REMINISCENCE : Promotion and Release (SPOILER ALERT)

[jo]

One film site makes a direct comparison to INCEPTION!


www.slashfilm.com/reminiscence-teaser-release-date/

‘Reminiscence’ Teaser: ‘Westworld’ Creator Lisa Joy’s Directorial Debut Sets Release Date With a Nolan-Like Teaser

Posted on Friday, February 19th, 2021 by Hoai-Tran Bui



Back at the end of last year, Reminiscence, the time travel thriller starring Hugh Jackman and helmed by Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy in her feature directorial debut, was removed from the 2021 release calendar entirely. But following WarnerMedia’s game-changing announcement of its day-and-date releases for its entire 2021 slate, Reminiscence appeared in a short teaser of the upcoming HBO Max releases this year. Now Warner Bros. has set a new Reminiscence release date for its same-day theatrical and HBO Max debut, along with a tantalizing new teaser that will have viewers reminiscing about a different movie – one by Christopher Nolan. Watch the (very short) Reminiscence teaser below.



If you feel like you just underwent a temporal pincer movement, you’re not alone. The above teaser for Reminiscence has major Christopher Nolan vibes, right down to the soft “braaam” of the score. In the teaser, the camera pans over a turbulent ocean to show a city of skyscrapers, some intact some crumbling, that are all submerged in water. Hugh Jackman coolly narrates, “You’re going on a journey. A journey through memory. Your destination, a place in time. To reach it, all you have to do is follow my voice.”


The imagery immediately calls to mind Nolan’s 2010 sci-fi film Inception, especially the sight of the dilapidated buildings surrounded by and submerged in water. But the Nolan inspiration isn’t too surprising — Joy co-created Westworld with her husband Jonathan Nolan, who has co-written many of his brother Christopher’s films, including The Prestige and Interstellar. This kind of cerebral sci-fi thriller filled with cold, desolate imagery and lots of skyscrapers seem to becoming the calling card for all three of them.




The teaser announces the Reminiscence release date of September 3, 2021, which is Labor Day weekend. Warner Bros. is setting the film’s debut for both theaters and HBO Max, as with the rest of the studio’s 2021 slate. The movie previously had a release date of April 16.


Reminiscence “follows Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), a private investigator of the mind, who navigates the darkly alluring world of the past by helping his clients access lost memories. Living on the fringes of the sunken Miami coast, his life is forever changed when he takes on a new client, Mae (Rebecca Ferguson). A simple matter of lost and found becomes a dangerous obsession. As Bannister fights to find the truth about Mae’s disappearance, he uncovers a violent conspiracy, and must ultimately answer the question: how far would you go to hold on to the ones you love?”



Thandie Newton, Cliff Curtis, Marina de Tavira, Daniel Wu, Mojean Aria, Brett Cullen, Natalie Martinez, Angela Sarafyan, and Nico Parker also star in the film, which Joy wrote and produces with Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan, Michael De Luca, and Aaron Ryder.

[jo]

If anyone's interested what INCEPTION is all about ( in case you have not seen the movie)

here are plot summaries ( some are very, very detailed and sounds like the entire movie itself... and likely contains SPOILERS in case you want to see INCEPTION itself in the future) --

www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl


From my perspective --

I have not seen INCEPTION and simply read the basic storytelling focus and plot points ( and almost completed reading the very detailed storytelling summarized in the above link).

I have also read the first draft of the script of REMINISCENCE.


As far as I can gauge, the only connection is the miming of WHAT is in one's mind, while asleep...or in deep physical resting state. In INCEPTION, we are talking of dreams and how it is used to commit a crime? Or help in the redemption of a criminal? The storytelling becomes very complicated as if one is watching a movie in a maze. I did not even bother to read the entire very detailed synopsis because it has become tiresome to me, following the circuitous moments and interconnections


Not so with REMINISCENCE in my perception.

In REMINISCENCE, Nick delves into past memories to jog people's recollection of an important past fact/event to resolve a present or future problem.

INCEPTION sounds too convoluted, as is true for some Chris Nolan films. Maybe Westworld ( which I have not watched) is in the same genre?

REMINISCENCE however is more of a straightforward thriller where the element of sci-fi is in its futuristic setting ( impacted by climate chance and the ability to delve into another's person's memories), where the storyline moves towards personal relationships among key characters. There is also a deep romantic story woven within, which makes personal relationships an equal focus in this movie.

