BA DA BA BAAAAA

            Last Friday was my last day of high school. Now I’m not getting all sentimental about it yet, I’ve been thinking about my favorite moments at Hawken these past few years. Academically, what comes to mind is my Independent Study intensive this past Fall when, if you all remember, I was posting on the blog 3 to 4 times a day.

            For those of you who are unfamiliar with Hawken’s wacky schedule, an intensive is a three-week period where we focus on one single class. The month or so between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I focused on screenwriting.

            Since then, I haven’t been able to do as much screenwriting as I have wanted to. I can’t even use homework as an excuse; being a second semester senior, homework wasn’t exactly a huge time consumer.

            Finally, my English teacher gave me an excuse to start writing again. For my final project in a class where we studied the “lost generation” writers, I wrote the first few scenes of a script based off of the great horror writer: Alfred Hitchcock.

            Although he’s most famous for the movies he produced later in his career, such as Psycho, Hitchcock actually made his first horror film in 1927, in the midst of the silent movie era. The film was called The Lodger, and it was about this infamous serial killer, The Avenger, who was killing beautiful blonde women all across New York City. As a part of my research, I watched this film before I started writing, and love it (despite the lack of sound and color). It definitely made me consider trying to write a horror script, and now that I’m done with high school, I actually have the time! Or maybe have a Hitchcock marathon? (With blog posts of course!) The opportunities are endless.

            So here is my attempt to mimic the greatest horror writer of all time. Definitely big shoes to fill!! Here goes nothing…

INSPIRED BY HITCHCOCK’S THE LODGER

EXT. NEW YORK CITY – NIGHT

SCREAMING BYSTANDERS point at a WOMAN falling from a very tall skyscraper on 42^nd Street. THE WOMAN lands on the sidewalk and A CROWD forms around her, horrified. SHE has blonde short hair and is wearing a long puffy coat.

ZOOM IN: ONE MAN takes out his cellphone and dials 9-1-1. His hands are shaking as he talks to the police.

FADE OUT.

INT. NYPD OFFICE – NIGHT

OFFICER DEREK is sitting at his desk, on the phone. HE is a fat man with greasy dark hair.

The office is busy; SOME OFFICERS are carrying paperwork, OTHERS are sitting at their desks, on the phone.

OFFICER DEREK suddenly stands, still talking into his phone.

FADE OUT.

TEXT appears on the screen. It reads:

“WE’RE ON OUR WAY.”

EXT. 42^ND STREET – NIGHT

CROWD is still surrounding THE WOMAN. Blue and red lights FLASH in the background, and a series of POLICE CARS AND AMBULANCES pull up. THE POLICE MEN get out of THEIR CARS and break up THE CROWD.

ZOOM IN: THE WOMAN is on the ground, unconscious. OFFICER DEREK takes her pulse, pressing two fingers on her wrist. He stands up.

FADE OUT.

TEXT appears on the screen. It reads:

“SHE’S DEAD.”

INTERCUT-

THE CROWD is distraught.

ZOOM IN: ONE BYSTANDER starts to cry; looks away.

ZOOM OUT: OFFICER DEREK sees a NOTE tied around THE WOMAN’S neck. He picks it up and reads it.

ZOOM IN: OFFICER DEREK holds THE NOTE close to his face. It reads:

HELLO OFFICER DEREK. SINCERELY, THE AVENGER

ZOOM OUT: OFFICER DEREK stands up. HE shushes THE CRYING BYSTANDER. THE OTHER OFFICERS attempt to push back THE CROWD. OFFICER DEREK YELLS and THE OTHER OFFICERS turn to face him.

FADE OUT.

TEXT appears on the screen. It reads:

“SHE’S BEEN MURDERED.”

INT. LOCAL NEWSPAPER OFFICE – DAY

THE ROOM is crowded with cubicles and JOURNALISTS typing furiously at their desks.

ZOOM IN: ARTHUR JENKINS sits in his cubicle. HE is on the edge of his seat, deep in his work. HE is very skinny and balding.

ARTHUR’S P.O.V.: A BLANK WORD DOCUMENT is pulled up on ARTHUR’S COMPUTER SCREEN. ARTHUR begins typing furiously. The screen reads:

A TRAGIC EVENT OCCURRED LAST NIGHT ON 42^ND STREET AT 8:28 P.M. RAMONA BENTLEY, ONE OF OUR VERY OWN HERE AT THE NEW YORKER, WAS THROWN FROM THE ROOF OF OUR OFFICE BUILDING. LAST NIGHT, NEW YORK’S INFAMOUS SERIAL KILLER, THE AVENGER, TOOK HIS NEXT VICTIM...

FADE OUT.

EXT. 42^ND STREET – DAY

OFFICER DEREK steps under yellow caution tape and inspects the crime scene. HE looks at the chalk outline of RAMONA still on the sidewalk. Next, HE looks up and sees A STREET VENDOR selling hot dogs on the sidewalk. OFFICER DEREK walks up to THE MAN and his hot dog cart.

