Too close to the real deal?

[Meltdown]

Question from the not so knowing canucklhead.

Would I get in too much trouble if I have a character in a script that is loosely based on a real life serial (child) killer.

My first instinct would be no, as the overall story isn't based on any real event, but some bleeding heart might think I've infinged on this criminals rights, seeing the guy gets his head blown off in the opening scene.

There's always that clause at the end of a movie "the characters in this flick are fictitious and bear no resemblance to any living yadda yadda yadda...


Your thoughts?

[Zeeman13]

If it's truly loosely based, then it's not a problem as long as the character's name isn't something like Wayne Williams.

[Hangfire 2]

The movie business is a monarchy and story is King. If you're story is good, the studio will deal with any fallout and secure any needed rights. Write the best damn story you can. Don't waffle on it. A child serial killer is serious b'idness, so you can't fudge it. Make it real. Make it the best you can. Let the lawyers worry about liabilities after the studio shells out for the thing.

This is providing you aren't actually using true details of the case and just changing the names. Law & Order did an episode based on the Bernardo murders and it took them a long time and many re-writes to avoid litigation.

[GirlinGray]

Well, if this person is well known enough they have become public domaine, they're no longer protected by the privacy act. And can only go after you for slander and libel. Not unauthorized depiction. (Fame has its downside.)

If you blow someone's head off in the opening scenes, though, and that's it, they are gone? It is hard to say you depicted anyone concretely in a recognizable way, regardless of public domaine and public figure issues.

[Meltdown]

Plan to craft the script with no reservations and little restraint.

One of the killers in question is the "cereal killer" - this guy came home one day and without any reason, gutted his girlfriend's little boy and ate cereal out of him.

This is not a made up story - this guy is in a prison in western Canada.

That's the type of emotion twisting involved - my concern is that with minimal detail, one can figure out who the character is based on.

Based on what you have to say, I'll forget about it and just get the story written.


Tough script to write - I get enraged whenever i really get into it.

[Goreomedy]

"Tough script to write - I get enraged whenever i really get into it."

If this is the case, you have to ask yourself, "Is this story worth telling?"

If it drains you mentally to tell this story, it most likely will have the same effect on the audience. I'm not suggesting running away from a theme because it might disturb an audience... but if you notice adverse effects physiologically, you might want to move on to other projects.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a haunting film. It was a quality character study, I'll admit, but I wouldn't want to see it ever again. And I definitly wouldn't want to be involved in that kind of production, in the scripting or shooting stage.

[Bill Marquardt]

Kosk

see?

[Meltdown]

Anger is what I want to eliset from the reader/audience. If it gets me riled up - it'll get the audience going.

Emotion - that's what Speilsburg goes for and it's what makes his movies so good.

Your point is valid and i will definatley keep it in mind.

[Bill Marquardt]

Meltdown:

You won't understand my cryptic message to Kosk above, so I shall explain it. We were discussing graphic violence in horror films earlier with Goreomedy. I made a comment that pretty soon someone will show babies being skinned alive, with the excuse that it was in the newspapers as something someone said satan worshippers do.

Now here comes the "cereal killer" story. Okay, it makes you angry. You want others to get angry. For my taste, it's a story that does not need to make it to the silver screen. I am not an authority. Maybe it would sell. I don't know.

I only know that this world is filled with beauty and ugliness, and we humans spend way to much time on the ugliness. Please, please find something else to make a movie about.

This is not an meant as an affront to you. I'm just expressing an opinion.

Bill Marquardt

[PteranoDon]

A. The cereal-in-the-dead-kid event is too unique. Pretending that it wasn't this real life criminal's story would be a hard sell.

B. Think about the most gruesome serial flick ever made (Se7en comes to mind for me). Now replace all the victims with little children. Happy with the result? The words "gratuitous" and "sadistic" come to my mind.

I hate movies that put children in danger. It's cheap; every person with a soul is repulsed at the death of a child. What's the point? The biggest blow chow movie of all time?