Just my impressions, for whatever it's worth.


I just hope that those who may have found INCEPTION too complicated to the point of boring do not really think REMINISCENCE is just a carbon copy. REMINISCENCE is after all a very human story!


Jo

[sohmerwood]

It’s delightfully ironic that, after establishing himself and becoming a movie star with a character who’s defining characteristic was the inability to remember his past, Hugh now plays a guy whose purpose is to help others find lost memories. I heard this film described somewhere as a “tent pole.” Is it possible this may not be a standalone? If so, I get “Humphrey Bogart-Sam Spade” vibes! Cool!

[njr]

“prosthetics vocally?” Nah, just Hugh’s talent at changing his voice/accent!

[jo]

Feb 20, 2021 13:20:15 GMT -5 njr said:

“prosthetics vocally?” Nah, just Hugh’s talent at changing his voice/accent!

Yes, Hugh has the talent to give a really wide range of acting interpretations with his vocal range ( speaking voice).

But --

there's something in the script which I do not want to disclose because some might not want to know that detail (unless they change it in the movie itself). It sorts of reminds me of how he sounded in parts of Les Miserables when he was singing the finale "Bring ME Home."

Jo

[jo]

Feb 20, 2021 9:06:02 GMT -5 sohmerwood said:

It’s delightfully ironic that, after establishing himself and becoming a movie star with a character who’s defining characteristic was the inability to remember his past, Hugh now plays a guy whose purpose is to help others find lost memories. I heard this film described somewhere as a “tent pole.” Is it possible this may not be a standalone? If so, I get “Humphrey Bogart-Sam Spade” vibes! Cool!

A "tentpole" - there is spectacle because the story happens in a near-future Miami which has been impacted by climate change ( hence the opening shot with the ocean waves crashing into buildings). It is also an action-thriller with some level of violence maybe associated with superhero films and some may be getting the impression that it sounds like one.

"Humphrey Bogart - Sam Spade" - Hugh's character does look messy ... and he is a special kind of detective working in a film noir-ish environment who does work for different kinds of clients, but without disclosing too much of what I have read from the script, it doesn't seem like it has the potential of a tentpole leading to a franchise. Pay attention to the ending! Of course, they can also change that in the actual movie

And if the movie becomes a major commercial and critical success - who knows if the gods would want to develop a sequel? After all, Lisa Joy and husband Jonathan Nolan are masters of the serial Westworld


Btw, this is the MPAA rating which gives an indication of the movie's DNA --

PG-13 for strong violence, drug material throughout, sexual content and some strong language. (Rating bulletin 2654 (cert #52921), 11/4/2020)

It is unusual because it is a rare movie that combines three major elements - action/thriller, sci-fi and ROMANCE!

How about seeing those romantic scenes in IMAX


Jo

[jo]

[njr]

^ Is the top photo from the film? I’m glad they darkened his beard - looks good!

[jo]

It was also identified as coming from the set of REMINISCENCE.

[jo]

[jo]

I do like to eavesdrop on REDDIT conversations to get a feel of general sentiments about Hugh movies.

This old discussion is where I found the link to the script


www.reddit.com/r/Screenwriting/comments/alkbjd/discussion_excited_for_lisa_joys_reminiscence/




But after the teaser was released --

www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/duplicates/lngj96/hugh_jackman_thriller_reminiscence_debuting_in/

The first 2 have the gossipy discussions.

*Lol - some people saying that the character doesn't look like Hugh

Yup, he himself said that he is more like a Bogart here
As if we are not used to Hugh hiding behind some weird makeup or unusual hairstyles or teeth prosthetics - LOL!
Or even de-aged (Showman) or aged-up (Logan)

*Generally positive reactions! Many looking forward to it. I also think the element of not too many releases of excellent movies during the pandemic have people excited to see a new treat!

*Some are a little diffident - is this a rehash of Inception/Memento/Blade Runner/SpotlessMind? Part of it is because of the Nolan connection.
If you have read the script - that aspect of using memory is only one aspect of the storyline. It is an action/thriller! It is a romance movie!

