Monday 21 October 2013

Superman Unmade #4: Superman Lives (Take 4B)


Here there be spoilers.

"I won some battles; I lost some. We had a great time doing it. The studio loved the script."

This is an incremental post, dealing with the second draft of Kevin Smith's Superman Lives. I'll try not to repeat myself, analysis of the first draft(s) are here and here. (There's still no explanation of the scenario which produced two drafts in 2 days).

Who wrote it?
Kevin Smith - Writer/Director/Actor/Podcaster and comic book nut.

When was it written?
This draft is dated 3.27.97, almost two months after the last.

How long is it?
The PDF floating around the web is 139 pages, but it's badly formatted. I went back to the original text file (which has been around for years and seems to be the source of the PDF) and ran it through Final Draft. That produced a 122 page PDF which is, I hope, a bit closer to what Smith would have produced. We'll never know for sure unless a scanned or digital copy shows up. The structure breakdown below is based on that.

What's the broad structure?
Act 1 = 1-23
Act 2a = 24-53
Act 2b = 54-100
Act 3 = 101-122

What's the context?
Smith complained that while writing the first draft, executives called him three or four times a day to check on his progress. Calling them "the most anxious group of motherfuckers I've ever met in my life" didn't endear him to anyone, though he later singled out the execs at Peters' production company. That first draft interested Nic Cage, with Variety reporting him as "seriously considering" the role on 21st February 1997. Just before Smith turned in his second draft, tentative discussions began with Tim Burton to direct (at Smith's apparent suggestion) after a number of others had turned the project down, most notably Robert Rodriguez. Variety reported on Burton's potential deal on April 4th, 1997, and he seems to have come on officially somewhere between late April and early May. Both Cage and Burton signed lucrative "pay or play" deals. As soon as Burton was on board, he rejected Smith's script and brought in Wesley Strick for a page one rewrite.

What's changed (and works better)?
  • The Krypton prologue is gone. Instead of front-loading the back-stories of Brainiac and The Eradicator, Smith folds them into Act 2, in a message from Jor-El downloaded into Superman's brain as he lies in recovery. This tightens the first act up, but the flashback, whilst occasionally poignant, remains clunky, and Smith never convincingly masks the heavy exposition.
  • Corto Maltese is replaced by a Metropolis-set kidnap plot involving Governor Caitlin Bree and her son. It works better, and almost certainly would have been cheaper to film than a beach-set melee with underwater photography.
  • The relationship between Lois and Clark makes sense on at least one level; she knows who he is. Smith has said that anything less makes a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter look stupid, and he's probably right. Having said that, he indicates that Superman revealed his identity to her, not that she figured it out, which undermines his point somewhat.
  • We see something of Superman's concern for bystanders during his battle with Doomsday. The fight now takes place mostly in the sewers, but it doesn't feel any less epic than the previous versions because they were so anaemic. This is better paced, more intense, and not the painting by numbers of the first draft.
  • The Eradicator is fleshed out a little more; a sentient computer with a perpetual battery and an autonomous body. Brainiac has stolen part of this technology for himself, which explains why he's able to partially form his own body, and why he needs the rest of it to finish the job. This means his goal and rationale are also laid out much more clearly.
  • The Shadowcaster is employed earlier, and its effects are suitably accumulative, making the drain on Superman's energy more believable.
  • "She has trouble... having me". I really have no idea which column this should go in. Smith seems to be implying that it's difficult for Lois and Superman to have sex (harking back to the Kryptonite condom). It's more explicit when measured against the previous version, which was "I would, but she won't have me". I don't know whether to laud Smith for his semi-realistic take on the difficulties of copulating with a god or roll my eyes at him for being grubby in a kids' film.
What's changed (and still doesn't work?)
  •  Lex's kidnap plot. This took six months to plan and is designed to "persuade" Governor Bree to back The Wertham Act (Smith's little in-joke for comic book geeks) which effectively bans Superman. Six months to plan a street snatch involving hired thugs and a Batman villain... in Superman's city. A city where he hears and sees almost everything unless he happens to be distracted by something. Do they lay a distraction? They do not. Does Superman respond almost immediately and deal with the situation with minimum fuss? He most certainly fucking does. SIX MONTHS. I give you Kevin Smith's Lex Luthor, who, whilst possibly being broadcast around the world by Brainiac, openly admits to his part in plotting to kill Superman.
  • Hacker Jimmy is back. And to top that, he's now an expert cat burglar who can simply sneak into the billion-dollar LexCorp building at will. Not because that's his character but because the plot requires him to.
  • Misty, Lex's bodyguard. She does nothing of note and has no discernible character of her own. At one point Smith even forgets she's there; she's present at the start of the elevator scene, has vanished by the middle of it (conspicuously failing to protect her boss), and is waiting upstairs in the penthouse office come the next scene.
  • Superman as judge, jury and executioner. Early on, he flirts with the notion of killing Luthor, though it's never let on whether he's just trying to scare Lex or if he's really contemplating it. It's taken to an odd extreme when he arbitrarily decides that Brainiac is just a machine, and must be destroyed. This is an extension of a previous conversation with The Eradicator, who states that if a machine begins to feel, positive or negative, it must be shut down. If machines who feel must be shut down, who's the one to determine that? And assuming someone has the authority, Superman's assertion that Brainiac is "just" a machine removes him from the equation. Is Brainiac a machine or not? There's a tangle of themes here waiting to be unpicked, but they never are.
  • Superman believes that he's actually saving Lois every time he saves someone else. But that not only reductively addresses his innate goodness (what about before he met her, and what exactly did Ma and Pa Kent teach him?) it makes him seem a little obsessive and creepy.
  • Massive logic gaps remain. If Jor-El was routinely sending The Eradicator down to study Krypton's core, why didn't Brainiac simply ambush him there, given that he was plugged into it? How does Luthor erect Superman's memorial so quickly? Why, if The Eradicator is a living computer, does he spend 24 straight hours typing in order to transport Superman's body out of the tomb? If the mythical alien marauders don't know where Earth is, how can they possibly send Doomsday to pave their way? If Brainiac can't locate The Eradicator, why bother tasking humanity's primitive technology with helping?
  • Peters gets what he wanted; a suiting up scene, because Batman. Smith probably had little choice; either he wrote it or someone else would have, and he at least makes the rationale decent enough, with each piece of the armour designed to protect a damaged part of Superman's body. Unfortunately there's no pass for the polar bears vs Brainiac moment, which is such a bat shit crazy idea that it's hard to imagine anyone making it work. We should be thankful that Smith managed to forestall Peters' cuddly dog idea.
  • Superman admits that before his death, he felt like a stranger in a strange land. But we never see this, so it means nothing. It's retroactively stacking the narrative deck. It's cheating. He also says that he's come to realise what keeps him here, but being kept here wasn't his dilemma at the start of the story, so nothing's changed. This resolution would have fit with the conflict established in Poirier's drafts, but it resolves nothing in Smith's. There's nothing of consequence, no resonance, and come the finale, everything simply goes back to "normal" in Metropolis. Smith says "There's no beginning and no end in comic books. It's all middle story.' It's like a soap opera that goes on and on", and whilst this may be true of comics... this is a movie.
Conclusion
Smith claims that Jon Peters promised he'd be the on-set writer, that WB would hire "one of these MTV guys who's real in line with our vision." Interestingly, this is pretty much the blueprint for the Marvel Studios model, hiring non-superstar directors to service the material and the producers' approach to it, rather than the other way around. Smith may have been right when he called Peters "either one of the most progressive individuals in films today, or just a flat out idiot". Either way, Peters' promises evaporated when Burton signed on.

Why did Burton about-turn on Smith's script?  He declined even a perfunctory meeting with Smith to discuss if they could work together, and it's possible he was never sold to start with, seeing instead the potential in the character rather than Smith's take on him. That wouldn't be out of left-field; their sensibilities almost diametrically opposed, Smith and Burton doesn't feel like a natural marriage. (Though admittedly stranger partnerships have worked).
While there are silver linings in the Smith drafts, they're few and far between, and it's not hard to see why Burton wanted to go in another direction. The problem is summed up in the battle over the scene on Mount Rushmore. Execs wanted to trim it for running time, but Smith maintained that its character work would be the heart of the film, and almost quit twice to make his point. The trouble is that it's not strong enough character work; it essays a conflict which is thereafter largely ignored and had no hope of resolution to start with. Superman can't stop being Superman. That's who he is, but by choosing that as his conflict, Smith ensures he's never forced to grow or change, and as a result he's dull. It's Lois that has to change her mind in order for their relationship to continue, and that sells her short.

So we have a writer fighting for a scene he believes in as the heart of his story (but who doesn't use it to drive a workable central conflict) and a group of execs who want to chop it out because all they care about is toy sales. Nobody wins, and the story, thematically fractured and frustratingly illogical, still essentially belongs to The Eradicator, relegating a static Superman to second lead in his own movie.

Find me on Twitter

(All sources have been linked to except the script: if you are the creator or originator of any material you feel has been misappropriated, please let me know and I'll do my best to correct the problem.) 

Friday 27 September 2013

Superman Unmade #4: Superman Lives (Take 4Ai)


Here there be spoilers.

This is an incremental post, dealing with absolutely tiny revisions in Kevin Smith's Superman Lives. I'll try not to repeat myself, analysis of the first draft is here.

Who wrote it?
Kevin Smith - Writer/Director/Actor/Podcaster and comic book nut.

When was it written?
This draft is dated 2.1.97, ONE DAY after the last.

