I was just watching the film The Departed. When I got to the end credits, I waited to see who it was written by, as I didn’t know. After Scorsese’s name comes up as director, it says that the screenplay is by William Monahan.

Well, if you know about film credit terminology, you know that “screenplay by” is not the whole answer to my question. A “written by” credit means that that person wrote the story and screenplay, that he is, in essence, the writer of the movie, as the credit suggests. “Screenplay by” means that that person wrote the dialogue and shaped the story for the screen, but someone else wrote the story (or at least someone else helped write the story). In some cases this is a result of a screenplay that was good in concept but bad in execution which gets rewritten, thus the “screenplay by” and “story by” credits are sometimes different, and when this is the case, the “screenplay by” credit will be shared; in most cases, however, a “screenplay by” credit means that the film was based on an existing property (i.e., a book, a video game, etc.). Typically, the “story by” credit or “based on” credit appears directly after the “screenplay by” credit.

In The Departed, however, it is not until after all of the producers, all of the actors, hell, even all of the stunt people are credited that the reason for the “screenplay by” credit is revealed: The Departed is based upon the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs.

Come on, Marty. You’re going to make a very faithful English adaptation of a recent and not at all obscure foreign film, and then try to hide the fact from general audiences? Not cool. But hey, at least you’ve got that Oscar.

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After I got off the plane in Madison this weekend, I hopped in a taxi with S. C. Butler plus one, and Rick Bowes to travel to the con hotel. On the way there, I checked my email on my phone and discovered an email from an editor who had commissioned some freelance work from me. The deadline was tight–June 1–but the work I had to turn in was very short, and so while I had done research and took some notes, I hadn’t written the pieces just yet. So I was rather surprised to discover an email from my editor in which he attached his edit of the two pieces I hadn’t written yet.

Obviously, I was concerned. I’ve been taking Ambien*, and when I woke up the other day I found my laptop in the fridge, so I wondered if I’d forgone sleep binge-eating in favor of sleep binge-writing. Actually, I was kind of hoping that was the case; if I were able to harness such a skill, it would be a great way to get some extra work done.

But alas, it was not the case. There was a mix-up, and this particular project was actually assigned to me and someone else, and this someone else was actually assigned the project first, so it went to him/her. Which is a shame, because it would have been a fairly lucrative opportunity for not that much work, but such is the life of a freelancer. However, my editor did promise to get me something else in the near future, which would likely be just as good if not better than this project. And in fact, he already came up with something for me: I’m to create a series of quizzes based on a certain entertainment property. It looks to be fun, and again pays pretty well for what seems to be fairly easy work, so I can’t complain.

* No, not really.

 

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The new air conditioner I just bought came with a little remote control, which I thought was cool, being an occasionally lazy sort of person who might just want to turn on/off the AC without having to get up. But much to my surprise, it seems I didn’t actually need the AC remote: My Tivo remote seems to control it as well. Or rather it turns it on and off when I press the “select” button. This isn’t a huge problem, since you don’t actually have to use the select button very often, but still mildly annoying.

Now if I could only get the AC to record stuff for me…

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