*Some welcome the dual release -- the film buffs will likely watch it on the big screen... those who find it difficult to go to a cinema have the option of streaming. Overseas -- only available option is the big screen... and as per
Box Office Mojo info -- on IMAX where it is available! In the USA, those with opportunity to watch it on IMAX will likely welcome that option. Just think - action and romance on a wide, wide screen ).

Jo

[jo]

Feb 21, 2021 19:51:12 GMT -5 jo said:

Hugh has seen the artistic rendering...

and posted it --

[jo]

Quite a few comments on the seduction in Hugh's voice

[jo]

Some actual reactions/comments from the REDDIT conversations --

This looks like the exact kind of mid-budget 60% on RT crime thrillers I love. Definitely going to watch this

MantraOfTheMoron
2 days ago
does this guy age? wtf

AubbleCSGO
2 days ago
Yeah I thought that was RDJ at first

Punningisfunning
2 days ago
Special mutant aging process. He was an Old Man previously

carloqwerty
2 days ago
That’s a shame I really loved this script. What WBros is missing out on is having a surprise hit with this type of release strategy, you can’t have an ‘IT Chapter 1’ 700million surprise hit. It’s also the type of script that lends itself to sequels and good world building. Can’t build a franchise with this type of release strategy

The script was on a Black List about 6 or 7 years ago, so you can easily read it online.

The first half is pretty much a tropey film noir, but fun. The second half is kind of Westworld-esque "I'm trying really hard to outsmart you now." But I'll see it just because of the visuals and world.

Wonderful... also a reminder for anyone who didn’t catch Bad Education on HBO to watch it. He is really great in it.

The directorial debut of Westworld showrunner Lisa Joy, produced by Jonathan Nolan. I'm in!

Eternal Inception of Z Spotless Memento?

Chodro
2 days ago
Is that Hugh Jackman??

Wengersmirk
2 days ago
It’s James Howlett

Chodro
2 days ago
That’s not my Wolverine.

Mys_Dark
2 days ago
That’s Richard Armitage, right? Did someone just search Wolverine and put a picture up? I mean, I loved the radio drama, but that’s not HJ.

[jo]

I've been reading up on Lisa Joy!

She's a remarkable woman whose motto is "Strive Big", not "Dream Big".

She is well-educated ( Stanford for her English-major college degree and Harvard Law School for her law degree). She said that she wrote her admission essay to Stanford as a poem.

But she puts equal emphasis on motherhood as much as the tends her many projects ( filmwriting or directing).

She and husband Jonah ( Jonathan Nolan) seem like a great couple and parents. Jonathan has been very supportive of her.


Two quotes (from an ELLE feature article on her) that may give us some clues on REMINISCENCE --

During her first pregnancy, she also penned Reminiscence, a sci-fi thriller she calls “an updated noir.” Legendary Pictures bought it at auction for a reported $1.75 million.

Btw, the script of REMINISCENCE was bought by Legendary Pictures for a remarkable $ 1.75 Million. Presumably, it was put on turnaround because the producing team became Lisa and Jonathan ( under her company Kilter Prod),a major Hollywood producer associated with some of Chris Nolan's films, Aaron Ryder, and former Hollywood producer ( now Chairman of MGM) Michael de Luca.

“Jonah has written some of the most beautiful scenes for women, some of the most emotional,” Joy says, “and I’ve done a ton of fight scenes—I love action.”

Action and romance, within a sci-fi setting, are the main plot drivers of REMINISCENCE! Is it the sci-fi setting... or the main storyline on Nick & Mae within a violent underworld setting...which gives the movie a NOIR-ish tone?


Jo

[jo]

Google Translation --

Just with this voiceover of @realhughjackman
the movie #Reminiscence you already have my full attention. If you tell me later that Lisa Joy (Westworld) is directing and writing the script, my attention is doubled.

[jo]

Everyone seems to be taken with that seductive voiceover from Hugh

From that long ago interview of Lisa Joy with Mike Fleming of Deadline.com.

All the years I was writing this, I would see the scenes fully in my mind and I was directing it and planning the set pieces and drawing the artwork for the world. The one person who was always in my mind, from the first day, was Hugh Jackman. It’s this crazy love story and it’s totally unreal to me. I drew his costume on him, I have all these sketches and I thought, it has to be him. This is a man who, whatever character he inhabits, whether it’s in Prisoners, or The Greatest Showman, he has a range that’s like that of a character actor. You always believe his characters. He has so much heart. Even if he’s playing a flawed character. You can just see that heart underneath that and you forgive him because you see in his flaws, your own.