How long is it?
127 pages (Same as the last)

What's the broad structure?
Act 1 = 1-31
Act 2a = 32-61
Act 2b = 62-105
Act 3 = 105-127

What's the context?
Now here's an oddity. I'd never seen this draft before about three weeks ago, when it was posted to a screenwriting message board. The previous draft, dated 31st January 1997, came straight from Warners' deposition in the rights case against Segal & Schuster's heirs. That's absolutely legit as far as I can tell.

This, however, is clearly labelled "First Draft" on the title page (where the other wasn't), despite being dated one day later. It's scanned from a hard copy and is difficult to read in places. It's not significantly different, more a polish than a complete draft. It just doesn't seem to fit with what I thought I knew about Smith's work on the project. He's said he only wrote two drafts (accounted for by those dated 31st January and 27th March, 1997); why would a revision dated one day later than an apparently legit draft be labelled "First Draft"? And why would he turn in a draft to Warners, only to produce another the very next day?
I don't have answers to any of these questions; it's just fun to ask them. If anybody knows the story behind this version, get in touch!

What's changed (and works better)?
  • Brainiac's motivation seems a little clearer, and more plausible; he wants The Eradicator's body. On Krypton, AI is not permitted to take free physical form. Enabling this for The Eradicator makes Jor-El a criminal.
  • The beginning of The Eradicator's arc is drawn ever-so-slightly better; he confesses to Jor-El that he's not sure he's ready to become self-accountable. In many ways he's as much Jor-El's child as Superman.
  • Jimmy's hacker skills have been scaled back a bit. Instead of hacking the LexCorp mainframe, he takes photos of the projector on top of Lex's roof and disseminates them via the internet to expose the hoax invasion.
  • We finally have a rationale for Lois doubting Superman's death. Jimmy draws her attention to news about the mysterious hero of L.A., and they both witness the unrecognisable Superman holding up the Metropolis bridge (much like Poirier's draft). This places the doubt in her mind. These incidents weren't in the earlier draft, and made her sudden tomb-cracking look like PTSD.
  • The citizens' rebellion is a bit more coherent this time, even if some of it still makes no sense. (How does Bibbo get up to the roof of LexCorp, the tallest building in the city?)
  • Luthor gets his comeuppance; rather than simply abandoning him in the menagerie, Superman makes sure he's delivered to the Police. There's still no indication of what happens to L-Ron and the skull ship, though. They're just abandoned and forgotten.
What's changed (and still doesn't work?)
  • After establishing a plausible reason for Brainiac wanting The Eradicator's tech, Smith throws it out the window. Minutes after the accusation from Jor-El that Brainiac wants a body, he begins building himself one from scratch, and seems fully intent on destroying The Eradicator rather than assimilating him. Later on, he reverts to his rationale from the first draft, but with a slightly more defined purpose; The Eradicator's tech will allow him to maintain his form permanently. This still doesn't take into account the already enormous energy drain on his systems, nor does it acknowledge that The Eradicator, for all its advanced technology, has the battery life of a clockwork toy. This thing is constantly recharging.
  • Strengthening The Eradicator's arc (however meagerly) simply reinforces the feeling that this is his story, not Superman's.
  • L-Ron, instead of being created or recruited off-screen during the thirty years Brainiac wanders the galaxy, now appears from nowhere in the prologue, as Krypton breaks up and Brainiac builds himself a body. Now, if you were a sentient, genius AI who needed a body, and you had this willing little robot servant knocking about... Ah, forget it.
Conclusion
This draft is all about logistical tweaks. 99.9% of the structure and story (and their flaws) are still there, but Smith has slightly pulled together some of the lapses of logic so rife in that first effort. The only character work done here is in laying one early part of The Eradicator's arc, and that doesn't do the intended subject, Superman (remember him?) any favours whatsoever.

Find me on Twitter

(All sources have been linked to except the script: if you are the creator or originator of any material you feel has been misappropriated, please let me know and I'll do my best to correct the problem.) 

Wednesday 25 September 2013

Superman Unmade #4: Superman Lives (Take 4A)

Here there be spoilers.

"Superman's angst is not that he doesn't want to be Superman. If he has any, it's that he can't do it all; he can't do enough and save everyone. It's not enough to make him want to quit being Superman; it's enough to make the guy stay up at night so he's out doing shit constantly."
Kevin Smith on Superman Lives

Who wrote it?
Kevin Smith - Writer/Director/Actor who established himself with Clerks and went on to write and direct Mallrats, Jersey Girl, Chasing Amy, and Dogma (amongst others.) He's also written comic book runs for Batman, Green Arrow, Daredevil, and Spider-Man.

When was it written?
This draft is dated 31.1.97

How long is it?
127 pages

What's the broad structure?
Act 1 = 1-31
Act 2a = 32-61
Act 2b = 62-105
Act 3 = 105-127

What's the context?
Smith hated Gregory Poirier's Superman Reborn and wasn't afraid to tell Warner Bros; they called his bluff and gave him the job. He tells a very funny story about how he got the gig in An Evening With Kevin Smith. It doesn't paint the then Warners' executives as particularly bright, more a herd following the latest grand idea. Obliged to meet with producer Jon Peters, Smith's opinion of him and his ideas is even lower. Much of the remaining context can be found in David Hughes' The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made and Edward Gross' Mania piece.

Why didn't it happen?
Smith's crack at the Man of Steel went through two (official) drafts, which snagged Nic Cage as Superman and Tim Burton, fresh off the chastening experience of Mars Attacks! to direct.  (Robert Rodriguez declined despite liking the script). Once on board, Burton pulled a 180 and demanded a page one rewrite from his own collaborator, Wes Strick. Smith's scripts ended up in the Warner vault, which by now must have resembled something out of The Prestige, with seven different drafts floating in quiet death.

The Script
Assessing Superman Lives is tough. For the first time we know, going in, more about the process and the mores of those behind it than we do about the script itself. Kevin Smith is a celebrity in his own right, and has taken ample opportunity to describe the odd development he went through on the movie. I've largely chosen to ignore that and focus on the script, rather than recycling 16 year old gossip; as fascinating and fun as it is, there's plenty serving it up better than me. Having said that, knowing what we know of Warners' apparent herd mentality and Jon Peters' eccentricities, it won't be hard to draw conclusions about why things ended up the way they did.

What does Superman want at the start of the story?
The only thing he really wants is to be with Lois, permanently. They're an item, and she knows his secret identity. Lois, for her part, doesn't believe that's possible because he belongs to the world. "You're not a man, Clark. You're a god."

What happens next?
Summoned to Earth by Lex Luthor's plea for help against Superman, Brainiac and his robotic minion L-Ron hatch a plan with the industrialist to destroy the Man of Steel. Upgrading a LexCorp satellite with his own technology, Brainiac creates the Shadowcaster, a device designed to block out the sun and cut Superman off from his energy source. Weakened and unable to recharge, Kal-El is killed in battle by the creature Brainiac sends to Earth to confront him; Doomsday.

Does Superman resolve his conflict, and if so, how?
Yes. And no. There really isn't a cohesive conflict. Superman wants to have a normal life with Lois whilst continuing to be Superman. Lois doesn't believe this is possible. But Smith never shows us Superman struggling with this dichotomy. Once he's revived by the Kryptonian AI known as The Eradicator, there's little that Superman can do to resolve this because he's focused on stopping Brainiac. The resolution comes down to Lois realising she loves him too much to let him go. Most of the second half of the film is devoted to Superman's relationship with The Eradicator, as he tries to educate it in the morality of heroism, but this isn't the conflict which has been set up. It's a script of two halves, but both of them deal with different conflicts/themes and there's almost no connection between the two, so it ends up feeling like two stories, one of which has no real end and the other no beginning.

