Barnes and Noble Finding Focus/Writing Workshop + Juno

The next Barnes and Noble Finding Focus/Writing Workshop will be on January 15th at 7:00pm. Bring your thoughts, projects, blocks, gripes, friends and anything else you'd like. The last one was terrific and honestly each one is so full of information, insights, tips and motivation that I'm blown away by it each and every time. If you have any questions or challenges you'd like me to cover please email them to me before the 14th and I'll see how I can work it in.

Now for those of you who've been missing your fix and asking for movie and book recs for the holidays, here's the story (no pun intended). I haven't seen that much lately and my reading material this last month has been gorging on magazines while getting ready for the next batch of texts I have to read come January-ish. (Cinema Editor, Animation, Moviemaker, Scientific American Mind, Esquire(it's the What I Learned issue) and Outside are all great this month. Of course there's always the usual suspects as far as women's mags, fashion mags and of course the Brit rags...)

As for movies, I loved Juno and would definitely put that on my list. I'm probably going to see it again to analyze how the filmmakers did it. What's the big deal? Well, one of the hazards of the profession as a creative writer and being trained in any medium is that you tend to have a hard time just being an observer or consumer of it. (Believe me you haven't lived until you've gone to the movies with a filmmaker and had to sit in the front row so you could FEEL each cut. The memory of it still makes my neck ache and it's been years.)

I still love,love, love the experience of film, drama and reading and it informs my personal work and the work I do with clients on their stories and storytelling issues and challenges. While seeing Juno though, I had an experience that I haven't had in a long time. I didn't notice a lot of what I'm usually tuned into. The story just swept me away, and while I usually go to the movies when it's not too crowded I found myself in a fairly crowded theatre in Union Square with a very mixed crowd of people of all ages and everyone loved it. People laughed out loud. People wept. (Ok -guilty on both counts - but knowing me when it comes to weeping at the movies it's not a matter of "will she?" but "so? was it a three-hanky? one box of tissues? a bed sheet?").

When I work with storytellers of all kinds in many mediums I always stress the character elements. The plot is the plot - in an interview in the current issue of Cinema Editor Magazine Nic Roeg said mentioned the fact that fairly early on people have already seen the 38 plots there are. (Great interview by the way with his long-time editor). It's the truth. There are so many plots and different permutations of them. There's got to be more.

What keeps you there? What makes you care about the characters? What makes you not stand up and walk out in the middle? The struggle to know your characters and make others feel for and with them whether they're "good" or "bad" is a constant one but when you've got it - it's heaven to work on. When a filmmaker gets that it's heaven to watch the film.

Juno is that kind of film. It's the oldest story in the book. 16 year old girl gets pregnant, what will she do? But the characters and the way they're drawn, fleshed out and portrayed is terrific. I really just dove right into the story and when I was talking about it later realized I didn't know how the filmmakers had done x,y, or z. That hasn't happened to me in a long time. I don't know if it's the movies out there lately or me. Jason Reitman who did "Thank You For Smoking" (another terrific film) did an amazing job directing this one. Great and interesting characters, great dialogue, great conflicts, great acting. Great storytelling.

Because I cannot let it go without comment. Will Smith is NO legend as far as I'm concerned. Enough said.

Enjoy the movies and let me know what you've seen and how you liked it!

Enjoy the day,
RK