Bechdel test - do I pass?

John August has been reminding everybody, who doesn't already know, about the Bechdel test which assesses the presence of women in movies. The questions are simple:

1. Are there two or more female characters with names?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. If they talk to each other, do they talk about something other than a man?

This is relevant to me because I've just completed the page one rewrite of Winter and popped it over to the Director who is quite enthusiastic - which is nice.

So, does Winter pass (even though it's only about 30 mins long)?

Yes, two female characters with names (40% of the named characters but one of them is the protagonist) . They do talk, albeit briefly, and it's not about men.

Quick run through of other stuff I've written: Monsters passes (TV); Air passes TV); Unit X passes (TV) ; Babel passes (film); Une Nuit a Paris passes? (I think) (film); Tec passes definitely (TV); Running fails (film). So, not too bad.

And Running wouldn't be too hard to fix - several characters could easily be female.

Which leads to the question: why are they male in the first place, if it doesn't matter? Essentially because I was just following stereotypes. If I can manage two females in Unit X which is World War II US Army (okay, one's a doctor and one's a nurse); I'm sure I can manage more women in Running (in fact just thinking about it introduces some interesting possible dynamics).

How do your scripts stand up to the test?

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What's on the turntable? "Soultrane" by John Coltrane. Nice.

Muddy waters

Not the great blues singer - I've hit act III of my ScriptFrenzy script and I'm procrastinating.

Now the movie plot has to deviate significantly from the book plot because the original ending just won't work for an action movie.

Mostly, up to now, I'd been following the storyline although I had changed the order of some events and lost a few superfluous characters.

If truth be told, I haven't envisaged the ending fully - and without a place to go, how do you know how to get there?

Better think quickly, I need to finish this today.

EDIT: I pondered, I resolved, I wrote - and finished. That's ScriptFrenzy done for me this year.

I have been watching...

Warehouse 13 - fun, popcorn TV. The Prisoner - nowhere near as bad as the bleating sheep try to make you believe. Sir Ian is wonderful, of course. Some nice little nods to the original but it's definitely its own story. Weirdly enough it reminded me most of The Truman Show. And they kept the rovers, lovely. Ashes to Ashes - excellent. The Mentalist - why try to make a modern Sherlock Holmes when you have this? (Which is a modern Sherlock Holmes.) Flash Forward - rather good. Dr Who - Spitfires in space! What else is there to say? Heroes - the ship has been turned around, but I doubt anyone will believe me.

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What's on the turntable? Bach's Prelude No.1 played Jacques Loussier and his jazz trio. (I've added a Spotify link, I wonder if it'll work)

It's the first day of Scriptfrenzy and by sheer chance I have a free day so I'm getting ahead with my adaptation, sitting alone in this Birmingham hotel. On page 12 so far.

It has to be said this script is a work of love - as someone blogged recently the idea of not being passionate about a script you're written is a bit silly. But I really love this book. It's available for option.

It's a book that had a profound effect on me when I was young and, apart from having rounded characters for even the smallest bit part, it is gloriously visual and structured like a blockbuster*.

I just pray that I can communicate the original author's vision because no matter how beautiful I make it (assuming I do), it's a shadow of the original.

Mind you it's also a relief to finally get it out and on to paper ... well, electrons.

*Except the end, which needs to be very different to work as a movie ending. And the beginning which was a very nice beginning but not a movie beginning ... I'm also leaving out some main characters and combining others. Well look, a novel is not a movie and never will be, you can't be blind to these things.

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What's on the turntable? "Fairground" by Simply Red from "Simplify"

Update

After my feedback from Blue Cat I've gone through the script of Running doing a general clean-up and trimming of dialogue and scenes. Doesn't really seem to have shortened it much.

Mind you I am now slightly embarrassed: As I mentioned this was a second draft and, as it turns out, it was packed with errors. Okay, in my universe a grammatical error every couple of pages = "packed" - but honestly there were so many adverbs plus continuous and passive tenses it was painful.

To think I sent them that ... and I've had it up on Inktip for the last few months as well. It even got downloaded a few times. Oh dear. Basically I just completely forgot that it had had no feedback at all, and no rewrites.

Anyway it's all shiny now. So I'll pop it back for the competition.

I originally wrote Running during a ScriptFrenzy a couple of years ago. And I've just decided I'm going to do it again (4th time). I find the deadline of 100 pages in 30 days to be very helpful in forcing page writing. I also have a script I've wanted to write for a few years, so I'll be doing that. We will give it the codename of Babel.

In fact this is a genuine secret project, it's an adaptation of a novel by a very famous author that made a huge impression on me, I know the option is available and I've been talking to the author's agent for several years. I spoke to Kate Leys about the project at the last Screenwriters Festival and she told me I should definitely write the script and not worry about the option for now - because I'm already in a good position.

So I will.

(There's another secret project which I'll call Beijing, another adaptation for which I have consent from the author but I won't be getting to that for a while.)

Next up is Winter in it's new guise as a period piece. Although the script isn't finished we now have a producer on board - and this project is very "serious". The producer is already asking very serious questions so we can nail down a budget because this one is going to involve money and everything.

As mentioned by Director Chris we need to find our niche in this world - play to our strengths. We both love SF and Fantasy - but those don't generally come cheap when it comes to production, so we shall be experimenting with the CG route. And if you want a clue to our plans I refer you to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

It's very interesting and very exciting.

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What's on the turntable? "Lerandis" by Cluster from "Qua"