I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority on this one, but Burbank, California, is the most fascinating place I’ve lived in. What I truly loved about it was the way that it sits in the middle of about half of all the major moviemaking studios in L.A.; it’s seemingly the cradle of a one-industry town’s most glamorous, moving-and-shaking, happening scene.

But you couldn’t find a less happening, less glamorous, less exciting or more maligned place than Burbank.

I learned to endure the rolled eyes, the barely-concealed smirks and quiet disdain of my showbiz friends when we would try to make plans or meet up somewhere on the weekends. No one - NO ONE - wanted to travel out to the valley because they were too hip, too cool and stylish in their West Hollywoods and their Santa Monicas and Brentwoods and West LAs.

And mostly that was okay with me. Living in Burbank was cheaper, cleaner, safer and I quite enjoyed my 10-minute commute to Warner Bros., where most others were stuck on the 405 for an hour or more. I’d roll out of bed at 7:45, zip out to Priscilla’s for coffee and still make it into my office by 8:30 or so. The practicality, the logistics and utility of living in Burbank appealed to me, in addition to the fact that it always felt nicer, more homey and detached from much of the scum and villainy of Hollywood (where I had lived before Burbank, when I first moved out west).

I was an uncool person stuck in the middle of the capital of cool. I was in an industry where young, gorgeous and ravenous dynamos lived and died storming the beaches of the development networking circuit, where to know the most upward, connected people translated to success, money, power and celebrity moviemaker hob-knobbing. For a number of years I worked pretty hard to become one of them. I made the calls; I went to the screenings and the parties; I networked with the best; and I fought for those golden opportunities to spend my precious free time reading that hot script that everyone else was reading, expressly for the pleasure of being told the next morning that I was not allowed to have it.

But as much of an insider as I became, that personality never fit me well. I felt like an outsider, but stuck in the middle of the inside. Kind of like Burbank. And I came to realize that I would never actually become that guy I thought I wanted to be.

Still, Burbank held a lot of charm and whimsy, and these many years later I still like to tell friends and family the story of the nutjob neighbor who lived in the floor above my one-bedroom Burbank apartment.

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Disclaimer: If you’re a friend, coworker or landscaper of mine, you’ve likely already heard this story. Knowing me, probably more than once. I’d suggest that you visit another website for the next 10 minutes. Perhaps you’d enjoy a story about ancient animal dung?

Carlo Conda is a blogger and aspiring screenwriter who visits and comments here on Burbanked, and he recently wrote a post on his site in which he contemplates the logistics of moving to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune in the movie industry. Conda has some greater issues at hand than I had to deal with when I moved to LA out of college, but his post reminded me of what was probably the biggest mental shove that I got when I was a young man wearing his shoes.

I majored in film and TV production at Syracuse University. A terrific school, a great experience and a defining time of my life - but we didn’t get to learn much about the film industry. The school was much better equipped to teach about television production - which was also great - but my dreams were pointed in a different direction.

In my senior year, the school gathered up a dozen film production majors and accompanied us out to Hollywood for a week where we got to meet Syracuse alumni who had showbiz positions and who had graciously agreed to sit down and chat with us snot-nosed kids. We had meetings with Peter Guber, the late Alan Rafkin, TV producer Mark Tinker, agent Rob Light and others.

But the thing that stuck with me that week, and all these many years later, was the bit of wisdom that came from writer-director-cinematographer Peter Hyams.

At several points in film history, Hyams seemed poised to break out as a celebrity director. This is a guy ballsy enough to make a sequel to one of Kubrick’s most celebrated films, and pull it off with not-too-bad results. Hyams also directed two Jean Claude Van-Damme movies at the height of the actor’s popularity, and for all of its cheesiness, Timecop has endured over the years, spawning comic books and a short-lived TV series and even modern-day remake talks.

But all of that pales in comparison to the fact that Peter Hyams made Running Scared, one of the best buddy-cop movies ever filmed. Pre-Lethal Weapon and many years before Ratner ever polluted the genre, Running Scared accomplished a great many narrative miracles, not the least of which was in casting diminutive Billy Crystal as a badass - an impressive feat, never replicated since. So prior to meeting Hyams, I’d been a long-time fan.

He was a gregarious, gracious host, entertaining us with stories and an open sense of enthusiasm. But the very best moment came when someone in our group suggested that we as Syracuse students were at a disadvantage in competing for jobs against our UCLA and USC contemporaries because we’d had only rare opportunities to work with actual film cameras, film stock, editing or other parts of the film production process.

Hyams laughed a little, and said something like this:

“Ok, let me ask you something. When you guys get out into the film industry, what do you think your first job will be?”