What works?
  • This is a true reboot, the first attempt at such in the film continuity. The film opens with the impending destruction of Krypton and the Science Council's refusal to believe that it's happening. By restarting, Smith is able to more organically plug Brainiac into the narrative of the planet's destruction, making it less of an obvious retcon than Poirier's first two drafts.
  • Lois knows who Superman is, and we find that out in a really well written scene. Just when you think you know what's happening, and how this dynamic is going to play out as usual, Smith whips the rug out from under you.
  • Lois is spunky, go-getting, feisty, smart. All the things she should be. She even takes out two Lextech soldiers all by herself.
  • There's no overwhelming roster of secondary characters to bog things down. No Silver Banshee, no Parasite. They may sell more variations of toys than Lex Luthor but he remains the more dramatic, suitable human villain.
  • No Kryptonite rocks, no Kryptonite blood.
What doesn't work?
  • It's a reboot that doesn't re-establish Superman. We don't see him growing up and learning about himself, presumably because Smith didn't think we needed that information again. So why do we open on Krypton? Because he needs to back-establish Brainiac and The Eradicator.  But does he really need to go that far back? It's less of an obvious Retcon than Poirier's first two drafts (particularly where Brainiac and his role in the destruction of Krypton is concerned), but it's also arguably a waste of 10 pages, and it structurally alters the whole script.
  • Batman, again. Though at least Smith understands that The Dark Knight probably wouldn't leave Gotham and drop in on Superman's funeral to say all of five words. Instead he has Batman splice into the TV broadcast to deliver his message (similar to Batman Returns). It's probably the least invasive version of this particular cameo; that it still doesn't work speaks volumes about how little Batman is needed here. And there's sooo much Batman. Corto Maltese (referenced in The Dark Knight Returns and Batman '89), Deadshot (a Batman villain), Superman's new black duds, constant nods... Smith eventually had to tell Peters that "Everything can't be Batman on this picture". And that's from a Batman super-fan.
  • Lex Luthor is back for the first time since 1987's Quest For Peace, but Smith can't seem to get a handle on him. He veers wildly between sinister, suave and ruthless, and an exaggerated caricature who's played for laughs. Becoming more of a second-fiddle stooge as the script progresses, it gets to the point where he's little more than the Superman II version; a blowhard coward who hides behind allies with superior firepower. This is not the greatest criminal mind of our, or anybody else's, age.
  • There's no coherent theme because the conflicts are mismatched. Smith's initial premise: Superman is a god, and that means his relationship with Lois is on borrowed time. He can't resolve this; he's Superman whether he likes it or not. We never see him doubt that this is right, and it takes 33 pages to get to it. Once he comes back, The Eradicator wants to relocate him to another planet in order to preserve his life. Superman refuses, whereupon they debate the morality of his heroism.  He's made no difficult choice, and the two halves don't really match up. The thematic dilemma of the second half (why do I do what I do, and why should I carry on?) would fit perfectly into Poirier's setup (I feel isolated and alone on this planet), but it doesn't really fit into Smith's. We think he may emphasise Superman's alien aspect when he introduces Krypton as a sterile world isolated behind defence shields, but it's never really pursued. He also briefly toys with the notion that Superman is actually impeding humanity's growth as a species, but again, it's never further explored. He contends that Superman isn't about angst, he's about hope, but blind hope is not inherently dramatic, and as a result his Superman is, well... boring. There are flashes of an intrinsic understanding of the character, but he's not doing anything joined up with it yet. Ultimately, it doesn't feel like a movie about Superman, just a movie with Superman in it. He doesn't grow, or change, and we understand no more about him at the end than we did at the start. The only character who does that is...
  • The Eradicator. This is a story about him, about what it means to become self-aware. The trouble is, it's not a good story. He's little more than a substitute for Cadmus in Poirier's drafts; expositor, ally, ethical counterpoint. He brings Superman back from the dead because he was programmed to. That's plot, not character. By the end of the script he begins to understand what Superman is arguing for, but he comes to that realisation rather suddenly, because the script demands it, and because there is no victory without sacrifice, a sacrifice that cannot be Superman's. The Eradicator never feels like he's growing; he's Aspergers guy one minute and a selfless hero the next. He feels like a device masquerading as a character, which is simultaneously his function within the narrative. Maybe Smith is meta-commenting?
  • Lois is so spunky and go-getting that she doesn't seem all that upset by the death of the man she loves. She simply keeps ploughing on through as if nothing's happened. Yes, Smith gives her something at the end of the 2nd act, when she almost breaks down in Clark's apartment, but it feels like too little, too late. By this point she's merrily carried on with little apparent regard for the loss she's suffered, and so this just feels like it's there because it has to be. There's a similar problem to that of Luthor with the tone of her character; would the Lois who takes out two soldiers and breaks into Superman's tomb honestly stay away from the Doomsday battle when Clark tells her to? They don't seem like the same Lois Lane. If it's supposed to be character growth... it doesn't work, because she bounces back and forth.
  • Kevin Smith is a lot of things, but he's not - A) an action writer, or B) a subtle one. You can argue that he at least has a voice, but it's such a unique one that the characters all feel as if they're barking his words.  He infamously delivered an 80 page outline for the movie to Warners, most of which was dialogue, and it's easy to see why. His prose is clunky, and he tells the tale like a breathless kid, constantly falling back on "suddenly" and "then". Characters stop what they're doing to have thematic discussions that drop so hard they may as well be accompanied by needle scratches, exposition stands out like a sore thumb, and much of the dialogue is painfully on the nose.
  • Huge gaps in logic abound. 
    • Why, if Krypton is a sterile atmosphere behind a defence shield, and seemingly distrustful of other races, would they place their faith in an off-world computer system rather than one built by their greatest scientific mind?
    • Brainiac has no clearly defined goal. Does he want The Eradicator for its technology or its power source? He estimates a huge leap in his intelligence if he assimilates The Eradicator, but how does he intend to power it if he's draining the Earth's core of energy in order to maintain even his current systems? If he wants its power source, it must surely outstrip the power supply of Earth's core; why, then, does it take The Eradicator FOUR DAYS to charge up once it's come online?
    • If The Eradicator can become a ship, and fly into space, can't they avoid the Shadowcaster's impingement by simply flying to the other side of it to charge Superman up? People take the shortest route to salvation; to eschew that is silly.
    • Why does Lois decide that she needs to know "once and for all" whether Superman is alive, when she's been given no indication otherwise? She suddenly decides to break into his tomb for no apparent reason.
  • Loss of powers. I'm not a huge fan of Poirier's drafts, but his rationale behind the loss of Superman's powers is simply more dramatic than Smith's. It may not have been very Superman (certainly Phin-Yar felt like new-age mumbo jumbo), but it was a dramatised exposition of an internal struggle, whereas Smith's scenario is simply a technical problem; how can he smash the Shadowcaster?
  • Jimmy is no longer a douche, which is great. But simply because he's "wired" and shares photos with other photographers over the internet, Jimmy is, in that classic Hollywood fashion, pretty much a hacker god, able to splice into the city's television channels with just a laptop and camcorder, (who needs a billionaire's tech, eh Batman?) not to mention capable of breaching a major corporate mainframe to expose Lex's faked alien "invasion". It's the classic, short-hand Hollywood version of anything to do with computers.
Conclusion
This is Smith's earliest dated draft, so perhaps we shouldn't judge it too harshly. Nevertheless, the list of things that don't work is surprisingly long. Maybe we shouldn't be shocked; Smith was never a blockbuster writer, rather an indie film-maker crafting small, character-driven comedies. The problem, as we established previously, is that we knew more about the context and the writer than we did about the script. Even though many know and accept his limitations, Smith's still a fan favourite; he owns a comic book store, he's written runs on several popular titles, he's steeped in comic book mythology. He's a geek. You could argue that he "gets" Superman better than any of the writers discarded thus far. He'd effectively done his own PR so well that the script had become legendary; it was the great "lost" Superman film.

The problem is that it's as bad as what came before; just in different ways. Whereas Poirier and Lemkin eschewed canon in order to dramatically punch things up, Smith embraces the history but milks no serious drama out of it (perhaps because of his reverence?) It's all very well arguing that Superman is about hope, but he's best used when writers figure out how to wring drama out of his particular struggles. As Smith has noted, "how do you write for Jesus?" There just isn't much here. He's dead? Okay, that's solved easily because The Eradicator makes it easy. After that, what does he have to deal with on an internal level? He's absolutely sure of himself, of his heroism, and leaving is never an option. He has plenty to deal with on an external level, but it's entirely technical, with no deeper emotional connection. If any character changes, it's The Eradicator (even if it does feel forced), but he's not supposed to be the focus of the script.

Man of Steel preventable death and destruction rating (where Man of Steel is a 10): 4
Smith gets something of a pass here. While he makes pains to point out that Superman tries to protect innocent bystanders from Doomsday, he does it through L-Ron remarking on this; we never see it. Superman never tries to guide the fight out of the city in order to minimise casualties, but it's almost a moot point, because we never get the sense of a titanic battle where bystanders are even going to even be an issue. To top it all, he kills twice. He has to kill Doomsday, because, like Zod, the beast can't be reasoned with; it's simply too dangerous. With Brainiac, it's unclear whether he does it to right the problem with the Earth's core or simply because he feels he must. Though he isn't as callous about it as in Poirier's drafts, once again we have Superman as killer.

Find me on Twitter

(All sources have been linked to except the script: if you happen to be the creator or originator of any materials you feel have been misappropriated, please let me know and I'll do my best to correct the problem.)

Tuesday 20 August 2013

Superman Unmade #3: Superman Reborn (Take 3C)


Here there be spoilers.

Less of an incremental post, this time we look at some major revisions in Gregory Poirier's third draft of Superman Reborn. I'll try not to repeat myself; for more background, see analysis of the first and second drafts.

Side note: I've also been reading up on Brainiac, particularly Alan Kistler's profile, which is well worth a read for those interested in the history of the character, given his heavy use in these unproduced screenplays. What's interesting to me is that the Brainiac presented in these drafts is neither the living computer of the pre-Crisis DC universe (and the 1992 script) nor the alien-possessed mentalist of the post-Crisis era. The notion of him upgrading himself is still front and centre, but it's all about biology, not technology.

Who wrote it?
Gregory Poirier - credited on (amongst others) The Lion King 2, A Sound of Thunder and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

When was it written?
This draft is dated 22.2.96

How long is it?
120 pages (longer than draft 2 at 119, shorter than draft 1 at 122)

What's the broad structure?
Act 1: 1-26
Act 2A: 27-56
Act 2B: 58-93
Act 3: 94-120

What's the context?
This is the third and final draft Poirier wrote for producer Jon Peters. With two months to revise and rewrite, he changed some things considerably. There's next to no information available about this process, and whether the rewrite was driven by Peters' notes, the studio's, or both.

