Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Last night I was watching the 1992 movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer, directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui and written by Joss Whedon. In the film Buffy (played by Kirsty Swanson) is a high school cheerleader in California, who spends most of her time shopping and hanging out with her friends, until she meets a strange man named Merrick (Donald Sutherland) who tells her that he is a "Watcher" and that she is The Slayer, or Chosen One, a girl who is born once every generation to fight vampires. It turns out that vampires are responsible for a spate of disappearances and murders in the local area. The movie looks very dated now and the kind of Bill and Ted and Clueless style humour is pretty broad. Although the film is fun and entertaining enough, it is not nearly as good as the TV series, and the series isn't really a follow on from the movie. Apparently Whedon was unhappy with the film because of the changes it made to the script. The TV series has a much better balance between the comedy and horror elements, whereas the film is pretty much entirely played for laughs. Apparently there is a rumour that a remake to the film is in the works which will have no connection to either the original film or the TV series and no involvement from Whedon.

It was another very average day at work, and it really was very dull. However, last night I got back in to my TV script which I had to put to the side last week because I was busy with the Film Festival.

Film Festival Week

Today was the start of another week at work, and of course it was pretty much the same as usual. I've got Film Festival movies pretty much every evening this week except for this evening and Thursday evening.

It means I probably won't be able to do much to my TV show script this week, but I'll keep on doing bits to it when I can and maybe work on the outlines of later episodes in the series.

TV Show

Last night I wrote some more of my script. I am planning to write it at the rate of an episode a week. At the moment I've got what I think is a good opening sequence and a title for the show. I really hope that it works out. As time has gone on I have become more and more determined to be successful.

After that I was watching an episode of Blake's 7 on DVD, which was pretty good.

It was another really quiet day at work today.

Massage at the Office

Last night I was watching the first ever episode of Red Dwarf on DVD. It was originally shown in February 1988 and is kind of crudely made compared to what came later, but it's still really funny. It's kind of interesting how shows change as they go along and Red Dwarf really changed a lot in it's time.

Work was kind of average today. One thing that was fun was that at work they were doing a free taster of the massages that they offer. They had people coming round the office and doing massages for people at their desks. I had a head and shoulder massage which was really good and felt really relaxing.

I'm still working away on the Script Frenzy screenplay and so far I'm doing pretty well, with 80 pages written.

Scream and Scream Again

I managed to get to the top of page 38 on the Script Frenzy script yesterday, so it is going pretty well. Sometimes it does go really well, but there are days when it feels like trying to complete a complex jigsaw puzzle with no picture and no pieces.

Last night I watched a new episode of Red Dwarf. Red Dwarf was a British science-fiction sitcom set on a spaceship in deep space which ran for eight seasons between 1988 and 1999. It was cancelled and is returning, for the first time in ten years, as a three part Easter special. I watched the show regularly when it was on, and I really liked it a lot. It was fun to see it again, and it was good to see that they had gone back to basics with the show. It also brought back a lot of memories of watching it during it's original run, when I was twelve and thirteen and permitted to stay up later on Thursday nights to watch the show.

Later on I watched a 1970 film called Scream and Scream Again. It was a truly bizarre film in which the police are investigating a vampire serial killer (who looks a lot like a demented David Bowie) who may or may not have something to do with a sinister doctor (played by Vincent Price) who is conducting strange experiments at the behest of a group of fascists (led by Peter Cushing). Thrown into the mix is a spy (played by Christopher Lee as a cross between James Bond and Dracula) and a man in hospital who wakes up every morning to discover yet another limb is mysteriously missing. It's a blend of horror, science-fiction, police procedural and spy thriller. It's almost as if the film-makers decided to throw in anything they could think of that was quite popular at the time, including the band Amen Corner who turn up at one point to play a couple of songs. If the film made any kind of sense at all, it might have been quite good. In the end it doesn't and it isn't. However it does feature a good car chase, and a hilariously over the top performance from Vincent Price.

Late at night I did watch a genuinely good horror film, Night of the Demon, directed by Jacques Tourneur, and based on the short story "Casting the Runes" by MR James. The story involves an American academic (Dana Andrews) who has made a living debunking paranormal phenomena. He is due to present a paper at a conference exposing the activities of sinister occultist Karswell (Niall MacGinnis). However Karswell secretly gives him a scrap of paper with Runic symbols written on it, which basically means that in three days time he will be made off with by a giant firey horned demon. Tourneur originally didn't want to show the demon at all, and leave the film more ambiguous, but the film's producer took the movie away from him and included footage of the monster in all it's rubbery, puppet glory in the first scenes of the film, as well as in the climax. However the film remains a classic despite this due to Tourneur's talent as a director and a clever script. The movie manages to be scary without including any blood or gore, because Tourneur was very skilled at using the interplay between light and shadows, often making it feel as if the real threat was looming over the characters in the deep shadows or just outside the frame. The original story is brilliant as well. Apparently a props man working on the film was asked to supply a set of Runic symbols. He came back the next day holding a couple of orchestral cymbals and said "I couldn't find any Runic. Will brass do?"

Today I went out and got some groceries for the coming week. Also it is quiet around here today, which makes a change. I was woken up early yesterday by the people living upstairs doing DIY, and I could hear the hammering throughout most of the day. They seem to not be doing it today, but my kitchen still reeks of paint. They are the same people who are in the habit of blasting out the Rolling Stones at about 1000 decibels at eight o'clock on Sunday mornings when I am trying to sleep! Another thing that annoys me is the people next door throwing parties every weekend and having sex very loudly, which I can hear very clearly through the wall (although that only lasts a few seconds so it's not too bad). I don't complain, I just try and ignore it, but I do feel like I've skipped forward twenty years and become like a grouchy, reclusive old man.

The Scariest Movie

I managed to get to sixteen pages on the Script Frenzy script yesterday. Last night was fairly quiet, I watched an episode of The Wire that I taped from TV on Friday night. Later on I watched the second and last part of The 100 Greatest Scary Moments. They rated The Shining as the scariest film of all time, with it's scariest moment being the famous sequence where Jack Nicholson smashes down the door with his axe and shouts out "Here's Johnny!" The second scariest film of all time according to the poll was The Exorcist.

Today I went along to my parent's house for lunch as usual. The latest issue of Sight and Sound had arrived with the main feature this month concerning the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the French New Wave movement.

We went along to Pizza Express for lunch. I had a some fried dough balls with garlic butter and Four Seasons Pizza (which had tomato, cheese, mushrooms, anchovies, capers and olives) along with a bottle of Peroni Nastro beer. That was really nice.

Half Day

Last night I got to eight pages with my script for Script Frenzy, so it's going pretty well so far.

I was on a half day at work today, so I managed to get out at two. Later on this evening I am going to have a drink with my friend Joe, but until then I'm going to do some more work on my script.

In the Neighbourhood

Last night I managed to do four pages of the script for Script Frenzy. I have the story worked out now, so it is progressing. The provisional working title is In the Neighbourhood (taken from the title of a Tom Waits song).

Today was another quiet day at work. I'm only in for a half day tomorrow, so that should be good.

Last night I was reading a pretty shocking and very funny article by the science-fiction author Harlan Ellison about his experiences writing a TV show called The Starlost in the 1970s. The show was totally transformed from Ellison's original vision of a real, intelligent science-fiction show and ended up being a total flop that is now pretty much completely forgotten.