My DIY film/writing school

Sleepingless

I love A6's.

That's when my wife Marie, a shift worker, gets a 9am to 5:30pm shift. It means I wake up when "normal people" get up, as opposed to 5:30am or 10:30am.

But it does kind of spoil my carefully crafted timetable, which was:

• 5:30am Kiss Marie goodbye as she drives to work.
• 6am-ish emerge bleary eyed, boot up computer
• 6:10am ish ... remind myself I need to get a RAM upgrade for this slow computer - or stop trying to run so many programs on it...
• 6:10am ish - about 8am ... write script
• 8amish or 7ish or whatever really - about 9 - blog.

So, apologies for the long delay. Actually Marie's been off in the last three days (her weekend) hence both our routines are out the window.

Poor excuse, really. I'm a professional, dammit. But anyway... the movie watching has continued, whether Marie's there or not. In fact, she's not much of a chick-flick fan. I'm more into them than she is ... give her an action film any day. We are a weird couple.

So anyway, I watched the chick-flick on the weekend, Sleepless in Seattle. Loved it! I am at heart an incurable romantic, and that final meeting on the top of the Empire State building is for me one of the defining moments in cinema.

"I think I left it by the tele... scope...." is now right up there along with "I am... and always will be ... your friend" and "Tell your sister you were right about me...".

A true romantic who likes sci-fi... go figure...

Also watched Coming to America, which while a romantic comedy is probably more of a date movie or even a guy flick (I'm thinking of the bathers here...) than other rom-coms. Funny, but in an 80s, Eddie-Murphy playing half the cast kind of way. In other words, a good laugh, but not a heck of a lot I could learn from it.

I also saw Before Sunrise and Before Sunset - not comedies by any means, but definitely romantic. Linklater is an artist! And so are Hawke and Delpy. A really deep movie to get into, and it's good to see them back to back.

Meanwhile, I'm mere pages away from finishing the screenplay. I reached 90 pages today, Woody Allen's ideal comedy length, and am trying to flesh out the subplots without making it seem like padding. Just making sure to pay off everything I've set up.

posted by Simon @ 12:01 pm