Cynthia Hawkins

New Years Resolution: update blog in a timely manner … starting right after I post this news of a piece that ran almost a month ago.  But if you love film and you love to write and you love writers in film, this one may have been worth the wait.   Thanks to Ryan Rivas for including my Ten Lessons of Fictional Writers in Film on the Burrow Press Blog in December.  The following is only the first lesson.  Check out the rest here and have a look around Burrow Press while you’re at it.

Funny Farm

In Funny Farm, Chevy Chase plays a writer who moves to the middle of nowhere in order to jumpstart work on his manuscript in solitude.  When he’s finally done, he rents a hotel room, chills champagne, hands his wife his manuscript, and sits with his hands folded together in anticipation—watching intently, reading her facial expressions as the pages turn, leaning to check whether or not her laughter erupts in just the right places.  Lesson?  Don’t do that.

You can now get your ebook copy of Writing Off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema right here.  A very special thanks to Simon Smithson at Calavera Books, each of the phenomenal contributors and interviewees, book cover designer Steven Seighman, and book trailer producer Vernon Lott for all of their hard work and support.  I’m thrilled to share the result of their efforts with you and to see just how much we can raise to help replace the Joplin High School JET-14 students’ studio equipment, field cameras, and supplies that had been destroyed in the May 22 tornado.  So go buy it!  I promise it’ll be $4.99 well spent.

Very excited to present the book trailer for Writing Off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema ahead of our December 1, 2011 release date. Morris Hill Pictures and Vernon Lott created this brilliant little video for us, and I’ll probably be sending them notes of thanks every day for an eternity. Help us spread the word by sharing this trailer with everyone you know.

It’s possible no one will know who you’re supposed to be, but that’s what name tags are for:

Aviators, flak vest, Folgers can of ashes – John Goodman as Walter in The Big Lebowski.

JBJ* ankle tattoo, mom jeans – Amy Ryan as Jackie Flaherty in Win Win.

Mom jeans, plaid shirt, blade, dislocated jaw – Billy Bob Thornton as Karl Childers in Sling Blade.

Missouri accent, knit hat, bag of severed hands – Jennifer Lawrence as Ree in Winter’s Bone.

New York accent, leather jacket, bag of severed hands (frozen) – Gary Oldman as Jackie in State of Grace.

Satin jacket, driving gloves, vacant expression, “A Real Hero” on a loop – Ryan Gosling as the driver in Drive.

Suit, mustache, bowling pins, milk shake – Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood.

Bobbed wig, Zorro mask, suicidal goldfish – Audrey Tautou as the titular character in Amélie.

Tux, mustache, garden hose – Harvey Keitel as Winston Wolfe in Pulp Fiction.

Junkie teeth, butchered wig, tiny elderly couple in your handbag – Naomi Watts as Diane Selwyn in Mulholland Dr.

* Did you really have to scroll all the way down here to find out this stands for Jon Bon Jovi?  Tsk tsk.

Supposedly losing-your-teeth dreams mean high anxiety, so it’s no surprise that I’ve had more than a few of them.  Bloody gums, teeth falling through your fingers kind of dreams.  Teeth turning into shards of glass dreams.  Yes, those dreams.  The most memorable of them, perhaps, being the one in which, against my will, I snipped off my front teeth with nail clippers.  Maybe the only sorts of dreams that bother me more are the things-happening-to-your-eyes dreams.  I’m explaining this because in the first few minutes of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a film written and produced by Guillermo del Toro, a twitchy old man with a hammer and spike knocks the teeth out of the mouth of a screaming woman pinned under his knees.

In other words, del Toro has my number.  Again.  First it was the eyeballs-in-the-palms creature loping after Ofelia in Pan’s Labyrinth and now this, a film about sinister little beings in the walls, hungry for freshly pried-out teeth.  Directed by Troy Nixey in his first feature film, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is based on the 1973 made-for-television movie of the same name, which del Toro claims was the scariest film he’d seen as a child. 

Read the rest here.

Here’s a little something new at The Nervous Breakdown about the inspiration behind the direction Writing Off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema has taken and my trip to Joplin, Missouri seven weeks after the tornado:

Curbside at the ruined high school, my fingers hesitate at the door handle.

