Inside the Brain of E.C. Henry

Page 1 of Dilly of a Duckling's Dally

Hope to have the whole script ready to show soon, but for now there's the first page as it exists in the script.  Having a blast writing this.

Dilly of a Duckling's Dally

Genre:  Animated Comedy 

Logline:  Abandoned by his flock at a state park that has predators that want to eat him, Dillard is forced to find a new living arrangement on account of the ornery nature of this newborn duckling.  

 

So whaddya think? 

Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Let me know in the comments.  Thanks,

Ranking the 2022 Academy Awards, Best Picture Nominations

1. Avatar: the Way of Water; 7.5
2. Top Gun: Maverick; 6.0
3. Everything Everywhere All at Once; (projected) 5.0
4. The Banshees of Inisherin; (projected). 4.5
5. All Quiet on the Western Front; 3.5
6. Women Talking; 3.0
7. Elvis; (projected) 2.5
8. The Fablemans; (projected) 1.5
9. Tár; 1.0
10. Triangle of Sadness; 0.5

I actually posted this earlier over at Scriptshadow.  Thought it was fitting to post my list of how E.C. Henry ranks what the Academy of Motion Pictures decided was the finalists for best movie of the year.  

Other movies of note that I thought the Oscars should have considered include: Redeeming Love at 8.25, Prey; (projected) at 7.0, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent at 6.0, Don't Worry Darling; (projected) at 5.0, and Babylon; (projected) at 4.5.

(Projected) means I haven't seen these movies yet, but I've still rated them anyway based on what I epect them to be based on their trailers, what I've read about them, and word-of-mouth.  I am making a push this week to see all the Academy nominated best movies of 2022 this week.  So far that's been Tár and Triangle of Sadness; both of which where VERY BAD films, imo.  

I'll be updating this list throughout the week up to the 2023 Oscars which is this upcoming Sunday.  Overall it feels more and more like the Oscars are becoming less special, as movies in general are loosing their appeal.  That said, every once in a while you "discover" a film like --

Which would have WON for best picture of 2022 if I was the lone one casting the votes.  And it's these movies that catch you by surprise that are keeping my interest in movies these days.  Sure isn't the main releases.  Sure the Way of Water was good, but it wasn't GREAT, and an unforgettable theater experience.  Been a while since I've been in the theater and been wowed.  Here's to hoping those days come back again. 

Tár (2022); Movies that Move Me: Volume XI

So was  this   --

My reaction to seeing the Cate Blanchette headlined movie Tár (2022)?  

Hardly. 

Though I did go into watching it last night with fairly high expectations.  One of the scripts on my "docket" to write was actually a story about a downcast composer who was suicidal and in need of a life jump.  It would have been a low budget drama.  Not that I went into my viewing of Cate Blanchette and Todd Field's dark drama thinking it would mirror what I'd been toying with mentally, but it did deal with the same kind of atmosphere: the practicing and composing of classical music.

Next Sunday Tár is up for Six Oscars.  The funny thing is I think it should only be given ONE:

Winner in 2014 for lead actress in Blue Jasmine

After viewing this movie --

In its entirety, I must admit Cate Blanchette didn't disappoint, this 2 1/2 hour MOVIE did.  

I don't think I've had such a disconnect where I thought the lead was so strong in a movie, yet was unable to carry to movie in the 53 year history of me watching movies.  

For my $$ it was OBVIOUS that Scott Field's Tár was trying to be the 2022 version of Black Swan (2010: staring Natalie Portman) or Whiplash (2014: Miles Teller vs. J.K. Simmons).  Both of which deal artists having issues in the performing arts.  Now, I adored Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, and LIKED Damien Chazelle's Whiplash movie, but my reaction was decided the Titanic-has-sunk for Todd Field's Tár,  as I would rate it a 1 out of 10!  Yeah, I was pretty pissed by what I was watching -- and it wasn't Cate Blanchette's fault!  It was the screenwriter's!  That and the director who should have known better.

Story-wise this is the story of Lydia Tár's fall from grace from being a conductor and instructor to college conductor trainees, after she kicks a female trainee out of her mentorship, and trainee takes it hard and begins to spiral downward until at last the trainee commit's suicide and Lydia's role in her fall merit's court case and further inspection of Lydia's treatment of other people by a governing body of her classical music peers.

On the surface this sounds like the PERFECT VEHICLE for an actress to show off her acting chops in a low-budget, dark drama.  The seeds are there for a compelling plot that builds to good cinematic creshendo and ending.  Scott Field, however, made some huge mistakes at the screenwriting decision making level that doom this story.  Doom it to the point that not even Cate Blanchette in all of her acting prowess can bail out. 

The dynamic duo of the movie Tár: Todd Field & Cate Blancehtte

Okay, so what did E.C. Henry find so offensive about this movie?  Let me site the reason.  They are few, BUT they mean everything.