FADE OUT.

TEXT appears on the screen. It reads:

“HAVE YOU SEEN ANYTHING UNUSUAL HERE THESE PAST FEW DAYS?

INTERCUT—

ZOOM IN: THE STREET VENDOR punches something into the register. HE looks up.

FADE OUT.

TEXT appears on the screen. It reads:

“OTHER THAN A WOMAN FALLING FROM THE SKY?”

INTERCUT—

A GROUP OF BUSINESS MEN line up behind OFFICER DEREK. HE continues talking to THE STREET VENDOR, and THE BUSINESS MEN start tapping their feet. Annoyed, OFFICER DEREK turns around and shoos them away. THE STREET VENDOR looks upset.

OFFICER DEREK asks a question and looks at THE STREET VENDOR. THE STREET VENDOR points to his hotdogs, and OFFICER DEREK knows HE has to buy one before THE MAN will talk. After he hands THE STREET VENDOR a five-dollar bill, THE MAN smiles and starts talking.

FADE OUT.

TEXT appears on the screen. It reads:

“A MAN WITH A WRAPPED UP FACE AND A LONG TRENCHCOAT ENTERED THE BUILDING AROUND NOON, AND I HAVEN’T SEEN HIM SINCE.”

INTERCUT—

OFFICER DEREK points to the skyscraper directly behind him, and THE STREET VENDOR nods. OFFICER DEREK shakes THE MAN’S hand and smiles. HE starts to walk away, but THE STREET VENDOR calls him back, and OFFICER DEREK turns around.

FADE OUT.

TEXT appears on the screen.

“BUY A HOTDOG FIRST.”

INTERCUT—

OFFICER DEREK begrudgingly takes out his wallet and hands THE STREET VENDOR another five-dollar bill. THE STREET VENDOR smiles again.

FADE OUT.

TEXT appears on the screen. It reads:

“BEFORE HE WENT INSIDE, HE WAS TALKING TO THE WOMAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY. I COULDN’T HEAR THEM, BUT IT LOOKED LIKE THEY KNEW EACH OTHER...”

INTERCUT—

OFFICER DEREK is perplexed. HE thanks THE STREET VENDOR one last time and walks back over to the yellow caution tape.

            MOVIES WATCHED: 20

            SCREENPLAY PAGES WRITTEN: 48

            NOVEL PAGES WRITTEN: 76

            PAGES LEFT IN FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: 336

How to Wake Up a Second Semester Senior

            For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Second-Semester Senior stereotypes, allow me to refresh you. Lazy. Unmotivated. On Cruise Control. Maybe even a tad neglecting? (Particularly Second-Semester Seniors with blogs to uphold…) All these characteristics serve to define that seventeen or eighteen year old who is already into college, finally realizing that all that work they did Junior year is actually paying off. Right now.

            However, despite the moans and groans of many of my classmates (I’m sure), life goes on. Yes, I know, this is getting into the Twilight Zone of clichés and vague, blanket statements. But every Second-Semester Senior has to eventually reach this conclusion: that what we do now still matters, we aren’t done, and there’s still much more to do.

            I literally reached this conclusion less than five minutes ago, when mindless YouTube browsing brought me to this.

After watching this, at first I felt guilty for all the sleeping I’ve done this spring break. But then, I clicked refresh, and watched the video again. And again. And I found myself feeling less and less guilty. With every tap of my mouse on the replay button, I got more and more excited. I remembered why I wanted to go to college in the first place: all of the opportunities. (I know I’m straying into that Twilight Zone again…) My favorite quote of the video was when 50 Cent said, “Sleep? When you sleep, you miss the opportunity to be successful.” Just, Wow. Needless to say, this video got me excited to work hard. Which, coming from a Second-Semester Senior, is a hard thing to achieve.

Since I haven’t done much writing this semester, to keep you all interested, here is one of my college essays that I really liked and wanted to share with all of you. In roughly 500 words, I answered the question: You saw something while walking on the sidewalk; what was it? Even if this might deem me an official, certified nerd, I have to admit that I had fun writing some of these college essays. Since I didn’t end up applying to the school that this essay was for, I figured, why waste it? Reduce, reuse, recycle, right? So here it is!! I hope to have new stuff for you all to read really soon. J

           

Walking down Sunset Boulevard, I saw her. I saw her spiky blondish brownish hair, her Botox-ed face, her sharp green eyes.

“I have to spit every time I hear Jane Fonda’s name.” My English teacher, Mr. Scott, cracks his knuckles as he says this. We’re sitting outside of the cafeteria and he crams his long legs under the wooden picnic table to face me. I flip to the second page of my yellow legal pad – the one without doodles slithering across it. My pen sits heavy in my hand as I write, “JANE FONDA = BAD” under “interview notes”.

“You don’t know the story about Jane Fonda?” I shake my head, and he mutters something about it being old news under his breath. I scribbled furiously in dark ink as Mr. Scott told me about Fonda’s visit to the Vietcong POW camp.

