Jim Shomos at the SA Writers' Centre

Jim Shomos is a writer, director and producer, across film, TV and digital media. He produced the world-first digital media series Mordy Koots. Yes, Mordy Koots. If you haven't seen this, you must. The Episode Opener [read Prologue] appears below, along with links to all episodes.

Jim has worked with Screen Australia, Film Victoria, Screen Tasmania and the Australian Children’s Television Foundation. He has been an official Speaker on digital media at MIPTV (Cannes), National Screenwriter’s Conference, SPAA, AFTRS, RMIT, and the VCA. He is a songwriter and and has also had stints as a storyliner on Neighbours and copywriter on Sale of The Century. 

And... he's coming to Adelaide to present a Masterclass on Writing. 

Online video, along with smartphones and tablets, are creating an explosion in the need for engaging screen content. Jim will highlight the opportunities this creates for screenwriters while focusing on a practical exploration of writing for the medium. The session will include a case study on his award-winning cross platform series forget the rules and examples of other outstanding local and international work. Discover how your narrative writing skills are relevant in this dynamic digital world; improve your craft; and be inspired with new ways to carve out a career as a screenwriter.

When: Monday 25th June 2012 between 5:30 - 8:30pm
Where: SA Writers' Centre, 2nd Floor 187 Rundle Street Adelaide SA 5000
Cost:  $20 AWG & SAWC Members  $30 Non Members

To register for this event please visit this page.

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Henry Hill Jr.: 1943-2012

Henry Hill in 1980

Henry Hill Jr., the famed mobster turned FBI informant, whose life story was documented in the book Wiseguy, died of an undisclosed illness on Tuesday at the age of 69. 

Ray Liota portrayed Hill in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), which was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. 

Hill was associated with New York’s Lucchese crime family throughout the 1960s and into the 1980s. He began his life of crime at the age of eleven, running errands for Paul Vario, a captain in the Lucchese family.

Hill completed his first major robbery when he and Thomas DeSimone—who was portrayed in an Oscar-winning performance by Joe Pesci in Goodfellas—robbed Air France of a shipment of $420,000 in April of 1967.

Hill became an FBI informant following a 1980 arrest on a narcotics-trafficking charge, and testimony he delivered led to 50 arrests. He, his wife, and their two children, entered the witness protection program and changed their names, but were expelled from the program in the early 1990s following several arrests on drug-related charges. 

In 2010, Hill was inducted into the Museum of the American Gangster in New York.

Adelaide Night Life - 1967

1967. What a year that was! 

Guy Pearce, Jason Statham, Judd Apatow, Julia Roberts, Keith Urban, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Miranda Otto, Nicole Kidman, Tina Arena and Will Ferrell were born.  

Basil Rathbone, Brian Epstein, Che Guevara, Claude Rains, Dorothy Parker, Harold Holt, Jack Ruby, Jayne Mansfield, Otis Redding, Paul Muni, Ronald Ryan, Spencer Tracy, Varian Fry, Vivien Leigh, Woody Guthrie and Xuantong Emperor all died. 

Jimmy Hoffa went to prison. Elvis Presley got married (in Las Vegas, of course). The first automatic cash machine was installed, in England, but no Nobel Peace Prize was awarded. Charlie Chaplin released his last film. Clint Eastwood released A Fistful of Dollars. Henry Hill and Thomas DeSimone robbed Air France of $420,000. And I first experienced the growing suspicion that I was fated to be drafted and sent to Vietnam.

In the music world, Johnny Farnham released Sadie (The Cleaning Lady). The Doors released their first album. The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour. Pink Floyd released The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The Rolling Stones released Their Satanic Majesties Request, and the musical Hair opened off-Broadway. 

It has been suggested that, at the time, Adelaide led the world in fashion, music and street gangs. Don't believe it? Just watch this news report from 1967, as ace ABC reporters get to the bottom of things. Discotheques, Mods, Rockers, Sharpies, and street fighting. Plus you'll get to hear that thundering tribal rock band, The Notions, performing live.

For contrast, here's a song from the Beatles' album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 



And to set things in counterpoint, here's Those Were The Days by Mary Hopkin from the following year.

"East WillyB"

East WillyB is a webseries set in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Bushwick is east of Williamsburg (hence East WillyB). The population there has, at various points in its history, been Dutch, German, and Italian. Today it is heavily Hispanic.

The webseries was created by Julia Grob and Yamin Segal, and produced by Michael Shawn Cordero.

Rent's going up, hipsters moving in, but where there's a Willy, there's a way! For years "Willy Jr.'s Sports Bar" has been the hot spot on Broadway where you could grab a drink, catch the latest gossip, and bitch about the Mets, but now Willy Jr. may be forced to close. Along with his friends, Willy Jr. designs a plan to keep "Willy Jr.'s" away from his scheming Ex, bring the barrio back in, and restore the bar to its former glory.