What's changed (and works better)?
  • Brainiac's methodology. From the outset it's now established that rather than picking random individuals (or Princess Leia surrogates) he's deliberately targeting each world's strongest individual from whom to cherry-pick DNA. 
  • There's also a much earlier acknowledgement that he needs a Kryptonian specifically, rather than his apparently random desire to head to Earth in the previous two drafts, which left Cadmus to explain his motivations.
  • Silver Banshee is retooled as a Brainiac-created sidekick from the outset. This may not please fans of the existing DC Universe character (assuming there are any), but it introduces her quickly and effectively negates the need for an origin story. She's also a far more interesting sidekick than the alien Hestes (present in the first two drafts and now relegated to a cameo). The dynamic between Banshee and Brainiac is simply better; there's hints of a patriarchal/sexual relationship, but also allusions to that relationship becoming abusive, which is a little dark for a Superman movie but is at least aiming for a degree of complexity.
  • The dynamic between Superman and Lois is better articulated.  They meet on her balcony three or four times a week and flirt around the furniture; just how serious they are about each other is what Lois wants to know.
  • Clark's sloppiness is telling better; Perry chews him out for ignoring the drug lab fire which creates Parasite.
  • Cadmus' computer now delivers our exposition, laying out the facts; without Kryptonian DNA, Brainiac will die in 122 hours.  The countdown, for him at least, is established much earlier.
  • For the first time, Superman's earth family is acknowledged, with Lois calling Martha to tell her that Clark is missing. You can't exactly feel Martha's agony dripping off the page (Superman Returns' play on the same kind of scene works much better) but it's a move in the right direction.  To be fair, it's a difficult scene to make play; when Martha knows he's dead, how can she convincingly tell Lois she's sure he's fine?  By the same token, saying "I'm sure he's fine" comes off, at least to Lois, like she barely cares at all. There's a tragic dichotomy implicit in the set-up which doesn't quite make it into the scene as written.
  • Brainiac is no longer the destroyer of Krypton. It simply isn't needed for emotional depth, and it makes nothing more personal for Superman.  Having him driven off by Jor-El, though, does make the story more personal for Brainiac, though it's not much explored as a motive because its overridden by his genetic needs.
  • Lois joining the army insertion team makes a lick more sense; she trades her lipstick-camera photos of the inside of Brainiac's ship for access. It's still not exactly feasible but it's the best effort yet.
  • Brainiac actually leaves his ship for the first time in any of these drafts, making him slightly more dynamic in the final act.
  • Poirier better develops the real doubt as to whether Superman wants to carry on. He's being pulled in two directions; a normal life in which the world faces imminent destruction because of his unwillingness to act, or a return to his old, hyper-kinetic, lonely existence in a world free of Brainiac's tyranny. In many ways this is classic drama; he can't have it all, so which is the lesser of the two evils? It's trite and conceited but his moment of resolution, when he takes off the suit and flies off under his own power, is the sort of visual dramatisation of an internal struggle that movies can convincingly sell.  It could have been a heck of a crowd pleaser.
What's changed (and still doesn't work?)
  • Parasite has changed from a lab-janitor to a lawyer. Unfortunately his origin remains ridiculous (he's now the product of a drug-lab fire) and his presence unnecessary.  Even if his origin is tied better to the consequences of Superman's crime-fighting, it's undercut by Kal-El's decision to simply let a mid-town drug lab explode (endangering thousands) rather than blowing the fire out. Not to mention that his super-hearing uncovers a cat amid the flames, but misses a live man. If they'd tied this failure of his hearing to the notion of his powers waning as he loses faith in his calling (an idea which the explanation of Phin-Yar flirts with), it could have had more emotional resonance. Superman would almost have been responsible for Parasite.
  • Lois Lane, dynamic reporter, one of the great female comic book characters, is introduced... asleep. Not superhero cinema's finest feminist hour.
  • Therapy.  This scene has been shifted around, and despite not changing much, there is one telling inclusion; Clark admits he doesn't feel part of the city.  He feels above it.  Is Poirier trying to explore what it feels like to be a god?  The trouble is it's still played for laughs, which renders the whole thing limp when the gravity of his problem demands more.
  • Brainiac changes the statue of liberty to a statue of himself. His power is that enormous. He's a telepath, a telekinetic, and can apparently manipulate reality itself. What's so damned hard about finding one body?
  • Parasite presents himself to Brainiac and offers to lead the hunt for the body in exchange for the annihilator.  It's the same movement, but with slightly different starting positions, but I'll say it again; Parasite does not need to be in this movie.
  • There's things which are obvious holdovers from the previous drafts and make no sense in the context of this one. The logic behind Carillean orbs has been suspect from the start, but it's now reached a different level. How can Cadmus have recorded Krypton's last moments if all he does is follow Brainiac around, and in this draft Brainiac is no longer responsible for the planet's destruction? It's a cheap narrative trick for flashing back to Krypton in a bid to impart emotional significance. Poirier tries to explain it later on with a throwaway line that makes things worse, not better.
  • Brainiac offers to take the Kryptonian DNA he needs and leave Superman human, promising he'll stop the countdown. He argues that the alternative will result in all their deaths. The trouble is it's nonsensical. Superman knows he can't trust Brainiac to keep his word. His other choice is to try to stop him, and the worst case scenario out of that is that he fails, whereupon the same fate befalls them all anyway. It's not a dilemma when the worst case scenario is the same no matter which path you choose, and one path has no up-side.
Conclusion
The theme of Superman Reborn is that you can't escape who you are, even in death. However, exploring this means it's more like Batman Forever than Lemkin's draft, which was supposedly abandoned for those very reasons. (You can read about why I think that's a crock here.)

While this draft improves upon the first two in a number of significant ways, there are still huge failures of logic and too much reliance on ideas seemingly cribbed from other movies and self-help philosophies. It's a 90s Superhero movie, laden down by old, lazy assumptions about spectacle trumping character. With ideas thrown at the wall in a bid to see what sticks, its blanks are begging to be painted in with Hollywood's increasingly sophisticated CGI paintbrush.

Knowing what we know of Jon Peters, it's incredibly difficult not to see his hand at work in many of the ideas, but this is just interpretation, based on others' recollections of him before and after this period. Neither Jonathan Lemkin nor Gregory Poirier has ever given much voice to their experiences working on these scripts, through either lack of desire or opportunity.  The quotes attributed to them seem to have come, mostly, from those articles attributed by David Hughes in The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made. As a result, they've been held implicitly responsible for the many faults, and we're none the wiser as to the compromises forced upon them by studio and producer notes. It's a common situation with assignment screenplays; the work rarely reflects a single writer's intentions because there are too many fingerprints on it, but it's the writer's name which ends up on a script (and sometimes a movie) which people hate. It's that disdain which endures.

Fortunately, this draft marks a watershed for the on-life-support franchise. The "dark" period of Superman on film, with deals done and scripts written in (relative) anonymity would come to a brief end when Warners hired the fearlessly verbose Kevin Smith to start again, from scratch.

Even if he didn't tell tales out of school at the time, Smith would become a master of the art in the not-too-distant future. He, along with the Internet (and the evolution of fan culture it set in motion) would begin to throw some light on the scuttling clusterfuck of Superman's development hell.

Superman Reborn was about to be reborn... as Superman Lives.

Find me on Twitter

(All sources have been linked to except the script: if you are the creator or originator of any material you feel has been misappropriated, please let me know and I'll do my best to correct the problem.)

Wednesday 24 July 2013

On Black List 3.0 evaluations

I've been at screenwriting a long time, but always feared stepping into the arena, exposing myself to criticism, afraid I have no talent for writing despite some rewarding but all-too scarce evidence to the contrary.

But fortune increasingly favours the bold (which is ironic given that so many writers are anything but).  As I've got older, I've come to realise that this is what I care about beyond all the imagined trappings.  This is my geekery, in the same way others' is crochet, libraries, IT. This is what I do. This is who I am

And I couldn't hold off anymore.  The fear of not knowing begins to outweigh the fear of being shot down. I need to know if I have what Americans call "game".  If the dream is a pipe one or if maybe, just maybe, I have a chance to do what I love and make some kind of living from it. 

"All I offer is the truth. Nothing more."

The Black List 3.0 doesn't claim to make writers; it simply offers them exposure.  That's all well and good, but saying we go in with no hopes or expectations would be disingenuous.  There are three distinct layers of hope:
  • An industry pro likes your work.  They won't rep you, but tell you to keep at it.  This would have been enough for me.  I wouldn't have booked my plane ticket, but it's progress. Minimal validation, to be sure, but as all writers know, we'll take what we can get.
  • Someone likes your work and offers to rep you.  It's still not plane ticket time, but it's a step up. A toe-hold on the battlements.
  • Someone likes your work, wants to rep you and thinks they can sell the script. I'd argue it's Sky-Scanner time, even if only from idle curiosity about how much a flight to LA actually costs.
Everything beyond that is the preserve of Variety, THR and our own fever-dreams.  I'd be lying if I said I hadn't though about it, and so would you. 

But there are safeguards; the reader.  Like Agents of The Matrix, they are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys.  They are the system.  If your script is downloadable it will still be available to the right people, but these are busy folk; they live on recommendations.  If readers don't like the work and rate it accordingly, your chances plummet.

Last week I uploaded my screenplay for feedback on the Black List 3.0.  This morning, I got that feedback.

The results were not what I expected, or hoped for.  Now I have to deal with that.

I think ten years ago I would have thrown a hissy-fit. There would have been anger.  Bitterness.  A resort to the kind of tactical self-denial seen on screenwriting message boards across the world. It's better than X, and that got made. It's a conspiracy. It's not what you know, it's who.

I have no anger. Only determination.

