“Cowboys and Aliens” to mix the sci-fi and western genres
Cowboys and Aliens is a film concept that’s been booted around the industry for a decade or more (since 1997 to be precise), and finally looks to be on the way to production with Robert Downey Jr. in front of the camera, and Ironman director John Favreau behind.
Why so long for what seems like a no-brainer idea that sells itself based on its title alone? For one thing, just a general inability to find a good story in the concept. Variety has a great chart illustrating the time line of this project.
Meanwhile, over at The Hollywood Reporter, we learned last month that Fox greenlit a scifi western from Scott Rosenbaum (Chuck). The untitled project, from Warner Brothers Television and McG’s Wonderland Sound and Vision, tells the tale of a gunfighter stuck between two worlds and will feature a nod to Planet of the Apes.
“What I’m really interested in is the revamping of the Western genre where you still have all of the iconic Western themes and iconic Western tropes but the idea is that it will feel incredibly contemporary and will introduce the Western to a whole new generation,” Rosenbaum said.
The idea’s not really new, of course. The Science Fiction Western is a known sub-genre of scifi, which transposes science fiction themes onto an American Western setting. It’s the counterpart to the Space Western, which transposes themes of American Western books and film to a futuristic space frontier setting (Wikipedia). That’s where your Firefly and Star Treklive (Roddenberry first pitched Star Trek to the Western-fixated TV network executives of the 1960s as “Wagon Train to the Stars”).
So the Science Fiction Western, while not new, may be welling toward a resurgence as a genre. God knows it deserves a reboot in the theaters after the horrific Wild Wild West (one of only one or two truly unwatchable Will Smith joints), and TV could use another crack at it too post the failure of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (an underrated show that never got its due, which also dipped a toe into SteamPunk, and got Bruce Campbell in front of an audience that wasn’t simply a gaggle of B-horror movie fanboys much like Burn Notice has done).
I see the (potential) development of Cowboys and Aliens and the Rosenbaum project as a possible new growth area for screenwriters, and if I were a screenwriter or show runner with a love of either scifi or western (or both) I’d be thinking about developing something to have in my back pocket in the coming 18 months.
Let’s get the news out of the way right off the bat:Faeries did not bring home an award in the screenplay competition. But the good news is, the grapevine tells us that we were a very close runner up, and an unofficial judge ’s favorite for commercial appeal and shootability. Moreover, we walked away with two producers interested in reading the script, and one well-respected studio reader itching to rep it to a few prodcos. So we’re still chuggin’ along.
But we did make it to Hollywood for the Shriekfest Festival, and win or lose, what a gas! Founder and fest director Denise Gossett, her most excellent husband and a bevy of dedicated volunteers put on a really fun, intimate, quality fest on the grounds of Raleigh Studios. Denise is a certified Scream Queen in her own right whose next project, the horror comedy Crustacean, is already in post-production.
(Raleigh is the location for a number of popular shows, and we were right next to the stage where they shoot Castle, which is my new favorite Murder She Wrote knockoff only partly because of what some might call my man-crush on Nathan Fillion, which started way back on Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place. Luckily, it was also right next to the first aid station, not that we needed it, but it’s nice to know. But I digress…).
My writing partner Sean made it down Thursday for the opening night party, and saw a few films on Friday evening. I arrived Saturday, and we saw a few more that night. Then there was an unofficial after-party Saturday night, hosted by Tammi Sutton at her production office. Tammi’s a Scream Queen as well, and a director perhaps best know for for Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil. Tammi throws a good party (thanks, Tammi!), it was a cool group of people, and we ended up hanging out till 3am… which I am just getting too old to do…
Sunday brought more movies, and the awards ceremony. While Faeries did not take home a prize, a lot of other deserving folks got their due (more about them below).
We didn’t see all the films, but we skipped the shorts programs and focused on features.