“Men were tortured into visiting her. As she scolded them for killing babies and children, they slipped tiny notes into her palm for her to take back to America. She shook all of their hands, looked them each in the eye, and just handed those letters over to the North Vietnamese.” He spit into the grass, and I thought about doing the same, but decided against it. After listening to Mr. Scott’s first-hand account of the Vietnam War, I felt that it was not my spit to spit, so to speak. There is that moment in everyone’s life where they realize that there are “two sides to every story”, as the saying goes, and Jane Fonda marks mine. I couldn’t believe Mr. Scott’s story. That night, I googled “Jane Fonda Communist Traitor” and found a plethora of opinion pages about the rumor. Reading a series of anonymous perspectives, I realized that there weren’t only two sides to every story, but thousands. The GPS inside my brain repeated recalculating, recalculating, as my definition of truth changed. Truth was no longer concrete, it was an abstract blob built by piecing together the millions of human perspectives. On just one webpage, one woman turned into twenty.

However, a story from just one perspective was no less of a story, and I realized this as well as I sat at that picnic table, transfixed by my English teacher. The fat words that ballooned out of his mouth smacked me in the face. Words scrawled on tiny pieces of paper home, words on a blog furiously typed by a lonely veteran. All of these words linked arms and made millions of stories, one no less captivating than the next. I knew I wanted to tell my own stories, some even with words that caused grown men to clear their throats and spit.

As I walk by Jane Fonda, I stop to see if she has fangs. I squint my eyes tight, but still can’t tell if little devil horns stick up from that blondish brownish spiky hair. Looking at her Botox-ed face, I try to read the truth right out of her pores. But then, I decide I’d rather have a million stories than just one “truth”, and keep walking.

            MOVIES WATCHED: 19

            SCREENPLAY PAGES WRITTEN: 44

            NOVEL PAGES WRITTEN: 76

            PAGES LEFT IN FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: 336

Expectations of Pi

            Most potterheads would tell you that if you are a true Harry Potter fan, you will always argue that the books are better than the movies. To be considered a true “potterhead”, you should feel that every tiny detail left out of the Warner Brothers movies is an insult to J.K. Rowling herself. While I loved reading the Harry Potter series, and believe that J.K. Rowling made me a reader from a very young age, I don’t consider myself a true Harry Potter fan by these standards.

            The art of taking a book and bringing it to the big screen is a lot harder than I think people realize. Although you do get the advantage of having the plot already decided for you, the balance between keeping the fan base happy and making it an interesting movie that isn’t over 3 hours is a hard balance to maintain.

            With the book, The Life of Pi, you certainly don’t have the same number of crazed fans demanding you stay true to every word written by author Yann Martel. However, every time a screenwriter kidnaps a novel, they have to make sure that the storyline is interesting enough to watch on a Friday night.

            In a story about a boy who is stranded on a boat with a tiger, the issue of keeping an audience engaged is definitely a question that I’m sure came up in the preliminary stages of the movie. If this boy has no one to talk to, how are we going to keep the viewer’s attention?

            I think screenwriter David Magee did an excellent job tackling this problem. The summer going into my sophomore year of high school, I read Yann Martel’s novel for summer reading. It could have been because it was homework over the summer, or because I was an immature, short-attention-spanned 14-year-old, but I remember hating this book. The 200-something pages of this boy’s survival in the ocean seemed much less interesting to me than my trampoline outside. I read it as quickly as I could, highlighted good quotes as proof that I read it, and didn’t touch the book again until the first day of school.

            Two and a half years later, my mom begs me to see the movie in theaters. Well, “begs” probably isn’t the right word. It isn’t all that hard for anyone to convince me to watch a movie. So, despite my distaste for the novel, I got my ticket, bought my popcorn, and sat in the black, musky theater.

            It was good. Really good. Sitting in the theater, I remember being surprised by how good it actually was. Maybe it was because of my low expectations, but I walked out of that movie theater, unable to stop telling my mom how good it was (even, to her dismay, while we were waiting in the line for the bathroom and then sitting in the stalls). But I couldn’t help it. This movie completely surprised me.

            To be honest, I don’t know what I expected. Maybe I expected to be as bored watching it as I did reading it. But everything from the special effects to the acting to the set grabbed me and pulled me into Pi’s tragic story. It’s hard to point to one specific moment where Magee made this story interesting to watch. But if I had to, I would really commend the actors, but particularly Suraj Sharma and Irrfan Khan, on making an unbelievable story a little more believable.

            To some of you, I probably sound like a 12-year-old twihard raving about Stephenie Meyer’s latest vampire book (although I hope I don’t sound like that). I know that pretending to be a movie critic means that I should be CRITICAL, but I was simply swept away by this whole cinematic experience. Could I work for Rotten Tomatoes? Probably not. But should you still go see this movie? Definitely.

            MOVIES WATCHED: 19

            SCREENPLAY PAGES WRITTEN: 44

            NOVEL PAGES WRITTEN: 73