"NAME THAT TUNE, MR. SPOCK"

I've been wandering through some old Spy Magazine archives lately, and found a little list that had me laughing to the point of tears. Here are my favorites from...

"Name that Tune, Mr. Spock!"

•This celebratory gathering occurs at my behest and I shall be lachrymose if it so befits me.

•She chooses to purchase a terraced incline directed toward a postlife paradisiacal region.

•The leather coverings now encasing my pedal extremities have been manufactured for the specific purpose of ambulatory forward motion.

•Adieu, jaundiced vehicular pathway consisting of blocks of baked clay.

•You provide illumination for the period of time delimited by my nativity and the complete cessation of my metabolic function.

•The deity had little or nothing to do with the manufacture of minuscule viridescent seed-bearing fruits.

•Expresses deep affection toward yours truly in the manner of a hardened igneous object.

•There is a total lack of vaccine or similar relief for the feeling of ennui engendered by the period of the annum characterized by warmer overall temperatures.

•I resisted the body of legislative constraints upon behavior, and those same constraints emerged victorious.

.....Given the dates of Spy Magazine, these are older songs. What would Mr. Spock be singing today? Anyone?

THE OLD SPICE COMMERCIAL: HOW THEY DID IT

I love the Old Spice commercial that's playing right now. You know the one: Technically it's called "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," but everyone calls it "I'm on a horse."

I think it's brilliant in its concept. (Selling body wash as an ultra-masculine product? Body wash?? Wouldn't the ultra-masculine shower cleansing product be a bar of soap?) And I think it's brilliant in its execution, both technically, and the performance by actor Isaiah Mustafa.

But how did they do it? Lots of CGI, right?

Actually, no. It was shot with practical effects, in one shot.

Lee is a big fan of Leo LaPorte, and I'm a big fan (now) of Isaiah Mustafa ("Mom, you're married!" Sabrina keeps remonstrating).... So this "How they did it" video was a lot of fun for us both. It's long, but worth it. Very interesting stuff.

ESQUIRE ON ROGER EBERT

Roger Ebert may be my new hero.

That's how I felt after reading this article from Esquire magazine.

I watched Siskel & Ebert at the Movies religiously back in the day. I watched Ebert and Roeper off and on, enough that my kids got into it. I stopped watching whatever they're calling it now when they started the ridiculous parade of people trying to fill Ebert's chair.

I don't always agree with Ebert's reviews, but they are always so elegantly written and so well-reasoned, I have to pay attention. The guy sure knows a lot more about movies than I do, so

it behooves me to sit down and listen.

Everyone knows a little, of course, about his battle against cancer over the last years. But this article takes us inside that battle and reveals a man who is coping with massive loss much better than I think I could. I ended the article a little weepy, wanting to pray deeply for Mr. Ebert, and wanting to read pretty much everything he's written.

You may feel the same way.

WHAT'S ON TV?: THE OLYMPICS

I could cite many reasons why I haven't been blogging all that much lately, but one of the weakest (yet truest) is that there's just so much on TV right now.

We watch too much reality TV in our house, in part because that's what we could watch with our kids when they were younger, and the shows were sticky enough that we still keep watching them. And let's face it, with teenagers, it's such a treat to be in the same room with them, all doing the same thing... so we'll stick with the reality TV.

And of course, right now, the reality fest that is the Olympics is on, adding to our dilemma: What to Tivo?

So over the next few days, I'll post a few quick thoughts on what I'm watching. And I'd love to hear your comments.

•THE OLYMPICS. I'm really pleased with the Vancouver coverage. I hated the China coverage, which never seemed to veer away from beach volleyball. But we're getting a good spread of events -- snowboarding, alpine, luge, figure skating, short track, speedskating... And, also unlike China, it hasn't been "Let's pause to look at the one American skier's run and then switch to another sport." We're seeing more of the field than we have in recent Olympics.