We all just looked at each other. For being on the cusp of college matriculation, I suppose we weren’t all that smart. He continued,

“I’ll tell you. You’re going to work on a film set and you’re probably going to be doing something stupid and menial, like making sandwiches. And once you’ve worked on that set for two or three months, you’re going to learn everything about film that everyone else has learned in school.”

We looked at each other again, this time with hope glimmering in our eyes.

“So what you have to ask yourselves is this: can you make sandwiches as well as those kids from USC and UCLA?”

Yes, we energetically nodded, we can make pretty good sandwiches.

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. Move out here and start making sandwiches.”

Almost two decades later, at least one of the SU students who was on that trip with me is working as a produced screenwriter. Another is a film producer. And if Rich, Vivian, Andrea or the others whose names have slipped away from me are still living the industry life, how wonderful for them.

Instead, I found my fame and fortune far away from Hyams’ office, with a stunning wife, three blessedly healthy little boys and a clumsy mutt that we named after a piece of meat. Ultimately I think that life, despite our best efforts, tends to combine it all together for us. Some sandwiches we choose to make, while others just kind of plop down onto our plates.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Hollywood, May 2, 2008
With the June 18 release date for his upcoming blockbuster geo-eco-thriller The Happening, writer-director-actor M. Night Shyamalan is preparing to engage film lovers all over the world in an entirely new, immersive moviegoing experience! Hollywood is abuzz with the introduction of:

The M. Night Shyamalan MEoh™!

Let’s hear the details straight from the man himself, M. Night Shyamalan:

Essentially, the MEoh delivers me, M. Night Shyamalan, directly to everyone who loves my films in a way unheard of before I thought of it. The M. Night Shyamalan MEoh allows moviegoers to hear from me and explore my opinions at every contact point that they have with my movie. I’m able to tell them what to think and feel when most of the time they’re simply not sure how to do all of that. It’s truly a precious, extraordinary gift.

As he does with all of his innovations, M. Night Shyamalan is keeping the details of M. Night Shyamalan’s MEoh very tightly under wraps - but today for the first time, the public is getting a glimpse at three of the available MEoh packages!

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Technorati Tags: movie, m+night+shyamalan, the+happening, director, writer, cameo, auteur

This is all the convincing I need that Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan have absolutely figured out how to bring innovation and excitement back to the way movies are marketed. Please go ahead and click on that one-sheet; make it bigger, drink in that red and orange fire, read that frigging great tagline again. Then think about the fact that this poster - and all the others, and all the teasers and the trailers and everything Dark Knight-related - think about how fantastically they tease, compliment and energize the look, feel, atmosphere and brand of the movie they’re selling.

That isn’t always the case, of course, because usually the people who are making the movie are not the ones selling it - and too often we see those objectives fighting with each other. But think back to the Batman Begins posters and trailers; think of the imagery of the bats and how prominently they played in that film’s marketing. And then - wonder of wonders - the bats and the fear they inspire play an integral role in the movie’s narrative! So we end up feeling like the movie that we’re promised is actually the one that ends up on the screen. What a novel concept, one that’s become unfortunately rare and precious.

And The Dark Knight sure seems to be following that gameplan. I don’t know anything more about the movie than you do, but the marketing is telling me that it’s about chaos. Epic, brawling chaos borne of a lunatic mind and Batman is the only mothereffer who can take it all down. Think about all of the dark nastiness we’ve seen so far from Heath Ledger’s Joker. In a fascinating, unique way that is more or less the opposite of what we usually see, this movie’s marketing is showing us exactly what we’re gonna get, but without telling us how they’re gonna do it.

Think back to the dialogue from the last trailer - …you’ve changed things, forever… you’re just a freak - like ME! …no name, no other alias… - it’s all about chaos. The multiple viral campaigns, the scavenger hunts and clues and answers - all chaos. Now look at this one-sheet again, with its fury and destruction and fire and the world without rules and that one epic badass who will stand in the way. Oh but by the smelly grey leotards of Adam West, that is serious chaos, friends.

I recently asked my blog-pal Piper which movie he was more anxious to see this summer, The Dark Knight or Indiana Jones. He chose TDK because he simply felt more excited to see what the filmmakers will do with it. And while I can’t wait to see Crystal Skull, everything the marketing for that movie is telling me is that it’ll be the same old thing.

With The Dark Knight, however, anything could happen. It opens July 18th.

What are today’s screenwriters looking for? In Hollywood, the answer is simple: a quickly-pitched, overly familiar story idea that feels different, but of course isn’t. Die Hard in a blimp. Bad Boys II meets Schindler’s List. Rudy, but set in the ultra-competitive world of meat-judging.

Wait, what?

According to The Wall Street Journal, college meat-judging teams practice long hours in tough conditions, stretch their capabilities to the breaking point and bitterly compete against each other, putting future careers, prestige and bragging rights all on the line. Sounds like the stuff of good, old-fashioned derivative movie-making to me. Check out some of the article’s stirring, sports-oriented blurbage that peels the fur and skin away and exposes the freshly-slaughtered truth of competitive college meat judging:

Jace Hollenbeck approached the bloody competition floor…

“We didn’t come here to lose.”

