Tag: The making of LILAC

Hank Isaac: Underfunded Overachievers #4

Writing on the Edge of Propriety Part 4
by Hank Isaac

hank isaacHow interesting would Little Red Riding Hood be if all that happens to her is that she skins a knee or hooks her coat on some plant thorn. She gets to Grandma’s house and it’s really Grandma who’s in bed. Then they spend the afternoon together eating tea cakes.

As old as I am, I’m still trying to understand a culture which is reviled by the possibility of a child getting a glimpse of a woman’s bare breast (or other body part) and yet is somehow okay with that same child watching endless versions of people getting shot, beat up, maimed, mangled in machinery, eaten by aliens or dinosaurs, having their limbs torn off in violent battles… Not to mention hours and hours of various forms of mental cruelty and deeds which that very same culture at least gives lip service to working against.

And yet, show that breast, or, heaven forbid, show a young girl’s bare chest, and everyone goes ballistic. It probably has a lot to do with people being afraid of their own thoughts. But I’m not a mental health professional, so I can’t speak to that with any schooled authority. read article

Hank Isaac: Underfunded Overachievers

lilac big scene
Night, cars, crowds – the most expensive scene in LILAC

The Crafting of “Lilac” Part 3
by Hank Isaac

I came to screenwriting and film making from the visual arts. My undergraduate degree is in Industrial Design. When I was in design school back in the 60s, the head of the program would always give his charges a little pep talk at the beginning of each school year. As young eager students, we generally zoned out during the talk.

But I do remember – all these years later – one significant comment. He said (again, my paraphrasing): It’s quite easy to draw a pencil line on a piece of paper. Just remember that, eventually, hundreds and perhaps even thousands of people will be spending potentially millions of dollars to make that line. And then they’ll be cranking them out – one each second – and people all around the world will be looking at and using that line. Their lives might even hang in the balance on that line (the head of the program was a designer of surgical instruments). Corporations. The world economy. The future of humanity. Anything could hinge on that line.

Just remember… you do have an eraser. read article