The opening ceremonies were tedious, though. We had friends over for dinner and the opening ceremonies, and when it hit 11:00, we all looked at each other and said, "It's not over yet?!" I liked the poet, liked the whales, liked K.D. Lang. I liked the initial shot of the field of wheat. But it all went on forever! Oh well, I guess we can't all be China. And they have more than redeemed themselves since.

I have a long history of loving the Olympics, especially the Winter Olympics, though I find I have no real rooting interests this year (and I don't automatically root for the Americans). I find Apolo Ohno incredibly charismatic, but he's the only athlete I can think of that makes me think, oh, don't want to miss that. Am I missing anyone?

And I find it hard to watch luge, which, believe it or not, has always been one of my favorite Winter Olympics sports. It's the one Winter sport I'd love to try (in ultra-slo-mo, of course), having already conclusively proved I will never be a figure skater. But I keep wondering if they've changed camera angles to avoid the spot where the Georgian luger died. And if there are piles of flowers there, or if the officials have cleared them away.

Finally, Cory keeps waiting to see if curling is going to make prime time. There's a shot in the opening credits that's shown up a couple of times where they make a curling stone hitting another one feel absolutely epic -- a triumph of editing and scoring. Still, I guarantee that if curling shows up in the evening, we'll all be there, rapt with attention. We're weird that way, I guess.

What do you think of the Olympics so far? What sports or athletes should I not miss?

"SMOKE AND MIRRORS": A REVIEW

"Genius"? I guess I can live with that.

I rarely check in to the ScriptShadow blog, which posts reviews of screenplays (produced and unproduced). So it was a surprise to me when some of my USC students told me that SMOKE AND MIRRORS had just been reviewed there.

It's a pretty good review. All right, fine, it's a rave. One of my students told me he had only ever seen a script rated "genius" once before (Aaron Sorkin's script THE SOCIAL NETWORK, about the beginnings of Facebook).

The reviewer got a few details off regarding the history of the script. Sean Connery dropped off the project because he was ill. Kevin Brodie was never truly attached to direct, but his name was used to cover the fact that the script was actually being bought for Michael Douglas (and I think that happened in 2001, not 2000, but I could be misremembering). At that point, Mimi Leder was attached to direct, but the whole thing fell apart during pre-production because of 9/11. But really, none of these details are that significant at this point...

We worked hard on this script: a year and a half and nine drafts before we sold it, and another four drafts afterward. So while it (still) hasn't gotten made, it's nice to see that it still holds up.

ScriptShadow provides a link to download a copy of the script. That's fine with me, for now at least.

Take a look at the review. Take a look at the script if you want. And who knows, maybe someday (soon?) SMOKE AND MIRRORS will rise from the dust and live again....

MORE "FAN FICTION" REACTIONS

I'm still enjoying hearing everyone's reactions to my Deathly Hallows "fan fiction" screenplay. The latest was from Pat, who asked quite a few interesting questions...

I just finished reading. I liked it – a lot. It all works to leave out the back story on Dumbledore for the movie. I didn’t think it would. But to have all that in a film, which is mostly told through newspaper articles would be awkward to watch. That was also a good way to leave out Rita Skeeter, who is entertaining in the book, but might really distract from the movie.

I did miss the part in the graveyard where Harry finds the graves of Dumbledore’s family, mainly because I missed the verse from Matthew. And I’m wondering, if there isn’t any of Dumbledore’s back story or Arianna, then how will that work at King’s Cross in the second half? I found that to be very powerful, that Dumbledore who had always seemed perfect, wasn’t. And that he had great reason to regret and to need forgiveness. Isn’t it through learning of his back story that we – and Harry – come to see that Dumbledore is very human after all? Or is their conversation at King’s Cross enough to convey all of that?

Obviously, I haven't written the very important King's Cross scene yet. But for me, the heart of the scene rests on three moments: (1) Harry realizing that he's apparently not quite dead yet, after making the ultimate sacrifice; (2) The vision of Voldemort's whimpering, pathetic soul; and (3) Dumbledore's comment, "Just because it's in your head, why should that mean that it's not real?"