Films I did see and thought really stood out: Dark House (fun, campy horror in the vein of Scream with a great turn by Jeff Combs), Nightmares in Red White and Blue (a nicely constructed documentary on the history of American horror — I found myself sitting next to two of the subjects, Mick Garris and Tom McLoughlin), and Evil Angel (a very polished flick that’s in the family of Fallen). There were a few other notables, but these were the ones that really stood out.
I just have to say that this was a really cool community of people… all lovers of the genre, sure, but more importantly just a super supportive group of creatives who really do root for one another, are completely open and accessible to hang out and bullshit, and who I’m looking forward to seeing again next year. There were more than a few recognizable names in the crowd (John Gulager was there most nights for you Project Greenlight fans) and plenty of fun to be had. Some of the films just aren’t my bag (not being a big fan of buckets-o-blood slice-fests – more of a psychological horror/creature feature guy myself) but the people behind them all are great folks and I highly recommend checking out this fest next year for the socializing as much as the flicks.
Here’s the rundown on all the winners… congratulations to all…
Best Horror Feature Film: Dark House Best Fantasy Feature Film: Spike Best Horror Short Film: Death in Charge Best SciFi Short Film:Enigma Best Super Short Film: Rift Best Acting Performance: Dameon Clarke in How to Be a Serial Killer Audience Choice: Lo Best Under 18 Film/Screenplay: Lock (ed) In Best Horror Feature Screenplay: Dead After Tomorrow
Best Sci-Fi Feature Screenplay: Upgrade Best Short Screenplay: Seekers Pretty/Scary Award: Death in Charge
If you read my review of Paranormal Activity and are still hoping to catch it, here’s the heads up that it is sneaking STARTING TONIGHT at MIDNIGHT at the:
AMC Mercado
3111 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara!
1-888-AMC-4FUN
Directions
Mercado Santa Clara Center – Just off 101 Fwy – Great America Parkway Exit
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is ONLY showing in Santa Clara:
Friday, October 2nd @ 12:00 AM!
Saturday, October 3rd @ 12:00 AM!
Sunday, October 4th @ 12:00 AM!
Pass this along to your friends and remember to tell them…
“Once every five years, a guy makes a movie for a nickel that can cross over to a broad audience,” says “Paranormal Activity” producer Jason Blum, who, as a senior executive at Miramax Films, had a producing credit on “The Reader” and acquired the supernatural thriller “The Others.” “And there are about 3,000 of these movies made every year, so this film is about one in 15,000.”
THE BUZZ
You’ve heard the buzz. Paranormal Activity, “the little indie horror film that could” about a couple who videotapes a demon haunting them in their home, made in a week for $11,000 by a guy with no filmmaking experience (Oren Peli, a video game programmer) gets seen at a horror fest (Screamfest), scares Spielberg so bad he won’t keep the DVD in his house (marketing hype, anyone?), and gets picked up by DreamWorks for the full court press. (LATimes story here)
Except DreamWorks wants to remake the movie. Which the filmmaker agrees to, with the caveat that DreamWorks must do one test screening. Which they do. And people walk out. “Oh shit,” thinks the filmmaker, “my movie must really suck.” Except it doesn’t. When asked why they walked out, viewers claimed to be so scared by the movie that they couldn’t handle watching any more (more marketing hype, anyone?).
So Paramount (which owns DreamWorks) thinks maybe they’ve got another no-budget no-name lightning-in-a-bottle Blair Witch scenario with a huge financial upside on their hands, and decides to do more test screenings around the country in little art house theaters in little college towns like mine to build the buzz toward a serious big screen release (or at least a license to print money with a DVD release).
And I got tickets.
(Now is as good a time as any to say that I hated Blair Witch. Flat out hated it. Laughed all the way through it. Derided the poor saps who actually believed — even after the stars appeared at the MTV Music Awards! — that it was a true story and all those poor kids had died. I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t creeped out. Oh, I got that it was unique, I got that its presentation was exciting and new. I just thought it was a shitty movie.)
