Say What?

For the past several years of reading about directors and actors, whenever they've said something that ticked me I've written it down. Quite unintentionally I've ended up with a bit of a collection that I thought I might share.

Have a limited amount of money but limitless ambition - Danny Boyle

Meeting everyone else's expectations is really just meeting your own - Joss Whedon

Know the script so well you can work of instinct - Anthony Hopkins 

A character comes to a choice where things either get better or they get worse - A. Reynolds

Film making is the art of withholding information - Per Holmes

The power of mystery- the power of what might be - JJ Abrams 

Clarity & Geography - what's going on in the scene? where am I in the movie? - Tom Cruise

Story telling is joke telling - Andrew Stanton

"The cat sat on the mat" is not a story. "The cat sat on sat on the other cat's mat" is

- John le Carrie

As long as it is working, don't cut - Michael Kahn

Whatever character you're playing they are always doing something. They're not just talking. Alive and experience - Tom Hardy

What's the best thing a Producer can do? Fuck off mainly - Ewan McGregor

Always risk, go out onto the edge of the limb of the tree, go out even further till you fall 

- Laurence Olivier 

What happened between the characters birth and page one of the script - Viggo Mortrnsen

All you have to do is ask yourself what frightens you and you'll know what frightens me 

-  John Carpenter 

"Yes and" is the respond to all improvs - Mike Myers 

Work through that 97% of murky abysmal mediocrity to get that 3% which everyone will remember you for - unknown 

8 rewrites - well worth it - Ricky Gervais 

Breaking TV

As the final episodes of, arguably one of the greatest tv series of all time, comes to a close. I found myself wondering how the series managed to be so consistently smart, well written, and challenging at every step. Its been a total joy to be engrossed in a series that I've not been able to predict at any point and has beaten me at every turn. Not knowing who Vince Gilligan was I decided to look on IMDB. Mr. Gilligan's philosophy seems to be similar in nature to that of Aaron Sorkin. Basically you don't need to dumb a show down to get good ratings. You need to make the show better. My research didn't go any further than Vince Gilligan's bio where I came across the following quote.    

"I guess I learned and am in the process of learning that less is more and oftentimes it's a benefit when you don't throw the kitchen sink at it... Especially that you don't make any of your plotting decisions out of fear or desperation. That is an important lesson for anyone to learn, to keep to the story and the characters simple rather than letting it all get away from you in an effort to please what is perceived to be an increasingly attention-deprived audience. The show's either gonna work for you or not. The odds tell you it won't. Most shows don't work. And when they do work, it's kind of like winning the lottery. With Breaking Bad I feel like I pulled the lever at the slot machine, and it came up cherries. If it was something I did, I don't know if I could repeat it. Having said that, in hindsight, my good fortune was that I didn't have the opportunity to go with my first instincts and throw the kitchen sink plot-wise into our first season. If I'd done that, I would have painted myself into some seriously unpleasant plot corners. My general philosophy now more than ever is to give the audience the least possible, which sounds like a weird philosophy, but you want to parcel things out as slowly you can. Of course what that means is, you want to parcel things out as slowly as you can while keeping things gripping and interesting. I don't necessarily believe the conventional wisdom that the audience is more restless than ever and always needs more stimulation. People still like storytelling that can slow down enough to explore characters and examine them closely. I think there's still room for that. Hopefully, that never gets lost completely."

                                                                                                                            Vince Gilligan

It also brings to mind a quote slightly to grandiose to be used in this context. Not to be applied to Breaking Bad specifically, but to the intelligence of your audience.

 "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. Good night, and good luck." 

                                                                                                                       Edward R. Murrow

Why I want to do a serious scifi in the Red Dwarf universe.

If your relationship with Red Dwarf has been a fairly casual one you'll be forgiven for maybe missing what I'm about to tell you. The RD universe is dense, clever, and has a single through line. Ever notice all the weird creatures encountered in the series were all man made?

By the time we meet David Lister. There has already been a failed age of inter stella travel, a dangerous total emersion video game craze, the Bliss designer drug, genetic wars, and a Simulant uprising.

There are no aliens.

 "For hundreds of years ship full of Astros in stasis we hurled out of our solar system and inter stella travel enjoyed its golden age. The goal of course was that they'd encounter intelligent life. They didn't. Not even a moderately intelligent plant. Not even a stupid plant. Nothing. In all of the universe the planet earth was the only planet with any life forms. That's all there was" 

                                                                                                  - Infinite Welcomes Careful Drivers. 

This is how it goes. In the 3 million years the RD crew have been in deep space. Under the leadership of President Millhouse Nixon the sun has been killed. An ill fated mission to control the weather has cause the sun to destabilise.

The human race has to move. To a new planet in a new solar system. The Mayflower, a seeding ship, is sent to build a new home for the human race. Aboard are Androids, Simulants, and genetic cross breeds of great strength to help terraform the new world and build our cities before our illustrious arrival.   

A batch of Space Corps Marines are onboard too with the human races' most precious cargo. The G.O.D. Protocol.  The sum of all human genetic knowledge. The heart of the mission. 

Every 10 years a marine has a 3 day tour of duty. On his 4th tour LtCol Michael R Magruder (Rimmer's son by Yvonne Magruder) is tricked into releasing a batch of Simbi-morphs into the ship. The Morphs release the Simulants and take over the ship. The Marines wake from hyper sleep but they're out numbered and on the 3rd day defeated. During the fire fight the ship is damaged and crashes into an ocean moon. Eventually the survivors launch the escape pods. The co-ordinates of the Mayflower are written down, torn into sections and split between the genetic races so no-one race can return to the ship and the awesome power of G.O.D within.

In those 3 million years the Mayflower survivors have spread out amongst the stars, settled, and evolved. 

As the Red Dwarf crew head for home it begins to encounter these settlements.

There is just so much scope. We haven't even looked to alternative dimensions yet! 

Smoke me a Kipper I'll be back for breakfast.