In the context of a movie, we're taking a brief pause before the climax: The confrontation between Harry and Voldemort. And taking a pause here is a great thing to do: Harry's walk into the forest to face death will have had us holding our breath, and this gives us a chance to catch it before the final battle.

But we have a pacing problem. A rather significant one. We've already had a huge pause, just before this one: The moment when Harry stops the forward motion of the story to run look at Snape's memories. There's an enormous amount of exposition here, exposition we need to understand a lot of what's happened, exposition that faithful readers of the book will expect and want to see -- and yet it derails us off the direct route that gets us to the confrontation with Voldemort.

So to sit down and listen to Dumbledore try to explain himself only amounts to another detour at a point in the story where we really can't afford one. Yes, you're right, Pat, it is through this moment in the book that we realize how very human Dumbledore is. But this is Harry's movie. All we need here is for Dumbledore to be proud of Harry and help prepare him for what comes next. And since Harry hasn't been spending the movie tormented about Dumbledore's past, why spend pages we can't afford to have Dumbledore answer questions that haven't been asked?

I would need to go back and look it up, but when the trio are given their gifts according to Dumbledore’s will, isn’t Harry supposed to be given Gryffindor’s Sword? You came up with a very clever way to give them those things without including Scrimgeour or the whole bit about the Ministry putting a hold on them, but I did wonder about the sword.

You're right: Dumbledore wanted to give Harry Gryffindor's Sword, but the Ministry of Magic held it back. But the fact is, Dumbledore didn't give him the Sword, so that particular moment leads to nothing. What we really need for the story is to understand that the Sword of Gryffindor can destroy Horcruxes. We don't actually get that from Dumbledore's will, but we do get it from Phineas Nigellus reporting that Dumbledore used the Sword of Gryffindor to destroy the Ring Horcrux. And we get to that scene by having the trio oh-so-conveniently overhear the conversation between Dean, Griphook and Ted Tonks... a scene, by the way, that I wouldn't have included in the script otherwise, because it's such an enormous coincidence.

I would like to have seen just a little of the time they spent with Kreacher at Grimmauld Place after Kreacher told Regulus’s story. It’s during that time that a bond is formed between the trio and Kreacher when they are planning how to get into the Ministry. When they suddenly turn up, disguised, in the Ministry, it seemed too abrupt. If I didn’t know why they were there, I’m not sure it would be very easy to follow. A non-Harry reader might wonder if they had just randomly picked the Ministry and were perhaps on a fishing expedition hoping to stumble upon something useful; was there some reason they were taking such chances? But once they were there, it played out nicely.

Take a look at the book. There is next to no time spent with Kreacher, only a few sentences about how he was now keeping the house clean and cooking nice meals for them.

As for the planning to get into the Ministry... I actually wrote that whole section. And it took up a good 10 pages where, ultimately, nothing was happening that was going to matter later. As I wrote it, and as I reread it, I was frankly bored, and found myself saying, "Let's get on with it!"
I agree with you that the jump to the trio showing up in the Ministry is rather abrupt. If I were to do a second draft, I would try to soften that transition, maybe see if I could wrap up all the preparation in one quick page: The trio looks at a map of the Ministry. Hermione estimates how much Polyjuice Potion they have left. Kreacher serves them a nice meal and fawns over Harry. Someone mentions that they're going to need to steal some robes and name tags and the like -- and then Boom! We're in the Atrium and ready to go....

I like the way you handled the camping trip. The only time it felt long to me (in the book) was the first time I read it, and that was just because I wanted to get to the point of what was happening. There’s only one other thing that you left out that I wondered about. When Harry goes after the silver doe, finds the sword in the pool and is rescued by Ron, why not have Ron give the brief explanation of how the Deluminator led him back to the place where Harry and Hermione are? He just says it’s a long story but doesn’t follow it up later. Or is that going to happen in the second part?

Thanks for the kind comments on the "forest" section of the story. So many people have commented that they find it so long and draggy in the book, and yet it really isn't. I think JKR just gives us a great feeling of the despair and sameness and lack of direction of the whole experience, so it feels longer than the actual page count. I tried to give that same feeling in a shorter page count.