I suggest you toss what you have in the fireplace and start over.

[kruel 10dncies]

sorry i've got to agree with pteradon to an extent. i know a few people who couldn't bear to sit through some parts of se7en. don't get me wrong it's a damn good film but not for the weak stomached. the thing is that i would consider myself very strong stomached, some of the ideas for my scripts i get are horrific, not quite as sick as that but still... the point is that this would make me sick to my stomach and i certainly wouldn't look forward to rewatching it. no-one likes to see little kids hurt, never mind gutted and filled with sugar puffs. visually strong images are good but this is something that doesn't need and most people won't particularly want to see.
my advice; tame it down a little... even if you only change it from a child to a dog. no-one likes to see a gutted dog but it's a damn site better than a gutted child and almost as powerful an image. hope it helps.
just my thoughts, kruel;@

[callit]

Melt,
The only way I see to pull it off would be as done in 'Silence Of The Lambs'. You'll have to have others talk about what has happened, perhaps prosecutors or witnesses giving testimony as to the sickening nature of the crimes. I think a forensics expert as a witness would best be suited for such scenes.

That's the only way I can think of executing the story if you insist on going through with this. There have been three major child-killer cases here recently, and NO ONE will allow any sort of leeway for such a story, regardless of your intent or angle.

I wholeheartedly agree with the others here: your efforts are best spent on more fruitful projects.

[lilybet]

I missed something. I thought the story was about someone who took revenge on child killers. Dumb, dumb me.

lilybet

[Meltdown]

I think I wiffed a bit on what my story is about -- the story isn't about the killers, it is a about a sniper that uses a british made ( thus U.S. unknown) rifle to pick off child killers and pedophiles ( most while still cooped up in prison)The only real violence is the sniper picking off his targets.

I knew that going into graphic detail on the killers themselves would cross the line - I don't like to write that type of "gore" - only the background on the killers is given as a voice over or news report - and I intended only enough to bring people's own thoughts to the forefront.

The sniper uses the cereal killer as a point of justification at a later part of the script - he explains what the guy did as he's setting up for the shot and then makes the bold statement

SNIPER (V.O.)
So look me in the eye and
tell me what I'm doing is wrong.




Thanks for all your comments - I definately keep them in mind as go.

Meltdown

[jpsinger]

A guy eating cereal out of a kid, while horrifying in real life, would be funny in a movie.

Unless you're going for a bizarre black comedy, using Junior as a bowl will wreck the tone of your script.

But don't worry about going too far. Never worry about going too far.

"I only know that this world is filled with beauty and ugliness, and we humans spend way to much time on the ugliness. Please, please find something else to make a movie about."

Sorry to say it, Bill, but this statement is the generation gap.

jps

[ksk2]

Morning, all. Stayed off this thread til now, because, well, "what dey done said" (the folks above). But at this point I think I can contribute.

Depending on the angle of this story, it would be something I'd avoid like Hanta virus. But...

Hansel and Gretal has a witch that cooks children (alive) and even tells them that beforehand. Now that is some sick s--t. Even worse considering that it's a story told to children. I've hated that tale since I first heard it.

Now, the angle here is somewhat different. But there'd only be several things that'd make me even consider watching this flick...

#1, no voice-over. Whether you write it well or not, no matter your intentions, or the actor who reads it, it'd strike me as an expositional justification for both the lead and the story itself. The audience won't stop to ponder the inner intent of the scripter. The story and characters should justify themselves, in and of themselves.

#2, the information about the sniper's targets and their victims would only come as a result of natural dialogue between the law enforcement officials hunting him, in the same manner as Law and Order and Homocide: Life on the Street (or Dalgliesh or Touch of Frost). We learn about the events as the cops do, or by seeing the sniper's actions. The only dialogue I'd want to hear from the sniper would be external, not internal. Spoken to whoever he runs into. Lines that would would show HIM, not his own perception of himself.

