Saturday, July 07, 2007

"America! F**k yeah!"

Feeling a bit happier after yesterday. Met up with half a dozen of my fellow MA screenwriting students at Screen Academy Scotland to talk through our final projects. Two of them had been to the festival at Cheltenham and gave us their thoughts on the event [well organised, Some great talks - especially Tony Jordan, and exorbitantly priced food]. I got the chance to brainstorm plot points and storylines for my final project, a soapy returning drama series for TV. It reminded me how much I enjoy colaborating with other writers, how enlivening the experience of a writers' room can be. Shame it only tends to happen on soaps in the UK.

Came home to find the TV aerial had not magically fixed itself in my absence. [The repairman is coming on Tuesday.] Having watched all of CSI season five, I couldn't face yet more blunt force trauma and auto-erotic asphixiation. So it was time for a movie. A prominent supermarket chain that doesn't need my help to make money is flogging off film DVDs for as little as £3 at the moment, so I'd bought the Oscar-winning American Beauty and Team America, a film raved about by lots of people whose opinion I trust. Wasn't in the mood for American Beauty, so puppet power won the day.

Laughed my arse off. Favourite moments - puppet fighting, puppet shagging, the North Korean leader's song and one particular character. If you've seen the film you know who I'm talking about. 'Matt Damon.' Say it again! 'Matt Damon.' After 90 minutes of such monumental silliness, I feel much happier - or at least able to appreciate the absurdities of life better. One of the two.

1 comment:

Andy Phillips said...

We're comin' in to save the motherf*ckin' day yeah!

I loved it. I especially liked how it parodied the very structure of action movies. I have a feeling the writers looked at a 'how to' book and followed it to the letter...but with songs.