Well, dear readers, I had a very productive day yesterday and got all manner of things attended to, including my car servicing which has rendered a perfectly perfect-running car. I had several other errands to do and did them all. I also had a nice phone meeting with the producer of the film I’m rewriting and we’re very much on the same page (page one) in terms of the direction I’ll be taking (north by northwest). I was still under the weather a bit from lack of sleep – my throat was still bugging me, although not as much as the day before, and I also had some allergy problems. My toe, however, is doing fine – it really wasn’t all that much to speak of, it just happened to bleed a lot on impact. I still have a Band Aid on it and will probably get rid of that tomorrow. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
After all my errands yesterday, I watched several more episodes of Alias, one of which was really top-notch, and several of which were very much not up to par. However, in Episode Thirteen there came a little revelatory plot twist which I, in my full astuteness, had predicted when I was watching season two. If memory serves, dear reader Jennifer e-mailed me and I wrote her what I felt was going to be the plot twist. When it didn’t materialize by the end of the season I thought I had failed in my astuteness. But, nooooo, my astuteness was/is in full mode. In case dear reader Jennifer or any other Alias fans wish to know what plot twist, it occurs in a scene between Ron Rifkin and the psychiatrist played by Patricia Wettig. I don’t know where they’re going to take it but I, like our close personal friend Ken Mandelbaum, can say you heard it here first.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must attend to even more things today whilst I actually start laying out the script.
I think these here notes could use a few plot twists today. They just seem to be going along on a straight line and I feel some plot twists are in order, don’t you? For example, this paragraph is not what it seems. This paragraph is really a secret coded message which, if decoded properly, recounts the story of The Randy Vicar and the Thorny Bush.
That was a fine plot twist, wasn’t it? Who saw that one coming? No one, that’s who. And that’s not the only plot twist in today’s notes. No, for example, there is another plot twist in today’s notes which nobody will see coming.
See what I mean? That was such a big plot twist that nobody, including myself, saw it coming. If I had seen it coming I could tell you what it was, but I didn’t so I can’t. But believe me, that plot twist was the berries.
Here’s another plot twist: Tonight, instead of dining alone, I’ll be dining with Tammy Minoff and her mother. Boy, was that a plot twist. I didn’t see that coming. And Tammy and her mother, in another surprising plot twist, will be recounting the story of The Randy Vicar and the Garden Hose.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have more plot twists, I must do errands, write some script notes and then sup. Today’s topic of discussion: Without divulging what they were, what films, plays and books have had the best plot twists, the ones that took you totally by surprise? I’ll start by saying The Sixth Sense did not take me by surprise, nor did the plot twist I predicted a year ago in Alias. Ira Levin’s first novel, A Kiss Before Dying, has one of the greatest plot twists ever, as does The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I thought The Usual Suspects had a splendid trick ending. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we? That would be the best plot twist of all.