I saw Wedding Crashers at the only Cineplex in the city of State College, Pennsylvania. I hated the film. I didn’t laugh. There was no gut. And even worse, the thing wasn’t even clever. The best part, or should I say the only redeemable part, was this little redheaded nymphoniac, who pranced down a flight of stairs like creature from Mars. I didn’t know her name, but she made me smile. And when the film was over, I didn’t think about her again for another three years.
Nowadays, I think enough about her to name my non-related blog about her. Lately I read everything I see about Isla Fisher. Not to mention, I’ve seen her in just about every movie, tv episode, and interview in which she‘s appeared. But, what is it about Isla and not a handful of other contemporary actresses, Natalie Portman, Kiera Knightly or Audrie Hepburn in a long gone era?
1) Her hair is exactly the shade of light red, skin just the right tone of white, and body type comprises the perfect makeup of every heroine in every story I’ve ever written.
2) She comes from Perth, Australia, a small coastal town in the barren part of Australia, which if there was ever a place comparable to my own Jackson, Pennsylvania would certainly be the place.
3) She was the loyal girl in Hot Rod, the small town girl waiting for escape in Wedding Daze, the harem leader in Attila, and the whore in Oliver Twist. If there’s a female fantasy I’ve had, Isla has fulfilled it. (Thankfully, I never saw her in Scooby Doo until much later. Rolled right through that one in the slumber of my pre-teen years. Dyed her hair yellow. Not to be confused with Sarah Michelle, I’d think. Had her appearing in bit scenes. Not even a lick of humor. I’m reminded of poor old John Wayne holding the spear in his last film.)
4) She’s had creative input on two scripts, Groupies and The Cookie Queen, and co-wrote two YA novels as a teenager. Mix with that scene in Wedding Daze where she stands on a junk pile with a wedding ring made from scrap metal. It’s clear she’s got, as Eugene O’Neill said, a “touch of the poet.”
5) She represents what New York would have been like had I stayed. I've watched the clip of Isla smoking salt peter less cigarettes outside a convenience store a dozen times. Right now even, I wish I could be back in Manhattan. In an alternate life. Standing outside the Pink Flamingo with Isla as the rain falls down.
Look, I’m not a stalker. I have no desire to meet Isla. I would never show up outside of her house naked except for a dog collar and shot gun. And I most certainly would never try to call her, write her name on the back of my notebook a hundred times, or send her letters with pieces of my clothing. Hell, chances are I wouldn’t like her in person. But my Isla, the one I invented, is a knock out. And I’d like to think one day when I’ve made it as a screenwriter, I can have a coffee with Isla and discuss casting her in my film. So, if there’s any reason why I write (which there isn’t, by the way, I write as unconsciously as others crunch numbers or hear music) it’s because I’m Hunting for Isla Fisher.
Now how do I intend to do that with this blog? Simple. I intend to use this blog as both the memoirs of an up and coming screenwriter/novelist and my way to review recently sold spec scripts, classic comic books, and an occasional film or two if the mood so strikes me (all of which will feature personal anecdotes and more than a fair share of musings on Isla). The hunting comes from the "hunt" to find the perfect script for Isla. Are there any?
So in a further effort to get any false pretenses off the table and to give you an idea of what kind of critical frame I’ll be viewing this artwork by, I’m going to now disclose a small portion of my film canon, and give you just the slightest hint of what I’ve found in these works to make them so masterful.
What follows are my personal top five films. The list changes frequently and depending on what difficulties life has presented my list is always different, but these are all films I’ve found consistently significant…
1. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah) - Watched a dozen times with a dozen bottles of whiskey. It doesn’t get any edgier, more poetic, or better scored than this Peckinpah masterpiece. If I can get this tone in a script then I know I have nailed any tonal problems that will arise. I am most fond of the opening scenes where Kristofferson and Coburn recall the good old days. (“She asked how much it was worth? You said two cents. She said if that was all it was worth she might as well sew the d$%# thing up.”)
2. After Hours (Martin Scorsese) Seen first in bits and pieces. Watched first in entirety at a video terminal in NYU’s Bobst Library. I know this was bitch work for Scorsese but if every script had the speed and inspired lunacy of this masterwork, we’d all have much less difficulty getting people to read our scripts. (The real kicker here is Griffin Dunne running down a Soho street after midnight with an ice cream truck and killer posse closing in behind him.)
3. Angel Baby (Michael Rymer) There is a video store off Saint Marks place called Kim’s. Saw this in a closet of a room on a cold night in November. A little known film out of Australia. It swept up a lot of awards over there, but of all the people I’ve shown it to no one has ever gotten it. A beautiful but bizarre film about schizophrenic lovers who go off their medications and decide to have a baby. A reminder heart and drama need not be traditional.
4. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton) Watched this so many times as a child the tape broke. The little remembered, but in my opinion crowning jewel of Tim Burton’s oeuvre. A full tilt boogie of clowns, dinosaurs, rodeos, ghosts, monsters, movie studios, and every other high concept subject I’ve tried to include in a script since. (Once, working on a script that was headed nowhere, I ended up trying to recreate Peewee’s chase through the movie studios).
5. True Romance (Quentin Tarantino) Caught the tale end on a static filled TV in my father’s conference room. First poem I ever wrote was based on the scene where Alabama watches Return of the Street Fighter. Forget every Tarantino since (which would be just about everything, right?). This is the one script where Tarantino doesn’t elevate to fake dynamics or overt homage to underground films of the 70’s and the one where the dialogue is not only snappy, it’s near poetic. (The Elvis speech, Gandolfini’s speech about killing people, and of course Dennis Hopper’s Black Italians monologue).
