HURRICANE MASTERMIND NOW JUST A TROPICAL DEPRESSION
...but it could build in strength back to a category one.
Last night was the close of Hurricane Season at the Eclectic Company Theatre, of which Mastermind was a part. After the show, there was the presentation of the judged awards as well as audience awards. Mastermind was honored with Audience Awards for Best Actor (Brad Wilcox) and Best Playwriting.
I am proud that we won the awards we did tonight. Michael wrote a play worthy of Joss Whedon that had both clever, brilliantly funny dialog as well as deep, complicated personal relationship issues. He gave us plenty to play with!
Hurricane Season is an annual playwriting competition/festival at ECT. This year, nine plays were chosen out of more than 100. Mastermind was selected as one of the top six best plays and was sent (with the other five) to an outside panel of judges to select the top three. They didn't pick Mastermind.
The juried winner was Spoken For a delightful, creative and funny piece, by S.L. Daniels, set in a world where the affluent can hire people to speak for them, affording them the luxury of being inarticulate, grunting single words and having it translated into coherent thoughts. In this case, it's about two speakers (one very good at their job, one not so much) and the rock stars their work for and fall in love with.
COOL STUFF BY PEOPLE I KNOW: THE WOMEN OF MASTERMIND
Here's some stuff by the women who worked on the productions of Mastermind that have gone up this year (so far). This is what they're doing now and that you should endeavor to check 'em out.
MANUSCRIPT - KATHARINE BRANDT Mastermind - Liz
Katharine originated the role of Liz in the premiere production of Mastermind, the one-night only show last April.
You can distinguish her in the photo by her being the one that is a her.
Katherine is one of the principals of Tall Blonde Productions, and not jsut for being a tall blonde, so that makes her both star and co-producer.
She told me of her plans to bring this play (herein lies a review of its Broadway run) to LA for its west coast premiere back when we in rehearsals for Mastermind. I was immediately intrigued by this tale of deception by people a little too clever for their own good. Aside from that, Katharine is a hellishly good actress, so I'm totally checking this out. Click the pix for tix.
GROSS INDECENCY - SUSAN LEE & BETH RICKETSON Mastermind - Director & Mastermind - Liz
Susan took Mastermind and really made it her own in its recent run at the Eclectic Company Theatre. Now, at said theatre of which she is a company member, she's directing Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. With her keen eye and ability to reach into a piece and pull out the emotions buried within combined with the fact that that Oscar dude was wild, this should be a party (like it's 1899).
Also, it was written by Moises Kaufman, who's five kinds of hot these days. His 33 Variations was all over the last Tony Awards and he's prehaps best known as the writer behind The Laramie Project.
Featured in the cast is Beth Ricketson, who also played Liz. Another excellent actress who has a fantastic and piercing stage presence.
I'll be hitting this one as well. September should be a good month for live theatre. Again, click pix tix.
Halfway through a full-on screenplay. Not a teleplay. A screenplay. The management team...Team Sullivan...yeah they don't really say that, but I'm not opposed to it...they want a screenplay to flog. I've been reluctant. I don't think that way. Never quite had the right idea that could be done in that form, but now I do. As for it's marketability...I don't think about the market, but there might be some confusion when it goes into the Hollywood sorting hat. It's weird how sometimes it seems that TV shows can be more difficult to categorize (thought it faces the network brand issue (I'll have a post about that eventually) but films it seems have to fit into more rigidly shaped holes, despite that they exist in and of themselves, not as part of a programming block.
Rewriting the Fringespec based on some really awesome notes in the in-between spaces of the screenplay. Though the screenplay is flowing well enough that there haven't been a lot of those. Whatever still needs doing after first draft will be done, to clear the screenplay from my head before a draft review.
The Area FiveThree Four pilot lies in wait. Not a priority at this time, letting the draft sit for a while.
Some other pilot season action may be afoot. That's all I'll say of that.
Hit a lot of TV commentaries of late. The Leverage commentaries work on a number of levels, the writing approach, lots of tech discussion as well, but there's always someone in the commentary who sounds like there weren't enough mics t go around. Dollhouse commentaries are also great, as any with JossWhedon are. He's entertaining and informative and open about network issues. Wish they'd taken some time to do Torchwood commentaries for Children of Earth. Still on the docket: The Middleman, Mad Men 2, Pushing Daisies 2.