Then you couple that with, my God, he’s Wolverine. The most charismatic, handsomest movie star. The idea he’s all those things combined, with the sensitivity and the action, the sheer physicality to pull off this physically demanding role. He was all I could picture. I didn’t talk to anyone else. I sent him an email and went out to meet him and we talked about the script. I stayed so long, they were like, you want to have dinner here? We were in his living room that long. I decided to leave him to dinner with his family and not encroach anymore. It was an instant connection in that way. He totally viscerally understood and inhabited that character.



I just recorded some voiceover with him and it was so moving to see him say these words that I’d imagined in my head so long. The life he brought to them was even better and more nuanced than I had imagined. That’s my lead.

You're so right, Ms Lisa Joy


Jo

[jo]

Maybe at that time, Hugh was not keen to do any stage musical film adaptation?

It would have been a great project for him. Stine was the writer who invented the detective Stone in his stories. There was an ongoing tit-for-tat between author and his (potential doppelganger) creation


Jo

[jo]

Release date in Australia -- August 26, 2021.

Will Hugh already have a chance to visit his homeland by then?

[jo]

More on Lisa Joy -- a feature written by her scripwriting mentor Scott Myers.

gointothestory.blcklst.com/go-into-the-story-interview-lisa-joy-896b92235428

The interview/discussion is very long ...and gives one an insight on the kind of talent Lisa Joy is. What motivates her? What inspires her? How did the process of writing REMINISCENCE come about?

I will only pick out those parts that pertain to REMINISCENCE (If you are interested in the full interview, pls check out the link). At that time, there has been no indication that the script will eventually become a greenlit film project ( although the script was first sold to Legendary Pictures) and that Hugh Jackman will get involved in it. Although from a later interview, Lisa Joy said that she modelled the character of Nick Bannister with the idea in mind of casting Hugh Jackman in the role.



SPOILER ALERT***********SPOILER ALERT**********SPOILER ALERT************SPOILER ALERT


Excerpts --

Go Into The Story Interview: Lisa Joy
Scott Myers

Jun 22, 2018 · 44 min read


I first met Lisa when she took two of my online screenwriting classes. At the time, she had recently graduated from Stanford and was working in the legal affairs department at Universal (I think my memory is right about that). Eventually, she went to Harvard Law School, but we stayed in touch throughout her time there. Lisa wanted to be a writer. Movies. TV. She was passionate about learning the craft and it was clear to me she had the talent to make it. I kept telling her, “Just keep writing what you can, when you can.” She sent me feature scripts she’d written while taking a full load of classes in law school. Then one day… well, read the interview to find out how Lisa went from practicing law to creating stories.

Lisa: That was it. I’m still private. My husband and I are both writers. We’re co‑writing “Westworld,” but I never showed him “Reminiscence” until I sent it out to my agent.

Scott: Seriously.

Lisa: I don’t know. [laughs] It’s terrifying for me, frankly. I thought about writing under a pseudonym, but then I figured no one really knows who I am anyway, it doesn’t matter.

Scott: Let’s jump to another sci‑fi project, another big project from last year, your script “Reminiscence” which you wrote on spec. Terrific script, Lisa. You made your teacher very proud.

Lisa: Oh, thank you.

Scott: Here’s a description of the plot: “An ‘archaeologist’ whose technology allows you to relive your past, abuses his own science to find the love of his life.”

This is set in the near‑future. It’s a fascinating science fiction, crime‑thriller script with a very strong emotional core to it. What was the inspiration for this idea?


Lisa: I think it was floating around in my mind. It’s hard to say where inspiration comes from. I remember I was in New York, and I just woke up one morning and I was like, “Oh, I think I have an idea.” It had been something that I was kicking around as an idea for a TV show for awhile.

But at the time, I’d actually found out that I was pregnant, and it was hard for me to staff and everything. The Writers Guild does not have maternity leave, and I was scared that I’d worked so hard to get into this career and what if it was all over.

Suddenly, when I’m thinking of this idea, I was like, “I have absolutely nothing to lose. I might as well write this exactly the way that I want to write it, with no thoughts about ‘sellability’ and no thoughts about appealing to certain people. I’m just going to write something that amuses myself, because there’s really nothing else for me to do for the next nine months.”

