Thursday, September 10, 2009

Egged on by Dave Eggers

Marsha Q's post reminds me to nudge people to see Dave Eggers' watchable little movie called "Away We Go." It got some bad ink: " . . . true to Gen-Y life, but uninteresting." Okay, the deck is stacked in favor of the happy couple looking for a place to settle down, but anybody who writes and is looking for some structure would do well to take a look at the movie's underpinnings. The principals go from locale to locale, looking for a place to settle down. Neat, huh? Lots of room for description, new characters on a regular basis, a a mini-arc in every setting (usually from curiosity to disappointment).

Aside: Sam Mendes directed ("American Beauty" among others) and he said he put aside doing "Middlemarch" for something lighter. No kidding, Sam.

Sometimes movies and often TV get a bad rap, but scripts are very economical. When I wrote for "Hill Street Blues," I worked as hard on finding resonant language as I ever did working on a poem. And I didn't have to get paid in contributor's copies!

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