First of four parts

Humans learn best from mistakes, especially when they’re artists. That’s why the ability to accept criticism is of vital importance to a screenwriter striving to hone his craft. One of his biggest challenges is to find mistakes in his own stories before it’s too late – meaning, before others do.

Over the years, I’ve read and evaluated a multitude of treatments and screenplays for film students and friendly screenwriters, and the reasons many of them didn’t work were of striking similarity. As a screenwriting mentor at the International Academy of Film and Television, I developed short film scripts with about 50 students from all over the world.

And here I again encounter the small and big mistakes in narrative conception that keep repeating themselves. They are old acquaintances.  I’ve wrestled with them before, and I’m still wrestling with them whenever I sit down to put my own story on a blank page.

My desire to bring to light, unmask and caution against the 7 Deadly Screenwriting Sins has grown steadily over the past months and has urged me to present them to you now.

Deadly Sin #1:  PASSIVE PROTAGONIST

The Greek work “protagonist” means “the one who acts first,” and this is exactly what the main character of a cinematic story should do.  Either driven by a deliberate purpose or unconscious need, his task is to accomplish something through action.  Narrative tension results from the hero’s movement towards a goal as he overcomes growing obstacles, and the audience emotionally invests in the character because he acts.  If you factor out the goal, you take away the anticipation that’s really the fun part of watching a story unfold.  Characters that are determined entirely by their environment are bound  to become problematic as they are not allowed to be defined by actions.  Remember that choices make people, just as people make choices.  A character with an undeveloped profile and destiny will leave the viewer cold. All too often, solutions are offered to protagonists on a silver plate or, in the worst case, the story’s hero is degraded to a minor character—the protagonist is pressured into the role of spectator in his own story.  Never let your protagonist become a toy of other characters or a cue ball of fate.  Remember that your main character is titled “protagonist” for a reason, so don’t let the sidekicks run the show.

Look for Deadly Sins 2 and 3 on Friday.

The post THE 7 DEADLY SINS OF SCREENWRITING, Part 1 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

Locations fell through.  I woke up on the 9th day of shooting, and we were set for our first shot at a hardware store in South Bay.  At the last minute I got a call from the owner saying the site wouldn’t be available.  This couldn’t happen.  We were already behind schedule, we couldn’t waste a whole day because our location wasn’t available, so starting at 6 a.m. I re-arranged the entire day’s schedule.  Instead of the hardware store Interior/Exteriors, we were going to shoot an outdoor car wreck scene that was scheduled for 2 days from then.

I woke up in Hermosa Beach, hopped in the car and drove out past OC and set myself to finding a deserted road in the middle of nowhere.  We needed a place where no cops went and where I knew we wouldn’t be bothered by anyone while we were crashing a car on the side of the road.  While I was searching, I had my AD and Line Producer organize a parking lot scene that we could shoot instead of the hardware exteriors.  Then I found the road.  I can’t even remember the name of it, but it was in the middle of the desert, and it was going to work perfectly.

I drove the 45 minutes back to base camp in South Bay and alerted the crew that we were headed to the desert.  They were all at first skeptical…until we got there.  The generator rumbled to life, the lights kicked on, we crashed MY car into the ditch and shot our scenes all night.  I didn’t get to sleep until 6 the next morning.

That was the first time I felt like a Producer.  I knew I had pulled that out, I had made something out of nothing, and that is what YOU will have to do when you embark on your own adventure as a first-time Producer.  It’s all about problem solving.  It’s emergency after emergency, and you have to make immediate judgments as to their severity, and prioritize on the spot, then dictate to others what those priorities are and make sure they get it done, and you always save the biggest problem for yourself, because you can’t trust anyone else for that kind of stuff.

Producing that film was simultaneously the most fun, stressful, terrifying time of my life.  I had no idea what I was doing, but that is honestly the best way.

Jump into deep water, let it overtake you, take in a couple gulps of salty terror, then fight your way to the top, poke your head above and take a deep satisfying breath, then make for shore.  I promise you it will be the swim that you remember, and remember fondly.

The post MEDITATIONS ON AN EMERGENCY, Part 3 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

Pete Wassell takes on the task of Producing his best friend’s movie…and realizes he’s plunged into a flaming pit of terror!  (Part 1 was posted on 5/15.)

