Most love films are generally about the obstacles that the lovers have to conquer in order to be together. This dance of ‘will they won’t they’ is what keeps us hooked. We want them to have that first kiss or live happily ever after and we remain gripped until we see all of their problems resolved.  My film isn’t a romance, it’s a thriller; but I really need to make the audience care about the love between the two characters at the centre of the story for the thriller to work.

I’m thinking of starting the film with a montage. I like the idea of representing their relationship visually. I’m hoping that it will allow me to condense information in a more elegant way than exposition in dialogue and also give the beginning of the film a certain poetry that might set the tone in an interesting way.

Best film montages: ‘Trainspotting’ (1996) – the opening sequence, ‘Rocky 1&3’ training montages. ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (1978) –  cleaning up the mall  ‘The Godfather’ (1972) – War, murder, mattresses, Nicky’s Story in ‘Casino’(1995), Tommy getting made in ‘Goodfellas’ (1990) and my favourite of all time the montage in ‘Raging Bull’(1980) where we see Jake  get married and start a family as he fights his way to the title fight.

Of all the montages only ‘Raging Bull’ gets close to what I want. The trouble with the others is that they use VO –  which I don’t want. I can see why they use it – it enables you to identify with the characters and understand what they are feeling. The reason I don’t want to use it is because it will set up an expectation of VO throughout the whole film.

I’ve always wanted to use VO in a film but I’m not sure if this story would benefit from it.

Maybe what I need is just a very clever opening credit sequence.

I’ve finished the treatment of the rewrite and I’ve written a detailed director’s statement too. The director’s statement may seem premature but it’s really helped me visually define the type of film that I want to make. I took the process very seriously and went through a couple of hundred dvds to find exactly the right images that truly represented the lighting, framing, and mood of the film that I’m about to write.

I’m very happy with the treatment and my producing (and sometimes writing) partner at Red & Black has given me his notes and the greenlight to start the draft.

I don’t know how to start.

The movie needs to establish two people in love quickly and convincingly. I’d like to do this without schmaltz and cliché, I’d also like to do this without boring the audience. I need to like the characters.   I need to like my female lead. There are a lot of impressive women in my life but, in my opinion, there are only a ten movies that have captured impressive and/or likable women on the screen: Ilsa Lund (Casablanca 1942) Sugar Kane Kowalczyck (Some Like it Hot 1959), Ripley (Alien/Aliens 1979), Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs 1991) Rachel (Night of the Hunter 1955) Rosemary (Rosemary’s Baby 1968) Frances Stevens, (To Catch a Thief 1955)  Thelma (Thelma & Louise 1991) Catherine Tramell (Basic Instinct 1992) and Vivian (The Big Sleep 1946).

Breaking down this list we have one psychopath (Cathrine Tramell) one Idiot (Sugar Kane Kowalczyck) and one granny (Rachel). The rest of the characters are attractive women with exceptional qualities and strengths. Why do I like them? Because they’re clever, kind, loyal, resilient, determined, vulnerable, unpredictable, funny and independent. I guess these are the qualities that I have to build my female character with.

So I’m starting a complete rewrite of my thriller. This is the third time I’ve started from page 1. I’ve been working on it for a year and a half. I haven’t given up because so far the previous completed drafts have secured a rising UK star (who’s given a letter of interest) and one of the top sales agents in the country. I’m starting again because I’ve thought of a better way to tell the story, and the budget for the last draft was way too high.

The new idea almost halves the budget and makes the story much more about a world and characters that I know.

The main mistake that I made in previous drafts was that I let the gangsters rule and define my narrative. This is a problem because I haven’t got any particular insight into the criminal world. Worse – I’m not interested in it. The villains were only supposed to help drive the narrative.  They were there to put pressure onto my protagonist and force him to work together with the woman he loves. However, somehow I got carried away and let them hog all the best scenes, fuck up my structure and slowly slip into cliche and caricature. The baddies stole my last script. They won’t steal this one. I have a plan.