The reader did his/her job.  There's no malice in their words.  I'm upset, I'm gutted and I've only just stopped shaking, but the classic screenwriter's retort that "they don't understand my work" is self-serving and of no practical use.  Our job is to make them understand our work.  If we can't do that, we've fallen at the first hurdle.

I lie beneath that hurdle with bloody knees and hurdle-grade plastic wedged into my balls.

There are positives to be taken.  The words "throwback" and "fun" were used.  The feedback also makes some decent points that I can address in the rewrite, not the least of which is that this reads like an R-rated movie, and would likely make less money as a result.  That's not going to encourage any studio to say yes. We tend to forget this when writing for ourselves, but it's important to understand the realities of the marketplace, the milieu into which scripts are being plunged.  The fact is that right now, studios want PG-13 content, and despite a multitude of 2+ hour blockbusters, 117 pages is now considered a hair too long.

The evaluation also raises some points I believe are misguided.  I won't go into them because no matter how eloquent one thinks one is, a point by point rebuttal of that nature can only ever come across as bitter and angry.

Perhaps it all comes down to sensibility.  I believe I know what I've written and why I've written it.  The reader fundamentally disagrees. I think the rating is harsh in the context of the fairly mild criticism levelled at it.  (There was nothing like "you can't write, please stop giving us your money", but perhaps they're just humouring me.)  Like any artist, I'll defend some of my choices to the hilt, but the fact remains; we have to make them understand, and bawling isn't the way to do it.

Above all this illustrates how switched on we have to be to break in.  I brought what I thought was my A game, and it wasn't enough.

What we as amateurs have to be careful of is swinging with the wind, simply changing everything somebody doesn't like; if reader A loves your characters and reader B hates them, which way do you swing?

You swing your way.

When you've reached a point where multiple readers address the same concerns, when the general consensus is that you are wrong, or where the studio has notes (this can be the same thing as scenarios one and two)... fine.  It may never be easy but it's common sense.  Compromise is inevitable in even the least collaborative of artistic media, and film is probably the most.

But before all of that, you have to write for you.  From you.  Or you are lost.

Be guided, be mindful of and serious about others' opinions, but first and foremost, write for you.  Just know that in one of creativity's most cruelly sadistic paradoxes, doing so may mean that you labour without reward, without recognition.  If you can reach even grudging acceptance of that, you're going to be a whole lot better off.

So where do I go from here?

I re-read the coverage and it's like looking at the last letter from an ex.  The one that finally confirms what you always feared; this is definitively over.  Your heart races every time you look, even though you know what it says so well you could read it in your sleep.  Still, you hope the words have changed. 

They haven't.

But this is not over. From here I go backwards.  And forwards.  Already rewriting. To truly know if these problems are not the result of a sensibility mismatch, I'm going to have to pay for another evaluation.  It's the only way to be... sure?  Maybe not.  But more sure.

This has been a "no".  But it only takes one "yes".

Friday 19 July 2013

Superman Unmade #3: Superman Reborn (Take 3B)


Here there be spoilers.

This is more an incremental post, dealing with relatively minor revisions in the second (known) draft of Gregory Poirier's Superman Reborn. I'll try not to repeat myself, analysis of the first draft is here.

Who wrote it?
Gregory Poirier - credited on (amongst others) The Lion King 2, A Sound of Thunder and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

When was it written?
This draft is dated 20.12.95, eight days after the last.

How long is it?
119 pages (down from 122 for the first)

What's the broad structure?
Act 1 = 1-27
Act 2a = 28-57
Act 2b = 58-98
Act 3 = 99-119

What's the context?
This is the second of three drafts Poirier wrote for producer Jon Peters, and it's a little tighter. There's no indication of why it was so hot on the heels of the first draft.  Perhaps the studio wanted a polish before Hollywood shut down for Christmas.

What's changed (and works better)?
  • There's a better sense of Brainiac's physical deterioration.  Nobody is allowed to look at him, not even his alien slaves.
  • Clark's state of mind is explained a little better; his sense of feeling homesick but with no home to go back to.  It's just that this doesn't feel very much like the Superman we've known up to this point.  He grew up in Smallville; surely if anywhere is home, it's there?
  • Superman's Sisyphean task is outlined better. He spends most of his day fighting for others, but the more he does, the worse things seem to get.  I understand Kevin Smith's argument that Superman is about hope, but sometimes to get to the hope, one has to endure despair.
  • There's more subtext between Clark and Lois; when he asks her what she'd do if Superman decided to move on, he's actually telling us he's tired, that he's thinking about doing so.
  • The civil servants of Metropolis no longer conspire to steal Superman's body (a scene in the first draft has them attempt an autopsy and fail miserably).  Instead, Lois sneaks into the tomb behind Brainiac's minions only for them all to discover the body is gone.  This also draws Brainiac's attention to her for the first time.
  • Brainiac's recruitment of Silver Banshee and Parasite is made marginally more interesting; he's curious as to why not everyone is out searching for the body, and charges them with marshaling the dregs to do so.
  • One of the major issues around Brainiac is also addressed; he's a genocidal maniac, a genius, a telepath, a telekinetic, and practically a god.  Why doesn't he go search for the damned body himself?  It turns out he can't, as Earth's atmosphere speeds his decay.  Without Kryptonian DNA he's too vulnerable.  It doesn't exactly plug the plot hole as much as whack a plaster on it, but it's an effort.
  • Superman is careful not to fatally injure the cops under Silver Banshee's command, as they aren't responsible for their actions.  Which is mighty nice of him.
  • Parasite now comes after the infiltrators in the tunnels, which makes far more sense than sending Doomsday, who in the initial draft... gets stuck.
  • Lois tells Clark he was the one she really missed, not Superman.  In the first draft, she admits this to an empty room.  In the second, it's moved up and done face to face, giving Clark a much more powerful reason to consider quitting the cape once and for all after Brainiac is defeated.
  • No rod through the brain for Brainiac, which is a step down on the brutality scale.  He's still genetically dismembered though.

What's changed (and still doesn't work?)
  • Batman's dialogue is gone, but his cameo remains, and is still completely redundant.
  • Silver Banshee's super-cheesy introduction has vanished.  The male models and death-sex are gone.  Unfortunately almost everything else about her remains.  She just doesn't fit.
  • Poirier addresses a major plot hole; if Brainiac destroyed Krypton, he must have acquired Kryptonian DNA already.  So why does he need Superman's?  Unfortunately it's fudged with some nonsense about Brainiac not having perfected his DNA harvesting technique when he destroyed Krypton.
  • Silver Banshee frees the prison population to hunt for the body.  This would be a nice idea if she didn't advertise it as a chance to win their freedom... something she just gave them for nothing.
  • Phin-Yar is explained a bit more, just not necessarily any better.  Superman's powers will come back when he remembers why he belongs here.  But if this is the case, his powers would have begun to wane even before he died.  Setting this up earlier as the reason he loses to Doomsday would have been at least consistent.  Ultimately Phin-Yar still comes across as a lot of sub-Star Wars new age mumbo-jumbo.  And I like mumbo-jumbo.
  • In this draft it's the army (not a band of Daily Planet reporters) who are planning to attack Brainiac's ship through the sewers.  The General in charge owes Lois a favour, so she and Jimmy get to go along.  Unfortunately this idea is somehow even dumber than the first.  I'd buy vigilante reporters over a high-ranking officer allowing reporters to tag along on a secret military incursion into the heart of an alien star ship.
  • Brainiac is now destroying one building every hour until the body is delivered, but this doesn't heighten the tension any.  We know the whole city, if not the whole planet, is to be destroyed anyway, so it raises no tension at all.  Eradicating large portions of the city's populace is also counter-productive to the search.
  • Parasite's aversion to feeding off the sick is better explained, in order to set up his leeching from Superman in the final act.  The denouement still doesn't make much sense, though, because up until that point Parasite hasn't been particularly discerning.  He's harvested the energy of hundreds of people.  This sets up the psychological damage carrying all these voices is doing to him, (something which is never paid off) but it's never established that he's leeching ailments until near the end of Act 2.  Are we seriously supposed to believe nobody he'd absorbed before that point had something wrong with them?  Even if we assume so, there's a huge logical disconnect between a brain condition like epilepsy and alien radiation poisoning.  I just didn't buy it.

Conclusion
There's only so much anyone can do in eight days.  These are incremental changes which do slightly improve the story; less dumb stuff happens in slightly less dumb ways.  However, the storyline is still unwieldy, with far too many deep problems to address in a polish.  It would take Poirier another two months to address some of these when he turned in his third draft.

Find me on Twitter

(All sources have been linked to except the script: if you are the creator or originator of any material you feel has been misappropriated, please let me know and I'll do my best to correct the problem.) 

Tuesday 16 July 2013

Superman Unmade #3: Superman Reborn (Take 3A)


Here there be spoilers.

"If there are any movies we kept looking to over and over again in relationship to this, it's Star Wars and The Lion King." - Jonathan Lemkin on his draft of Superman Reborn.

First things first, I implore you to check out Film Crit Hulk's incredibly detailed story autopsy on Man of Steel.  He talks a lot of sense, and whether you agree with him or not, it's a worthwhile read for anyone interested in story mechanics, and specifically the story mechanics of Superman.  It's a long read, and the all-caps doesn't help, but hey, that's Hulk.

