CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 11/21/07

No Turkeys Allowed:
A CS Weekly Thanksgiving

Compiled By david michael wharton

As families around the country return home for food, family, and friendship, CS Weekly takes a few minutes to appreciate the creative works that have inspired us on our own journeys.

As writers, we're all the product of our inspirations, shaped and encouraged and spurred onward by the talented artists who came before, whether they're still spinning dreams onto the page or screen, or whether they live on only in their words. Before we here at CS Weekly headed home for Turkey and cranberry sauce, we asked ourselves the question: what creative work, be it book, movie, or television show, are we most thankful for this holiday season? Check out our answers, ponder the question yourselves, and take a few minutes to be thankful for possessing that wonderful, mysterious spark that keeps us coming back to that blank screen day after day, year after year, dream after dream.

Peter Clines is Thankful for Raiders of the Lost Ark
Screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan
Story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman

The movie that showed me the real power of storytelling came out a few summers after Star Wars. It was some old-time adventure starring the guy who played Han Solo, and none of the kids really knew anything else about it (this being back in the days when storylines were not proudly announced months before a film opened). So, we trudged down to the single-screen York Beach Cinema, lied about our ages to get cheap tickets, and went in to watch the movie. I'll always remember Captain Katanga berating his first mate over the missing Doctor Jones, the music swelling, and then glancing down the aisle at my friends as all of us in the theater exploded with cheers and applause as Indy clawed his way up onto the deck of the U-boat. That's what good screenwriting can do.

Jason Davis is Thankful for Doctor Who
Late one Saturday night in 1988, I was introduced to Doctor Who. It was English. It was eccentric. It was extraordinary. As I continued to watch the series in subsequent weeks, I marveled at its variety—the eponymous time traveler could go anywhere in time and space, opening the door to incredible storytelling possibilities. In trying to learn more about the then 25-year-old series, I discovered a fan culture that venerated the show's production as much as its content and found myself learning about producers like Barry Letts and writers like Terrance Dicks. Indeed, it was through interviews with these men that I learned how television is made, and I knew, from that point on, what I wanted to do with my life.

Ginny DeFrank is Thankful for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Written by William Goldman

Much like that annual first forkful of stuffing, each viewing of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is so intensely pleasing that I can't believe I've forgotten just how good it is. No scene is wasted. Each character Butch and Sundance interact with helps reveal their characters while also establishing his own. From Butch's respect for the innovative robbery strategies of a would-be usurper, to a marshal's annoyance at Butch and Sundance's slowness in staging his capture, the wit applied to characters' common humanity drives the story of two friends reckoning with the ever-approaching death of their way of life.

Sean Kennelly is Thankful for Field of Dreams
Screenplay by Phil Alden Robinson
Based on the book Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

Field of Dreams has got to be the film I'm most thankful for in so many ways. As a boy, I grew up going to major league baseball games with my dad, and when this film came out, there was a growing distance between us. Field not only inspired me to reach out to my dad, but helped me realize that he was human and forgivable. On top of that, Phil Alden Robinson's script is a terrific adaptation that I still study to this day. Field of Dreams was truly more than just a movie for me.

Deirdre McGill is Thankful for My Man Godfrey
Written by Morrie Ryskind & Eric Hatch
Based on the novel by Eric Hatch

I am grateful for depression-era movies for their style, warmth, and wit. My favorite is the 1936 version of My Man Godfrey, directed by Gregory La Cava and written by Eric Hatch (adapting his own novel) and Morrie Ryskind. Starring Carole Lombard as the ditsy socialite who hires what she believes to be a vagrant as her butler, Godfrey, and William Powell as Godfrey himself, the film shows the faux butler bringing some sanity to the crazy Bullock household. What I love is how the movie takes a very humanistic approach to the themes of poverty and romance among different social stratas, without ever becoming preachy.

Danny Munso is Thankful for The Office
Written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant

In 2001, two unknown British writers named Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant saw their first collaboration hit the BBC airwaves, and eventually The Office became the most successful British comedy of all-time. Thanks to the show's brevity (two series, plus a Christmas special), I watched the entire run in one evening, stunned by the fact that I was being unbelievably moved by a world I knew little about, and by the fact that this was these guys' first crack at writing. While its American spin-off becomes more absurd with each passing episode, the original is painfully grounded in reality—whether it's a crush on a co-worker, the jealousy involved in a colleague becoming your superior, or the prospect of losing your dream job—and somehow still finds the laughs. The Office is everything I aspire to be as a writer: touching, funny, and groundbreaking. There will never be a show like it—even if they steal its name and premise.

