swerytd
Wednesday 21st February 2007 4:04pm
Guildford
7,542 posts
Hey Tom
I like the idea and I think you're doing it well so far.
The character of the director is clear as it comes through, though I think you're going for the cliche of a director. It's just my opinion but I reckon you need to give him a few traits that differentiate him from the plain-'diva' sort of directors that you'd expect to see here.
You've done this well with the actor; making him 'reach a point in his career where it's all about the money'. I like that angle and a few more scenes with him in would be great I think. (Maybe he could be exposed as selling drugs or being a gigalo as the camera crew approach his trailer later on so it really *is* all about making money!)
Note about the film. I think you've got a good opportunity to *really* send up a film and/or film type here in the scripted film bits and, this is just my opinion, but you're sending up a typical Seagal/Van Damme picture. If you were parodying a different kind of film. Maybe, say, Fight Club or some other film where there's only one of it's kind, and your actor is clearly not intelligent enough to understand what the film is about and what the director is trying to do, then you've got a good conflict between actor and director and could have scenes with each of them describing different things and then a scene with both of them together where they end up disagreeing/arguing about what the film's about (maybe the scriptwriter could come in and tell them they're both wrong!)
Another point about the one-of-a-kind film is that the director could claims it's one-of-a-kind and the interviewer (or whoever) could say 'What about Fight Club?' (or whatever) and the director could be completely oblivious to its existence, prompting a scene the next day where he's rented the film out the previous evening, realised it's almost exactly the same, and is basically trying to change the whole thing straight away with chaos everywhere.
Note on Director's Commentary. It's very good and you should get a copy and watch it. Whilst reading through your script there were elements that made me think 'It's like Director's Commentary but not quite as good', which is a little unfair I admit, but probably what a lot of people watching will think. Hence a few of the ideas I've given were to sort of guide you away from it so it's different enough.
Just some ideas. Hope they're useful. I think you've got a good idea here and should keep going with it.
Dan