Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Stage VS Screen


I saw a snotty tee shirt once that read, “Film is Art, Theater is Life and TV is Furniture”. In my humble opinion, wearing something like that puts you at the head of the class when it comes to snobbery. Do not pass go – collect your more cultured than thou existence and go straight to… jail.

“Why don’t you like that? It’s witty enough and I’ve read this blog before – you have your own set of snobbish ways too, Evil Chicken!”

Guilty as charged and why that very well may be the case, Gentle Reader, please allow me to say right off the bat I find that tee shirt exclusive, a little myopic and heavily weighted down by a boatload of pride. “Why?” It’s because story is the key. I don’t care what venue it takes. Serve the story. However it manifests itself.

That being said please allow me to share a dilemma with you; I don’t know what format I’m going to write yet for this April’s Script Frenzy – screenplay or play. Now, let me just say, I am comfortable with the screenplay format. Not that I’m a whiz by any stretch of the imagination; no. I just have a working familiarity with that process. I’ve written them before or had a hand in writing them. Now I’ve written puppet plays but I’ve always used the screenplay as my canvas (man, that sounds pompous – I’m sorry). To date I have never written a PLAY in standard format. April’s Script Frenzy may be my chance to change all that.

What to do… what to do?

This may not sound like a big deal but it could spell the difference between victory (100 pages by the end of April) and defeat. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve got to do some research; dust off my old Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller books/plays. It’s always good to look before you leap. Hey, if worse comes to worse I’ve got my tried and true Screenplay formatting to fall back on… right?

Oh well. I’ll decide sooner or later. One thing that I could stand in April is some company. I hear that “Misery” loves it! No pressure or anything but April is Script Frenzy (http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/) and NOW may be YOUR time to shine.

Think about it.

1 comment:

Merci said...

Bravo! There is some marvelous writing in TV. A lot of trash, too, but that can be said of theater and film, as well.