Inspiration, Insanity, The Industry & James Lipton, Bitch

 Everybody loves comedy. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't enjoy comedy in one form or another. It's a release of tension, a great, big guffaw, a chortle, a giggle.

A larf.

The universal symbol for theater is the masks of comedy and tragedy, taken from Greek times, and I've always found it fascinating how the two were so intricately tied, a yin-yang kind of relationship. After all, what is comedy if not tragedy seen from a different viewpoint? If you were David Brent (or any of the characters, for that matter) in the Office those situations wouldn't be funny to you, they would be downright painful.

From an early age I was surrounded by comedy and didn't just enjoy it, but was fascinated by it. Even at a young age I knew there was a craft there, a skill in the writing and the timing, whether it was the Young Ones or Fawlty Towers, P. Ramlee or Benny Hill, there was an intelligence there in the crafting of the comedy which has always piqued my curiosity.

Earlier today, whilst downloading semi-nude images of Katherine Heigl and Milla Kunis (both not only sexy but very funny ladies) I opened another window and started randomly searching YouTube for some comedy. I watched some of Will Ferrell's celebrity jeopardy sketches from SNL, Bill Bailey talking about Starsky & Hutch's background music, a silly yet funny prank on a girl that involves teabagging, some outtakes from the 40 Year Old Virgin, and some skits from the Dave Chapelle show.

As I followed the related links on Dave Chapelle, I found something interesting - Dave Chapelle had made an appearance on the James Lipton show 'In the Actors Studio'.

I had seen some clips of this show and had, at previous times, found it incredibly dull and pompous. It just felt incredibly pretentious to me and didn't interest me, even though I'm the type of person that devours any kind of video about the inner workings of artists. I just have a thing about stuff like that. I have a box set of Fawlty Towers on VHS and I still love it because every episode is introduced by an interview with John Cleese and I can listen to the man talk about the theory of comedy for years. But Lipton's show? Never really interested me.

Until I saw this.

As I watched all ten parts of the show I found myself interested, inspired and, more often than not, laughing my ass off. It's not just that Dave Chapelle's a funny guy, but that Lipton and Chapelle were both feeding off each other, bouncing the comedy between them to the point that they even have a dance off which was just surreal.

And I doubt there's any other interview where you can hear James Lipton say, in his incredibly academic and authorative and serious voice, "what was the inspiration behind the song 'I want to pee on you'?"

Or hearing him say, "where are my fucking royalties?"

To have Dave Chapelle on the show not only made the show seem a lot less pompous than I thought it was, it also did what I didn't think shows like that would do which was legitimize and acknowledge that kind of humor that many academics may consider to be childish buffoonery.

The one point that really touched me, though, was when Chapelle warns the students to prepare to have their hearts broken when they get into the industry and witness first hand what happens when their art collides with commerce.

The point really got to me because it's something that a lot of people talk about but to experience it is a whole new thing. I find it harder and harder to write these days as opposed to three or four years ago when I didn't worry about commercial sensibilities and actually selling the idea. Nowadays I see pitch after pitch of mine thrown out the window and it's deeply depressing.

I remember the first time I started writing a script for a possible television movie. I was so amped up on the idea I couldn't get the story out of my head and, over a few hours, wrote the first forty pages when all the company asked for was a synopsis. Knowing how I write and not imagining any other name actors being able to pull off the dialogue, I wanted to play the male lead to make things easier as opposed to trying to find someone who can pull it off. The response was the first of many stingers, which basically suggested someone else to play the lead (that I totally disagreed with) and that I cut down the dialogue and make the comedy more slapstick instead.

This was almost three years ago, and I still haven't finished that script because it stings just thinking about it. As you can see, I don't take rejection lightly.

Since then I've seen rejections for a plethora of reasons that make absolutely no sense to me. I wish the shit didn't affect me, but it does. All these reasons are taken into consideration the next time I write and it's like a creative barrier made up of dead bodies and barbed wire and smells of wee. You wanna get around it, but in all honesty you'd rather just stay away.
Another comedy and writing inspiration of mine is Kevin Smith (no surprise there). There's another video I found a while back of one of his Q&A's that I enjoyed and is the perfect cure for those days when I wish I was back in advertising after witnessing the inanities of working in the film industry.

