Production Diaries:
June 2004
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Recent Entries:
HUNDREDS GATHER TO PAY TRIBUTE TO THE LATE MAKO IWAMATSU IN CAGES!
Wed, 14 Nov 2007
A SPECIAL TRIBUTE SCREENING OF MAKO!
Tue, 16 Oct 2007
Perles Acquires Cages Distribution!
Wed, 01 Aug 2007
"CAGES" RUNS 4TH WEEK IN THEATRES!
Fri, 13 Apr 2007
IT'S MY TURN TO FLY!
Mon, 09 Apr 2007
"CAGES" SURPRISES MANY AS IT ENTERS THIRD WEEKEND IN THEATRES!
Fri, 06 Apr 2007
"CAGES" ENTERS THIRD WEEK IN THEATRES!
Tue, 03 Apr 2007
LOYAL FOLLOWING TO THANK, AS "CAGES" ENTERS THIRD WEEK IN THEATRES!
Mon, 02 Apr 2007
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Matt Holland on the Making of Cages: PART TWO-A
08/23/04
The Writing and Rewriting of Cages: How the Sausages are Made
Rewrites One Through Fifty
DISCLAIMERS: This essay is about the screenwritng process. I have not read the final, or "shooting" script. Any discussion of the movie's plot, or changes to the plot, are intended to be satirical. I have no idea what twist and turns the characters lives may or may not take. Considerable literary license was taken in describing conversations that I may have had with Graham two or three years ago.
No persons or animals were harmed in the writing of the script. Please do not read this, or any written material while driving as it will likely result in a rear-end collision and higher insurance premiums. Sadly, I have learned this fact from personal experience.
Note to self: Proofread any future postings. I noticed, to my mortification, at least two errors in the previous posting. Life isn't easy when one obsesses about the past misusage of commas.
(The transcription has since been fixed. Thank you to the webmaster. I won't linger on the implications of that job title, though I feel certain that there exists an entire community, many of them living in San Francisco, of like-minded people.)
Glam LA Update: As I was writing this, at an eatery in Hollywood, an apparently homeless woman, and by that I mean apparently homeless and apparently a woman, wandered into the restaurant. She eyed the salad bar longingly before disappearing into the restroom for a shower, a nap or another fix. She was wearing a wraparound skirt that had likely been a dropcloth at Jiffy Lube 'N Tune and had speckles of leaves in her matted hair. It was very urban homeless chic: sort of Bo Derek in "10" meets "La Cage Aux Folles" meets life in a cardboard box. Or anyone living in New York's East Village. No one gave her a second glance. You could have two hundred needles protruding from your face at the supermarket and no one will notice. It's a tough town that way.
When I returned to my parking spot, police cars, with their lights flashing, were blocking traffic in either direction. More police cars continued to gather, like birds near Tippi Heddren in Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds". And I mean later in the movie, when things in Bodega Bay were really turning to shit.
I had just come from New York and thought I was escaping the seemingly incessant "yellow light, orange light...one, two, three" warnings concerning the level of risk attendant to doing the things you had to do anyway. But, no, the perils of urban life seem to be everywhere. Even here, where the most prominent structure in sight was a seedy strip mall. I hoped it was nothing more menacing than a garden variety felony that was being committed, like kidnapping or attempted homicide. This is obviously not a puff piece intended to promote LA tourism, but what's the alternative? Leave show business?
"I Have a First Draft!"
Graham bounded through my front door with a slim manuscript in hand. It seems that we had just had the discussion about his idea for a script ten minutes before. Maybe it had been the previous day. I'd been using pain medication to excess.
"That's great, Graham. I'll take it with me to the gym. I was just heading out the door."
I took the script with me and read it on the stair climbing machine. Two girls, one on either side of me on identical stair climbing machines, were each reading a script. None of the three of us acknowleded what the other was doing. There's no talking to strangers in LA, particularly about your screenplay. It's not allowed. If it is allowed, it's certainly heavily discouraged. I've learned that through having my many efforts at conversation with strangers be rebuffed with blank stares or abrupt single word answers coupled with a look of suspicion, I presume about my sanity.
I finished Graham's script in a half an hour or so. It was filled with visuals which made it difficult for me to follow the story. Now, I'm not a visual person and, for that reason, have a hard time reading scripts. I often get confused watching movies. I'm still not sure what happened in "The Usual Suspects" and I saw that movie twice.
Graham is the opposite, very visual. He speaks rapturously of foreign films that are rich with imagery, but contain little dialogue. I find those movies excrutiating, like watching a Renoir slide show for ninety minutes-with or without narration or listening to public radio.
TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW:
also check the dates of:
Aug 8, 2004 for more writing by Matt Holland.
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