ScriptSuperhero.com

Sometimes you have to know a lot more than what ends up on paper.

Whether it’s a screenplay, stage play or a high school essay, it always comes across who knows their stuff and who’s flying by the seat of their pants when it comes to writing well on any topic. And you can be sure, when you’re in the writing biz, that eventually someone’s going to come along and go over your work with a set of exam gloves and a fine-toothed comb.

My best example actually comes from a high school essay I did on Nicholas and Alexandra, the last Czar and Czarina of pre-Soviet Russia. All I had to turn in was a 15-page paper and I had an entire high school semester in which to write it. I probably could have flipped through one basic primer on the Russian Revolution and obtained all I needed. Instead, I got caught up in the subject and read about four books on the topic, including one on Rasputin and one on the love letters written between Nicholas and Alexandra.

While the Rasputin stuff was nice and spooky, it will always be the love letters book that made the biggest impression on me, because it humanized authority figures for me. Here was Nicholas, Czar of Russia, one of the most powerful nations on earth at the time, and then there was Alexandra, member of the royal line of Europe. Both very important people, powerful and impressive.

Yet their love letters were little more than the sweet and foolish things that passed between boys and girls in my own senior class, full of sweet nothings, insecurities, uncertainty about whether the other person liked them. Just normal beginning of a relationship and falling in love stuff. It was an amazing book that helped me see, even at 18, that folks in the halls of power in our world are all just people, no different than anyone else.

That’s good writing. And after all that research and reading, I think mentioning the love letters of Nicholas and Alexandra made up for less than a page of my essay. Yet because I did that research, I knew my subject so much better as a result, and my problem was not reaching 15 pages; my problem was trying to stop when I reach page 25.

“Scary Movie”-style comedy “Meet the Spartans” beat out the return of Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo character, laughing up $18.7 million at the box office this weekend, the movie’s debut. Rambo, meanwhile, wasn’t far behind, coming up with over $18.1 million to take second place at the box office. That’s not a spectacular debut, but it’s not exactly billet grilles, either.

27 Dresses held up better than expected to nab third while Cloverfield fell sharply after its record-setting debut last weekend; business was off nearly 70 percent. Coming in fifth was Untraceable, the high-tech thriller, which made only $11.2 million in its opening nod.

Teen pregnancy comedy Juno was bumped from the top five, but took sixth place, having topped $100 million in the last eight weeks of release.

TV Guide.com is predicting, based on talks on strike lines with striking writers, that the WGA Strike could be over in time for the Oscars, which are scheduled to air on February 24. That’s about four weeks away.

While a bold prediction, there is evidence both in favor of, and against, such a resolution, so no one should start ordering the imprinted promotional products for the Oscars just yet. In favor of an impending resolution are many bits of evidence. Individual studios keep striking transitional agreements with writers, to get them back to work early, every day; last week, Marvel, Lionsgate and RKO became the latest to announce individual agreements.

Also, the WGA-AMPTP negotiations, which resumed last week, are still on with no new breakdowns to muddle up the works. Technically, the atmosphere is ripe for a settlement and a tentative labor agreement could be reached any day, though it would take about a week after such an announcement for the WGA to put any such agreement to a membership vote and collect the results.

So here’s the real schedule: the Oscars would need to see a green light from the WGA no later than a week in advance. That pushes the deadline out to February 17. But that would have to be the day the membership of the WGA votes in favor of an agreement, since announcing a tentative settlement wouldn’t end the strike. So that means the latest a tentative agreement can be reached for the strike to end and the Oscars to go forward would be February 10, just under two weeks from now.

At least one writer interviewed on the picket line by TV Guide has admitted that if the strike remains unsettled to the point that the Oscars must be sidelined in the way the Golden Globes were, it would almost guarantee that the strike could drag on well into summer, perhaps as long as another year.

Scary thought. Let’s hope they work out a tentative agreement soon!