Cinematic Inspiration by Craig Hammill (SMC Founder)
Beethoven's 7th Symphony
Akira Kurosawa famously said that movie structure is most like symphonic structure. And that cinema is most like music. Listen to the brio of the first movement here then the sudden deliberate brilliant interior machinations of the second movement followed by the developing energy of the third and finally the climactic resolution of the 4th movement. Never has a better script in 4 acts been written than Beethoven's 7th.
James Joyce’s Ulysses
This programmer, for whatever reason, has gotten more inspiration for screenwriting and movie ideas from novels than from ever reading other scripts. Maybe it's because novels are so dense and so able to get into the psychology of characters that they provide a tremendous foundation for the more short-hand way one must write a screenplay. But novels can also inspire with daring stylistic designs that become thrilling to consider in terms of translating to cinema. James Joyce's Ulysses details a single day in Dublin (June 16, 1904) using sequences from Homer's The Odyssey as the basis for each episode. Consequently, the famous Oxen in the Sun chapter in the ancient Greek epic where Odysseus loses all his sailors because they slaughter and feast off forbidden cows becomes a hilarious scene of Irish men, young and old, getting drunk and becoming increasingly out of control. Joyce also writes each chapter in a completely different style. So one chapter is a series of newspaper headlines, another chapter is written in the more archaic style of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and one chapter bounces around more than two dozen characters as they walk through Dublin at lunchtime. But Joyce grounds everything in the story of two men, one quite young, one middle aged, in key moments of self-conflict and agitation. One of the most audacious and daring artistic works in any medium. And a source of endless inspiration for any artist who gets thrilled at the idea of new potential ways to tell a story in cinema.
The Collected Works of William Shakespeare
It's tough initially for the modern reader to fully adapt to Shakespeare's 16th century language. But if you can push through, Shakespeare's 40+ plays will prove an endless fountain of cool refreshing reward from which you can replenish your writing mojo. All the elements we love in our dramas and comedies but which are so hard to master (dramatic irony, thrilling dialogue, comedic misunderstanding, exciting plant and payoff plotting) are here. Even lesser known plays like Coriolanus, Pericles, Titus Andronicus, Troilus & Cressida pulse with a fierce intelligence and humanity. And it's helpful to see Shakespeare go for the "crass" joke or gripping action sequence to keep the audience engaged but then, somehow, miraculously, throw in a monologue about coveting true greatness over material wealth or wrestling with an afterlife whose rules are forever unknown. Shakespeare is poetry, prose, and drama all in one in every single play. And nobody asked, but for the record, this programmer absolutely believes Shakespeare wrote his own plays. Nothing is more infuriating than the argument that a middle or working class person couldn't have had enough innate talent and motivation to have educated themselves enough to write some of the finest poetry in any language. Of course they can. It may indeed have been Shakespeare's relatively humble roots that gave him his tremendous feeling and understanding of characters of all social strata.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks
We filmmakers often love to use paintings and photography as references when speaking with collaborators to design a "look" for our movies. I've always worried this is a dangerous practice. Because cinema is time + space + movement + audio + image + performance+ montage. Painting and photography are kinds of "frozen" music. How many movies have you seen that look beautiful but feel stiff and don't crackle with whatever it is that CINEMA is? Still, some painters and paintings offer staging strategies and color schemes that, like novels, might be capable of being adapted/translated to cinema. This programmer's favorite painter is Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci, more than any other painter I've seen, had a genius understanding of how to synthesize all the elements of design.When we look at his masterful Virgin of the Rocks, we notice how he uses deep rich yet muted shadowy tones so that the shimmery grey-pearl light he uses to illuminate the faces really pops. He organizes the characters so there's a beautiful rhythm and flow that guides the eye like a river that encircles a house. And all the characters gaze at the baby St. John the Baptist so that our gaze eventually goes there as well. Da Vinci's color schemes have also always struck me as sustainable across 90-120 minutes of movement. They push the envelope of color richness but are just dark and muted enough to not assault. Anyway, there seems to be a rich underground ocean of visual literacy we can learn from the masters. Scorsese's first advice to many folks starting out is study the old masters. I think he meant John Ford, Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, Michael Curtiz, Elia Kazan, etc. But he's quoting painting advice which always seemed doubly important to me.
The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
Sometimes life can be so exhausting, confusing, challenging, we live it in halting prose without the touch of poetry that makes it all so wonderful. Especially now, in this time of coronavirus, it might not hurt to put down the phone or remote control, hit off the devices, and pick up a book or two of poetry. The greatest of movies, likewise, salt and pepper their prose with poetry. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was always able to somehow smash together eroticism, earthiness, political commitment, and love of people and the land into a dough that would always produce the sweetest yet savoriest of breads. One of the greatest joys is to read him in Spanish even if you have to have the dictionary right next to you the entire time. Although I'm often confused/not getting the idiom (so key in poetry), there is always a turn of phrase in his South American Spanish that floors me. As a native English speaker who learned Spanish second, I've learned over time: if I need to negotiate a contract, speak English. If I need to express emotion, Spanish is bountiful and endless. But even if you don't speak Spanish, Neruda's poetry in any good translation in any language will inspire you with what gymnastics words can do when they come forth from a lithe pen.
Written by Craig Hammill. Founder and Programmer of Secret Movie Club.