Yes, Ron is going to give the story of how he found Harry and the Sword at the top of the next movie. I felt it would be anti-climactic, to say the least, to have the events happen and then have someone explain how they happened... And given that (in the real-life movie scenario) there will have been a year or so gap between movies, we are likely to need the reminder of what just happened. So Ron's story will serve as the "Previously in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows moment that we are likely to need.

I’m curious about one other thing. When Harry finds a photo in Sirius’s room, why doesn’t he also find he partial letter that he sees in Snape’s Pensieve memory? Or have I confused that with something else? I thought Harry found part of the letter and in the Pensieve, we see that Snape had taken the other part.

No, you haven't confused that with something else. But ultimately it doesn't matter that Snape saved a piece of paper with Lily's signature. We will have had enormous amounts of visual evidence that Snape loved Lily, and we don't need that moment. And it's boring to watch people read on screen.

Those are all very nitpicky things – my apologies for putting all that first, but I wanted to get my thoughts down before they escaped.

I really do like your version of it. You kept the main, important events ( like the wedding with all the proper colors), introduced Luna’s dad, had Lupin and Tonks married, pregnant, Lupin wanting to be an absent father, Harry chastising him, and so on. I liked the beginning with the Dursleys – shorter than the book, but all the key parts were there. The Seven Potters was very well done. Because it was even quicker than in the book, it felt more intense as I could totally see it. It almost felt like too much to take in, but that’s not a criticism. I think the only thing left out there was that the Order knew it was Snape flying with the Death Eaters. Malfoy Manor was great – it sets us up to see it in the second half without having to have the explanation about Voldemort and the Death Eaters being there, or that the Malfoys aren’t particularly happy about the situation. And it leaves Snape in that ambiguous position of doing nothing to stop a murder that happens in front of him, which seems to place him clearly on Voldemort’s side.

Thanks for the kind comments. And were I to do a rewrite, I probably would include a shot of Snape in the grand escape from 4 Privet Drive. You're right that that should be there.

A question about Dumbledore, though. Since you are leaving out his back story and we didn’t see the Peverell grave in Godric’s Hollow, are you still going to include the Deathly Hallows story? Hermione has the book and is reading it – to not include it would make that seem a useless article. Oh, and thank you for putting Harry and the others under the Invisibility Cloak. I think they’ve left it out of the movies too much, just as they left out Dobby after the second movie, which will make it hard for non-readers of Harry Potter to care much about a house elf who was mostly portrayed as annoying.

Yes, I am going to include the Deathly Hallows story. I'm thinking we will see the actual Peverell brothers confronting Death (glad I don't have to figure out fully what "Death" looks like!) as Hermione reads the story, so as to cut down on the actual reading. I think, given the name of the movie, the Deathly Hallows are a necessary inclusion, even if it would be very possible to get to the end of the story without most of that storyline. I also love several moments about the sequence at Xenophilius Lovegood's house, and would miss them if they weren't in the movie. (For me, personally, one of the "must-have" moments is Harry seeing the mural Luna painted -- "friends friends friends"....)

We don't need Dumbledore's backstory to follow the story of the Hallows; we only need to realize that Dumbledore thought it was important for Harry to know about them. And we need to know that Dumbledore had the Elder Wand, but don't need to know how he got it. We also don't need the Peverell grave because we've already seen the symbol of the Hallows on Xenophilius and in The Tales of Beedle the Bard -- that's the link that Hermione follows, with the Peverell grave only serving to remind us of the mark.

Thanks so much for sharing this with us. It was great to read, to see what you would include or leave out, how you take all those internal thoughts of Harry and convey them visually. Without that, we lose the richness of the story.

I have to admit, that I almost always prefer a book to a movie. As much as I like movies, I really like reading all the descriptions and internal thoughts of a character. When a movie with a lot of action also has plenty of dialogue or character development or back story, I’m usually pretty happy.

I agree that a book is usually better than the movie version of the book. But given that these movies are being made, and given who I am, I just had to take a crack at it. Glad you enjoyed it!