“It’s okay,” my grandmother, sitting beside me, says, “everyone else has been taking pictures.”

With a big inhale, camera in my hands, I’m out on the street, then in the grass, in my wedge-heeled sandals, stepping over gnarled strips of metal.  I’m still holding my breath as I find the school in the camera’s lens, twisting to focus on its row of classrooms opened up like a smashed dollhouse.  My shirt hem flaps in the wake of the traffic, and I want to announce, “Really, I’m here to help.  It just doesn’t look like helping because I’m a writer and this is all I can do.”  With my finger fumbling over the camera buttons, I snap five blind shots, hurry back to the driver’s side, and exhale behind the wheel.

Maybe I’m the worst person to do what I’m doing because I’m having trouble taking a simple picture to show you what I’m doing it for.  I’m having trouble even telling you what I’m doing.  I’ve started this story at least eight different times so far, and none of them began here.

Read more.

A big thank you to Melanie Dolloff and Danny Craven of Joplin Schools for taking the time to tell me about the needs of the faculty, staff, and students in the aftermath of the tornado.  Full story forthcoming.

Here’s another bit of news from my trip as reported on the Writers on the Influence of Cinema site:

“The Joplin Eagles Television program at Joplin High School, which instructs students in the fundamentals of film production, lost their studio and field equipment and other supplies in the May 22 tornado. Pictured above is some of the damage sustained by the high school, deemed a total loss. After a visit to Joplin School offices last Friday, we learned that we can allocate the Writers on the Influence of Cinema donation to the Joplin Schools Tornado Relief Fund specifically for the JET 14 program.  More details coming soon, but in the meantime we couldn’t be more excited at the prospects of helping JET 14 Station Manager Danny Craven and Joplin Schools in their efforts to ensure that JET 14 students have what they need to develop their skills in film and broadcasting.”

The anthology will be available in ebook format this fall, and if you’d like an opportunity to have your essay on film and writing included submit it here before the contest closes on July 22.

I’ve been hesitant to update my page since the last thing I posted was in regards to the Joplin tornado of May 22.  Other things seem silly and small by comparison.  But then again maybe some levity is a good thing.

Here are some silly and small recent items of mine at The Nervous Breakdown you can read/watch if you want to.  The first is a playlist inspired by all of that stylized slow-motion walking in movies and the second is a video guide to the 2011 summer blockbusters (in movie geek attire, of course).

Not so silly nor small is the new edition of Prick of the Spindle on which I first officially served as managing fiction editor.   Some excellent works in here.  Don’t miss it.

Mostly I’ve been busy on the Writing Off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema project, coming soon this fall as an ebook from Calavera Books with proceeds benefitting the Joplin Schools Tornado Relief Fund, and the related essay contest.  Tell everyone you know about it.  And then tell them again a little later in case they forget.

I’ll be in Joplin this week for the first time since before the tornado hit, checking on family and dropping by the Joplin Schools offices for a visit.  After the media packs up it’s easy to forget that the devastation is still there and people are still in need.  Check the previous post for ways you can still help.

So I think we’re all caught up now.  Enjoy the holiday weekend!

Oh, and there’s also that novel I’m revising like a madwoman ….

My family is from Joplin, Missouri, and while my relatives are all well and accounted for my heart goes out to all of those who’ve lost loved ones and to all of those who are beginning the hard work of rebuilding and recovering in the aftermath.  Please take a moment to donate to an organization dedicated to assisting in this process:

Greater Ozarks Regional Chapter of the American Red Cross

The United Way of Southwest Missouri

United Methodist Committee on Relief

Ozarks Food Harvest

A larger list of organizations collecting donations can also be found at rebuildjoplin.org and at the Joplin Tornado Relief Fundraising Efforts Facebook page here.

(*Photo taken by my cousin in my grandparents’ Joplin neighborhood.)

I really love Kenneth Branagh.  I don’t understand people who don’t love Kenneth Branagh (I’m looking at you, Joe Hawkins).  But because I know such people exist (Joe Hawkins), I recently tried very hard to review Thor without my Branagh bias.  It required that I get my Holly Golightly outfit on and explain a few things in an accompanying video I’m sure to regret.  Find it all here and enjoy!