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OMGWTFBBQ

Quite the weekend.

Had a BBQ spectacular that lasted almost the entire of Saturday, we did the early morning markets gauntlet at Rocklea gathering our meat and vegetables (hunter-gatherer mode activated), prepared a ton of dishes simultaneously (honey-soy drumsticks, chicken-satay skewers, italian-style burgers and potato salad) because I rock, got the bbq fired up (man-mode activated), drank some wine (-50dkp manliness hitpoints), cooked meat for about six hours, socialised, drank more, started a huge fire in the backyard as night fell and the temperature plummeted. Still, a few hours later, a couple more bottles of wine down and people were harmonising around a youtube karaoke of Nothing Else Matters and Unforgiven by Metallica.

So yes, quite the weekend.

Caught The Dark Knight again too; the second viewing crystallised a few things for me, namely:
- the movie’s too fucking long for what plot it should’ve dealt with or not long enough for the plot that it tried to deal with
- fuck Hong Kong and several other scenes off as unnecessary ballast
- okay, what the hell, here’s my take on how they should have structured it - take note Christoper Nolan, I’ll doctor your next script…

Act 1:
- Character introductions as is ✓
- Wayne enterprises merger with crooked US business
change: completely remove HK element
- Mob / cops / Batman stuff as is ✓
- Batman goes after “on the lam” US crook
change: introduce sonar here as part of a tense snatch & grab
- Dent takes the case to court etc ✓

Act 2
- Joker’s next targets as is etc ✓
- Bruce Wayne again / intercedes in a Joker attempt on Harvey
change: not at the fund raiser, that stupid scene is gone
- Pressure on Batman / Dent = Batman etc as is ✓
- Truck chase ✓
- Dent/Rachel in warehouses ✓
- Joker escape ✓

Act 3
- Harvey in hospital ✓
- Joker bomb threat ✓
change: following this Harvey is unknown to be dead or alive
- Bridge & tunnel threat ✓
change: Gordon gets reports of his team being missing
- Ferries & hostage situation unfold simultaneously in different locations to stretch resources thin again
change: separate locations for each, Batman has to help hostages first then in process gets hunted by police after sabotaging/attacking SWAT
- Batman & Joker
change: police on Batman’s tail, reports of dead cops comes in to Gordon but with no perpetrator.
another change: Joker confronts Batman with the truth that Harvey is now Two-Face and is out there, killing people, getting revenge and he’ll destroy hope, Gotham is doomed.
yet another change: Batman stops him with the detonator as before but this time…
- Joker dies
change: Joker hurled off roof as before, sailing towards cars, cackling, laughing, Batman tries to save him but fails! Cops see part of this and presume Batman has dropped his ‘code’ and is now a murderer.
- Gordon finds Batman before SWAT
change: the truth about Dent’s fall, Gordon realises Dent is killing people, they need to find him, but the cops are after Batman, the murders now get pinned to him too so the Joker doesn’t win, he’s hunted, he escapes

The End.

Reasons why:
- It’s too much for one movie, we get this. It’s too huge to cram two complete arcs in there without sacrificing one of them, Dent gets short-shrifted in the last 30 minutes into an incidental villain to be quickly dispatched; gone
- The HK stuff is just plain flabby and ruins the pacing and bloats the movie to fuck, it also adds nothing except for some coolness; gone
- Similarly the poor editing and nothingness of the fundraiser offers the question: why was this included in the end movie? it adds nothing; gone
- I have a lot of issues with the last forty or so minutes of the movie, so separating the hostages and ferries seemed natural because not only does it not make sense for the Joker to attract the SWAT team to his location (did he have any kind of plan for escape?) but it also allows some of the confusion in that scene to be alleviated and the dramatic tension to shift from that situation to the ferries again without polluting and diluting both scenarios with the same fight. Plus, it allows Batman to start getting tailed by the cops to allow for the pinning of the murders onto Batman and the creation of the same premise anyway.
- Leaving Dent alive offers an excellent parallel for the third movie, the white knight has turned dark and the caped crusader is as reviled as ever by the public and now has the police hounding him like a criminal too, a time for Gotham to be so dark offers a nice chance for them to try to reclaim Harvey before he goes too far.

That said, The Dark Knight is still far and away the best movie I’ve seen in 2008. I doubt that’s going to change. As I sat there in the lead-up to the big truck chase, my heart was pounding - that’s pure powerhouse cinema right there. I fucking LOVE it.

Anyway, no work on the screenplay, but I’ve been percolating lots and lots of ideas, character beats and so on in my head. Not necessarily for this screenplay but for others. That’s probably a result out of helping a friend with his project and that always creates sparks of critical thinking in the brain, forcing you to look at your own stuff in a slightly different way.

On the other hand, I’m actually looking to tone down the movie watching. I watched The Mist again on Friday night and made another believer out of Hugh, then half of Payback: Director’s Cut and half of The Terminator the next night.

But I’ve got a solid gold opportunity arising with Clare travelling to Portugal to not just fuck around at night and watch movies until I’m starring in a movie in mind, like a spiritual sequel to Thomas Jane’s Homeless Dad where I just want my kids back!

Arrested Development joke there, just to keep you kids on your toes.

I had a point though, it was that I need to spend the next couple of weeks writing my ass off. If I can solidly break out a screenplay or two out of the half-written draft phase and start refining it, maybe I can get into a regular habit of this creativity lark again and actually produce something worth getting to someone sooner or later. I’ve been reading again lately too, so there’s NO DAMN EXCUSE.