with live music the place I really want to be is playing with the band.

My pal Francis has a music studio down the street from me, complete with every instrument ever invented. For me it is the best sandbox in the world.

One day I sat down at a drum kit and bounced a stick against the drum-head. Oh my god - it bounces! (more…)

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Is the movie Groundhog Day about time?  Is that a central theme?

I glanced over at the Laboratory section of my website to see how people were answering the question, “What is Groundhog Day about?”  So far the answers have included transformation, getting it right, growing up, change, reincarnation, grace, self-actualization…. even “pastries”, which may have been a joke but I bet is actually an honest answer about perfecting a difficult craft.

But nobody has answered “Time.”  Is the movie about time?

On the surface the answer seems to be “yes.”  (more…)

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In my blog entry on Chumps and Jerks, I got into a discussion with Al of Wisconsin about balance and weave – but Al also offered this:

“Phil has his dark moments in the film. Many of them. Yet he has a core of decency. Many a lesser man might have gone on a homicidal bender in those darker moments. Ned or the fellows on the radio or even whoever was playing “The Pennsylvania Polka” might have set off an otherwise normal person stuck to deal with them over and over and over. Phil only tried to bump himself (and to be fair, the groundhog) off.”

So far as you know, Al. So far as you know. The movie did not show every moment of Phil’s life on that repeating day. (more…)

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It was a particularly beautiful fall weekend in Santa Fe and I took myself for a walk in the mountains. The air was crispy, the autumn colors were stunning, and I found my feet walking the familiar path to visit my old friend Phil Connors up in his cave.

“So glad to see you!” said Phil. “Pull up a rock.”

We talked about this and that – the coming winter, the prospects for snow, the situation in Pakistan, the rising Euro, etc. But there was something gnawing on me about Phil’s adventure in Punxsutawney, so I asked him about it.

“In your own assessment of your time on February 2nd, you went from being, basically, an emotional child to an emotional adult.”
“And then some,” he affirmed.

“But you did it without any formal rituals. I mean, nobody told you how to be a man, or what kind of man to be. Nobody guided you; you didn’t follow anybody’s religious text or tribal tradition. You just grew up.”

“All true,” said Phil. “What’s your question?”

“I was just wondering if you felt you were missing something. Do you think it would have been better or faster or easier if somebody had just told you what to do?”

Phil thought for a moment. “You’re a storyteller,” he said. “Maybe this will help.” And he began to tell me this story, which I’m pretty sure he was making up as he went along: (more…)

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For many people, the first and most obvious question following up a discussion on Groundhog Day is, “What was your best day ever?”  People ask me this all the time.  But the truth is I had never thought about it.  For me this was never the focus of the movie and it doesn’t relate very well to the way I look at my life.  Perhaps this indicates for me a forward-looking nature, or perhaps it’s a lack of introspection, or perhaps just a truly deficient memory.  Certainly I have had some wonderful days - and I’ve also had days that I know I would rather not revisit, even in my memory, even with the distance of time.

But there is one remarkable day that keeps floating to the top.  (more…)

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The last writers’ strike was in 1988, and I had been a screenwriter for about fifteen minutes. Welcome to the team – now, act natural and do nothing.

I had sold my first screenplay, which is to say it had been “optioned.” They didn’t actually “buy” the script; they got the exclusive right to buy it should they ever actually begin to film the movie, which they know is always a long shot. In addition to the option, however, they had hired me as an employee to rewrite my own script – standard contract procedure - and this is what they needed me for. And this service I could not provide. The producers called me frantically the day before the strike. “You haven’t joined the Writer’s Guild yet, have you?” they pleaded hopefully. (more…)

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