Screenwriting 101

Yesterday was a very special day. It was St Patrick’s Day. It would also have been my father’s 93rd birthday. That’s the age he would have liked to reach, just like Nelson Mandela has.

But, as my friends now know up to a point approaching tedium, my father was murdered.

So it was a funny kind of day. I couldn’t write. I lost seven chess games in a row. I cooked a meal half-heartedly. I was late for this week’s movie.

I ran there, sat down and was about to switch my new cellphone to silent when I realised it was missing. It had cost me $200 the day before and was now my cell phone. I wasn’t going to enjoy this movie worrying about my wife worrying about $200.

On the screen there was a beautifully rendered chameleon in search of his own character, his own heroism. It sounded like Screenwriting 101. Did the creators of those few minutes really think children care about some screenwriter showing off some or other theory he or she has learned?

I had to go back on to the street to retrieve my cell phone. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t in my car. So I drove home and there it was, on the couch. So I grabbed a sausage and decided to go back to the movie. This was a good half an hour later, and I still had to go and relieve my bladder.

Rango (Johnny Depp) the chameleon was a liar who had become the sheriff of a very desperate town. The town was called Dirt. Someone had usurped Dirt’s water. Someone said you control the water you control everything. Very true, very topical. Many millions of litres of blood are still going to be spilled because of water.

Rango, the first animated film made by George Lucas’s company, Lucasfilm, is beautifully rendered. The characters are endearing and highly original. The writing, however, sucks. If this film is supposed to be for children, of all ages or not, how do the writers expect real children to understand jokes about gloves and prostates?

Then there’s Rango meeting up with a Clint Eastwood rendition, telling him he can’t escape his own story, hoarsely. Again, do children really care about what some writer feels like telegraphing about The Spirit of the West? I don’t think so. Obviously there was a chase across the desert that was reminiscent of that other Lucas vehicle for bad dialogue, Star Wars, but the chase was really done well.

Afterwards I went to an Irish pub and it was pumping. There were photographs of all the great Irish writers on the walls. Writers like Wilde, Yeats, Beckett. Lots of men were wearing funny hats, beards and green T-shirts and the tiny barmaid had a cheery glint in her eye.

I liked that, and I think my father would have too.

Neil Sonnekus