A Pleasant Return - Myst - The Motion Picture

Nov
17

Despite my continued lack of computer, I’ve traversed great distances and am coming to you now with this special message from the MFG team. This can also be referred to simply as - an update.

At the time of my last posting, I was lamenting the death of the initial version of the script for BoT. I still cry a bit inside when I think about it, but I’ve got very happy news for all of you loyal readers out there.

As I had said before, I believe the restructuring was a necessary venture in order to bring the project to a place where it would be viewed as viable to the powers that be in Hollywood. I of course, had some fears, despite my faith in the team (just as many of you did) what that might mean for the integrity of the story. Those worries have been washed away entirely.

As Isaac mentioned, he flew in from Oregon earlier this month. During his visit, Patrick, Jason and Yale presented us with what they’ve come up with in terms of the restructure. I was very excited to finally see the unveiling of their long nights of labor, and it was well worth the wait. Speaking from the standpoint of someone who was not involved in this particular part of the process, I think I can offer some true objectivity when I say what they’ve done is absolutely fantastic.

I have said before that I believed very strongly in the draft of the script we currently have. That being said, I want to be clear that it is by no means a perfect script. It isn’t even a script I’d want to shoot. What I believe in is the quality of the character development, the dialogue and the tone of the script. It has a lot of issues with pacing and the structure is a bit too literary for a film. The way the story unfolds would work beautifully as a novel, but as you all know, BoT is already a novel. It needs to become something new. Something different. Something more…streamlined. That is what the proposal for the new draft offers us. I appreciate the desire for the fans to see the original draft, but I don’t think I’d ever feel comfortable making that available.

This proposed new draft keeps a great deal of what was originally written, but molds and shapes it into something far more viable and closer to conventional structure. This is exactly where we need to be taking the script and the project. None of the intelligence we tried to craft originally has been lost. None of the characters have been simplified to mind-numbingly bland archetypes. It still maintains the essence of our original vision.

I have one beef. We’ve received comments from a few industry people that the dialogue is flat and that the character development is lacking in the original draft. This is interesting to us because the most common comments from readers of the script have been about the quality of both of these things. In fact, we identified one of the major structure and pacing issues was due to the fact that the script focused so much on the character development. What’s more, that development is in large part through dialogue. Somehow, when the script is being read by certain people, it would seem that this character-developing dialogue is being misunderstood. The only explanation I can come up with is the fact that my writing is very, very, very heavy with subtext.

I come from the theatre. To me, a script and its dialogue are written for performance. What may escape a causal reader on the page can become alive and exciting when the actor pairs the words with the intentions of their character. What may seem hidden in code on the page becomes engaging and nuanced commentary on the humanity of the character. This is where the magic of both stage and film exists. Good dialogue rarely finds the character saying exactly what they mean to say. It is the subtext of the line, what they’re really saying that reveals the character in an organic and exciting way. In short, my heroes are the likes of David Mamet, Sam Shepard and Harold Pinter. These men are all known for the subtext in their writing.

I think subtext is something that has fallen by the wayside in many modern film scripts. Whatever the reason, I can’t help but feel that people simply aren’t used to reading subtle dialogue. I wonder if they’re just not picking up on the meaning behind the words. I worry about this because I really believe in the importance of subtlety. I believe in giving an actor lines that help them to act with laser precision as opposed to lines that they have no choice but to simply lob out there only to have them thud obtusely like clods of dirt.

I don’t know. I sure many would argue that my dialogue is just too unapproachable. I can hear it all sing in my head. I think an actor would hear it too. Maybe others can’t or won’t. Maybe I’m really misguided and what I think I’ve written isn’t what I’ve written at all. Maybe what I think is there just… isn’t. We’ll see where we’re asked to take the dialogue as this process continues.

One thing I do know is that I’m excited about where we’re going with the script and I can’t wait for the next draft.

2:52 am