Came up with a wicked Dollhouse spec idea. That I'll probably never write. I don't think it's a productive use of writing energy to execute a spec that has a low probability of being read. Though it's worth noting that about 75% of execs I met with last staffing season watched it, but there was the Fox one...and the clearly geek one...and the one that revealed herself as closet geek...so probably a spread a bit off the standard deviation. And the thing about Dollhouse is it's such a unique concept, I don't think my idea will ever translate to anything else anywhere else, though it isn't dependent on specific characters.
Checked out Callan. An ops series from Great Britain circa 1970. Clearly a precursor to the likes of La Femme Nikita or the Sandbaggers. Starring Edward Woodward. Not bad. Drawback, you basically have to start with the third season because most of the first seasons just don't exist anymore. Thanks for the recommendation on that, Mad Pulp Bastard.
I will admit that I not only watched Defying Gravity, I will continue to watch it for no reasons I can justify. It's Grey's Anatomy in space and I cannot watch Grey's. It has like nine things wrong with it. At best I appreciate it's attempt to hit sci-fi with a different tone for the genre, but the tone is misfiring like big misfirey thing. Mock me in the comments, I can't defend myself. It's open season.
Still staying open for new venues for Mastermind. Let your stagey theatre friends know. BTW, the Canadian premiere is off the docket for now, as it's producer, Tommy Gushue, got busy in the business of TV manufacturing and he got into the CFC. Good luck to him!
Today, let us briefly turn to the realm of cinema. In specific, cinema which features certifiable, though good-hearted, insane vigilantes.
In this post from The Guardian's (UK) film blog, a young man, we'll call him Ben Child (largely because that's his name) has chosen to scold Warner Brothers for not coming out and announcing a third Batman flick. In so making this admonishment, he says:
"All of this serves once again to make the company – and its wholly-owned division, DC Comics – continue to look like a slow-moving behemoth, incapable of making decisions, compared with the new kid on the block, Marvel Comics, which set up its own studio in 2004..."
To him, I say this.
"Shut your festering gob, you tit!"
While I do forcefully agree with his assertion that Marvel knows (for the most part) how to exploit their characters in the realm of film and have done so with plenty of success (even the sucky movies still made money). DC and WB, despite having been part of the same corporate monothingy for...ever, have a track record of (despite The Dark Knight) utter failure in this regard (though improving, with The Losers and Green Lantern coming forth).
Regardless of what you may think of Superman Returns, the true failure is that Superman III and IV were allowed to exist and that it took twenty years to get a reboot/relaunch under way. For SUPERfuckingMAN. Especially when Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher were allowed to do molest Batman four times over.
And then there's Wonder Woman. The third of DC's trinity. Yeah, she had her own TV series...30 years ago. Jonah Hex is getting a movie before she did (and from the looks of it, I think they fucked up Jonah Hex). Even with Joss Whedon, no go. And there was a fantastic spec by Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland that bought by Joel Silver (largely as a kill fee). Silver didn't want it to be a period piece. Why the fuck not? If it's good, make the godamn movie. Then bring her forward in the sequel if it's that important.
OK, I'm off point. Back to the subject at hand.
Warners hasn't announced a new Batflick. Good. For one thing, he's taking the word of Gary Oldman at Comic Con as gospel. Oldman said they'll start filiming next year. No one else, anywhere, has said a goddamn thing.
Actors will say all manner of stuff. Rarely should any of it be taken seriously.
But this is Gary Oldman.
Yeah.
That actually makes it less trustworthy, because I see Oldman as exactly the sort that will have it on with the 6000 people in that room and the rest of the damn internet...because he can. I like Gary Oldman. (But that's a whole other post).
And assuming all the pieces are in place, how is not announcing it even relevant. It's gonna be at least two years before it even hits the screens. Minimum. Announcing it just doesn't mean shit. The only that matters in bums in seats. They could shoot it in absolute secrecy for all I care. Just give it a good P.R. push when they're ready and all will be well. It's done when it's done and not a 'mo before.
Let's not push Warner into making a Batmovie until everyone is ready. After all, I don't just want a Batfilm. I want a really fucking good one, and that last one raised the bar pretty damn high.
I seem to recall that Fox was in a big damn hurry to cash in on some mutie money and forced a release date on X-Men 3, a film which had, at that time, no director and two completely different scripts which were about to be mashed up (questionable in every way shape and form).
While it made some cash and still spawned yet another sequel (in the form of the Wolverine movie), the fact is...compared to X-Men and X2 (and even just on it's own)...it sucked. It suffered creatively by non-creative concerns.
Today, let us briefly turn to the realm of cinema. In specific, cinema which features certifiable, though good-hearted, insane vigilantes.