So I raised the money from friends and family, which puts even more pressure on you.  Though your family and friends would never wish that, the truth is that you care about their money way more than you would a rich stranger.  These are your loved ones, and they probably don’t have much money—mine didn’t—but they believed in me and my Director, and so now not only was I the guardian of their pocket books, my own heart was invested.

This is a good thing.  If you’re going to Produce a movie, you need to put it all on the line.  Only then will you do what is necessary to see it through to the end.

The money was in the bank, so now I started setting up meetings.  I used Mandy, Craigslist and some plain old name-dropping word of mouth to find our DP and our Gaffer who brought along his own grip.  I found us the makeup woman, our Script Supervisor, a Line Producer (Now I know!  He’s the watch dog of the budget and the paperwork), our PA crew, and I organized our auditions until we had our cast.  We were ready to shoot.

Wait, where?  I had to find locations.  Two bars, a liquor store, an apartment.  We needed to shoot driving sequences, a hotel room, and an outside restaurant.  Normally you would get permits for all this shooting, but not us, we couldn’t afford it, and our guerilla style filmmaking made us feel young and cool and a bit dangerous.  I got our locations, now we were ready to shoot.

We set our date.  We had one last meeting, the Gaffer told me what he needed, as did the DP, the AC, and the Makeup/Wardrobe woman.  I called the rental houses for expendables, gear, extra lighting needs, etc…and then we set up Day One.

The first day was great.  Our first set-up was in an office, and it went off without a hitch.  The crew worked well together, the actors were happy and things were moving quickly…SOUND!  I totally forgot, I also had to find a sound guy.  One more thing!…back to the shoot.  Everything was going great.  Then Day Two, we were shooting in my apartment, so that should be easy.  No way.  Efficiency went the way of the dinosaurs.  We slowed waayyyyy down.  It was no one’s fault, we just had a lot to shoot and not much time to shoot it.  This was the beginning of the first emergency.  We had to speed up, which meant we had to move things around.  I spent a lot of sleepless nights going over the next day’s schedule with the 1st and 2nd ADs, both good friends of mine, and let me tell you, it put our friendship to the test on a few occasions.

Tune in right here on Monday for the thrilling conclusion of Pete’s Ordeal By Fire!

The post MEDITATIONS ON AN EMERGENCY, Part 2 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

by IAFT’s Pete Wassell

When I first went to film school, I wanted to do what everyone wants to do—write and direct.  I was going to be the next Tarantino or Spielberg.  I was going to make big movies about small stories.  Then, as I navigated the maze of my own interest and ability, I realized I wasn’t a director.  The jury is still out on writer, but NOT director.  I hated being on set and having everyone ask me what was next.  I knew what I wanted, but didn’t know how to communicate it, and when I got what I wanted, I realized what I wanted was no good.  I set my sights on producing.

Ah yes, producing…that hazy chasm between suit and artist.  No one really knows what a Producer does.  There’s 20 producers on every movie.  Executive Producers, Line Producers, Associate Producers, Co-Producers.  I had no idea what any of these people did.  I had seen them before, sequestered away on the fringes of set, sitting in little packs, laptops open, doing…nothing.  At least that is what I thought when I was lugging 20-lb. sand bags up and down stairs all day, or stapling fake grass onto a wooden ramp at 3 in the morning.  I hated those Producers.  That’s the job I wanted: cushy, modern, young…cool.

So when my best friend and business partner came to me with a great script and asked me if I wanted to produce it, I said, “Absolutely.”  Then I woke up the next day…and my world and my firmly held truths were shattered into a million pieces of porcelain terror.

Our film was going to cost money, and we didn’t have any.  That was my first job.  We were going to need a DP, Gaffer, Grips, AC, AD, 2nd AD, Script Supervisor, a Line Producer (I still didn’t what that person actually did) and a cast.  The Director had written the script, he had storyboarded his movie, he was ready to inspire a crew and imprint his vision on a digital canvas.  Oh yeah!  We needed a camera, lenses, lights, locations, extras!  That was my job.  I realized, all at once, exactly why those Producers chilled on the sidelines with their laptops and bottles of water.  Because they didn’t have to do anything else.  They had hired me to carry those sandbags, and staple that fake grass, while fretting over the budget the whole time no doubt.