It’s a mix of some of the things I love. I love the movies To Have and Have Not, Blade Runner, Eternal Sunshine, and the novel “Slaughterhouse Five.” If you took all of those things, and some of my favorite poems, and put them in a blender, I think you’d see a lot of those influences and the kinds of themes and world that I wanted to explore.

Once I had the idea and I thought, “I’m not going to do this as a TV pilot,” which when you do something for TV, on network especially, there are certain places you don’t go, certain things you can’t do. You have to self-censor.
When I took away the idea it was going to be a TV pilot, I said, “Write a feature. Write it exactly as you want it.” Shortly after I let myself off the hook that way, the structure for it fell into place easily.

It’s a complicated structure, the piece, but it has a symmetry to it that was poetic in the way that it fell upon itself. As soon as I found those kind of buoys bobbing in the water I knew I had to hit and that made the whole piece float, I just swam for those buoys and wrote the thing. That became the script.

It’s funny because there are scripts I’ve worked on, this one that I’m now using for the idea for “Westworld,” I worked on it for over seven years I would say, and never got it to quite the place I wanted to.

For “Reminiscence,” most of the time I spent on it in pregnancy trimesters. It was the first trimester I thought of it. My second trimester I finished the script. I just wrote in this delirious burst, and edited it for a while. We took it out and within two days it had sold.




Scott: The central idea of “Reminiscence”, that there’s this technology which exists in the near‑future where people can experience a startlingly real re-experience of events in the past, was that the very first thing you had for the story?


Lisa: Yeah, that was the core of the idea, the high‑concept hook. It came from a place where I’ve always been fascinated by memory. I think some poet said this, maybe, Billy Collins, I’m not sure, but he said that his biggest sins are cynicism and sentimentalism.

I believe the same thing could probably be said for me in that I honestly sometimes wake up at night so full of nostalgia for random things and moments in my life. Nostalgia’s its own kind of drug. There’s something beautiful about thinking back on a moment, and yet so tantalizingly frustrating about it, too…

It’s like when you look back at memory, you’re seeing things only in peripheral vision. Everything’s a little bit hazy, and you remember how special that moment was, but you can’t quite grasp it again with the same solidity you once experienced it. I thought, “What if you could?” I remember back in high school reading about the brain, and psychology has always been something that’s fascinated me.

I remember somebody told me when people have their brains operated on, sometimes when you touch certain parts of it with an electrical charge, it triggers memories. I don’t know how real that is. But for me it was an evocative enough thought.
What if every moment you ever experienced is still there locked inside you? Not just the thought of that moment, not just the memory of it, but the actual sensation of being in that moment. What if your own brain could be a time machine and take you back to a moment and immerse you fully in it?

What would you do with that power? How would you use it? How would you abuse it? What would the world look like? How would the world change? Out of those questions grew the script.


Scott: What’s fascinating about it is we always look for high concepts, strong concepts, and this one for a science‑fiction story is a terrific one. But also, it has an innate emotional and psychological element to it.
The idea that people would choose to pay money to have these reminiscing experiences, some of them even preferring to live in the past, suggests they are fundamentally connected to regret, or grief, or lust, or nostalgia, whatever. So what starts off as a technological idea really is a very human one.

Lisa: Yeah. For me, I’m always so interested in the emotional core and the character work of anything I write. I’ve written in a lot of different genres, I would say. But the thing that is first and foremost to me is, “Do I love the character? Do I empathize with them?” I even think you have to love and empathize with the villains you write, especially them, in a way. Otherwise it just becomes caricature.

For me it would be hard to write something where there wasn’t an emotional core to it. Memory has so much of that built into it. It’s a very ubiquitous human trait — to wonder about the past… the people you left behind… the things that could have been.

In physics they talk about time as being just another dimension. We think of it as very linear because that’s how we experience it. But what if you didn’t have to experience it in a linear fashion?
If you could go back as an old man to relive holding your child for the first time, or your wedding night, or talking to your parents again. If you could just relive that moment in all its fullness, would it be any less real or any less valuable than say sitting at the kitchen table eating some Cheerios in the present day? That’s one of the things that I wanted to explore.






