WRITING TIPS FROM PRESTON STURGES

I assume every one here knows Preston Sturges (above, click to enlarge), the writer/director of literate 30s and 40s comedies like "Sullivan's Travels", "Unfaithfully Yours", and "Palm Beach Story." Here's Sturges on the art of writing:



ELEVEN RULES FOR WRITING A HIT MOVIE

1) A pretty girl is better than an ugly one.

2) A leg is better than an arm.

3) A bedroom is better than a living room.

4)An arrival is better than a departure.

5) A birth is better than a death.

6) A chase is better than a chat.

7) A dog is better than a landscape.

8) A kitten is better than a dog.

9) A baby is better than a kitten.

10) A kiss is better than a baby.

11) A pratfall is better than anything.

Nifty, huh?

WHY "RATATOUILLE'S" LOVE STORY NEEDED HELP

John K. recently did a terrific blog on Popeye and Olive Oyl where he called Olive "the most distinct and entertaining girl character in animation history." I agree! I like cartoon girls who are human beings and not glamour queens and karate experts, and who have to make the same moral choices that I do.

I can't stand standard cartoon girls like the Bratz girls above. Who would ever want to meet these hideous fashion zombies? Not me!

Cartoon girls don't have to be ugly. Look at the life Katie Rice manages to inject into her characters! I love Katie's stuff! I'm not normally interested in cute but her girls are more than cute. They embody youth and a sense that it's great to be alive!

A couple of years ago I decided to stop drawing girls in the Bratz style and try to discover a way of drawing them that felt right to me. Of course when I worked on other people's projects I drew the girls the way I was told. It was still fun (especially John's girls). But when I drew for myself I tried to find a style that fit my own taste and life experience. For better or worse, this (above) is what I came up with.

I like girls who are human beings just like I am. My kind of girl has an emotional need for men, just like men have an emotional need for women. This need makes them vulnerable and that vulnerability makes them interesting (I hope). In my opinion modern animated films put too great an emphasis on women's independence. Isn't it obvious that if they're so godawful independent then they don't need anybody and there's no dramatic tension? I can't understand why studios are blind to this.

Commenters liked Colette in "Ratatouille" more than I did. They were touched by the way she fell in love with the guy who washes the dishes. Well, I was too. But I can't help thinking that the character dynamics would have worked better if Colette hadn't seemed so independent. She looked like someone who'd been around the block and had no romantic illusions. She looked jaded. She didn't need a relationship. When it developed it seemed forced and phony.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SCHIZOPHRENIA?

I'm spot reading an interesting book called "50 Signs of Mental Illness" by James Whitney Hicks. I've read about 20% of it so far which I figure entitles me to analyse all my friends and offer sound advice about how they can improve themselves. I, of course, am completely normal.

The first illness I wanted to read about was the flagship mental illness, the one that Tony Perkins had in "Psycho", the King of the Jungle, the magisterial Mount Everest of craziness...schizophrenia. I was shocked to discover that this illness didn't even rate a chapter of its own. It was a minor subheading embedded in the middle of a chapter on psychosis. What the heck happened?

What happened was that schizophrenia has been demoted in recent years. It doesn't even indicate dual personalities anymore. That's called "multiple personality disorder." Now schizophrenia means pretty much the same as psychosis, and psychosis has something to do with taking delusions and hallucinations seriously.

The really scary thing is that psychosis has no known cure. Almost every psychotic can be moderately improved by drugs but only moderately. Well, maybe there's a partial cure for a few people. The book says that a third of them can helped to a greater degree if the medication starts early, after the first episode, but how often does that happen?

I thought the downgrading of schizophrenia would be the only shock, but it wasn't. There was the upgrading off something called "oddness."

Asberger's Disorder is one of the most prevalent types of oddness. That's where you have difficulty with social situations. You don't pick up on social cues or the intentions, discomforts and needs of others. In other words you behave like a chronic nerd. Nerdism is now considered a serious disorder! Nerdism has no cure but sometimes anti-depressants or anti-psychotic medication help. Some nerds can be taught to pretend they're normal.

Gee, thumbing through this book reminds me how of how much I miss Freud. That's his couch and chair in the picture above. Taken individually a lot of what Freud's ideas don't hold water. Taken collectively they constitute a marvelously imaginative and thought provoking body of work. Psychology was more fun in the Freudian era.

FACES TO DRAW FROM / KATIE RICE AUCTION

Here's (above) Shirley Temple, probably photographed by Halsman.

Shirley's picture is proof positive that the famous Elvgren Smile (above) exists in the real world.

Here's (above) Fernandel, a famous French actor in the 50s, also photographed by Halsman. Thanks to the commenter who linked to this!

Here's (above) sultry Ann Sheridan. I wonder if sultry existed before the era of Hollywood eye make-up?

I don't know who this guy (above) is.

Ditto this girl (above). She has an unusually weak chin. Put your thumb over the chin and try to imagine what her face would be like if she had a chin. You'll see that she's actually very pretty. What a difference a chin makes!

OK, enough about chins! Katie Rice, ace girl artist and proprieter of the world famous "Funny Cute" blog, is auctioning off some of her latest drawings. I saw the originals (which are much more colorful than these photo reproductions) and they are tres formidable! The girl can draw, what can I say?

One of these days we're going to lose her to Paris Vogue and you won't be able to touch one of her originals for less than a thousand dollars. Fortunately for us she doesn't know she's going to be famous yet so we can still buy drawings for what it costs to buy herself hula lessons.