Here's Pilot Season Episode 1.

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Meanwhile, in real life, there's a battle going on in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a battle between the old barrio families and the Manhattan-focused forces of gentrification. Take a look at this:

Book review: "Bill Idelson's Writing Class"

Bill Idelson's Writing Class was recommended to me by Brian McDonald. It is one of those books you stumble across and wish you'd found years earlier. If I were suggesting a hierarchy of screenwriting books for beginners to read, I'd place this at the top of the list. 

Bill Idelson worked in television, writing shows such as The Twilight Zone, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Flintstones, The Andy Griffith Show, Get Smart, Bewitched, Gomer Pyle, Love American Style, The Odd Couple, The Bob Newhart Show, Happy Days, The Betty White Show, M*A*S*H and others. 

He was also a television actor, appearing in many of the shows he wrote. His last role was on The War at Home, in a 2007 episode called "No Weddings and a Funeral," a few months before he died at the age of 88. 

Bill Idelson's Writing Class is a small book, 179 pages (including the full scripts for an episode each of Get Smart and The Andy Griffith Show). The Writing Class proper is barely 70 pages. But the ideas contained in them hold basics of story-telling that many of the hefty books never get around to. Each chapter ends with a writing exercise. Do the exercises before reading on. They will open your eyes to the secrets of story-telling. 

Before it was a book, the Writing Class was an actual writing class that met at Bill Idelson's home, in his kitchen, seated at a pine table that had once belonged to Humphrey Bogart. I don't know if the table helped, but many of his students went on to become successful writers in Hollywood.

Here are a few quotes to give you a feel for the man's style.
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• If you want to sell your product and make a lot of money, it's got to have a story. It almost seems too simple, doesn't it? But it's true.
• The cardinal rule is ... no story, no money. You need a story that makes the juices flow. Something's got to stir. You've got to feel amused, or sad, or frightened, horrified, disgusted, turned on ... sexually. 
• Everyone reacts pretty much the same. It's called "group behavior," and is important to a writer. It's what makes hits and flops. If you watch an audience during an emotional scene, you'll see the handkerchiefs all come out at the same time. People are very much the same. They have the same sorts of organs: heart, stomach, nerve endings, entrails, etc. It's what makes it possible to transfer a human heart to another human. It makes it possible to evaluate a script or a performance. It makes Oscars. 
• When I tell students that hardly anybody knows what a story is, not even professional writers in Hollywood, they look at me as if I'm daft. How could people who make a living telling stories not know what a story is? Well, in my experience, most professional writers tell stories by the seat of their pants. They know what it feels like to have a story when they're writing. And they know what it feels like when they have no story or a weak story. But most of them couldn't explain what a story is if their lives depended on it. Oh, they'll give explanations of what a story is, but it won't help anybody write a story, and few of them use their own definition when they write.
• So I ask the class: What is a story?
  "It has a beginning, a middle and an end."
  Always the first answer. And I tell them what Mel Brooks said when they told him that. "So has a piece of shit."
• You need three elements to tell a story. The hero—(who) does not need to be heroic. He can be a crook, a shyster, a con-man, a mobster, anything, just so long as he wants something and the audience empathizes with him. His goal. And the obstacle. 
• The story is the struggle to get what you want.
• You want something: a girl, a guy, a raise, and there's an obstacle: the girl, the guy, the boss. 
• The story is the struggle; the more difficult the struggle, the stronger the story. 
• How do you make it more difficult? Well, it's the irresistible force against the immovable object. The hero has got to desire the object a lot. The obstacle has got to be unyielding. The audience has got to believe there is no solution. If you can make them believe that, they'll be on the edge of their seats. The hero cannot give up. The obstacle cannot give up. The longer the impasse the longer the audience will pay attention. The minute one side surrenders, the story is over. The story is the struggle.
• When does a story start? When all three of the ingredients are established: The hero, goal and obstacle. When all three of those are known, the story starts.
• The writer must not avoid conflict.
• There's no limit to the lengths a beginning writer will go to avoid conflict. The easy way out. Don't do it. Intensify the conflict if you want to make a living.
• Every person wants something every moment of his life, from the instant he's born to the minute he dies.
• Everybody wants what is in their own best interest.
• If everybody wants what is in his own best interest, what happens when people get together? A clash of interests. Conflict!
• There are only two ways to get what we want. Your Final Draft software indicates what they are. Two settings: Action and Dialogue. In primitive times and places, such as the old west, action was the key, or at least that's what we're led to believe. But in our civilization, dialogue is used more. There is no more fascinating and complex a subject than dialogue. It's a subject for a lifetime study, and it better be a long life.
• Good dialogue is spoken by the character, generally to another character, and makes the audience believe what they are watching is really happening. It makes audience's juices flow and holds their attention and puts money in the writer's pocket.
• I believe that storytelling is kind of a natural thing. All of us, from an early age, were pretty good at telling stories, true or false. And we never worried about construction (read 'structure'). It always seemed a simple thing to tell a story that was interesting. The main thing was that if the story was interesting to us, it would probably be interesting to other people.
• If you read the rich writing teacher's How-to books and believe that on page thirty you must establish the determining moment, and on page sixty accomplish the character change, your story might become just the wee bit mechanical, nest ce pas? Maybe that's why these writing gurus never make much money writing creatively.
• The rich construction (structure) experts are not so much instructors as critics. They take a successful movie and dissect what the successful writer did. They remind me of wannabe painters who move a canvas chair into the museum and copy the brush strokes of Whistler's Mother. I only mention these charlatans to save student's time and money.