The video is of Kevin Smith's ordeals vis-a-vis his Superman script, way before Brandon Routh put on the codpiece.

Enjoi.

Down With the Woo

Like all hot-blooded males throughout the world, I love a good action film. I can watch Die Hard on loop and Rambo IV was balls-out mental fun, even though the plot was drivel. During the formative years in my teens when I really started to feel like I wanted to be a filmmaker, there were many filmmakers at the time that influenced my decision. Besides the obvious ones that I keep mentioning such as Scorcese, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino and P. Ramlee, there was also one Hong Kong director who's filmmaking style influenced me greatly at the time - John "slow-mo-bullet-fest" Woo.

When I saw 'A Better Tomorrow' I thought to myself, "wow, this is action". When my other film geek friend kept raving about how violent Reservoir Dogs was, I passed him 'A Better Tomorrow 2' and said, "that isn't violence. This is violence."

'The Killer' blew me away, 'Bullet in the Head' was surprisingly touching, even though it was pretty much a Chinese 'Deer Hunter', and 'Hard Boiled' cemented the fact that no one was cooler than Chow Yun Fat.

Of course, things are different now, and the whole balletic-bullet-fest that was his trademark has since been aped to oblivion and even John Woo hasn't done anything like it since 'Face/Off', the closest Hollywood came to putting out a proper Woo film before fucking it all up with 'Paycheck'.

Nowadays, action has gone in the direction of the realistic - shaky, telephoto-ed cameras a la Bourne and even when doing a death-defying act it's presented in such a way as possible via free running or some other such acrobatic feat.

But I've always wanted to shoot some Woo style stuff, just for the fun of it. I've always wanted to do an action film because, well, it's an action film. Action films are one of the few genres that really can only be presented in the medium of film. Whilst you can imagine a stage adaptation of 'Reservoir Dogs' or 'Rumble Fish' (and I have seen such adaptations, both good), it's a bit harder to imagine 'Die Hard' on stage.
Or 'Shoot Em Up'.

When I was offered to direct the second season of a local TV series focusing on doctors' love lives in a hospital, they also asked whether I could direct the last episode of season one because I may be more suited to action.

Action? In a medical drama? Yes. Below is a behind-the-scenes video I edited together from video footage on my Canon powershot G9.

I heard that a lot of doctors were pissed at the lack of realism and technical errors in the show. Well, if they were pissed at that, wait till they see this episode.

Hehehehe...

This was the first time I ever shot a 'proper' action sequence and the first time I had a pyrotechnics crew. The first shot we did was when one of the bad guys shoots at a cop and a doctor, missing and hitting a wall, blowing chunks out of it. The pyro dudes set up the charges, then we stood behind the plywood wall, about five or six feet away, watching the monitor. After rehearsing the flow a couple of times (because every squib costs money), we rolled and I called out, "Action! One! Two! Three!"

The next thing I knew, there were a couple of explosions and we were covered in plywood. Coolness.

The one thing I never anticipated though was how long it takes to shoot an action sequence. We had three to four cameras running at the same time so that we wouldn't have to reset and get reverse angles and what have you, but even then it took a while.

Step one: block out the shots so that the camera operator knows what to do and the pyro guys know where they can put their charges and hide their detonators.

Step two: whilst their setting up, rehearse the shots with the actors. The John Woo jumping sequence took the longest and I kept showing the guy, physically, how I wanted him to jump, to the point that the whole of my left side ached from constantly jumping in mid air onto a stretcher, but with every rehearsal I could see the guy was afraid of hurting himself with the jump. Sigh...

Step three: rehearse again with the pyro guys and camera operator with last minute touch ups on lights and stuff.

Step four: bang!

Each 10 to 15 second shot would take on average anywhere between one to three hours to get, and I had 15 to 18 shots in the whole sequence. And a bunch of other scenes to shoot on that day as well! Aaargghh...

In the end I think we got it all, and next week I start editing the episode. Should be interesting.

Or mental.

Or both.