Scott: One of the interesting themes of the story is time. You have the protagonist, a man called Bannister, and that’s the way in which he’s an archaeologist, he’s skilled in guiding clients into their memories and digging back through these layers of time back into their past. In fact, at one point he says, “I’m just a keeper of lost moments.” How would you describe Bannister as a character? What are his core issues?

Lisa: Bannister is a character who is a kind man, but it’s hard to see that kindness because he’s so buttoned up. Because of his job, because he’s so good at what he does…there’s an art to being an archaeologist, you have to give people the right prompt to lead people back into their memories.

But because he’s so good at that, and he’s seen so many people and the reasons that they go back in time to experience things, it’s given him a cynicism. It’s kept him at arm’s length from the rest of the world.
When he sees young lovers walk down the street, he knows that probably in five years they’ll be in the tank one of them thinking about the other. It’s made him a little bit jaded because he knows how ephemeral joy can be, how ephemeral love can be, and because of that he keeps life at a distance.

You get the feeling there’s something broken in him, something a little disconnected with the rest of the world, and something achingly lonely. He’s looking for a memory that’s worth keeping.





Scott: That dovetails right into the Mae character who becomes the object of Bannister’s rather obsessive pursuit. How would you describe her character?

Lisa: I was heavily influenced by classic noirs for the script and Mae’s character is no exception. Many noirs create very strong nuanced roles for women; but some noirs still have a bit of that femme fatale / damsel or sinner / saint dichotomy.

I wanted to work within the noir style, but subvert it a bit and flesh out the nuances in the female character to portray a complex and modern portrait of a woman.

I wrote this movie from Bannister’s perspective, a male perspective. This is a unique opportunity to write as a man observing a woman, to literally study the kind of masculine gaze it’s from. Bannister is an archaeologist and “archaeology” I think is the right word for how we find Mae’s character. It’s a dig. You have to search for who she really is.

I remember thinking about that in Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock had explored some of those themes. This is my meditation on that. You see her through Bannister’s eyes, and you see her as one thing. But what I wanted to do was to give her, her full depth as a character too. To peel back layer after layer and to go on this discovery with him, and as we learn more and more about Mae, we also learn more about Bannister — and the somewhat unreliable lens through which he views the world and Mae.

As a female screenwriter a lot of people say, “It’s harder for a female protagonist to open movies,” or “women can’t write men” or whatever. In my mind, that’s just all nonsense. You should ignore all that. What you should do is just write a character. Write a full, beautiful character that you fall in love with, man or woman. That’s how you get something true. Something that resonates.





Scott: In any science fiction story set in a different time or a different planet, there’s a certain amount of world‑building the writer needs to do. You’ve got that going on in “Reminiscence” with driverless cars, designer drugs, memory‑tank technology and whatnot.

But there’s a whole culture you develop around all of those technologies which is really interesting. Businesses like that Memorabilia Inc., a kind of chain store where people can go and get their memories fix. You’ve got these odd sort of New Orleans style funeral practices. Advertising in the sky, all this stuff. It feels very real and it’s quite entertaining. How did you go about creating that world?


Lisa: I had the luxury of time, in a way, where I sat down and I was writing the script spec, I was writing it to my own taste. Honestly, before I went into any theme, I would just close my eyes and sit there for quite awhile and think, “What is it like to move through this world?”

If it was boring me, I would say, “That’s not good enough.” I think the world that was created has bits of things that I love and find fascinating.

I’ve just taken little bits of culture that I witnessed when I traveled to Asia, or when I look at different parts of the United States, or when I’m in Europe, or anywhere, and I just take tons of things that seem strange to me at the time and just follow them through, strange but beautiful. That’s what I did.

I read this thing recently about how New York is built on the rubble of blasted European cities from World War II, and that if you were to dig down beneath say, FDR Drive, you’d find the landfill was composed of fragments of cathedrals, buildings and homes destroyed in the Blitz.

That’s how the archaeology of scripts sometimes works is that you have all these little pieces of the cities you’ve been to and the people you’ve seen. That part of creating the world of screenplays is to piece them back together, these broken Lego bits and create something all your own.






Scott: From a nuts and bolts perspective, much of the story is about creating a thread of clues Bannister has got to follow which in effect constructs the plot. I’m wondering how much of that came intuitively and how much do you think derived from your time working on TV with a series like “Burn Notice,” going from clue to clue, commercial break to commercial break.