Producing is the hardest job on a film set, don’t let anyone tell you different.  Many directors fancy themselves generals, preparing their troops for war.  Well, if that’s the case, Producers are the treasury, and the lieutenants, and the colonels.  Producers are the people that have to tell the general no, and have to deal with all the consequences.  They are the ones who guard the money.  The MONEY.  Though I may sound like a cold-hearted capitalist, the truth is when you’re making an independent film, investors are shelling out money to YOU.  It isn’t your money, it’s theirs, and you are the one who must guard over it and make sure it shows up on screen.  If the movie fails, and these people lose their money, it’s not on the Director, it’s on YOU.  Never forget that.  Don’t let it scare you, instead let it fill you with a deep sense of respect and duty.  You have a duty to these people and to yourself to make sure their money is spent in the best way possible.

Check back on Friday for the next installment of Pete’s 3-part story!

The post MEDITATIONS ON AN EMERGENCY, Part 1 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

I know.  How many times do we have to read a diatribe, a manifesto on the state of the Hipster?  “It’s been done!” they say…  Well, I haven’t done it.  So I’m gonna do it now.

What is a Hipster?  That term has always been a bit cloudy to me.  I’m confident I can spot one walking down the street, but that’s lame to identify an entire faction of the population based solely on tight jeans and ironic/iconic t-shirts.  I mean, just recently I started wearing tight jeans, and I own a few iconic/ironic t-shirts, but I wouldn’t identify with the Hipster crowd.  I have good friends who are Hipsters, no doubt, but they shall remain nameless.  I still haven’t come to it, though–what is a Hipster?  Let me give you my definition.

Age: 23-30.  I feel like Hipster is evolving, and that it’s really a name for many people in my generation.  I think the younger kids, 18-22, have different names for themselves, and actually refer to people in my generation as Hipsters, in jest.  More on that some other time.

Tight Jeans: Sorry this has to be on there.  I don’t think Hipster without thinking tight jeans.

Carabineer/keys: It’s so convenient!

Attitude: doesn’t care about what you think, though at times can be sensitive.

Music: Anything and everything.  This is the best quality in Hipsters.  They dig all the sounds:  Dub step, bluegrass, folk, and metal; hip hop, dance, trance, punk.  They listen to, and like it all.

Relationships: full of drama, heartache, love, and loss

Now that I’ve very condescendingly described a few key elements to being a Hipster, I think I can get on with this article’s thesis: recent films that embody the Hipster ideal.

#1: Bellflower

Written and Directed by newcomer Evan Glodell.  Also partially shot on a camera he engineered himself, Bellflower is the Hipster incarnate.  If I had to pick one movie that I thought lived up to the dreams, aspirations, and fantasies of the Hipster condition, Bellflower would be at the top.  The main character, Woodrow, is slightly introverted, but not shy.  In the meantime, Woodrow and his buddy, Aiden, are building a flamethrower which lends itself to the frantic nature of their ADHD personalities.  They drink too much, and Woodrow finds himself in love with Milly, a loud, opinionated Hipster heart-breaker who goes through men like popcorn.  And that’s the story.  All playing over the backdrop of Woodrow and Aiden spending their days fantasizing about cruising through a post-apocalyptic wasteland a la Mad Max, in their souped-up muscle car with the word “Medusa” emblazoned on each door panel.  This film is a meditation on masculinity, love, and friendship, and one that I cherish.  But it has a very specific audience which tells me it will end up very much stuck in the time when it was made.

#2: Blue Valentine

Hipsters love Ryan Gosling…and Michelle Williams, which makes Blue Valentine a perfect Hipster flick.  Gosling and Williams star as Dean and Cindy (great names!), two young, emotionally fragile, yet headstrong, independent lovers who navigate the minefield of love, loss, anger, betrayal, and rejection.  Another film that I love, Blue Valentine is that perfect little gem that cuts back and forth through time, telling you simultaneously the story of how Dean and Cindy fell in love, and how they fell out of love.  The performances by Gosling and Williams are stellar, as is their chemistry.  Being able to play the young lovers, then so seamlessly move into late 20s/early 30s, lower middleclass mother and father hipster family is breathtaking.  I mean Hipster family in the most serious and respectful way as well.  Dean loves his daughter, though he doesn’t aspire to be anything more than what he is.  Michelle Williams feels oppressed by all the new responsibility, lack of discipline, and lack of help on the part of Dean.  At one point in her life she knew Dean would be something amazing, but could only watch as he slipped into middle age, balding, fat, and completely content with his lot.  This is the nature of the Hipster image to me.  Hipster women are full of life, energy; they want to be with a great artist who is always moving, always fun, always on the cutting edge.  The problem is that most men aren’t that; especially Hipster men who must deal with more insecurity, and a bigger crisis of masculinity than any generation of men before.  Blue Valentine hits on all these points without portraying the characters as whiny or self-indulgent.  It examines these character traits, but doesn’t decide that they are the only aspects of these people, just as what I wrote above doesn’t describe Hipsters completely in and out.  It’s more of an assessment of motivation, not necessarily a mold in which to fit.  Blue Valentine is a great film directed with control and skill by Derek Cianfrance.  I highly recommend it, Hipster or not.