Elizabeth Rivera is Thankful for About a Boy
Screenplay by Peter Hedges and Chris Weitz & Paul Weitz (latter two directed)
Based on the novel by Nick Hornby

About a Boy taught me an important screenwriting lesson: it's ok to be normal. Odd, I know, since it's a coming-of-age movie about a strange boy and a shallow hipster who are anything but normal. Yet, the movie is told simply. No gimmicks or catchy action sequences. It doesn't take itself too seriously, or think it's more righteous than it is. It just tells the story. In the past, I felt like I had to be edgy, that edginess was what made a film good. After I wrote a scene, I didn't ask myself, "Is this honest?" or "Is this significant to the story?" only "Is this edgy? I was preoccupied with this idea, but I'm not the edgy type. I don't have cool black square-frame glasses, my jeans don't cost 90 dollars, and I hate sushi. I wear jeans from the sale section of Old Navy and eat from the McDonald's dollar menu. My movies are not edgy, nouveau style; there's no traces of Fight Club or Kiss, Kiss Bang, Bang. They're much simpler than that, and About a Boy showed me that it's ok to just tell a story, stop worrying about being edgy and just be normal.

Dennis Sampson is Thankful for The Dark Knight Returns
Written by Frank Miller

In 1986 Frank Miller gave a rebirth to Batman with this dark, brooding, noirish epic about the Dark Knight's fierce return to the streets. The characters were given fresh spins and new depths (Robin's a girl and Superman's become a patriotic errand-runner tangled in a web of bureaucracy), the storylines were no longer the stuff of children's books (the Joker's homicidal spree ranges from a talk-show audience to a troop of Boy Scouts), and the legend of Batman was presented in a fashion that forever changed the face of the superhero. All for the better.

Sean Siska is Thankful for Quiz Show
Screenplay by Paul Attanasio
Based on the book Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties
By Richard N. Goodwin

There is a lot to admire in Paul Attanasio's masterful script for, but the thing that struck me most after I finally had the chance to read it a couple of times (thanks to the now defunct Scenario magazine) was how all three main characters desired the same thing: fame. It was the first time it occurred to me that you could have your characters appear to pursue radically different agendas while under the surface actually trying to achieve an identical goal. I've since learned that this is a technique integral to creating a strong narrative with a solid theme, and I thank Quiz Show for opening my eyes to that fact.

Sarah Skilton is Thankful for Postcards From the Edge
Written by Carrie Fisher

"Maybe I shouldn't have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares? My life is over anyway." Thus begins Carrie Fisher's debut novel Postcards From the Edge (1987). This book taught me it doesn't matter what you write (there are only so many plots anyway), but how you write it. Creating personal style and a character who sticks with the reader can be more important than plot. Fisher displays a joy of language in her prose, cleverly twisting words until they become something new. Her technique inspires me to inject personality into all my dialogue.

David Wharton is Thankful for The Iron Giant
Screenplay by Tim McCanlies
Story by Brad Bird
Based on the book The Iron Man by Ted Hughes

I could have gone the easy route and picked one of my favorite Thanksgiving-set movies (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles), or picked one of my favorite films of all time that I only last week saw on the big screen for the first time (Blade Runner), but instead I find myself feeling thankful that I was one of the few folks who actually saw The Iron Giant on the big screen, and have been singing its praises ever since. One of the last truly great traditional-animation movies to come along before CGI tightened its grip over the animated family film, The Iron Giant tells the story of a starry-eyed young boy in the 1950s who meets a giant, alien robot living in the woods behind his house. The film takes period potshots at everything from cheesy '50s sci-fi films to cheerfully naïve "duck and cover" filmstrips, adding plenty of laughs to a story that is, at its heart, about a gun that decides it doesn't want to be a gun anymore (or rather a several-story alien death machine that decides it doesn't want to be a several-story alien death machine). The laughs are plentiful, the heart is huge, the undercurrent of Cold War paranoia is sadly all-the-more timely only a few years on, and all of it ramps up to a simple but powerful message: that we are who we choose to be. And yes, I will readily admit that the climactic scene to this day reduces me to a sniffling, blubbery baby.

Raiders of the Lost Ark courtesy Paramount Home Video

The Iron Giant, The Office courtesy Warner Bros. Home Video

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