THE MOVIE
So, is Paranormal Activity any good?
The movie was slated to start at 10pm on a Thursday night. On a hunch, I decided to show up at 8:30 just in case there was rush, and ended up being about 75th in line. Yup, lots of people in little college towns like free movies.
Once they let folks in, every seat had a butt in it… “the little movie that could” (with the help of a healthy dose of marketing acumen from DreamWorks) had sold out the house. The air was abuzz with electricity… teenage girls were giddy with nervous excitement… teenage boys had their chests puffed out and their swagger on. Everyone was ready for “an experience”. Would it be a self-fulfilling prophecy?
A few trailers for upcoming horror/thriller type movies ran ahead of the film, each one eliciting wild screams and hoots and howls from an audience so adrenalin pumped you’d think we were waiting for a prize fight to start. We could tell this was going to be a crazy night.
When the film finally started (easy to tell, as per the choppy hand held home movie image) the crowd let out a scream as though The Rocky Horror Picture Show was rolling.
And then the next ninety minutes were spent listening to teeny bopper girls squeal and scream and teeny bopper guys yell “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” about every 90 seconds. Now I get it, it’s a scary movie, screaming will happen. But seriously, screaming when a character turns out a light? Narrating the film with “Oh fuck she just went outside!”? Please. Grow the fuck up.
But was it scary?
In a word, yes.
In more words, it’s very scary. I had anxiety and adrenalin pumping through me like hasn’t happened in a long long time. The film does a great job of building tension, of offering cues to impending action in the form of a Jaws-theme-esque rumbling baseline as something “paranormal” is about to happen. It does a great job of developing characters, their relationships, and the destructive effects the growing threats have on them. And it does it all in a way that does probably the best job of any movie employing the “auto-chronicled narrative conceit” (yes, I believe I just coined that term, tell a friend) has done to date.
Paranormal Activity is the movie The Blair Witch Project wanted to be and Cloverfield didn’t even try to be. Discuss amongst yourselves the relative success or failure of The Last Broadcast, REC or its American remake Quarantine.
THE LIMITATIONS OF AUTO-CHRONICLING
The “auto-chronicled narrative conceit” has its innate issues. It creates a single camera situation shooting in real time (Blair Witch circumvented this by having two cameras available, but didn’t really leverage it), with one character nearly always off screen, that does away with (or severely hampers) all the established film vocabulary tools… the wides, the two-shots, the over-the-shoulders, the singles, the cutaways, the inserts. All the film tricks that directors and editors use to subconsciously establish relationships between characters, to control tension and mood in dialogue exchanges, to communicate unspoken subtext, to control and structure our experience of the story into a narrative that works, are suddenly wildly restricted if not impossible to leverage.
In order to show us the story in its entirety, the camera operator has to carry the camera with him, and keep it running, and keep it focused, and keep interesting things in frame, all the time. Even when really scary, dangerous things are happening. Especially when really scary, dangerous things are happening. Those are the things that have to be in the shot, right? So he’s not helping his friends, not running for his life with the camera pointed at the ground, but he’s framing the shot.
And we can’t see that character’s reactions to anything going on, since he’s behind the camera (kinda like my mom, who is never in any vacation pics so we can’t prove she was there). Unless he turns the camera on himself and up his nose to tell that he’s “so so scared” — and then we’re not seeing the action, and neither is he. Tough to build empathy for characters who are essentially our guides and who we can’t see engaging in the adventure. They’re narrators, not participants.
Further, the story is shot (as presented in the narrative, not in the true production) in sequence. No flashbacks, no cutting away to other subplots, other characters, to the cops forming a plan, to the army launching a counter-strike, to worried family wondering where our camera operator is. The film has one point of view. One narrative thread.