#3: (500) Days of Summer

“You like the Smiths?”  said Joseph Gordon Levitt to Zooey Deschanel in the elevator.   Lame.  I don’t like this movie, all right!  This is an example of a Hipster film that is so condescending, and so offensive to the audience, I can’t believe anyone who actually fancies themselves a Hipster would like this film.  I think only people who want to be hipsters like it because they think they have to.  I like Joseph Gordon Levitt, and I think Zooey Deschanel is really pretty, but this movie is a hollow shell full of two-dimensional caricatures of stereotypes.  The story is about Tom (Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Deschanel).  Summer doesn’t believe in love, but Tom does, and he falls for her…hard.  Tom is an aspiring architect who currently writes greeting cards to pay the rent.  He dresses in all the right Hipster fashion including sweater vests, jackets, and thin Italian ties.  Long story short, Zooey Deschanel breaks Tom’s heart, but using that hurt to fuel his ambition, Tom finds himself turning inward and discovers an inner strength and creative drive that finally lands him that first gig as an architect!  But wait!  Zooey Deschanel pops back up in the end, with some rather un-settling, if not surprising news.  I won’t tell you her revelation, in case you’re really dying to see this movie.  Let’s just say there’s nothing too nuanced about it.  (500) Days of Summer is what an old guy thinks Hipsters want to see.  I sure as hell got duped.

So what have we learned?  Hipster movies love to analyze and study the competing definitions of masculinity, mulling them around, and swapping established gender roles.  This generation is one in the middle of a very large transition, one that will re-establish what it means to be a man, and a woman, in love and lust, while also espousing the virtues of nostalgia for un-remembered time periods, tight jeans, carabineers, and tight band t-shirts.

When I started writing this piece, I wrote as an observer, an outsider looking in, because no way was I a hipster.  I conclude this article, sitting in my desk chair, wearing tight red skinny jeans, with an iconic/ironic t-shirt gussied up with tri-color robot men shooting old timey laser guns.  I too find myself pondering what it means to be a man in this era.  I respect and love women, and yet must contend with my urge to hunt and gather.  I never aim to intimidate, I’m sensitive and honestly want a relationship with a woman I can talk to and open to.  If that makes me a Hipster, then so be it.

In the end, there are many worse things you could be called other than Hipster, and the movies are great!

The post HIPSTER MOVIES 101 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

Five suggestions and pointers for aspiring writers and filmmakers.

1.]  Always have a title page with your name, address, and phone number on it (or your agent’s address and phone number, if you’ve got one) and an Email address.  Contact numbers.  Always.  If somebody you don’t know likes it and wants to contact you, how can they if there’s no contact number?  And you never know where your script will end up.  I went into an office once accompanying a producer on a pitch, and I saw a copy of one of my scripts on the shelf.  The meeting wasn’t about my script.  I didn’t know anyone in the office, and I have no idea how my script got there.  (But I can confidently tell you I did have my name and contact numbers on it.)  Point is, the same thing could happen to you.  Your script might get passed from hand to hand or computer to computer, and somewhere along the line, someone might read it and want it and not know who wrote it or how to get in touch, if there’s no contact numbers.  It’s a crap shoot out there, and you never know where your script will end up.  I know a development person who keeps piles of scripts in the trunk of her car, just in case someone’s looking for a certain type of story.  Put your name and contact numbers on the title page of your script.

2.]  Cut and trim.  Examine every scene to determine if it’s necessary to your story.  Examine every line of dialogue.  Do you need it?  Trim sentences.  A wise director once told me this:  you don’t need “he sits in a chair.”  ”In a chair” is understood.  All you need is “he sits” (unless it makes some kind of plot point as to what he sits on–there’s a bomb under the chair or something like that.)  A script should be no more than roughly 110 pages, with industry-standard margins.  For lower budget movies, I try to keep it under 100 pages.  A tighter script reads better.  A tighter script keeps me involved and wondering what will happen next.  Sometimes in reading a script I feel like I’m hacking my way through heavy brush with a machete.  When I start feeling that way, I start yawning.  Make it easy for me to read your script.

3.]  A lot of people in the business don’t like to read scripts on a laptop.  They want paper in their hands.  If you deliver hard copies to prospective readers, I advise using hole-punches and brads.  If you give somebody loose pages, even in an envelope, they’re bound to lose some of them.  Also, it’s my own practice to announce, on the title page, the total number of pages in the script.  Just last week I read a screenplay and there was no The End written at the bottom of the last page, and the way it printed out the last page was full right to the bottom of the page, so I wasn’t sure the script had ended.  I wondered if there was more on a missing last page or pages.  I had to call the guy and make sure I’d got the end of the story right.  I think it helps if the reader can look at the front of the script and see how many pages it is.  What if somehow, while your script was sitting around in some office, the last page got torn off or misplaced?  Again, the reader could check the number on the title page and would know at a glance that a page is missing.  Also, my preference is just to put End.  Just like that, in bold typeface.

But I don’t mind reading a script on my computer.  It saves paper, and maybe that’s good for the planet.  If you send out an electronic file of your script, make sure it’s a read-only PDF file.

4.]  Use your spell check!  There’s nothing worse than wading through a bunch of typos and misspelled words with improper punctuation.  If you can’t proof your script, ask somebody else to do it.

5.]  Remember who you’re writing for.  You’re not writing for the audience.  You’re writing for the guy sitting in an office who’s paid to read the script and write coverage for the producer who might fund it.  You’ve got to get past him (or her) before you can get to an audience.  Create the movie in the mind of the reader–get them hooked (seduced) so they keep turning pages…

Did I say five?  Make it half a dozen.  Here’s one more.

6.]  The Four Big Goals:  Focus, Shape, Clarity, and Economy.

Focus:  Keep your story concentrated on who and what it’s about.

Shape:  Sculpt your story around only what is needed.

Clarity:  Just because it’s clear to you doesn’t mean it’s clear  to everyone who reads it.  When you’re reading through your script, read it with the eyes of someone who’s never read it before.

Economy:  Get rid of everything you don’t need.  Like Picasso said, “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”

The post HINTS & TIPS FOR THE SCREENWRITER appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

While living in Boston for a year from 2010 to ’11, I worked a truckload of jobs.  From taking photos of tourists getting on Duck Boat rides, to seasonal help at Borders bookstore (the worst job I’ve ever had…ever!).  But the majority of my time was spent toiling at the AMC Boston Commons 18.

It was a giant movie theatre right next to the Commons, so when it was busy, It Was Busy.  I’m talking 10,000 people in a night on Valentine’s Day.  It was crazy.  Concession and box office shifts were the worst, especially during hectic days since you may never stop greeting people.  Literally 8 hours a night, saying hello to guests and printing their tickets/dipping their popcorn.  It was mind-numbing work.  It wasn’t until I was bumped up to booth that I realized I loved my job.

Ah yes, booth—the greatest word you’ll ever hear while working at a movie theatre.  Though I fear working a booth shift will be a thing of the past in the not too distant future.

The booth is where the projectors are kept—it’s where the magic happens.

In the old days projectionists had their own union, and being a projectionist was a full-time long-range career move.  The old guys would have multiple reels spanning multiple projectors, and they would have to be right on the dot when switching reels or the movie would cut to white.  It was a thankless job, yet one that required a lot of physical repetition and attention to detail.

When I got to booth they were still projecting film, but now they had what was called a platter system.  Each projector was an old beast—blocks of metal that smelled like editing rooms and were about as quiet as a chainsaw.   The night booth workers would splice together the prints and install them on the 3-tiered platters which looked like giant CDs where a complete print of a film would lay spooling and unspooling all day.  You fed the film through a little mechanical device called the brain that was equipped with a laser eye and a slack lever.  It controlled the speed at which the platter spun.  Then you would feed the film through a tower, stretch it across the room and into the projector where you carefully, yet quickly fed the film through sprocket holes and gates.

This was a fun job.

A good projectionist could spool up a film in 5 minutes, run to the next one, spool it up, and so on, getting the whole theatre ready to project the first movies of the day in 30 minutes.  When the first show was ready to start, an alarm would go off on the projector, you’d hit the button, and the projector would rumble to life.  You check the focus, the framing, and the sound.  If all looked good you moved on to the next start, scratching off each start time on your schedule until magically 8 hours had gone by.

Fact is, this was a great job, and a great time to be doing it.  That is, until the theater decided to go all digital…

Digital is not fun.

In the eyes of a projectionist, truer words have never been spoken.

We got our first big 3D digital projector in April of 2011, and it was a monstrosity.  A giant, blue and grey plastic behemoth that ran quiet, smelled new, and was a total mystery.  Which gets me to the crux of this article.

It took 3 weeks to train me properly on the film projectors.  I could fix any problem that cme up.  It was all mechanical!  If the film slipped a gate, I could fix that.  If the tension wasn’t correct, I could re-spool and fix that.  If the brain malfunctioned, I could quickly cut, splice, and re-spool while resetting the brain, all while keeping the audience happy by getting their movie back on the screen quickly.  And the truth is problems rarely occurred!  They were good old machines that had one purpose and were engineered brilliantly.

The same could not be said for the digital behemoth.  You had to have a special degree to fix any problems with the projector, so if it went down in the middle of the show because of some esoteric issue, that was it.  The audience was issued refunds, and we had to call in the specialist who cost a million dollars an hour.

That’s the difference.

Film is physical.  It’s right in front of you.  It smells a certain way and it acts a certain way, and if you know how to maintain the machinery and fix the occasional problems, you’re set, and like I said before, it only takes a good 3 weeks to train on a film projector—the rest you learn as you go.  The nuances of the film projector were many, but it was nothing a guy with a film degree couldn’t handle.

The digital projector with its endless 1s and 0s was not something I could fix, it wasn’t something I could identify with, and it was not fun.  It takes the joy and the rigor out of the job, and I like to think it just doesn’t look as good either.

Digital is the future, and I’m on the bandwagon, but I will miss film projection, and I shed a tear every time I think about a new generation of movie geeks who will never have the opportunity to work in a movie theatre projecting film through a giant hunk of smelly steel.

I’d like to raise a toast to film, and the projectionists of yore.  We had fun, didn’t we!?

The post FILM VERSUS DIGITAL appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader [or viewer] at least one character to root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it’s only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things: reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist.  No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them, so that the reader [or viewer] may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person.  If you open a window and make love to the world, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers [or viewers] as much information as possible as soon as possible.  To heck with suspense.  Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Vonnegut qualifies the list by adding that the greatest American short story writer, Flannery O’Connor, broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that.

Another set of rules about writing from Kurt Vonnegut:

1. Find a subject you care about.

2. Do not ramble, though.

3. Keep it simple.

4. Have the guts to cut.

5. Sound like yourself.

6. Say what you mean to say.

7. Pity the readers [or viewers].

The post MORE ON KURT VONNEGUT, JR. appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

Vonnegut was born in 1922 to a third-generation German-American family in Indianapolis.  He studied biochemistry at two different colleges from 1941 to 1943 before enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II.

While he was serving in Europe in 1944, his mother committed suicide.  On Mother’s Day.

As an advance scout during the Battle of the Bulge, Vonnegut was cut off from his battalion and wandered alone behind enemy lines for several days until captured.  Imprisoned in Dresden, he witnessed the Allied fire-bombing that destroyed that city.  He was one of only seven American prisoners of war in Dresden to survive, because they were kept in a cell in an underground meat locker at a plant known as Slaughterhouse Five.  “Utter destruction,” he recalled, “carnage unfathomable.”

The Germans put him to work gathering bodies for mass burial.  “But there were too many corpses to bury.  So instead the Nazis sent in guys with flame-throwers.  All these civilians’ remains were burned to ashes.”  This experience had a profound influence on his work and formed the core of his most celebrated book, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE—now considered one of the finest American novels of the 20th century.

Vonnegut was freed in May 1945.  Upon returning to America, he was awarded a Purple Heart for what he called a “ludicrously negligible wound.”

After the war, Vonnegut studied anthropology and also worked as a police reporter in Chicago before going to work in public relations for General Electric.  He once proclaimed, “Science is magic that works.”  He also declared, “Smoking cigarettes is the only socially acceptable way of committing suicide.”  He himself smoked Pall Malls.

His first short story, Report on the Barnhouse Effect, appeared in 1950.  He continued to write science fiction stories before his second novel, THE SIRENS OF TITAN, was published in 1959, and two years later, another novel, MOTHER NIGHT.

On the verge of abandoning his writing, Vonnegut was offered a teaching job in Iowa in 1963, and that’s when CAT’S CRADLE became a bestseller and confirmed his reputation.

GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER subsequently appeared in 1965, and then SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE in 1969.

Vonnegut had two wives (once divorced) and eight children: three with his first wife, one with his second, and four adopted.  Of the four adoptees, three are his nephews, adopted in 1958 when their father was killed in a train wreck and their mother (Vonnegut’s sister) died of cancer.  In the same week.

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, in 1973, became one of his best-selling books.  Vonnegut’s own voice is always apparent in his writing, although frequently filtered through the character of a down-trodden science fiction author named Kilgore Trout, who was based on real-life science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon.

Oddly enough, in 1974, a paperback appeared on the market, VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL, with Kilgore Trout listed as the author.  A lot of people loved the book and thought Vonnegut himself wrote it.  Years later, it was revealed that it was actually written by Philip José Farmer, mimicking Vonnegut’s distinctive style.

Kurt Vonnegut attempted suicide in 1984 and later wrote about it in several essays.

In 1986, Vonnegut played himself in a movie, BACK TO SCHOOL, written by comedian/actor Rodney Dangerfield, Harold Ramis, Will Porter and a crew of other writers.  In the story, Vonnegut gets hired by Dangerfield to ghost-write  a thesis on the novels of Kurt Vonnegut.  Dangerfield’s professor spots it as somebody else’s work and tells him, “Whoever did write this doesn’t know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut.”

With the publication of his novel TIMEQUAKE in 1997, Vonnegut announced his retirement from fiction.

In 2000, a fire destroyed the top story of his home.  Vonnegut suffered smoke inhalation and was hospitalized in critical condition.  He survived, but his personal archives were destroyed.

Vonnegut was always disrespectful in his appraisal of authority.  “The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat.  The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.”  Later, referring to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, he called our political leaders “power-drunk chimpanzees.”

“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over.  Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.  Big, undreamed-of things.  The people on the edge see them first.”

In 2005, many of his essays were collected in a new bestselling book, A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, which he insisted would be his final contribution to literature.

However, an August 2006 article reported he had stalled on finishing a new novel, IF GOD WERE ALIVE TODAY.  “I’ve given up on it.  It won’t happen.  I’ve written books.  Lots of them.  Please, I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do.  Can I go home now?”

He once said, “Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God.”

He died at the age of 84 in 2007, in New York City, after a fall at his Manhattan home resulted in irreversible brain injuries.

The asteroid 25399 Vonnegut is named in his honor.

Note: This glimpse into the life of Kurt Vonnegut was compiled from various internet sources.

Check out his official website:

http://www.vonnegut.com/

The post THE LIFE AND WORK OF KURT VONNEGUT, JR. appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1977, I didn’t know many people, so I spent a lot of time in movie theatres.  This was way before the arrival of VCRs and DVD players (not to mention Netflix, Hulu and YouTube).  That means the only way to see movies uninterrupted was in theatres, on the big screen.

There were a lot of repertory cinemas in those days, theatres that would show double features of old movies.  They would ordinarily change the bill two or three times a week, and there were probably a dozen such theatres in town (all but one or two of them gone now).  The choices were virtually limitless.

So I spent a year in the dark, seeing probably more than 400 movies in one twelve-month stretch.  Mostly I saw studio output from the 1930s and ‘40s.  For me, it was better than a year in college.

One benefit was I was finally able to figure out why some people were famous.  I had always disliked Joan Crawford, for example.  Couldn’t figure out how she ever became a big star.  Then I saw her in Grand Hotel (1932), The Women (1939), and others, when she was young and vibrant, and I understood.  She started out wired–instead of weird.  She was really something.

The directors who meant the most to me were John Huston, William Wyler, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Ford.

There was also a passel of overseas directors, working in languages other than English, who made an enormous impression on me.  Foremost among them were Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi (all from Japan); Federico Fellini, Pietro Germi, Vitorrio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni (all from Italy); Ingmar Bergman (Sweden); Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard (France); and Satyajit Ray (India).

I strongly urge people interested in making movies to study the work of the best directors from that period of Hollywood and world cinema history, because it was truly a golden age of movies, with good story structure and an emphasis on adult emotions and adult acting.

It amounts to a full-fledged course in Master Storytelling.  Help yourself to a heap.

The post A YEAR IN THE DARK appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.