1. There is a repeated beat where Lydia Tár wakes up in the middle of the night drawn to an irritating noise in the house.  Suspense builds... it's a ticking clock in a cabinet drawer that upset her and that takes 5 minutes of screen time!  Then Lydia wakes up to an obnoxious refrigerator door.  Opening it to find -- nothing!  Not even an expired jar of mayonniase!  Yet another waste to time, and failure to deliver on an evocative scene in a low-budget movie that desperately needs scenes that deliver.
2. There are scenes of Lydia comforting her lesbian lover's child in the middle of the night.  I guess this is Todd's way of trying to humanize an otherwise cold character in Lydia Tár.  Problem with EVERY SCENE that Petra (the lesbian lover's little daughter) is in is BORING.  AS.  FUCK!  Your supporting characters need to contribute to evocative scenes, and that's never the case with Petra/Tár.  Problem with all that is, these scenes are really dull -- even for a low-budget drama.  In a low-budget drama it's on the screenwriter and director to take these familiar beat and do something FUN with them.  That's never done in Tár, and that's directly to the fault of Todd Fields, with minor assist to the actress who plays Petra, who does NOTHING to command the screen when she's on, thus never elevating the pressure on Blanchette to perform and BE the movie.
3. The set-up and payoff of the mentoree who went of the rails was piss poor.  Honest to God THIS is the central conflict of the movie, and yet I still don't know what this girl did to push Lydia away.  A homosexual relationship is hinted at, but not confirmed nor fully denied.   When your central conflict involves a character that the screenwriter decides to keep outside the movie, you're taking a HUGE RISK.  In the case of this movie, I think some sense of who this girl was by showing her on screen, not just hinted at through 3rd party conversation and innuendo.  Maybe not early, but definitely show who this failed menoreee was the ACT II breakpoint.  For a low-budget drama there were scenes that were not shot that really needed to be there.  Maybe this a call to the need for other writers to contribute to a given project.  Maybe what we're seeing here is blind-spot by Todd Field.  Too late now, the movies shot and been released.  But trust me there are some scene that needed to be in this movie that never made to the script.  Not good.  Not good at the block level, screenwriting, outline form. 
4. This film is built to entertain the narrowest of audiences: those familiar and who have an affinity for the life of those immeshed in classical music.  In banter with her peers the great love of past musicians and composers is gone over, and over, and over.  Having never studied this stuff, I didn't know who most of these people were.  Todd Field should have taken better steps to help his audience through this world.  WAYYY to much assumption for how the classical music world in Berlin functions is ASSUMED to be known by the audience.  After a while I gave up on trying to understand this world.  This was big miss by the screenwriter and director as it is HIS JOB to bring the audience into a foreign world to them, and entertain them.  Black Swan did this.  Whiplash did too... 
5.  The counter-story being felt by Lydia's assistant, Franesca; was a disappointment.  The first 2/3 of Tar features mentorship between Lydia and her assistant Francesca.  At the end it becomes apparent that Franesca has had enough of Lydia's ways and abruptly leaves.  This is totally believable, yet not resolved well at all in the movie.  I think the Lydia/Franesca relationship is the most important of the whole movie.  Yet in the last third off it, Francesca is no more and Lydia is left to fend for herself as her demise snowballs.  Imo you needed 2 to 3 scenes with Franesca in them in ACT III, and the audience ends up getting none.  This is a big failure by Todd Field, imo.  

In the end you have this fascinating character, Lydia Tár, in this movie of a world that most people aren't going to know anything about; that the screenwriter and director ultimately disappointed with because of the scene choices made at the script level.

Tár (2022) is a script-level fail movie.  To read it's up for best original screenplay of the year is a laugher for me, because that's where this movie dies.  Tár should have been this year's Black Swan, or this year's Whiplash.  Alas, it was not.  It needed other writers to put in what Todd Field missed.

Keeping the Paper Companies Employed

E.C. Henry uses A LOT of  this :
Welcome to the world of editing works of fiction.  Shit doesn't improve by itself people!  No, it's people like E.C. Henry that keep --

The paper companies in business.

Working at a distribution warehouse is a close second to keeping the paper companies in business (hehehehe)  NOT the kind of place you want to work if you're bent on going "green".  Lotta wasted paper.   Printers working overtime to cranking out all manners of useless reports that should have been kept digitally instead to made into copies that get put in folders that are also made of pulp!  

Still, as wasteful as I think I am at times.  I love a hard copied script.  Before I left for Tennessee I had to burn abut 200 I had made over the years, and it broke my heart.

Another beneficiary of my writing career is the INK companies.  Cheapest cartridge for my Canon Pixma printer is like $25 bucks -- and I have FIVE of them inside my color printer.  I can easy spend over $300 bucks without batting an eye at Office Depot on ink.  Sorry Dunder Mifflin, but you don't have any brick and mortar stores in the local Kingsport, Tennessee metro area.

So being a writer gets expensive.  Even pens these days are spendy.  But what's a writer with pages to edit to do?  My eyes can only stand so many hours of looking at computer screen before they need a break.  And that's where the paper alternative comes in handy.  

I do a lot of edits on hard copies while at the day job during breaks and at lunch.  Yeah, I'm THAT dedicated.  That and my co-workers conversations rarely hold my interest.  I like making new stories.  They like video games and drinking alcohol.  Hmmm.  See the disconnect?  

And so I edit on, using more paper, buying more ink cartridges, because that's what writer's do -- they keep the paper companies employed!