handful_ofdust

Up ‘til 4:00 AM last night/this morning making changes to my TP-133 materials…I’ve taken my cue from Tran and added two classes of show-pitching, amongst other stuff. And since I found the original outline I wrote for "The Diarist", my second The Hunger script, I also finally—finally—began to hammer out that first Law & Order spec as a beat-sheet. No, not the Batman one, unfortunately; that would have to be SVU, whereas this was always conceived as old-school L & O, though content might argue otherwise. I’m already into Act Three and very happy with it thus far, especially so because one of the characters—the necrophile’s lawyer—has morphed into a part for Naveen Andrews.

The changes will probably lead to big hate for me, I already know—more even than usual, since I’m being very explicit about hanging the class mark on students’ pitches (oral and written), while refusing to take pitches after those two classes are over, refusing not to make them present in front of the rest of the class, etc. This is, as I will explain, because if you can’t pitch an idea in front of people you at least know, you’re going to be less than useless in the real world. OTOH, I’m ameliorating that somewhat by offering the technically ept/communication skillz-challenged the chance to do a "trailer" pitch and just screen it in class. But even there, you’ll have to at least be able to answer questions about your own damn show afterward.

Anyways. Once I’m done with this, I’ll print out, make a new binder and post most of the material on the Student Potal at IAODT, so if and when dorks come in and beg me for last week’s handouts, I can just say: Download them, ladies. Not all of them, but people who can’t be bothered to show up must do without at least a little of what people who show up get—otherwise, it’s not exactly penalization, is it?

Then it’s on to TP-119 and TP-122, hopefully in time for Week One. Pathetically exciting. I have way too little to keep me entertained.

On the stupid media fun tip, meanwhile—gakked from

dargie: List 10 celebrities that you find attractive and then tag 5 of your friends. As with her, by no means comprehensive.

Tilda Swinton—I’ve been thinking about her a lot recently, probably while wondering where the hell Constantine on DVD is. One of the only women I can think of who’s capable of being truly androgynous yet utterly feminine at the same time; she’s ageless and more than slightly alien, which should stand her in good stead as the White Witch.

Errol Flynn—the man was a prick supreme, and looks distressingly like my maternal grandfather. On the other hand, he’s just hella sexy: Way too tall, way too happy, way too handsome, the very definition of "roguish", yet convincing in his sincere insincerity the way all true sociopaths must be: "She loves me!" Yup. Her, and everybody else. (See also Takeshi Kaneshiro, the Flynn of Asia.)

Oh lord, Angelina Jolie. I suppose this makes me very boring, but Angie’s like a natural disaster, an atom bomb at close range: Scorching, awesome, horrific. There’s not much I’d refuse to pay money to watch her do, as long as it involved guns and an optional British accent.

And speaking of psychopaths who speak in voices not their own, here comes Christian Bale! Lay aside momentarily the fact that he’s my ideal casting for Tim Darbersmere turned young once more…now he’s Batman too, which makes him fair game for every fantasy I’ve ever had, or ever will have. He made me see Bruce Wayne as a person, one I’d date if he’d let me, even though I know full well he’s nothing but a thin skin mask over endless Dark Knight. He also recently made me understand why somebody might sleep with him even if A) he was starving himself to death and B) he wasn’t paying them to.

Ryan Reynolds—he hits my tall button, my smart button, my dork button and my borderline weirdo button all at once, particularly as Hannibal King, but just as often even as himself. I like that he’s so much Mr Sarcasm Man that he probably has difficulty sounding sincere in real life, like the character from Kids in the Hall—"no, stop, come back, please, I’m SO LONELY." And the buff doesn’t hurt, either.

Parker Posey—Reynolds in a dress, yet much, much more. I’ve sort of tracked her since the double shot of Amateur and Henry Fool, but I also remember her just as well from Party Girl, in which her character looked like a less female drag queen version of the singer from Dee-lite. She seems like she’d be a lot of fun, a lot of work, flexible and know all the gossip…unless she was a vampire, of course, at which point she’d be all the above, but also bored, dorky, violently impatient and strong enough to punch holes in tables. Ah, Danica, we hardly knew ye.

I stood next to Chow Yun-Fat once, at the press conference for The Replacement Killers. He was wearing a crisp white linen suit, immaculate and professionally pleasant as a Golden Age Hollywood star, radiating a sort of odd Buddhist kindness towards the fans who screamed outside and the media/industry types doing their dance around him: Big, soulful, like Vincent D’Onofrio without the freak-freak. It was a watershed moment, and aside from Terence Stamp and Christopher Eccleston, he’s one of the only celebrities who’ve made me genuinely weak in the knees.

Liam Neeson, also tall, also big. Great voice. Deceptively mild little eyes, craggy in all the right places; I love how his forehead almost seems to meet the bridge of his nose, like some kind of Viking Neanderthal. When I look at him I see a physical charisma that screams temporal displacement, as though he fell through a rift in time and accidentally ended up onscreen; most people now watching him are probably far too young to recall his early years, when he boy-toyed his way through seemingly every leading lady in Hollywood, and all the guys went "Hwuh?" Well, this is a pretty clear-cut case of "the men don’t know, but the little girls understand."

Zhang Ziyi/ Keira Knightley—less so in the latter example, but both these little girls project a potential for violence that’s almost avatar-channeling. Indeed, Zhang is the only person I could ever think of casting in a remake of any role once played by Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia, who unfortuntely doesn’t act anymore—she had a particular look, perfected in movies like The Bride with White Hair or The East is Red, which could freeze strong men in their tracks and make their spines explode. That "invincible sword-goddess" look. Keira, with her spiky teeth, depthless eyes and scary lean flatness, occasionally comes as close as any non-Angelina white person ever does to having that same look…I’ll bet she has it in Domino, for example, if they ever gets around to releasing it. Niiice.

And then there’s Daniel Day Lewis, with his aristocratic hawk-face and his brawler’s broken nose, a man who always looks like he gives roughly 1,000 percent, no matter what he’s doing: Throwing knives, making shoes, raising kids. The fact that he’s MAD simply puts the cherry on the cake…oh hey, and speaking of mad, Kate Winslet! Or Michael Chiklis, or Lance Henriksen, or Juliet Lewis, or Ralph Fiennes, or Cate Blanchett, or Geoffrey Rush, or Joaquin Pheonix, or Paul Bettany, or Brendan Fraser, or Rachel Weizss, or Ian Mckellen…or Kiefer Sutherland and William Petersen, or the whole rest of the cast of 24 and CSI (aside from the asshole boss, but including Xander Berkley)...

Yes, my libido knows no bounds, in theory. And now, it’s your turn! You know who you are.;)