The reasons for these 2 points are simple: first, vigilante movies have been done do death/are a dime a dozen. Second, in all walks of life, there are "sacred cows". The more sacred the cow, the better your script had better be while working it in the abbatoir. You're tackling the biggest sacred-cow of all, and expositional v.o.'s and med. examiners giving us the vile details will seem (to many, IMO) to be an attempt to gild a leaden lilly.

I'm not saying don't finish the sript. But there are gonna be some landmines with it, and you'll need to avoid them.

Best of luck, kosk

[Meltdown]

Thanks KSK2.

Yeah, where my other scripts flowed onto the page quite easily - I'm having to sit and brood a lot more on this one.


I'll start chopping the V.O. - there isn't a lot of it and it is more to provide the shooter's POV - there is a reason it is in there and it's somewhat critical for playing out the story. (I'll go into in greater depth later or you can e-mail me at vwolff@mrosp.com - I'm at work right now watching pea sized hail falling down)

My agent said V.O. is tricky to pull off, but to give it a go.

I keep watching Blade Runner over and over...

VW

[lilybet]

"this statement is the generation gap."

I think not. Human nature never changes. Some prefer to dwell in the dark. Some prefer to dwell in the light. Some would never find the cereal event funny, no matter how it was presented.

Maybe the dark is cool in your crowd at the moment. Maybe you'll grow out of it and maybe you won't.

It has been said that there is a new generation every five years. So, you're about to become a "fogey" for the next crowd.

lilybet

[ksk2]

...that a film written by Deepak Chopra (starring Shirley Maclaine and a cast of a thousand Ren-Faire hippies) outsells Blade, Spawn, The Shining and Sleepy Hollow, you'll have an irrefutable point.

[PteranoDon]

A sniper that kills child killers and pedophiles? Now you're talking.

[lilybet]

Huh?

[ksk2]

Declaring (in your addition to this thread) that anyone who writes material that falls into your personal definition of "dark" needs to grow up, is merely stirring the pot. And frankly, films that deal with what you consider "dark" sell a lot of tickets. At least as much as "in the light" stories. If you don't like the genre, fine. But implying that anyone who does like them hasn't grown up yet doesn't help any script get written. And Edward Gorey focused on what multitudes of people consider dark: poisonings, murder, patricide, pedocide, premature burials, etc. But as I recall, you didn't have a problem with him. Gorey's focus on the "darkness" made him not only stand out from the "vanilla-hippies" of his day, but paid a lot of rent too.

In entertainment, or even accurate mythology, makes great success of the "dark". As did faerie tales. The accurate records of the Welsh Faeris (The Twllydd Teg) clearly state that they committed cannibalism on intruders. And one of the most successful female writers of all time made her name about an arrogant devil gone mad trying to raise the dead, which in her day was considered (literally) nauseating in it's depth of "darkness". The "Dark" sells. It always will. Because all cultures love it in context. Sorry.

[lilybet]

Oh, Kosky, Posky, Mosky,

You misunderstood my post. I was responding to the generation remark not critizing anyone for writing anything they want. Although, I suspect there might be a few people on this board that talk about it a lot more than they do it. Before you have one of your hissy fits, I wasn't referring to you.

I believe in a previous conversation in response to a question from you about my personal likes and dislikes, I told you what I liked but also said that I could appreciate anything that rose above it's genre. In other words, I just happen to like quality work in all things. Pity, there's not that much. But I already admitted to being a snob.

I will accept anything that is intrinsic to the story and characters but the minute it becomes gratuitous, it's off my list.

Gotta get back to my chick flick, the one with Shirley and the airy fairy hippies. The hippies do unspeakable things to her because she wasn't of their generation.

lilybet

[wcmartell]

Kosk gives good advice on VO, let me add...

We are trying to give the audience an experience.

So the method we communicate information to the audience is important. The more "first hand" the experience is, the more of the experience they feel.

A big problem with VO is that it isn't emotional at all - it's expositional (cerebral) by nature. It's cold - not just "second hand", but second hand removed from the situation. It's a comment, not an argument.