So the trick is, how do you give your camera operator reasonable reasons to stay focused on the action that don’t yank the audience out of the story? How do you integrate any creative edits, how do you offer different perspectives on the action, how do you shift the audience’s focus or empathy to another character?
It’s not impossible. But it’s hard. And it has to be done right. Which is why most times it fails.
WHY PARANORMAL ACTIVITY WORKS
Paranormal Activity works in part because it finds creative ways to circumvent enough of the restrictions of auto-chronicling to keep the story visually interesting and narratively convincing.
It works because Micah (Micah Sloat), the day trader boyfriend with a fixation for all things electronic, spends his days viewing and editing the footage captured the night before. Katie (Katie Featherston), the girlfriend who is the focus of the demon’s attentions, handles the camera while he edits, shooting the screen and showing us the edited footage. It’s a nice little post-modern self referentialism, and creates the illusion of a flashback, or at least of a secondary narrative reference. It also approximates what the audience recognizes as an OTS (Over The Shoulder) shot, with the frame dirtied a little by Micah’s shoulder, with the focus on he and Katie on the computer screen… so it satisfies our unconscious desire for the filmic OTS convention, within the confines of the auto-chronicle affectation.
It works because, as Micah fiddles with the camera, Katie screams for help from the other room. He takes off to help her, then scurries back to grab the camera before coming to her rescue. It’s played for a laugh, and Katie in fact gives him shit for going to get the camera before helping her, and he matter-of-factly explains that that’s why he bought it. It’s simple, but it acknowledges the narrative difficulty while simultaneously illuminating something about them and their relationship.
It works because it establishes the geography of the house, and uses different rooms to establish different moods. Movies shot in a single location (Micah and Katie never leave their house, with the exception of one short opening scene in the front driveway and one short later scene on the back patio) can often suffer from a lack of geographical variety. When you never leave the house, it’s important to establish zones in the house that the audience can recognize, and understand the relative relationships of. We need to feel like the bedroom, living room and kitchen are three distinct localities so that as our characters move between them we feel like we’re getting the benefit of multiple locations. And we need to understand the physical routes from one locality to the next so we can appreciate what it means when our characters are in the kitchen and something goes “bump” in the bedroom… we know how far away that is, we know there’s a staircase between them, and we know they’ll have to pass by that creepy attic access hatch to get there (Hard Candy — a movie I like a lot — nevertheless was challenged by a lack of this geographical definition, and consequently the tension suffered as we didn’t clearly understand where the bad guy was while Ellen Page rifled through his drawers).
It works because the footage shot in the bedroom (sort of a night-vision, while they sleep) is from a tripod across the room from the bedroom door. The scariest footage is in the room where the characters are most vulnerable… and it’s not shaky hand-held footage, but is static locked down tripod footage. Nobody is in charge. The camera, and we, are voyeurs with no one in control. The frame shows the couple in bed (foot of the bed toward the camera), and the doorway next to the head of the bed. We can see them, and we can see out the door and down the hallway… which is where the entity comes from. Any time we see that shot, we have not only the simple sense of voyeurism, but also the knowledge that they can’t see everything we can see even if they wake up. We can see what’s behind them. We’re put in the omniscient position, and it’s very uncomfortable, because we know we’re going to see impending danger before they do and there’s nothing we can do to warn them.
The bedroom footage also makes use of fast-forward edits. Some nights, many hours go by and nothing happens… so the time code in the corner spins in fast forward, as the couple jerkily flops and rolls around the bed in their sleep, till it rolls to a stop at 3am, to show us the paranormal poltergeistery. At other times, it’s the paranormal poltergeistery that takes place over several hours, and we’re treated again to the discomforting perspective of watching terrible things happen in the room around them while they sleep. This fast forward effect is deceptively simple, and simultaneously unsettling (in the way so many recent horror films have chop-edited their beasties as they approach the camera) while remaining a reasonable and organic byproduct of a necessary edit… which makes it all the more naturalistic, and thus all the more disturbing. It allows us to watch hours of demonic disturbance in 20 seconds, without forgetting that the experience lasted hours. That’s a lot of storytelling in a very efficient presentation.
