critique Mars scene.

[Spike]

I feel like posting (for, I think, a short time) another one of these, from the PKD (Philip K. Dick) adaptation. I think it gives me the illusion that I'm doing something, lol. I've invented the incidents and the dialogue (with the exception of a few lines) but I try to follow ideas in the book. It's a taste of some of the kinds of concerns in this story, and I'm interested if it resonates or is tiresome.

In this scene (5.5 pages) we have a main character, Jack, a repair man, who has been called to the Public School of Mars, which is staffed with AI robots, to look at a malfunctioning janitor suddenly obsessed with puke, tossing his orange sawdust stuff everywhere. It is an assignment he dreads: "I just don't like those things. They don't fool me," he has said.

Anyway, Jack finds the janitor's issue--a recursive loop, maybe a coder's private joke. He is then asked to look at another teacher, the school counselor, a Kindly Dad model (maybe a replica of Mr. Rogers), who, he is told, seems, intermittently, to be repeating himself.

Jack has just gotten a call from his wife about his neighbor who has committed suicide.

https://www.keepandshare.com/doc30/114720/kindly-dad-pdf-72k?da=y

 

[Nate North]

ok, so there are good and bad things about this.

1. Now there's some rhythmic conflict.

2. The writing could more directly convey the tension that naturally exists in that situation. Could be just one line at the beginning. "he sat the vidcorder down and activated it. "This is repair session 2314, psyche technician Jack X initiating initial contact and appraisal" He hated recording these things, but the insurance companies had all mandated it after the Sandusky incident"

3. It's interesting and a good idea to use an ongoing situation with it's own tension as a framework for some exposition. We get some insight into the character, but the action of the story doesn't actually stop, explaining along the way, as things happen. In True detective for example, it was as simple as two detectives that got into conversations on the drive out to the next investigation location, or while in a police interview that could lead to prison.

4. It's a great idea to show this character kind of loosing his grip a bit, ditching his professionalism in favor of just using the situation to unload. It shows instead of telling. I'm learning things about this character that he's not saying directly, so that's good.

5. The scene could be stronger in a number of ways. For one thing, the psyche exam of the robot is it's own mini storyline, and could have resolved in some satisfying way, unless you plan to revisit this one Dad robot multiple times. So even if he's having kind of a mental breakdown, it would be more interesting if he successfully found the problem with the robot. There's an effort there to do that, so I know you already know to be doing this, but it felt like an afterthought, as if jack delivering his flashbacks was the headline, and the robot's malfunction was tertiary.

I could be wrong about some of this stuff, because the segment is out of context, but basically I could envision a scene where the robot's "tell" is more subtle. It seems like the apex of possibility here is for the audience to be "mislead" by Jack's apparent personal breakdown. You make the audience think that he's a professional there to do a job. Then suprise them with his lack of effort and use of the situation for personal decompression. Use this "decompression" (thinking about his past, about his feelings), as a way to deliver some exposition (that's what you did already, just here for timeline coherency) Now, here's the twist in the scene. At the end of the interview, we are made to realize that Jack has been performing the testing on the robot the entire time, by pretending not to do his job, which is supposed to provoke a certain type of response. He pretends to be unprofessional to test the robot, delivers the exposition during this window, and then pulls it all back together by demonstrating that he was intentionally baiting the robot with designed behavior to reveal a type of disorder he hypothesized it had. Jack can still be just as checked out as he is in this version, but I'm just thinking that you also need to be giving the audience reasons to be interested in the character. The backstory and psychological stuff provides depth and texture, but seeing him do something clever, and do his job even though you can tell he's not invested, does even more, and you could accomplish both in one brushstrokes.

Overall, I thought this section was better than the last one.

 

[Spike]

Thanks Nate, again, for taking the time and thought. I appreciate it. (Although "appreciate" is a little tepid. )

You wrote: " It felt like an afterthought, as if jack delivering his flashbacks was the headline, and the robot's malfunction was tertiary."

And this is exactly right. The counselor himself, the job itself, is at this point unimportant. What is important, for this aspect of the story, is Jack's hallucinatory episode.

The plot in this story is a kind of convoluted land scheme, involving some time travel. But beneath it is a philosophical layer, centered on Jack's breakdown. The flashback is a kind of nightmare scene: The building becomes a flimsy facade, covering up time and entropy; the people around him become lifeless things. It is, for Jack, a horrific vision, a horrific fate, and one he is determined to fight. He can't believe it, he can't give in to it, he can't give up. Even if, he can't help wondering, in what is meant to be the climax of this scene, it happens to be true.

It's one of Philip K Dick's great themes--the nature of an authentic human--and one that was completely removed from the movie Blade Runner. Dick died just before the film came out, but he did get to see some of the footage. He loved the way it looked. And he hated the script. But he was philosophical abut it, as may writers are when someone changes their book (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) into something less. Because, for the first time in his life, I think, he made some real money, and was about to get some mainstream attention.

Anyway, this was my motivation for working through this thing--a movie that he would have liked. Whether it works or not is a different story. I think individual scenes, out of context, may not work very well. I see you wanting the present-day part of the story to be more realized, more complete. And I get it. It's an interesting and informative response, and I think, in this scene, might be a typical reaction.

But I don't think I mind a little impatience, in the audience, at this point. Hopefully it will be worth it. The story is building and is not yet apparent. But by the end, in its entirety, it may be something. And the tonal conflict you notice might even be a part of what the thing is about.

 

[mlesemann]

Just a couple of small notes:

1. I'm not a fan of voice overs, for the most part. It can occasionally work well (think American Beauty) but most such lines can better be incorporated into the scene's dialogue.

2. People don't address each other by name multiple times during a conversation. If there's a reason for it, great (other than just to make it seem odd). If not, I suggest reducing the number of times that they say each other's names.

 

[Spike]

Just a couple of small notes:

1. I'm not a fan of voice overs, for the most part. It can occasionally work well (think American Beauty) but most such lines can better be incorporated into the scene's dialogue.

2. People don't address each other by name multiple times during a conversation. If there's a reason for it, great (other than just to make it seem odd). If not, I suggest reducing the number of times that they say each other's names.

Thanks, Mara. Jack is telling a story, which becomes dramatized instead of told. Which, now that I think about it, is an odd convention peculiar to movies. The voice-over is an attempt to introduce and explain this. But I suppose I could have him just say, in present time, "I had waited for over a year . . . " and then go back. I'll have to think about this. I imagine a good director would know which is best.

And the name thing. I didn't even notice this. Maybe it emerged as a part of the oddness of the whole conversation. It is, in essence, a therapy session with, Jack originally thinks, a thing, with essentially a toaster. So perhaps I heard him being a little sarcastic. And the robot, a little annoyingly, follows his own kind of script. I'll think about this as well.

Thanks again for reading