So that’s it, I bring you Hunting for Isla Fisher. If there are any scripts, films, or DVDs you’d like to see reviewed on this site, feel free to email me and I’ll do my best to cover them.
Nowadays, I think enough about her to name my non-related blog about her. Lately I read everything I see about Isla Fisher. Not to mention, I’ve seen her in just about every movie, tv episode, and interview in which she‘s appeared. But, what is it about Isla and not a handful of other contemporary actresses, Natalie Portman, Kiera Knightly or Audrie Hepburn in a long gone era?
1) Her hair is exactly the shade of light red, skin just the right tone of white, and body type comprises the perfect makeup of every heroine in every story I’ve ever written.
2) She comes from Perth, Australia, a small coastal town in the barren part of Australia, which if there was ever a place comparable to my own Jackson, Pennsylvania would certainly be the place.
3) She was the loyal girl in Hot Rod, the small town girl waiting for escape in Wedding Daze, the harem leader in Attila, and the whore in Oliver Twist. If there’s a female fantasy I’ve had, Isla has fulfilled it. (Thankfully, I never saw her in Scooby Doo until much later. Rolled right through that one in the slumber of my pre-teen years. Dyed her hair yellow. Not to be confused with Sarah Michelle, I’d think. Had her appearing in bit scenes. Not even a lick of humor. I’m reminded of poor old John Wayne holding the spear in his last film.)
4) She’s had creative input on two scripts, Groupies and The Cookie Queen, and co-wrote two YA novels as a teenager. Mix with that scene in Wedding Daze where she stands on a junk pile with a wedding ring made from scrap metal. It’s clear she’s got, as Eugene O’Neill said, a “touch of the poet.”
5) She represents what New York would have been like had I stayed. I've watched the clip of Isla smoking salt peter less cigarettes outside a convenience store a dozen times. Right now even, I wish I could be back in Manhattan. In an alternate life. Standing outside the Pink Flamingo with Isla as the rain falls down.
Look, I’m not a stalker. I have no desire to meet Isla. I would never show up outside of her house naked except for a dog collar and shot gun. And I most certainly would never try to call her, write her name on the back of my notebook a hundred times, or send her letters with pieces of my clothing. Hell, chances are I wouldn’t like her in person. But my Isla, the one I invented, is a knock out. And I’d like to think one day when I’ve made it as a screenwriter, I can have a coffee with Isla and discuss casting her in my film. So, if there’s any reason why I write (which there isn’t, by the way, I write as unconsciously as others crunch numbers or hear music) it’s because I’m Hunting for Isla Fisher.
Now how do I intend to do that with this blog? Simple. I intend to use this blog as both the memoirs of an up and coming screenwriter/novelist and my way to review recently sold spec scripts, classic comic books, and an occasional film or two if the mood so strikes me (all of which will feature personal anecdotes and more than a fair share of musings on Isla). The hunting comes from the "hunt" to find the perfect script for Isla. Are there any?
So in a further effort to get any false pretenses off the table and to give you an idea of what kind of critical frame I’ll be viewing this artwork by, I’m going to now disclose a small portion of my film canon, and give you just the slightest hint of what I’ve found in these works to make them so masterful.
What follows are my personal top five films. The list changes frequently and depending on what difficulties life has presented my list is always different, but these are all films I’ve found consistently significant…
1. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah) - Watched a dozen times with a dozen bottles of whiskey. It doesn’t get any edgier, more poetic, or better scored than this Peckinpah masterpiece. If I can get this tone in a script then I know I have nailed any tonal problems that will arise. I am most fond of the opening scenes where Kristofferson and Coburn recall the good old days. (“She asked how much it was worth? You said two cents. She said if that was all it was worth she might as well sew the d$%# thing up.”)
2. After Hours (Martin Scorsese) Seen first in bits and pieces. Watched first in entirety at a video terminal in NYU’s Bobst Library. I know this was bitch work for Scorsese but if every script had the speed and inspired lunacy of this masterwork, we’d all have much less difficulty getting people to read our scripts. (The real kicker here is Griffin Dunne running down a Soho street after midnight with an ice cream truck and killer posse closing in behind him.)
3. Angel Baby (Michael Rymer) There is a video store off Saint Marks place called Kim’s. Saw this in a closet of a room on a cold night in November. A little known film out of Australia. It swept up a lot of awards over there, but of all the people I’ve shown it to no one has ever gotten it. A beautiful but bizarre film about schizophrenic lovers who go off their medications and decide to have a baby. A reminder heart and drama need not be traditional.
4. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton) Watched this so many times as a child the tape broke. The little remembered, but in my opinion crowning jewel of Tim Burton’s oeuvre. A full tilt boogie of clowns, dinosaurs, rodeos, ghosts, monsters, movie studios, and every other high concept subject I’ve tried to include in a script since. (Once, working on a script that was headed nowhere, I ended up trying to recreate Peewee’s chase through the movie studios).
5. True Romance (Quentin Tarantino) Caught the tale end on a static filled TV in my father’s conference room. First poem I ever wrote was based on the scene where Alabama watches Return of the Street Fighter. Forget every Tarantino since (which would be just about everything, right?). This is the one script where Tarantino doesn’t elevate to fake dynamics or overt homage to underground films of the 70’s and the one where the dialogue is not only snappy, it’s near poetic. (The Elvis speech, Gandolfini’s speech about killing people, and of course Dennis Hopper’s Black Italians monologue).
So that’s it, I bring you Hunting for Isla Fisher. If there are any scripts, films, or DVDs you’d like to see reviewed on this site, feel free to email me and I’ll do my best to cover them.
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