Dialogue can either be a "first hand" experience or expositional. If you have two people arguing - we're experiencing the argument "first hand". We're right there in the middle of it. That gives the audience an experience.

If we're doing expositional dialogue (those police reports), we're still "second hand". We don't get the experience. So we need to make sure there is something else in that scene that provides the "first hand" experience for the audience (the conflict in the scene).

I have a script that was made into an awful film called VICTIM OF DESIRE. I had two detectives listening to the ME give his report. Boring stuff. No conflict. No emotions. It's just exposition. We needed this information, but I had to find a way to add conflict to the scene. So I added the victim's wife. Now the scene takes place when the wife IDs the body. One of the detectives asks the ME for a preliminary report - and the ME starts rattling off gory details... in front of the wife! The other detective keeps trying to shut the ME up, but the first detective keeps asking questions (more gory details). It turns into a low-key battle between the two detectives: one wants to hear the information NOW, the other wants to shut the ME up until the wife has left the room. We FEEL for both the wife and thee second detective. We are emotionally involved in the scene... which is all exposition!

Every scene needs conflict - but exposition scenes REALLY need conflict to work.

But the best "first hand" information method is to put us right in the middle of a situation WHILE IT IS HAPPENING. Instead of having characters talk about something, have them DO something. There's more impact in a scene where a man actually catches his wife in bed with his best friend, than in a scene where he just finds evidence of it, or a scene where he hears about it (even if the person telling him is the best friend or the wife). One is a visceral experience, the other is removed - after the fact. Even if the wife and husband have a terrible shouting match... it's about an event that we weren't there to experience. It's still second hand. If we are there... if we SEE it... we react just like the protagonist. It has a strong effect on us. Because we are experiencing it first hand. We were there - it happened to us, too!

We're trying to give the audience an experience. The biggest emotional impact we can create. To do that we have to give them "first hand" experiences... not boring exposition.

- WC

[ksk2]

...and I am literally grinning without even a HINT of sardonic-anything.

And I completely agree with your taste RE gratuitous. Even when I write supernatural genre, I have to write what I enjoy. Which frankly is "creepy-stuff" rather than spurting arteries. If others wish to do that, great. :) More power to them. But I always think that an undetected changeling baby, pissed off at its new mortal parents and quoting curses from the Bronze Age, will always be more of a "chill" than an over-used butcher knife. I know you catch my over-winded drift...

And I could never fault you for being a snob. I wouldn't call you that myself, since I've been called different but similar things for years... >D

So while you happily go back to Shirley, I'll happily return to my Lugh Lamfada/Samildinach scene... ;)


Kosky, Posky, and ... Mosky? Guess I need to buy a genuine fez...

Thanks for helping me laugh at myself (again), "Kosky"

[Teris1]

I loved Se7en. I loved Fight Club. I love movies about the ugliness of society because they reflect society (at least as I see it).

I can't stand popcorn (non-comedy) movies like Forest Dump and The Green Mile. The utter absurdity of these types of movies annoys me.

That doesn't mean that I'm right and those that dsisagree with my movie tastes are wrong. I say write what you want to write and if people are offended and outraged, you're doing something right. Just remember, people were outraged at The Graduate, Fight Club, Casablanca, etc.

As for voice over, I generally agree with martell's post above. I dislike it because it is a way to "cheat" the audience by giving them information that the writer does not have the skill to write. That said, it can be effective when the story is too long to fit into "standard" screenplay length.

[ksk2]

Ah, Bill, what better way to agree with you other than...

An example of first-hand yielding good dialogue, from the hey days of Richard Pryor's career (on LP)...

Woman comes into her bedroom and catches her man with another woman, demanding an explanation...

Man: "Woman, who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?"

I was in my teens when I heard that on the stereo. And I've never stopped chuckling over it since.

Stuff you never forget... the mark of a great writer.

Happy 4th, "Mosky" (still chortling)