Who wrote it?
Gregory Poirier - credited on (amongst others) The Lion King 2, A Sound of Thunder and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

When was it written?
This draft is dated 12.12.95

How long is it?
122 pages

What's the broad structure?
Act 1 = 1-27
Act 2a = 28-57
Act 2b = 58-98
Act 3 = 99-122

What's the context?
Having tossed aside Jonathan Lemkin's take (allegedly for its thematic similarities to Batman Forever) Warner kept faith with Jon Peters to oversee the project.  He hired his Rosewood screenwriter Gregory Poirier, a 1990 Nicholl Fellowship semi-finalist, to pen the new draft.  Poirier seems to have written at least three drafts which have surfaced.

Why didn't it happen?
One man brought Superman Reborn down.  Kevin Smith, writer/director of Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy, was at Warners for meetings with top brass over potential rewrite projects.  Asked to assess the Poirier script (which draft isn't clear), Smith told them he hated it, calling it "The Batman TV show version of a Superman movie."  (2:08 on the video).
Eventually sat down with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, head of production at Warner, Smith was handed the keys and told to go off in a new direction.

The Script
It's really tough to know where to start with Poirier's Superman Reborn, the last script to bear that title before the long-gestating project became Superman Lives.
Reading all three drafts illuminates plenty about the art, purpose and practicalities of rewriting to accommodate producer and studio notes.  The second draft is dated just 8 days after this one, while the third and final (that we know of) is dated three months later, and clearly reflects the extra time allowed to polish and refine it.  Ultimately, I decided that to maintain the structure of these pieces it would be better to address them all as different scripts.

So who's our protagonist?
Superman, silly. ;o)

What does Superman want at the start of the story?
He wants to belong.
This, once again, is a Superman for the '90s.  An alien, feeling outcast and ostracised on Earth, and flirting with therapy.  He doesn't feel this is his home, but knows he has nowhere else to go.  In keeping with the previous drafts, there's a huge hole in his relationship with Lois, but here it appears to be less formally defined.  They are clearly in love, but they're not "together" per se.

What happens next?
The alien tyrant Brainiac arrives, looking for Kryptonian DNA to stabilise his genetic structure.  Roaming the galaxy absorbing the DNA of other races, and destroying their worlds in the process, Brainiac's physical condition is slowly deterioriating as his genetic accumulations refuse to gel.
Brainiac unleashes Doomsday, an unstoppable monster with Kryptonite for blood, who kills the Man of Steel.  But Doomsday forgets to bring back the body, and it subsequently goes missing, so Brainiac turns to two Earthly accomplices, Silver Banshee and Parasite, for help.  Enveloping Metropolis in an energy field to prevent removal of the body, Brainiac demands its delivery within 48 hours, or he will destroy the city with his annihilator.

Somewhere deep under water, another alien, called Cadmus, has the body on a slab, and is busy putting his own plans for it into action when Superman unexpectedly wakes up...

Does Superman resolve his conflict, and if so, how?
When Superman awakens, his powers have vanished.  Learning from Cadmus that his abilities actually derive from a Kryptonian martial discipline known as Phin-Yar (though this is never really explained), Superman is forced to confront the notion that they have disappeared because, essentially, he doesn't want them anymore.  Faced with the prospect of a normal life, he still feels duty-bound to save the city, and begins breaking Brainiac's hold by using a mechanical suit which replicates all his old powers.  But as the suit begins to fail, and the countdown to Metropolis' destruction ticks away, he is forced to confront his feelings of isolation and loneliness, and accept that Metropolis is where he belongs.  In turn, he discovers that the city appreciates him after all, and slowly regains his powers just in time for a final showdown with Brainiac.

What works?
  • Clark as alien, and alienated.  He's reaching a point in his life where, as a normal human male, he's expected to be thinking about settling down, having kids, and setting up the second act of his life.  Instead he's running around dealing with everyone else's problems, and his career is at risk as his distraction manifests itself.  He generally feels like he doesn't belong.  This is a far stronger position for the character than either of the last two scripts because he wants something, even if he's not sure what that is.  Kevin Smith has gone on the record with his annoyance at this; "Superman’s angst is not that he doesn’t want to be Superman. If he has any (angst), it’s that he can’t do it all; he can’t do enough and save everyone... Batman is about angst; Superman is about hope. It's not enough to make him want to quit being Superman; it's enough to make the guy stay up at night so he's out doing shit constantly.”  Ultimately, this comes down to whether one's view of the character is immutable, which I sense Smith's is.  I certainly don't feel there's anything wrong in exploring his sense of alienation if it means getting to the hope in the end.  That's his arc.
  • Cadmus is not a bad character, he's just completely derivative.  He's been chasing Brainiac for hundreds of years so this is personal for him.  He's Obi-Wan Kenobi crossed with Han Solo.  Old and wise, but street-smart, cynical and not interested in taking anyone else's shit.  He is, however, so derivative that there's really only one way his story can end.
  • Lois and Clark; there's a bitter-sweet angle to their relationship.  This is a friendship that could once have been something more, but whose time seems to have passed.  Once again, Clark's potential as "Mr Right Now" is highlighted in stark contrast to the pedestal-dwelling Superman.
  • Poirier actually tries to give us what I wanted from the Bates/Jones draft; a tough protagonist's decision in the 2nd act.  Clark is torn between abandoning his life as Superman, and ensuring the safety of Metropolis.  If the suit works well enough, he could walk away when Brainiac is defeated and live a normal life.  Ultimately, he remembers who he is and why he does what he does.  Once he realises that, we suspect he would carry on even if he had to use the suit for the rest of his life.  It's the decision, the intention and the will that help make him Superman, not just the powers.  It's this that treads the same ground as Batman Forever, far more so than Lemkin's draft.  Will the hero choose to forsake his alter-ego for the sake of a normal life?
  • A ticking time bomb.  48 hours to bring Brainiac Superman's body, or Metropolis is razed.  That's a decent, driving incentive for Acts 2 and 3.  The watch countdown motif is dumb but effective.  Why Brainiac suddenly downgrades from planet-popping to mere city-razing is another question entirely.
  • The Super-suit.  Just.  It feels like it was designed to sell toys, but crucially, the suit serves a useful narrative function; with it, a powerless Superman can still be Superman.  It's not perfect, but it gives him a means to continue being useful during Act 2, and helps drive his arc by enabling him to consider how he can save the world AND think about walking away from it.  It also works because it doesn't work; it replicates his powers but can wig out at any point, which at least makes it dramatically interesting.
  • Superman gets to see his own funeral.  Carillean technology allows Cadmus to record the final days of a planet for holographic playback, and so Superman can witness his own burial, see the outpouring of grief, and starts to realise that perhaps he is appreciated here after all.  As motivations go, it's pretty on the nose, but effective.
  • Kryptonite.  Again, it's given more to do than the usual "hang around and make like a green rock".  Yes, the idea of Doomsday having Kryptonite blood is dumb, but it's actually one of the least offensive dumb ideas here.
What doesn't work?
  • Poirier's draft takes Jonathan Lemkin's assertion that Superman is like Batman crossed with Star Wars and runs with it.  Very, very far.  The first scenes are of a princess being kidnapped and forced to watch her planet destroyed by a super-weapon.
  • Far, far too many antagonists.  Once again we have the curse of the comic book movie; a hilariously illogical alliance of villains.  Reborn almost simultaneously sounds the same notes as Batman & Robin:
    • The Brute, crudely adapted from an era-defining villain - Bane/Doomsday.  Grown in a lab with Kryptonite for blood to do one thing; kill Superman.  However, he is later seen off by Lois jamming a knife under his fingernail, and is ultimately killed by… falling rubble.  Doomsday was never exactly a rounded character, but he's little more than a device here, and once he's served that purpose there's nothing for him to do.  He makes Schumacher's version of Bane look almost reverential.
    • The Femme Fatale - Poison Ivy/Silver Banshee. Silver Banshee (a Scotswoman who says "me" instead of "my") has a retinue of male models who laze around her apartment 90% naked, steal diamonds for her, and are routinely dispatched post-coitus by the effects of her magical voice-box. If that sounds like something you'd want to see, I can only assume you are Joel Schumacher.
    • The Accidental Supervillain - Mr. Freeze/Parasite.  Who knew a lab fire could turn a guy purple and enable him to harvest the life-force from anyone he touches?  Parasite also serves as the comic relief; except there's little comedy and next to no relief.  There may well be a place for him in a Superman movie one day, but there are roughly a dozen better antagonists to get through first.