It also works because the film opens in the middle of the story. The activity has been happening for some time (in fact, since Katie was a child – it’s followed her here), and Micah has purchased the camera equipment for the purpose of chronicling the events. There’s no convenient “happens to be a filmmaker” trope, where the camera just happens to be rolling as things start to happen. And his resultant fascination with it, and penchant for carrying it everywhere, serves to further excuse the fact that it’s always available.
It works because the film builds and arcs very nicely, both emotionally and mechanically. Early on it exploits the cute couple’s sweet relationship, and relies on quite a bit of humor (Micah’s constant urgings to Katie to “test drive” the video camera in the bedroom — she says no), and as the demonic activity progresses slowly from a few scratchy noises, swinging doors and misplaced keys to some very violent and unpleasant sequences, so too does the humor and sweetness give way to tension and apprehension and terror.
But mostly, it works because some very smart character development is allowed to unfold onscreen. Blair Witch failed in part because I didn’t give a shit about any of the characters… she was a bossy bitch, the guys were irresponsible stoners, they don’t really know or like each other very well at the beginning and none of that really changes during the story. Paranormal Activity presents us with a very sweet, very dedicated young couple who we really like (the audience at my screening crooned more than one “Aaaawwww…” as one or the other characters said or did something sweet for the other). And over the course of the story, we see their less attractive traits revealed by the growing stress (she’s a little emotionally damaged, he’s a macho protector who won’t respect her boundaries or admit he needs help with this situation). And because the psychic they’ve brought in early in the film has warned them that the entity feeds on conflict and negative energy, we know that their reasonable devolution and frustration is only making things worse.
Now in spite of my frustration with the talkers and the screamers at my screening (I’d have enjoyed the film much more if there hadn’t been all the “shooshing” from the grownups in the audience trying to shut-the-fuck-up the “Omigod dude she’s gonna die did you see that I’m so scared” Talkie Talkerson’s who were so rattled by the movie they forgot they were in a theater) the rest of the audience at my screening seemed to dig it… I haven’t seen a room full of people shriek in unison like that since the head fell out of the bottom of the boat in Jaws. And they screamed, and they laughed, and as the credits rolled they released a huge community exhalation of relief that it was all finally over and none of it was real, and then they stood around in the theater and in the lobby and on the sidewalk out front taking comfort in one another’s company for another 30 minutes because nobody wanted to go home alone at midnight. They’d all just witnessed something pretty amazing, and they’d all remember where they were when it happened.
But I still think it’d be even scarier at home, late, in the dark, alone (or with a few close friends), on TV. I see “Paranormal Activity” parties in the future.
Maybe even at my house.
WHY IT DOESN’T WORK (Here there be SPOILERS)
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The ending.
The last 20 seconds of the film completely subvert the preceding 90 minutes… all the careful off screen terror, all the quiet building and disintegrating of relationships, all the decidedly un-boo-like scares are forgotten and the movie crescendos with a single in-your-face, at-the-camera “BOO!” that’s utterly out of character.
Oh, we know it’s coming… some deliciously subtle looks and smiles from Katie have telegraphed to us very clearly that something’s gone terribly awry. I could tell from the whimpering and whispered “oh no’s” of the audience that everyone in the room got exactly what was happening. And as Katie screams for help downstairs, and as Micah rushes out of the room to find her — leaving the camera (and us) in the bedroom — and as screams and thrashing crash at us from somewhere in the dark downstairs, we all know what it is we can’t see. And it WORKS.
But the director had to throw a body at us, literally… and then as Katie crawls toward the camera and attacks it open mouthed like a shot cut from Jennifer’s Body, all the good will goes away. The final smash to black, followed by simple titles telling us that Micah’s body was found days later and Katie was never seen again, feel cheap and disappointing and lifted right from Blair Witch. The movie didn’t need to be much longer, and the ending didn’t need to be terribly complicated. But it needed to be more complete. It needed to be more elegant. There is no resolution. The preceding 90 minutes deserved it. Micah and Katie deserved it.
