is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Wednesday
Apr 26, 2006

Air Vent Chastity posted by kza

Over at his great blog, Go and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory screenwriter John August has proposed a Screenwriter’s Vow of Air Vent Chastity:

I, John August, hereby swear that I shall never place a character inside an air duct, ventilation shaft, or any other euphemism for a building system designed to move air around.

Last time I checked, several people have “signed” the vow (or whatever it would be on the internets), and I think there have been suggestions for other types of anti-cliché vows.

Not to be a stick in the mud (especially with something as tongue-in-cheek as this), but I won’t be signing. I understand the frustration with the overuse of the air vent escape; I understand the ridiculousness of it. But in the comments section, someone brought up the counter-example of the toys in Toy Story 2, or the possibility of squirrel characters running around in the vents, and noted that for these characters, using the vents would be a natural (non-contrived) method of getting about. But for August, a cliché, even if it makes sense in context, is still a cliché.

And that’s where I part ways. I mean, why is the air vent thing an issue to begin with? Is it simply because it’s overused? Or is it because it’s overused and very unrealistic? If the answer is the latter, then the squirrel example should suffice as a good use of the air vent, and the vow shouldn’t be necessary. If it’s the former… well, what isn’t overused in mainstream screenwriting? As nice as it might seem to have action movies without explosions, romantic comedies without “meet cutes”, Westerns without shootouts… y’know, these things aren’t going anywhere, and have their place as well. And while the air vent is too often the escape hatch of the hacky screenwriter, if it’s used in an interesting fashion, I’m not going to complain. After all, a cliché is really only a cliché when no thought or imagination go into the presentation, and I’m not going to take a vow that preemptively hamstrings my ability to use either of those things.

(Yeah, it’s a slow night over here at the Spitball! — y’wanna fight about it?)

(New character bios soon.)

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What is Spitball!?

Spitball! is two guys collaborating to write about writing and collaboration. We're writing partners who have worked together since 2000, and placed in the top 100 in the last Project Greenlight for our script YELLOW.

Currently, we are both working on multiple screenplay, short story, and novel ideas independently and together, and collaborate on this blog.

What Spitball! used to be

Spitball! started as an attempt to collaborate on a screenplay online in real time. From January 2006 to July 2007 we worked on an interactive process to decide the story we were going to make. A full postmortem is coming, but you can find the find all the posts by looking in the category Original Version.

During this period, we affected the personalities of two of the most famous spitball pitchers from the early 20th Century. Look at our brief bios for more info about this, and so as not to be confused as to who is talking when.

We rebooted the franchise in early 2009 in its current form.


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Kent M. Beeson

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Kent M. Beeson (aka Urban Shockah) is a stay-at-home dad and stay-at-home writer, living in Seattle, WA with his wife, 2 year old daughter and an insane cat. In 2007, he was a contributor to the film blog ScreenGrab, where he presciently suggested Jackie Earle Haley to play Rorschach in the Watchmen movie, and in 2008, he wrote a film column for the comic-book site ComiXology called The Watchman. (He's a big fan of the book, if you couldn't tell.) In 2009, he gave up the thrill of freelance writing to focus on screenplays and novels, although he sometimes posts to his blog This Can't End Well, which a continuation of his first blog, he loved him some movies. He's a Pisces, and his favorite movie of all time is Jaws. Coincidence? I think not.

Martin McClellan

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Martin (aka Burley Grymz) is a designer and writer. He occasionally blogs at his beloved Hellbox, and keeps a longer ostensibly more interesting bio over here at his eponymous website. You can also find him on Twitter.