  • The Batman cameo.  The Dark Knight pops up at Superman's funeral to say a few words.  Five, to be exact.  He then vanishes, ignoring the force-field surrounding the city, and apparently dismissing this most inter-galactic of crimes.  We can only assume that Metropolite problems aren't in his job description.  The point is, if you're going to have Batman pop up, have him do something useful.  Will he splinter the focus of the story?  Of course he will. So why is he here?
  • Superman as Rocky Balboa.  We already established that Cadmus is basically Obi-Wan Solo, but come the second act, he's become Mickey Goldmill and Mr. Miyagi too.  For Superman, act 2 is basically motivational psychology and training montages.  Speaking of which…
  • Phin-Yar.  The Kryptonian martial discipline is a means of dramatising Superman's struggle to unite his heart, body and mind.  It's the external goal of getting his powers back twinned with the internal goal of accepting himself and his place in the universe, but it's hard to argue with Kevin Smith's assertion that this displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the Superman mythos.  It's part The Force, part self-help, part Sun Tzu.  At one point Cadmus tells him to "think about why you lost your powers.  What are you supposed to learn from it?" and my eyes rolled so far back in my head I almost lost them for good.
  • RET-CON ALERT!  It turns out that Brainiac destroyed Krypton.  Because landing in Metropolis Central Park, unleashing Doomsday to kill Superman and threatening to destroy his adopted city clearly hasn't made things personal enough.  Not only that, but through Cadmus' Carillean technology, Superman gets to witness the moment his parents packed him off in the life-pod as Krypton came crashing down around them.  There are just so many holes in this version of events that to pick at them would be the very definition of fish in a barrel.
  • Jimmy Olsen plays a fairly prominent role, but in this continuity he's moved into TV, and it's done nothing for him.  Frankly, he comes across as a bit of a douche.
  • The "MTV Generation" again.  At one point Jimmy and Lois spill out of a chase into a basement rave, described as "MTV's Grind inhabited by sexy zombies".  Yes, SEXY Zombies.  Presumably they try to mate with you before/after/whilst eating your brains.  Poirier at least seems to be playing it for satire, hence the entirely straight-faced line "Blend in, we'll be okay."  
  • Lois "listens to THRASHING ALTERNATIVE music like Green Day or Alanis Morrisette."  That sentence pretty much satirises itself.
  • Superman's magic glasses.  Not only do they appear and disappear at will, they make the wearer look 50% frumpier.  Lois puts them on, and is shocked when she looks at herself in the mirror and thinks she's seeing another woman.  This is actually a great idea for a revelatory scene, but... MAGIC GLASSES.  There's no explanation of how they work.  There's no deeper thinking.  They just are.
  • A ticking time bomb.  We already covered this in things that work, but come the third act, it ceases to work at all.  By page 109, Brainiac knows Superman is alive, and his location.  In fact, Brainiac has everything he wants on board his ship.  Why doesn't he destroy Metropolis at this point?  Take off, obliterate the planet from orbit.  Job done.  Needless to say, he doesn't.
  • Superman kills.  I don't have a problem with him using necessary force if there's no other way.  If that means he has to kill, so be it.  Others will argue that it's Superman's very resistance to killing that makes him interesting.  But here, he never explores options other than killing to win.  I wasn't at all upset by him breaking General Zod's neck because it was clear that Zod could be neither captured nor pacified; the same goes for the Zod in Superman II.  There's no such groundwork laid here, so it feels like killing for the sake of it.  There are four antagonists, and he brings not a single one in alive.
Conclusion
We're waaaaay outside the Chris Reeve era here, but this is no reboot.  We're mid-continuity, with established characters and paradigms of a franchise in need of complete recasting.  Now, we tend to think of every change in principle cast as being a cue to reboot.  But back in 1995, Bond had changed (often), Batman had changed, and nobody started again... the films simply carried on.  Why not Superman?

In 2013, it's easy to wonder why these unmade scripts kept falling in between stools, but at this point the reboot hadn't even been invented yet.  There weren't so many sequels back then that the notion of starting from scratch was even viable.  Now, almost twenty years later, even successful franchises are due a reset.  Consider Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy; it's because of the success of his vision that Batman is going to end up rebooted.  Nobody is going to want to play in Nolan's universe, in his timeline, with new actors.  The result will be another reset, and likely another origin story.

It's not at all hard to see why all involved thought Poirier's Superman Reborn needed more work, at the very least.  It's a mish-mash of basically sound narrative technique with some truly horrible ideas.  It fails on too many levels, skirting Batman & Robin awfulness whilst never, thankfully, descending into the seventh level of camp that film occupies.  It's big, it's bloated, it would have cost a bomb, and with a multitude of narrative and logical disconnects at play, it doesn't actually make much sense.

That said, it'll be interesting to examine what, exactly, Poirier changed in the next draft.  What problems had he, Peters and Warner Bros. identified and how did they go about dealing with them?  In Hollywood, it's very easy to throw writers from the train and get someone else in; Poirier at least got three shots at hitting whatever target Peters and Warners were pointing him at.

Man of Steel preventable death and destruction rating (where Man of Steel is a 10): 5  Comparatively little preventable destruction (even though he doesn't ever try to divert Doomsday away from populated areas), but Superman is directly responsible for at least two deaths, and there are two more he could, perhaps should, have prevented.

Find me on Twitter

(All sources have been linked to except the script: if you happen to be the creator or originator of any materials you feel have been misappropriated, please let me know and I'll do my best to correct the problem.) 

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Thoughts on Protagonism

In the previous posts about unmade Superman projects, I didn't wrestle with the notion of protagonism enough, or correctly.  I've been thinking about it since immediately after they went up.

I concentrated too much on my faulty understanding of what a protagonist does (i.e. their function in the story) and ignored what they are (i.e. the story as a means of exploring them).  That's not a good way to think when you're trying to develop character-driven stories.  It's mechanistic.  I'm not even sure it's an easy mistake to make, as it's rather a fundamental misunderstanding.

The word Protagonist comes from the Greek Protos, meaning "first in importance" and Agonistes, meaning "actor".

Who is first in importance in this story?

Whose story is this?
The protagonist is the character in whose story (whether that involves a dramatic arc or not) we need to be invested.  It doesn't necessarily follow that this character has to be the one behind the inciting incident (hence my mistake in attributing Brainiac, Morpheus and Delia as the protagonists).  

But it DOES follow that their inner/outer turmoil in dealing with the inciting incident and how it changes their world should drive the story forward.

Reframed in the correct context, Superman is clearly the protagonist of both the scripts we've looked at.  The villains are the antagonists.  The inciting incident is, well, incidental (at least to this argument).

I'm not going to go back and change the posts, as it's a learning experience and I've got to cop to my mistakes.  I will put a link to this post in though, for posterity, so you'll all know I've changed my ways. ;0)

Monday 1 July 2013

Superman Unmade #2: Superman Reborn (Take 2)


Here there be spoilers.


Confronted by aliens who manifest physical projections of his darkest fears, Superman is killed in battle.  Transcending his body, he is reborn as Lois Lane’s son and raised in the sewers by a rag-tag band of mutants and freaks.  As Metropolis is torn apart by fear and chaos, the reborn and rapidly maturing Boy of Steel must find a way to emerge from hiding and preserve his father’s legacy.

Who wrote it?
Jonathan Lemkin, credited writer on Lethal Weapon 4, The Devil’s Advocate, Shooter and Red Planet.

When was it written?
This draft is dated 24.3.95.

How long is it?
58 pages (scanned from hard-copy).

What's the broad structure?
Act 1: pages 1-25
Act 2a: pages 26-58

What's the context?
With Superman back in Warners’ hands after buying out the Salkinds, the studio put Jon Peters to work on the franchise, confident his experience herding Tim Burton’s Batman to the screen would pay off for them again.  Peters hired Jonathan Lemkin to write the first draft.  

Lemkin goes on the record in David Hughes’s The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made

I think, based on the action of Lethal Weapon 4, some of the more supernatural elements of Devil’s Advocate and the fantasy elements of Demolition Man, everyone felt comfortable with going forward with me as the writer of Superman Reborn”.

There’s a curious cyclicity to the whole business.  Movies take a long time to make.  Scripts can be in development for years before even pre-production starts.  Curiously, Lethal Weapon 4, which Lemkin cites as one of the reasons he got the Superman job, wasn’t released until more than 3 years after this was written.  It was also, famously, rushed into production with no finalised script, allegedly because Warner Bros. had a Krypton-sized hole in their 1998 release schedule caused by the implosion of… Superman Lives, which Superman Reborn had evolved into.

Why didn't it happen?
Lemkin cites the similarities in theme and tone to Batman Forever as the reason Warners decided not to press ahead with his script.  Peters hired Gregory Poirier for a page one rewrite.

The Script
To call this script bat-shit crazy does bat-shit crazy a disservice.

Let's not kid ourselves; similarities between this and Batman Forever are not the reason it didn’t get made.  Yes, they touch on some of the some themes, but the underlying reasons it never went further are much, much more obvious.  Lemkin says that his only briefs were to write a great film, and to reinvent Superman for the MTV generation.
 
Lord knows what Jon Peters thought of the MTV generation.

Lemkin was also, allegedly, bound by the commercial realities of Hollywood film-making.  In this case, the deals which can be made with toy companies to off-set the huge production and marketing costs inherent in blockbuster film-making.

“This is a huge corporate asset, and if you look at the marketing that can come from this, it’s phenomenal. So they’re being very careful with what we do.”

Apparently there’s a word for the suitability of a film to be turned into toys.  Toyetic.

Superman Reborn is not toyetic.

It is not a script for a family movie.  In fact it opens with the legend: “No one is here to save you anymore”.  Can you see that plastered all over little Johnny’s Christmas morning prezzies?  The notion of toy companies merchandising a film which involves the death of the entire principle cast in the first 20 minutes, murder, rape, orgies and general chaos as society collapses in on itself is… a stretch, to say the least.  It’s not impossible that it was those companies who nixed this, having first look rights under their merchandising deal.

So who's our protagonist?
Once again, it’s not Superman, but two transient alien energy beings able to assume human form: Morpheus and Delia.  Their origin is never explained.  I haven’t been able to find a trace of them in the Superman mythos so it seems they were Lemkin’s original creations.  Without their arrival, smashing to earth inside a meteorite, the story doesn’t happen.
*For updated thoughts on protagonism, see my new post*

What does our protagonist want at the start of the story?
 
They’re tricksters; their aim is not just to conquer but to toy with worlds, to destroy champions, wreck the planet, feed on the fear and chaos they generate, and move on.

What does Superman want at the start of the story?
Once again, he’s doing fine.  But much like the previous script, Lois is unhappy, unable to see them ever settling down and having a normal life.  In short, she wants out.

