March 27, 2021

I attended a virtual panel hosted by Women's Weekend Film Challenge. It featured Ruthy Pribar and Daniella Nowitz, the director and DP (respectively) of the Israeli movie Asia. They talked about the movie and about the relationship between director and DP. Then they watched clips submitted by participants and gave them quick critiques. It was really cool! I liked hearing how the use of camera styles and cutting helped tell them about the scene and its characters. Stuff I wouldn't have thought about. 

I reread Hell House (I talked about this yesterday, I think, and was more sour on it.) and found that I was taking stuff out. Especially the last line in a scene. Back when I was writing it I was worried that the reader wouldn't understand what was going on. When you've got it all in your head, it's hard to know what's going to be obvious to the reader vs what's obvious to you. It had been a couple years since I looked at the script, so I could approach it from a reader's POV, having forgotten the step-by-step action. I had been telegraphing in a bunch of places, which I took out. Allow the audience to make those leaps, hold on to a bit of mystery especially if the meaning is clarified in the following scene. 

MLog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

MOONSTRUCK

1987

Directed by: Norman Jewison

Written by: John Patrick Stanley

Watched: 3/26/21

Loretta (Cher) is engaged to marry Johnny, a man she likes but doesn’t love, much to her mother’s relief. He mother thinks marrying someone you love breaks your heart. Johnny leaves to Sicily to be with his dying mother and asks Loretta to try to reconcile with his younger brother and ask him to come to the wedding. Loretta meets Ronny (Nicholas Cage), Johnny’s younger brother and the two fall in love/have sex. Loretta insists that she has bad luck. She waited for the right man in her first marriage and two years later he got hit by a bus. She tells Ronny they can never see each other again. He agrees as long as she goes to the opera with him. They go, and while there Loretta sees his father with his mistress. She goes home with Ronny again. The next day, Johnny comes back from Sicily – his mother having miraculously recovered – and Ronny comes over to meet the family. Loretta’s mother confronts Loretta’s father about the affair and he agrees to stop. Loretta decides to tell Johnny about her love for Ronny. Johnny shows up and breaks off the engagement, thinking that it was their engagement that made his mother sick in the first place. Then Ronny asks Loretta to marry him and she agrees. 

I really liked this movie. It treated serious things sillily and took silly things seriously. Nicholas Cage and Cher are great in it. The whole cast is great. It’s a romantic comedy that fulfills on its promise to be a romance (as opposed to merely a “rom”). It has an undergirding of real pain, depth, loyalty because it includes the love stories of people who have been married a long time, people who are faithful and those who are not, of people who are looking for things in love they’ll never be able to find. 

Rating: ★★★★