🏠🐴 Inneresting #162 - Build Your Mojo Dojo Casa House

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Can you feel the Kenergy?

Ken’s remodel of Barbie’s Dream House into his Mojo Dojo Casa House isn’t just absurd when you run the name through Google Translate. It’s showcasing all the things Ken is teaching his fellow Kens to value under a single roof. It’s one of many bold moments where the props and setting set the tone for the story, which you can learn more about in Jocelyn Silver’s look at the production design team for Barbie.

Sometimes a story calls for a big swing. In Scriptnotes Episode 577, The Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) talked about letting ideas grow big, since they could always be pruned back later. Dan Kwan explained the way they look at structure and emotional arc as ways of grounding their most out-there ideas:

With Swiss Army Man, structurally what we wanted to do is ask, “What if we started this movie with the worst idea ever, a man who is farting so much that he’s able to be used as a jet ski, but it’s cathartic and beautiful? What if we started with that image, and we still found a way to justify this film’s existence?” It felt like a very interesting challenge to us.

The classic line that Paul Dano used to use at all the Q and As was, “It was a film that started with a fart that made you laugh, and ended with a fart that made you cry.” It’s a semiotic experiment. It’s very academic. Structurally, that was what we were going for, and everything else was trying to be thrown into that bucket.

With Everything Everywhere, we asked ourselves, “What if we could create a multiverse movie that went to too many multiverses? What if we took the hero’s journey and deconstructed it beyond anything recognizable, where you had way too many stories, way too many wants, way too many needs?”

Originally, we wanted the whole film to fully collapse. Basically, we wanted the main character and the audience to not care anymore, to actually believe in nihilism, like, “Nothing matters. This story doesn’t matter.” Then we were like, “Okay, but what if structurally we got there, but then we still found a way to pull everything back together and make it make sense?”

🎶 Push - Matchbox 20 🎶

In Jurassic World, the Indominus Rex isn’t just a fearsome carnivore, but a walking, clawing personification (dinofication?) of responding to an audience’s desire for sequels to feel bigger and more exciting. Geoff Campbell, Digital Creature Model Supervisor for the film, describes the balance between entertainment and science involved in crafting these dinosaurs.

Every shot of Mad Max: Fury Road seems to feature at least three absurd things. Kyle Buchanan’s oral history of the film, Blood, Sweat & Chrome digs into the way the creative team would make character and world-building justifications for even the most outlandish choices:

Matt Boug: Colin made a point of coming over to me as the newbie to explain the ethos: Every single thing in the film had to have three or more functions. I ended up making this leather-wrapped tool kit that you would find in your car when you have to change a tire, and in it, one of the main pieces was a large crowbar. I’d also turned it into kind of a religious icon, like a big cross, as well as a weapon that you could swing and do some damage with.

George Miller: Our mantra that all the designers had was that just because it’s the wasteland, it doesn’t mean that people can’t make beautiful things. I’ve noticed that there’s an aesthetic with these postapocalyptic movies and games in which people tend to make it look like a junkyard.

Joshua Horowitz (journalist, MTV News): How do you come up with the Doof Warrior? What combination of ideas do you arrive at to get a guy in a red onesie with a guitar that shoots flames?

George Miller: He came to some degree to distill the nature of Fury Road: kind of wacky but rooted in some sort of reality. He was the equivalent of the drummer or the bugler, with his electric guitar.

“To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn't just about horses, I lost interest.”

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WGA Strike Update

Even with the announced meeting between AMPTP and WGA negotiators to discuss reopening talks, the best way to participate and support the effort to create a fair contract is to find a way to get involved!

If you are interested and able, join a picket line and show your support. The Writers Guild also has a list of other ways to help.

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Let yourself get weird with a Write Sprint

Each week we post a comment thread for writers to meet up, cheer each other on, and put some words on the page with a Write Sprint.

What’s a Write Sprint?

John wrote up an explanation, but here’s the short version: Set a timer for 60 minutes, close down all distractions, and do nothing but write until that timer goes off.

A sprint like that is a great opportunity to push your ideas further. You can always cut something later if it’s not working, but setting a timer and asking yourself “What’s the biggest, most absurd version of this I could write?” gives you a little freedom to play!

Shout out to last week’s Sprinters R. Austin Barrow, Genie Leslie, Elyse Moretti Forbes, and Brian Matusz!

Click here to join in!

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Weekend Read 2: Now macOS compatible!

Weekend Read 2 already fit screenplays perfectly on your iPhone or iPad. No more squint, pinch & zoom when trying to read on the go.

But now you can take notes and read on macOS, as well! You can even drag-and-drop on your desktop to add scripts to your library (that sync with any other devices that have Weekend Read 2 installed).

Weekend Read 2 for Apple Silicon Macs isn’t a separate app. If you downloaded it for your phone and/or iPad, you can add it to your Mac. And if you purchase a subscription for the Pro features, that carries over to the Mac as well!

See for yourself—Download Weekend Read 2 from the App Store!

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Previously on Inneresting…

In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Jonathon W. Stokes highlights why its important for these high stakes moments to come as late in the story as possible, suggesting that Nuking the Fridge too early diminishes the tension in everything that comes after.

What else is inneresting?

• A “de-make” of Myst for the Apple II, embracing the technical limits to prove what’s possible.

• Tess Garcia on seeing Barbie in theaters as an event: “For many, Barbie has evolved into more than a movie. It’s a movement, and an excuse to go out with friends and dress the way our younger selves dreamed we would as adults.”

• Patrick Willems takes a deep dive into what people using AI to emulate Wes Anderson get wrong about the director (and about making a compelling trailer).

Reading the room

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And that’s what’s inneresting this week!

Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.

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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art, Bluesky @ccsont.bsky.social, or Threads @ccsont@threads.net