Lisa: The most important one of the things about TV is it goes at such a pace that sometimes it can become predictable in some ways because you even know when the ad break is coming and what’s going to happen. You can just feel those rhythms. A part of it is it become intuitive.

But you also want to subvert that a little bit and make sure you throw in some surprises in TV and in film, keep things experimental a little bit and moving forward. I would say that from TV I learned the rigors of keep the story moving. Make sure something new is happening. Make sure you’re discovering new things at each turn. But not exactly in the same six act structure that TV would have necessarily.


To me, I wanted it to be more organic so there would be room for surprises that would surprise me. That I’d, if I stumbled across something and it seemed like a little bit of a digression, in TV I would normally cut that out, because frankly, you just don’t have time for network TV specifically. You have 52 pages.

Unless it’s really important, you just don’t have time for it on network TV. In the feature, you have a little more time to explore things and take small digressions, which you might not immediately understand the importance of those digressions, but later on I think they add to the fullness of the universe and help take a script to new level.
I tend to think that part of structure is learned. After writing and reading a lot of scripts, you start to get a feeling for: “Oh, God, the hero needs to be driving something forward at this point. He’s meandering around too much.” I guess its craft, and you just keep practicing until it becomes intuitive.

But I also think that part of it is like music. Not everybody’s a musician, but when you first hear a song, there’s a kind of “a priori” sense for the rhythm and flow of it. How things crescendo into a peak. Decrescendo into conclusion. When the chorus will come back and give you something to hang onto. When it’s going to really get going and have you swaying or clapping along.

Screenplays and music have that in common. Sometimes I don’t know why it doesn’t work, but I just know it doesn’t sound right. It’s not singing right, if that makes sense.





Scott: You mentioned the word “complicated” earlier in terms of your structure. You’ve got these reminiscing events and you have flashbacks, yet they’re distinct. I think in the script you say they have a distinctly different look.

Lisa: Right.

Scott: There are several of them. How challenging was that for you? How many to use? When to use them? How to use them? Did you do a lot of rewriting on that or did that lay out pretty easily for you?

Lisa: I did a lot of thinking on it beforehand, it wasn’t as much rewriting as it was a long and heavy meditation period beforehand.

I wanted to talk about memory’s fallibility and subjectivity. The thing about the archaeologist’s reminiscence machine is that when you go back in those memories, they are accurate. You are just pushing a button in your brain, and the exact replica of that memory is coming up. You don’t get the kind of subjective bias that you do in an organic memory.

Organic memories are fuzzy. They’re hazy, and you can get confused about did that really happen or was that something somebody told me? Did I embellish it over the years? Did I turn it to suit my purposes? Did I tell this memory as a funny anecdote so many times that the little embellishments I’ve added have now become fused in my mind to the actual memory?

You do lie to yourself about your own past, and I think you do invariably lie to yourself about your own past. They can be white lies, or they can be more malicious lies. But the way in which we think about the past is not honest.
It cannot be honest because our brain just does not conjure it back up with that level of detail, we fill in the blanks. We fill them out to suit our purposes.

I wanted to be able to juxtapose from the way Bannister remembered things for himself, or the way things actually went to illustrate that point and understand the Bannister character in terms of the lies that he told himself about the past.




***********************************

MOST MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD - Don't read it if you don't want to know the ending!

SPOILER: Click to show

Scott: One final question about the script. The conventional last two words of a script: The End. Not in “Reminiscence.” In your script, you end with the words: “The Middle.”


Lisa: Right. The thing that influenced me structurally in writing “Reminiscence” was a format of a Rondel poem. In that poem, the first two lines of the first stanza are refrains, and they repeat at the last two lines of the second stanza and the third stanza. Basically, you have a poem progression where certain lines are echoed and tweaked in their repetition.

In a way, the structural underpinnings for “Reminiscence” are borrowed from that sort of poem. Because for me that kind of poem works like a memory, where certain memories tug you back again and again. I wanted to mimic that in the structure of the screenplay.

The last two lines, the words, of the screenplay wanted to point out that that was the structure that was happening, and to point out that an ending is not always an ending.

Scott: So you sell this thing to Legendary Pictures for a boatload of money. Then the script makes the Black List. