Cleveland City: The Screenplay

Each time I watch The Third Man I discover something new. This past weekend, while catching the third act of this classic Noir, I came across two new observations:           1. Scorsese paid homage to a key post-funeral scene by replicating the same scene in The Departed (more on that in a upcoming blog)           2. The physical and visual intensity of our protagonist running around and then trying to get out of the post-war Vienna sewer while he's being chased by military police is a beautiful metaphor for many of our favorite Noir characters: even if they are not in the sewer itself, their moral compass certainly is. Orson Welles, as Harry Lime, who waters down medicine that then kills the very children whose mothers survived the bombs, is both monster and charmer. Charming monsters are the scariest. Because they live their lives keeping one foot in the sewer while the other (to parap...

Back in late Autumn, 2008, as the last of the tree leaves descended onto the thinning grass, I struggled to figure out the third act of the story. How does it end? I kept asking myself. So I took two steps to help me: 1. I printed out color headshots of all the actors I wanted in the roles, with their character names included and then taped them all up on the wall that faced my writing desk. 2. I made a soundtrack off all the songs that sounded like what I wanted the film to look like. Once I did both, thus cementing the tone for the story, finishing the script came much easier: looking into the eyes of those faces and listening to those songs inspired my sense of sight and sound. A decade later, as Jacob and I work on finishing the most current version of the story, I was thinking of revisiting the soundtrack to see if it still fits. But couldn't find that list of songs anywhere. And, yet, just yesterday, while going through some boxes of my older projects, I just happe...

I've been thinking about who could possibly play Esti, the lead character in my film. She'd have to be in her mid 50s, have an ethnic look and be able to deliver both subtlety and intensity. Yes, she's a mother but she's not the supporting character to a child or a spouse. She's a woman in her own right - beautiful, successful, courageous and smart. She calls the shots in her life. Esti is the subject of the story. Not the object. When I was watching the Oscars last week and I saw Annabella Sciorra come out with Ashley Judd and with Selma Hayek, I had tears in my eyes. These three women, among others, have been through just way too much. And when the three of them held each other and physically supported Sciorra, who for the past decade has had minimal opportunity to hone her craft on the big screen thanks to The Monster, I could tell just how nervous she was to be there. She started by stating something simple and elegant: “It's nice to see you all aga...

    "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."  - Khalil Gibran  I'm thrilled to share with you the central characters of Cleveland City! Most first originated a decade ago and but they just now coming to life, telling me their backstory, their motivation, their struggles and their secrets. All families have secrets and the lives we mortals live, keeps of these secrets, at a certain point understand that either we risk bringing the truth to life or those very secrets destroy us, from within.  Whether Patricia Arquette, who won Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood or Julia Roberts for her Best Actress Oscar portrayal of real life single mom Erin Brokovich , in both films, these two mothers went digging for an honest life, not just for themselves, but also for their children. That's what true character is about. I love my characters. They are flawed yet motivated, broken yet stro...

A lot of development on the Cleveland City script treatment.  We have a logline. We have a tagline. We have a poster. And the first sequential 13 scenes - ie Act 1 - is now damn near close. Once Jacob and I nail this sequence, truly the backstory of this dark, dark tale, that's when the rest of the scenes can flow. We will have our structure. Next? Getting all 52 down on paper and then resequencing them in the order we want the story to unfold. The way we want to audience to make their discoveries.  And not one reveal more. We gotta keep y'all in the dark. Because it's Noir.  

Body Heat was very much about that for me. What happens when a guy who has personal charm and has done well with women but isn't effective in the world runs into someone who's effective in the world?" - Lawrence Kasdan Some of the best Noir films tease us with the possibility of what may happen between men and women. The women are sultry. The men are bad boys. And the good men - once they meet the sultry women - they then go bad, too. In the 80s and then then 90s, a heyday for Neo Noir and great cinema in general, we were blessed with many cinematic gems that, with their dimmed lighting, reserved pacing and and intense actors, forced us, the viewers, to sit in those theater seats with great anticipation as to what will happen next. Will they kiss? Will they cheat? Will she kill? Will he die? The male actors who rocked these films most? Michael Douglas, William Hurt, Denzel Washington, Jeff Daniels. But it was the female actors who lured in and marked these men...

Nothing is what is seems. That's the premise of every single Noir story.  The characters - they're full of secrets, lies, past lives, multiple identities, mysterious backgrounds and dubious professions. The one thing they all share is that there's a duplicity that holds them together - it's what keeps so many of them alive. Ultimately, it's all about the facade - that thick or thin layer that the public gets to see - a veil behind which our favorite characters do their business and live their lives. While not a traditional Noir, Martin Scorsese's take on The Departed offers perfect example of this. Matt Damon's Colin Sullivan is both police agent and crime son, chasing his own tail. Leonardo DiCaprio's Billy is both cop and acting criminal, chasing Sullivan. Vera Farmiga's Madolyn, the cop psychiatrist, sleeps with both of them. And Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello is the big mob boss who it turns out is also the FBI informant. In the end a...