Modern Piracy

This first semester of film school is sort of boot camp situation. The idea is to get us to be on a constant cycle of pumping out little movies. On any given week, I'll be either in pre-production (writing, casting, getting locations), shooting, or editing, or, worst case scenario but likely, some combination of all three.

This brings up the problem of trying to write something that is decent enough to shoot. Anyone who enjoys a random sampling of the movies that get made these days knows that this is easier said than done.

Most of the time, I write stuff based entirely on small ridiculous details. I wanted to write something that involved a man putting on chapstick (because it's so great to watch: the action of applying chapstick is exactly like applying lipstick, and some men seem completely self-conscious about this fact, but others seem to just not know where their lips are) and this turned into a non-dialogue seven-pager about something totally different. So I'm searching for these little twigs, these little hooks to get me going.

I received a gem of a book for my birthday. I had admired it many a time at Michael's house and he somehow convinced his roommate to part with it: Modern Pirates by one Stanley Rogers, pub'd 1939. It's all about mishaps on the high seas in modern (ie- 1800 onwards) times. You'd think there were more things to worry about in 1939 than publishing books on swashbuckling that use the word "coolie" without quotation marks, but apparently not.

The true value of this book lies not in reading it through, but in flipping it open at random and reading one or two sentences at a time. Check it out:

"Wheeling round and looking aft he saw a sight that froze his blood. Captain Wilkins, with his shirt spotted with blood, had sunk on his knees on the deck."

"He probably could not swim, for he threw up his hands and went down without reappearing again. This man knew the penalty for piracy was death, and he had evidently preferred to take this way out rather than face inevitable execution."

"As the head rolled on the deck it was the signal for a general attack on everyone on board."

So, yes, highly dramatic, brilliant (in the British sense) writing, dastardly schemes and bitter betrayals and all. I think cornstarch and red food colouring is the key to fake blood, but checking up on that is my next step.