I've done alot of improvisation work. Mostly private, but some onstage at an theater workshop on Melrose in Hollywood years ago. I was having a high old time with it, till my purse was stolen at a rehearsal. That made me so furious I never went back. It took me a year to replace all my stolen stuff.

Stand up comedy takes more brass than I've accumulated, thus far.

I'm not even sure if anyone on this site wrote a stand up comedy, but it always sounded like fun to me, writing your own script and performing it to live audience.

Question to members:

I was reading earlier that the movie * My Big Fat Greek Wedding " started out as a one woman play. What is a one woman play? Or a one man play? Is it a play performed by one person on stage? Does she perform all the roles by herself?

Quoted from Ayham Question to members: I was reading earlier that the movie * My Big Fat Greek Wedding " started out as a one woman play. What is a one woman play? Or a one man play? Is it a play performed by one person on stage? Does she perform all the roles by herself?

Yep.  That's correct.  I still think the funiest one man play/show was John Leguizamo's Freak.  It was directed by Spike Lee and perforned in New York.  He played the roles of his family, friends, girlfriends, everyone.  It was fracking hilarious.  It was so good you almost forget your are only watching one person.

But yeah a one person play/show is just one person on stage performing multiple roles, but usually returns to a somewhat "narrarator" voice which usually is their own.

Just think of a screenplay.  The dialogue would be spoken in the "tone" of the character and all of the subtext and description would be spoken by the actor's own voice in narration.

Guy, that's very interesting and thank you for the info! I never really watched a one person play. I'm not really much of a live theatre person. I took a date once to the Phantom of The Opera, I fell asleep, I woke up and she was gone.

Quoted from guyjackson Yep.  That's correct.  I still think the funiest one man play/show was John Leguizamo's Freak.  It was directed by Spike Lee and perforned in New York.  He played the roles of his family, friends, girlfriends, everyone.  It was fracking hilarious.  It was so good you almost forget your are only watching one person.

Patrick Stewart did a one man show of Dickens' A Christmas Carol in New york for a couple of seasons.  I didn't see it myself but heard he was fantastic in it.  Supposedly, he developed thirty-six different voices for his show.


Phil

Thank you for the inputs, Phil and Guy.

My hot blond co-writer asked me the other day for a "tagline" for the story we're working on. I laughed at her and said, tagline is a logline. And I came up with a logline. She felt dumb.

But this stuck on my mind, and this morning I researched and found out, painfully, that the two are different!!! And I feel dumb! Am I the only one, I wonder?

So, for any member who doesn't know the difference, let me and I'll post some good samples.

Don't be shy...come on... just raise your hand and I'll post it up...just one finger.

Please?

OK! any writer who doesn't know the difference and raises his/her hand, will get FIVE BUCKS, plus the info!!

i just bought David Trottier's Screenwriters Bible... and it is fantastic. it answers pretty much any question you could possibly have about writing a script.

Swap, even the Bible wouldn't spare me her laughter when I tell her...or maybe I shouldn't tell her!

But let me ask you though, isn't a tagline something that's picked by a producer, as a promo for the movie? and the writer only puts up a logline?

Quoted from Ayham But let me ask you though, isn't a tagline something that's picked by a producer, as a promo for the movie? and the writer only puts up a logline?

A logline describes the throughline of the story. A tagline is little more than a marketing slogan; movie poster fodder e.g "In space no one can hear you scream."

Check out http://www.twoadverbs.com/loglinearticle.htm for everything you need to know about loglines.

It's all about making that P-L-A-N-N-I-N-G...

Plan for a while. For example: webs, jot down ideas, etc. I always look at news on msn to see if it will spark an idea. After obtaining an idea, and working with it. I start an outline. After doing one outline or two I start the rough draft. After a rough draft I revise... Rewrite it... Rewrite it... Revise... Let it sit... Revise... And walah!

That's how I do it.

http://www.bigbreakcontest.com

This is a list of the winners from the Final Draft contest...I went over the loglines of the first and second place winners, wasn't too impressed, especially with the first place...

One of these days, I'll stop missing this thread. It gets posted and then buried before I catch it, and I'm on a lot. I want to briefly follow up on the log/tag line question. Martin's answer is spot on, but I want to expound just a little bit.

A logline is a sentence that describes the core of your story. It contains the protagonist, major conflict and antagonist or antagonistic force at the very least. This is written to pitch the story to producers and used in TV Guide venues to describe the story quickly and concisely. A good limit to set here is 30 words.

A tagline, by contrast, is just a blurb intended to intrigue a potential audience and entice them to coming in to see the movie. Martin's example: "In space, no one can hear you scream" is now readily identifiable with Alien, but tells us absolutely nothing about the story. A logline might be: "A mining crew struggles to defeat an almost invincible alien before it kills them."

Hope that helps as well.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15641336/


This is about stealing ideas.