These and other pictures will be on eBay soon, if they're not there now. Check them out on Katie's blog: http://funnycute.blogspot.com/

LET'S FIND A GIRL FOR THIS MAN!

I have a problem! A friend and frequent commenter on this site has a feud going with my other friend John K, and takes every opportunity to knock him in print. I know what you're thinking: so what? John can take care of himself. Weeeel, it's not that simple.

The person I have in mind is slow to anger but once aroused...Holy Cow! Run for the storm cellar! The man doesn't stop till his opponent is a bloody mass of palpitating organs on the floor(I mean this in a verbal sense; the man isn't violent). This guy isn't just an angry young man, he's a Tasmanian Devil!

I thought of asking my friend to cool down and take a vacation from the site for a while, and I'll do that if I have to, but I'm really conflicted about it. I just don't feel comfortable with censorship. I've wracked my brain to think of some other way of handling this and here's the best solution I could come up with...

...WE NEED TO FIND THIS MAN A GIRL! Not just any girl but a girl who's a Tasmanian Devil in her own right... someone who can match the guy growl for growl, then kiss and make up. They say love soothes the savage beast. Let's put that to the test!

To all Theory Corner Women...if you're single, and maybe a bit on the temperamental side...or if you have a girlfriend who's proud that she doesn't take guff from anybody...Boy, do I have the man for you!

Of course this girl shouldn't be too shabby in the looks department. The man I have in mind is rather studly and can't be expected to lower his standards. What does he look like? Let's see...he's in good shape... maybe in his early thirties...neat...well-spoken. One person I asked thought he looked like Marlon Brando (above).

I think he looks like John Garfield (above).

Now this man can be a real terror to outsiders but he's a real pussycat to his friends and co-workers. He's in no way shape or form abusive. He's literate and he's a hard worker. His only flaw is that he verbally rips the heads off people he thinks are pompous and beats them verbally to death with their own tendons. Well, we all have defects.

Some girls are like that too! Imagine how happy a girl like that would be with someone of her own species!

I hope Theory Corner readers will come to my aid here. If you have a candidate in mind please put her picture and contact info up somewhere you can link to. Imagine how good you'll feel knowing that you brought two kindred souls together!

WHAT IS A STORY?

Julie: "What's all this talk about animated features needing a good story? What is a good story anyway?"

Ray; "A good story? Well, that artsy stuff is hard to define. Good stories in the modern sense are a fairly recent invention, maybe...um...maybe only a few hundred years old! Greek and Norse mythology, Homer, Tristan and Isolde, The Death of Arthur -- they're all good stories alright, but they're not good in the sense that "Hamlet" or "The Maltese Falcon" is good."

Betty: "Outside of plays I'm not aware of any truly compelling stories, ones that keep the reader on the edge of his seat wondering what will happen next, till the 1800s."

Montgomery: "Sorry! I have to answer the call of nature! If you can still hear me outside the door, I think that episodic, rambling stories like "Tom Jones" were good stories. Jones was written somewhere around 1750.

Modern stories are more streamlined and goal-oriented but for me they have to have some of the "you are there" feel of Jones or else they feel too contrived. That's why Dickens was such a good storyteller. He had strong plots but he mixed them with the gritty, first-person feel that the 18th century novels had."

Ann: "Ah, we're getting to something interesting here! How does an animated film like say, "Ratatouille", fit Montgomery's criterion? Does Ratatouille combine a real page-turner 0f a plot with folksy, real-life experience like the kind you find in Tom Jones?

George: "Ann, I'm sorry to turn my back on you but you're talking nonsense! Comedy is more anarchic than that. It follows rules that are intuitive and...well... musical! Your Tom-Jones-plus- Maltese-Falcon formula doesn't fit comedy. Either do comedy pure or figure out some way to merge it with the other two things! Just don't water it down!"

Eleanor: "But Ratatouille is a cartoon. Cartoons have to follow structures that lend themselves to funny drawings. Maybe cartoons shouldn't try to tell dramatic stories."

Burt: "I think the guy writing this is getting sleepy. Let's pick this up later. Um... Montgomery, you're gonna open a window in there, right?"

70s WEIRDNESS

One day an asteroid might hit the Earth and all records of the 1970s might be wiped out except for the references to it in my blog. I figure if that's the case, then I better give some serious thought as to what should be preserved. For the sake of posterity I've chosen two phenomena that I believe the future will be interested in:

1) In the 70s men wore middle-aged ladies' hairstyles!!!!!!!!!! The housewives you used to see on Monty Python...the ones with purses that they used to use to hit people with?...they were visionary trendsetters, way ahead of their time. All over America men longed to have hair like they had. No, it wasn't just Ronald MacDonald (above)...

...it was everybody! Why should little old ladies have all the fun?!

The middle-aged lady hair styles were believed to work best with plaid pants and package-revealing crotches (above)! The wall paper the guy is leaning on was everywhere. It was believed to go well with floppy, leatherette sofas and rounded coffee tables. You still see this paper in barber shops and men's rooms.

2) In the 70s women developed a way to show their packages too! I guess women were dismayed because they had no packages to show off. They wanted to have fun too! This was remedied with the invention of camel-toe pants. At first camel-toes were found only on leisure wear...

...then the formal camel toe appeared. Now you could be a hard-hitting executive and still let the guys in the boardroom know you're a girl!

Over time camel toes could be found everywhere: In TV audiences, in supermarkets, even in church.

I hope somebody seals a hard copy of this in a time capsule and buries it in their backyard.