And Waitresses Learn to Hate Food

It's always tricky watching a movie when you're writing a movie. Good example of the worst case scenario: I was watching Empire Strikes Back with a friend last night just after she read the first draft of my script, and she decided to illustrate a point about a central conflict for the main character by saying "See - your movie should be more like that."

No movie should ever be compared to Empire because Empire is (arguably) the best movie ever, and my shitty first draft of a script should even more never be compared to Empire when I know there's a problem with the scenes with the dad character and I'm working on it, thank you. It's like if I tried to pick up chicks at the Cattyshack — it's a losing man's game.

Then there's the TV Tropes effect where you spend so much time thinking about media that you just spend the whole movie waiting for the act break, the page 45 analogy, the part on page 75 where the hero almost give up, blah blah blah.

But - sometimes! - you watch a movie and say "Aha! That part of that movie is great in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as a similar part in my movie will be great!"

This just happened to me.

I am watching Sneakers, an old favorite of mine. Like my movie, Sneakers has a team of people working on a single thing. And it's a heist movie, so it's a team of quirky character actors. Oh, and the cast is fucking brilliant - like, Pres. Roslin, Sundance Kid and Ghandi brilliant.

Anyway, some of the greatest moments in this movie are when everybody these brilliant character actors get to just turn and react to something. There first time Robert Redford casually mentions Mary McDonnell, everyone just turns and looks at him.

It's a fucking genius moment. And, the best thing about this moment - super easy to write. I can watch this moment and think "Aha! I'll bet my movie will have a ton of moments where everyone turns around and looks at one of the other people! I can in some way be as good as Sneakers, one of my favorite movies!"

Now, if I can just work in some light saber battles ...