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Here is the Bill Idelson story.

Jedi Bubblebath

Is there no limit to the ways in which Star Wars can be recycled? Apparently not. 

Here's a Nerdist interpretation of the InterGalactic peace. Saber 2: Return of the Body Wash was written by Zeb Wells and directed by Seth Green.

The last remnants of the Empire have been defeated, and it is a period of peace in the galaxy. The Jedi Order, no longer needed in their role as defenders, have scattered across the stars and started new lives... while the Sith wait quietly hidden in their midst.

Such a Jedi and her Sith counterpart have found common ground and established a new business together on a remote planet. United by a love of animals and a belief in the force, they have rededicated their lives to the art of grooming.

Their latest mission leads them to the base of a former Rebel. Though the war is over, they have not forgotten where their true allegiances lie.

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Interview with Tennyson E. Stead

Tennyson E. Stead is a Los Angeles-based writer, director, and founder of 8 Sided Films. His webseries, The Starmind Record, won awards at the 2012 L.A. Web Fest for Directing and Editing. 
   I first encountered Tennyson when I ran a post featuring The Starmind Record. He popped up again a few months later, whilst in the throes of pre-production and fundraising for his next project, a movie called Quantum Theory. He came across as an intelligent, energetic, and committed filmmaker, with a philosophical bent, so I asked him a few questions.
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*  Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Mostly, I'm from the Boston area. I was born in Newton, Massachusetts.

*  Does that make you a “Southie” in The Departed or The Town sense of the word?

No. South Boston is where Southies are from. South Boston is the Irish part of the harborfront, basically.

*  What school did you go to? 

I studied theater at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and I'm a proud alum of Phillips Andover Academy.

The Social Network:  The John Harvard statue is fake, the snow is fake, 

but the building is the genuine Paresky Commons at Phillips Academy. 

*  When did you first take an interest in films/stories?

Right away. Before grade school, my grandmother used to help me make storybooks about spacemen riding around on friendly dinosaurs. Learning to write was something I put a lot of work into, because her health was failing and my parents were constantly concerned that I was exhausting her.  

   Films got me excited as soon as I figured out what they were—and there was some confusion at first. My mother had a hard time explaining that we couldn't just... go to Dagobah. I eventually got the hang of it. When I realized someone could just make all these things up, I wanted to be that person.

   My first stage production in high school sealed the deal. For the first time, I was around people who appreciated my eccentricities.

Luke Skywalker goes to Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back

*  What was your first paying job?

I helped my parents pay for my books at Andover by working in fast food restaurants and coffee houses over the summers and holidays, but my first real job was as a stagehand.

*  When did you move to L.A., and why?

Back in the winter of 2002, I came out here to put my hands on the entertainment industry and sort out what exactly I wanted to do with it.

*  What was your first job in the movie business?

My first job in Los Angeles was cold-calling investors on behalf of an independent film company that made direct-to-DVD films of highly dubious creative or financial value. At the time, I didn't know what I was getting myself into... and despite some hard lessons in the beginning, I wound up helping to produce films under some very cool people.

Keith Kjarval

*  What training or mentoring have you received?

My only mentor in the industry has been Keith Kjarval, president of Unified Pictures. Keith made his name in the film business on the strength of his considerable sales and finance experience, and working with him over the years has helped me understand the forces that drive a successful financial venture in any industry.

   In a lot of ways, that's what finally gave me the confidence to start building my own homestead in Hollywood. At the same time, the strength of my craft comes from thirty years of telling stories. There's no substitute for that.

*  What was the best advice you received at the start of your career?

"Keep writing." 

*  Why did you name your production company “8 Sided”?

Playing tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons back in high school was what first got me thinking about directing. I usually played with kids who were acting in the theater department, and the games were run by folks who really knew what they were doing—the stories that came out of those sessions were some of my most intense and engrossing experiences I'd had up to that point. Watching people I knew share things through performance that they had no idea they were capable of... that got me hooked!

