Hi! My Name Is...

While we wait for the wheels of B-moviedom to turn, turn, turn, thoughts speed towards our next brush with greatness.. THE NEXT GREAT SCRIPT FROM DAVE AND CHARLIE.

Personally, I don't see how anything with the heading of "From the creators of Siege..." can fail, so I'm all jazzed about it. As you've read here on this blog ('in these pages' sounds better, but isn't really accurate, is it?) we're doing horror. Preferably SCARY horror. And we're in the dragging-our-butts phase of trying to put everything together.

Today, I'd like to talk about characters. Specifically, who I want to put in our little film.

Horror films have stereotypes. People who you expect to see. While I love stereotypes (our rule on Siege was "If it's not a stereotype, don't write the character in there") I'm looking and thinking of people we don't normally see on screen.

How about a character in a wheelchair? Not someone who's entire reason of existence is "The Guy in the Wheelchair" but a regular character who happens to be in a wheelchair. Think about the doctor on CSI. He has a limp and a cane, obviously something wrong with his legs. (I think it's actually the actor- not a character thing) but they don't talk about it. It's a non-issue. His handicap just adds to his flavor. Similarly, in the short-lived series Threshold, one of the main characters was played by Peter Dinklage, the ... uhm.. how do you say it in PC talk these days? Oh screw it, the midget. He was awesome. And his character had no reason to be small, (I actually read the script for the pilot episode, and he's just another character) they just decided to cast Peter Dinklage. Who's a great actor. (And I may be mis-spelling his name. Forgive me, Peter.

So let's put a main character in a wheelchair.

Or maybe a Born-Again Christian who never talks about her religion or tries to evangelize anyone. She's a normal character, who happens to be right-wing, born-again fundamentalist. Or conversely, a left-wing conspiracy freak. What kinds of people interest me, as a writer?

That's some of the joy of starting off a new project like this: no rules. I want to create a character who's into Feng Shui, I do so. And while I can't imagine his or her Feng Shui knowledge being central to the story, it's a cool element to pepper and color our cast.

You got anyone you'd like to see in a horror story?

QUICK NOTE: At a recent reading of my non-Charlie script, I got the comment that it read like a very exciting B-Movie. Now having written and made some B-Movies, I was insulted, because I was hoping my new script was more mainstream than that. But they explained that B-movie now means things like Anaconda, Underworld, stuff like that. Movies that make 60, 70, 80 million bucks that are generally dismissed by the critics. Well Hell, I'd love my other project to get made and rake in 70 million at the box office, so I'll take that as a compliment. Straight-to-video movies like Siege are apparently now called C-Movies.

I don't know if that means we need to re-name the blog.