What happens next?
Interrupted mid break-up, Superman goes into battle with a being formed from his darkest fears, the final iteration of which is a giant Kryptonite being.  With the Man of Steel six feet under, Morpheus and Delia set about creating chaos.  But Superman’s spirit has undergone some kind of transference, impregnating Lois with his child, which comes to term in a single week.  She and Jimmy Olsen are killed protecting the baby, who is taken in by Harry Cadamus, a 120 year old geneticist living underground in a hidden community of mutants he helped engineer.  The boy, whom he names Miles McGee, continues ageing rapidly, growing to the age of 11 in a week.  But the older he gets, the quicker his powers develop, and the more curious he becomes about who he is and where he came from…

Does he resolve his conflict, and if so, how?
If we ascribe Kal-El’s conflicts to his son, given that he is essentially Superman resurrected…  It’s still tough to say, as there's only half a script.  What we do know is that it's about hope versus fear.  The internal goal is represented externally by Morpheus’ visual readouts, which document the city’s levels of hope versus fear like some kind of emotional stat bar.  Every night, fear wins.  But every morning, people wake with the hope of a new day and better day.  Morpheus is infuriated by this; what does it take to break these people?  It’s a little on the nose, but not ineffective.

So let’s extrapolate, given what we know and where the arcs start.  Given that the film is about hope versus fear, and Superman’s fear is what ultimately destroyed him, I don’t think it’s outrageous to postulate that it’s Miles’ faith in himself that allows him to triumph.  Are we sure he wins?  No.  But given that this script was designed to breathe life into the character on screen and resurrect the franchise, it’s a fairly safe bet.  It’ll be Miles' ability to push through his fear in a way his father couldn’t which will ultimately be Metropolis’ salvation.  It's hinted that he's also able to manifest his own thoughts physically, so this would probably have had a part to play in the final confrontation.

In a similar vein, humanity’s arc, from a society molly-coddled by the presence of a living God upon whom it relies for salvation, could end in a new-found heroism amongst the civilian populace.  It’s hinted at earlier, but I’d expect to see it ratcheted up in the final act as both Superman and Metropolis face their fears, bring down Morpheus and restore hope for the future.

What works?
  • It’s a good story, essentially Batman with Superpowers.  Miles’ parents are murdered, and he grows up in a world racked by fear and chaos, a metaphorical darkness, only to emerge from that to avenge them.  The themes are timeless; fear versus hope.  The absence of a father and the appearance of a new father figure are very much in keeping with previous iterations of the character.
  • Kryptonite.  Instead of an inert rock, it’s used sparingly, given form and purpose; the Kryptonite monster which manifests itself from Superman’s darkest fears is a proactive use of the classic Superman storytelling crutch.
  • As much as certain aspects of the original Superman’s portrayal jar (see “what doesn’t work”, there’s an interesting concept underlying them.  Superman here is, as Morpheus points out, “a hero with a logical appreciation of his own shortcomings.”  We’re starting to move towards a more sophisticated, nuanced psychology of the superhero.  A man with doubts like any other.  In this case “what if something else is stronger?”
  • In keeping with this, Superman’s strength makes the monster stronger.  This idea was also explored a little at the end of the 1992 script.  When someone is as strong as Superman, how do you develop drama?  By turning that strength against him.  He can’t outmuscle it, so what does he do?
  • The infamous life-force transference.  I never had a problem with it.  If we’re going to suspend our disbelief enough to believe that a baby can travel billions of miles from an alien world, and then do all the stuff he can do… who’s to say how he procreates?  “The son becomes the father, and the father the son.”
  • As much as the script dwells on hopelessness, there is a message of hope in there.  “It’s good to be tough, it’s not good to be hard”.
  • 20 years before Batman Begins, Lemkin asks; what if the presence of your hero created your villains?  He also asks whether Superman’s presence has actually retarded humanity’s growth.  Doesn’t the presence of a god encourage us not to rely on ourselves, to expect to be saved?  It’s hard to know if he more deeply explored the implications of this in the second half.
  • Morpheus is pretty funny, and not altogether detestable because of it.  It’s easy to imagine Jim Carrey pulling the role off in his sleep, but The Riddler was also a manic trickster, and that’s one of the things here that isn’t all that far removed from Batman Forever.
What doesn't work?
  • Superman’s strength makes the monster stronger.  I know, we’ve been here in “things that worked”, right?  But having set up this interesting action dynamic, Lemkin squanders it by having him… outmuscle it anyway, pulling its head off and hurling it down the street.  (Man Of Steel haters take note; it could have been much worse.)  Having established an obstacle, Lemkin conveniently does away with it as soon as the monster has done its job, which is to usher out the established cinematic Superman on a gurney.
  • That death is a little perfunctory.  It takes only five pages to detail a battle that kills a being as powerful as Superman.  Go big or go home.
  • Morpheus wants to rule.  He states that he needs 80,000-100,000 minds enslaved to match Superman’s power… But he and Delia just killed Superman, the most powerful being on the planet by some stretch.  So what’s the end game?  The villains’ motivations aren’t outlined very well.  “To rule” seems a pretty amorphous goal.
  • Superman is not the Superman we’re familiar with.  Morpheus describes him as cold-hearted, hopeless and faithless.  It plays up the alien aspect.  This is partially the tack that Goyer and Nolan have hung Man Of Steel on, but that’s a reboot.  Here, Superman is essentially mid-continuity; established in the world, working at The Daily Planet, in a relationship with Lois.  To paint this Superman as lacking faith, hope, and warmth would have been utterly jarring, because Reeve’s Superman is anything but.  Conversely, Morpheus also refers to those dregs of humanity who power him in the same terms.  They can’t both be true.
  • The whole “MTV generation” vibe.  It's 1995, and Superman isn't cool anymore.  That means no cheesiness.  Only dark, grungy heroes need apply.  Our new Superman grows up in a sewer.  This emotional aesthetic seems to translate not only into a rumination on despair and hopelessness, but incredible amounts of sex, swearing and violence.  We’ve got more decapitations than Sleepy Hollow, skeletons being pulled out, head-shots, rape, hand-jobs, child-porn palaces, smashing a 9 year old with a pipe… and worst of all, Techno.  It’s almost Dickensian in its grimness, like Lemkin was daring Warners to fire him by writing something so outrageous it would never get past this draft.  Yes, it sets the scene and establishes the stakes, but this is a Superman movie.  It's too much.
  • Meta-references.  My biggest issue with the whole thing.  Superman comic books exist in the Superman universe.  That’s useful as a device to inculcate Miles into the lore surrounding his father, but also show how humanity has abandoned its adoration of Superman.  Trouble is, it’s nothing some discarded newspapers and memorabilia couldn’t have done.  Similarly, Cadamus refers to “Ma and Pa Kent” like it’s common knowledge the couple raised him.  It doesn’t work.  It’s confusing and bizarre, the story-telling equivalent of the ’92 script’s wink to camera.

Conclusion
It’s strange that only half of Lemkin's script has ever shown up.  Was there every any more?  If there is a second half, why has it never surfaced?  It stops right in the middle of page 58 with a CUT TO, so it doesn’t look like someone just lopped it off at the end of an arbitrary page.  The script came to light as part of the deposition in a multi-billion dollar lawsuit, wherein several unmade Superman scripts were produced to show the company’s continual investment in kick-starting the franchise. 

Given this context it’s hard to believe the second half wouldn’t have been part of the deposition.  Did Lemkin never finish?  If not, why not?  Did the toy companies nix it?  Did the notoriously mercurial Peters change his mind?

As much as it pisses on the movie continuity, there’s no doubt that the first 58 pages of Superman Reborn work as a story; just not necessarily a Superman story.  If you thought the Bates/Jones/Salkind draft read a little Elseworlds, this’ll blow your hair off.  The only thing I can think of to compare it to in that context is Frank Miller’s draft for the aborted Batman: Year One.  The one where Alfred is a black guy called “Little Al” and the Batmobile is a Lincoln Continental.  Superman Reborn looks over that script’s remolding of the basic story and sneers at it for not going far enough.  It’s so different I couldn’t imagine it ever getting made, but perhaps it’s very value lies in its reimagining of the basics.

Like the previous draft, Superman Reborn pre-supposes the existence of galactic cultures outside of Krypton and Earth, not to mention the existence of earthly mutants and the underground world they live in.  In that, it too feels more like the comics than the previous movies.  But it too has the same issue of jarring with those movies.  Regardless of age and accidents, the original cast could conceivably have started this story (the script mentions that Jimmy has now aged and has a family), but it’s hard to imagine them intending to invite Christopher Reeve back for what amounts to a 15 minute cameo before offing him.  By the same token, which actor would settle for being the new Superman all of 15 minutes before handing the mantle over to a series of kids and someone who passes as 21?  It’s not a hard reboot, so it’s tough to imagine anyone else in these roles.  It’s a hand-off movie, but it's so tonally inconsistent with the previous films that the only continuity would be the actors.  Once again, it falls between stools.

Man of Steel preventable death and destruction rating (where Man of Steel is a 10):
3 – A fair amount of property damage which Superman does nothing to try and prevent by removing the dream creature from Metropolis.  Having said that, he’s a little busy getting his arse kicked.  Property damage isn't the first thing on his mind, frankly.  It's hard to say where it all goes from there...

Find me on Twitter

(All sources have been linked to except the script: if you happen to be the creator or originator of any materials you feel have been misappropriated, please let me know and I'll do my best to correct the problem.)