   Over the years, I've written several tabletop games myself. All the rules I made up were based on a system of chance using eight-sided dice.

*  Much of the interesting filmmaking happening at the moment is coming out of filmmaking collectives. You refer to your production company as a “repertory film company.” What’s the difference?

Filmmaking collectives seem very focused on sharing production resources, which is important... and at the same time, the ability to make a movie is only part of the puzzle. 
   As a business model, repertory theater has thrived for centuries by not overlooking the audience as part of the well-being of the company. A repertory ensemble works together when it comes to production, but we also share accountability for cultivating and maintaining our audience. Social media gives folks like us the power to build global communities, so repertory business principles can finally be applied to film.

*  Most young filmmakers understand the need to build social networks, but you go further than that. Can you explain your approach to “building the audience”?

Have you ever tried to get people to come to a theatrical or musical performance? Even with people you know, it's impossibly hard to pack a house... and movies open in more than one house simultaneously, with multiple shows a day! If you're not ready to fill five movie theaters, four times a day, for three straight weeks, then even the most modest American theatrical opening is beyond your reach.

   If you do manage to fill those theaters, then you'd better be ready to expand to thirty screens. Perform well on those, and now you're getting somewhere!

   Our approach to building an audience is to find the people who like what we do, and to use every resource we have to keep them entertained. If we work hard, then the three years or so it takes us to get this film through production and our first festival season will prepare us to fill theaters. If we then continue to keep our audience engaged, the same people who came and saw the film will be there to make the next opening even bigger.

   My advice, if you want a career in this business, is to take full accountability for who-shows-up to see your shows. Do not assume that getting people to come is someone else's problem, because one day it will turn out to be your problem after all!

From The Last Shot, a great examination of the Hollywood dream.

*  It has often been said that “Hollywood is the only place in the world where you can die from encouragement.” Do you think that’s true?

Definitely. There is a lot of talk in Los Angeles. People move here because they are hoping to realize a dream, and not necessarily because they have polished their craft and made show business a way of life. All the time, you meet folks who expect Hollywood to take them by the hand and help them become the actor or writer they know they should be. Folks come to Los Angeles expecting destiny to take over once they arrive.

   Calling attention to the deficiencies of someone else's work might just bring unwanted attention to your own, which in turn might scare destiny away. There's also a lot of people who simply don't know what makes a good performance, screenplay, or what-have-you. Lastly, everyone is worried that the person they wind up speaking critically of is the one person who was destined to make them a star. Folks in Los Angeles deal with all this by buttering one another up constantly, and then we dignify it by calling it politics.

   Bear in mind, however, that there is a distinction between the business of filmmaking on the one hand, and the business of breaking into Hollywood on the other. These kinds of conversations are more or less exclusive to the latter of the two, which is a world rife with snake-oil salesmen and lots of empty promises. The world of filmmaking is basically like theater, but with more illusion and lots more money.

*  Tell us something about your next project, Quantum Theory.

When a defense contractor steals next-gen reality-bending quantum technology, the two sassy geniuses who invented it will stop at nothing to get it back!

America Young

Danielle Jones

Quantum Theory is a science-fiction heist movie with a very fun, goofy, quirky pace and tone. Our two stars,  Danielle K. Jones and America Young, have an on-screen relationship that's very much like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in Grumpy Old Men - and their relationship is what gets them through. These two girls have created something that literally allows them to bend and alter the fabric of the universe, and it's been stolen by the most resourceful, thorough, and completely unethical people you can imagine. This is a movie with exceptionally high stakes.

   We've chosen this film as the one we want to introduce ourselves with, basically because it's so much fun. This movie is goofy in the same ways we are. We're hoping the fun of making and watching it will draw people in. If you're looking to find out more, join our community at http://www.8sidedforum.com/group/quantummovie!

*  If you could recommend just one filmmaking advice book to a newcomer in Adelaide, what would that book be?

Read anything by Stanislavski. Everything in cinema boils down to the action of the characters, and what the actor is doing. Stanislavski, in my opinion, has written the definitive body of work on that subject.

• An Actor Prepares, by Constantin Stanislavski
• Building A Character, by Constantin Stanislavski
• Creating A Role, by Constantin Stanislavski

*  Name your ten all-time favorite movies.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Solaris (1972)
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (1990)
• Robocop (1987)
• Star Wars (1977)
• Fanny & Alexander (1982)
• District 9 (2009)
• Autumn Sonata (1978)
• The Right Stuff (1983)
• Avatar (2009)

 

Thank you for the questions, Henry!  If anyone has anything additional they would like to know, you can always find me on our own community pages, here: http://www.8sidedforum.com/profile/TennysonEStead 

Break a leg, everyone!

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Here's the creative team for Quantum Theory discussing the project on an Indiegogo fundraising video. 

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