…students spend most of a day staring at whole and dismembered carcasses…

“This is the big leagues for meat judging,” he said.

Then they drew near to gauge the udder fat.

It was the beef carcasses where many stumbled.

Sounds like someone at the Journal is angling for a screenwriting credit.

Are you paying attention, my slippery and scruple-less movie scribes? Just imagine the scene where the coach drags a beef carcass, hooked to a ceiling rail, across a room and slams it against a blackboard to make his point; or the one where a female team member faints from the cold of the meat locker; or the heartbreaking bit where the team’s plucky but untested rookie meat-judger lets everyone down by failing to identify an obese lamb. And just think of all the driving rock music-fueled training montage scenes!

Cast Josh Brolin as the alcoholic coach with a score to settle; or shoot it on a real college campus with a cast of unknowns and you’ve got Rocky meets Cloverfield; or simply pitch this to Will Ferrell and get him to make the same movie he keeps making, one. more. time. Hell, I’ll even gift-wrap a few more title ideas for you:

• Total Beef
• Glory in the Meat Locker
• Triumph of the Meat
• HARDBONE!

That should really be enough to get you started. (found via News of the Weird)

Technorati Tags: movie, screenwriting, logline+freebies, news+of+the+weird, wall+street+journal, meat+judging, college, sports, will+ferrell

Now I don’t want to pick on the once-prolific comedy director too much; the dude hasn’t shot a watchable movie since 1993 so I’m not one to give him a kick. But I would like to take one of Reitman’s movies and illustrate what I think is a pretty unfortunate use of a soundtrack pop song - and how that song can potentially wreck a given film’s legacy.

I’m not even sure where I was recently - at Wal-Mart? the mechanic’s? standing in line at Quiznos on Triple Meat Thursday? - when this song played over the muzak, and has since been running through my head on a loop of insanity throughout my waking hours. I’d have to do some research, but I’m pretty sure that Ted Bundy was a perfectly well-adjusted young man until this song got lodged in his suddenly murderous psyche.

The movie is this:

And the song goes like this:

‘Cos I wanna be good for you
I didn’t mean to be bad
But darlin’ I’m still the best
That you ever had
Just give me a chance
To let me show you how much
I wanna give you my love touch
love touch

For the most part, Legal Eagles is a decent movie, a fun distraction. It’s Redford at his most frivolous, rakish and charming. Debra Winger at the height of her popularity. Daryl Hannah doing…well, that Daryl Hannah thing. And the movie includes at least one escape-by-forklift, which simply can’t be a bad thing.

But I remember sitting in the theater watching this movie, feeling pretty good about life in general, and when the closing credits came up with Rod Stewart warbling about how much I needed his “love touch”, the entire experience exploded.

Now you can go ahead and make your case that there are far more grievous assaults on cinema’s use of pop music, because there are plenty to choose from. “Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” from Armageddon; “She’s Like the Wind” from Dirty Dancing (a song that my college restaurant coworkers and I revised to - naturally - “She Passes Wind”); pretty much anything by Celine Dion - all of these are affronts to the excellent history of movie music.

But the key difference in those cases is that those songs - as miserable as they may be - at least appeared to have some relevance to the movie’s story. Rod Stewart’s song seems to have come at an important milestone in his career, wedged between the softcore fantasy songs of my youth (”Kick off your shoes and sit right down/Loosen off that pretty French gown”) and the slushy, cloying dreck of later years (”There’s a love that’s divine/and it’s yours and it’s mine like the sun”). But Stewart’s “Love Touch” is a special case, an extraordinary abuse of movie-watchers’ goodwill and patience. Obscenely catchy and miserably annoying, the song’s ultimate sin is that its use in the movie is so pointless, so shoe-horned in as if an afterthought, that it actually damages the movie.

And I’m being serious. I remember leaving the theater feeling worse about Legal Eagles as a whole, simply because of that song. I’ve never watched it since, have barely thought about it, and am convinced that it was a terrible movie to begin with. It may be faulty memory or it may simply be good analytical skills, but the movie’s failure in my mind is entirely due to Rod Stewart’s lazy, boring, aim-for-the-middle effort.

Which has now been running through my head for about three days. Please, if you happen to see me walking down the street, I beg you: deliver a punishing blow to the back of my skull.

Better still, leave a comment with the lyrics to the movie pop song you love - or hate - the most, in the hopes that it’ll help purge “Love Touch” out of my head for good.

Technorati Tags: movie, music, legal+eagles, ivan+reitman, rod+stewart, soundtrack, love+touch, robert+redford, debra+winger, daryl+hannah