And I deserved it.
My understanding on further research is that (allegedly) Paramount insisted on a reshoot of the ending, and that the ending I saw is the shitty Hollywood studio ending. This link provides an (alleged) accounting of not just one but two alternative endings from other earlier screenings, either of which would have been far better than what I saw and more in keeping with all else that makes the film so successful. If the film gets a wide release, let’s hope they toss the Hollywood ending for something — anything — else.
But you know what? That last 20 seconds doesn’t ruin the entire preceding experience. It’s still a good watch. Just don’t watch it with a bunch of talkative squealy teens. Watch it at home. Late. In the dark. Alone.
OCTOBER 1-4, 2009
(Los Angeles, CA) SHRIEKFEST INTERNATIONAL HORROR FILM FESTIVAL is thrilled to announce the full, expanded schedule for the ninth annual horror film festival, returning to Raleigh Studios Chaplin/Pickford/Fairbanks theatres, October 1-4, 2009.
Festival goers will once again enjoy the finest in independent cinema from around the globe, selected from hundreds of submissions that came in everywhere from London to New York; from Utah to Spain. From our opening night screening of the never before seen MANEATER starring Dean Cain, to the shorts from Spain, United Kingdom, Canada, and finally to the World Premiere of Darin Scott’s “Dark House”. The 9th Annual Shriekfest International Horror Film Festival has worked hard to present a festival as diverse as the fans of the Los Angeles city itself.
Shriekfest Screenplay Competition Finalists include "Faeries" by Chip Street and Sean Meehan
American independent films are also well represented this year, on Friday, October 2nd – HOW TO BE A SERIAL KILLER, as well as SHELLTER and DAWNING, both of which are screening on Saturday, October 3rd. We can’t leave out SURVIVING EVIL starring Billy Zane, Evilution, and Evil Angel starring Ving Rhames.
Not to leave out our fabulous selection of short films. Movies like HOWLING BRAT, MAROONED?, 2095, DEATH IN CHARGE, THE HORRIBLY SLOW MURDERER…,DARK ROOM THEATER, REKINDLED, AND FANTASY and the stunning RIFT challenge the viewers with provocative, well crafted original stories.
We have an amazing documentary, NIGHTMARES IN RED, WHITE, AND BLUE that examines the idea that horror films reflect the times and places in which they are made…narrated by horror icon Lance Henriksen and features exclusive interviews with legendary auteurs like John Carpenter, George A. Romero, Joe Dante, Larry Cohen, and Roger Corman, as well as film historian John Kenneth Muir and Fangoria editor Tony Timpone.
Once again SHRIEKFEST Film Festival exceeds at challenging the idea of what a horror film festival should screen, with eclectic selections (NO-DO: THE BECKONING), to science fiction (ENIGMA), comedy (COLD CALLS), Gothic Fairytale (SPIKE), and even the bizarre (LO).
Entrance to SHRIEKFEST Film Festival 2009 is $8.00 per block, an All-Fest Pass, good for all four days of the festival, is now available on our website, for just $90.00, this pass includes the opening night party.
All films are un-rated, and unless specifically noted no one under 17 will be admitted without a parent or guardian’s accompaniment or permission. For more information on THE 2009 SHRIEKFEST FILM FESTIVAL, as well as news about other related events, including the Opening Night Party and the monthly networking events, please visit our website: www.shriekfest.com
Yup, another prodco asked for the Faeries script today. Must be something in the water... that's 5 so far I think. http://faeriesmovie.info21 minutes ago
Just got a tip from Paramount…
Paranormal Activity horror film review
Shriekfest Film Festival announces 2009 Schedule:
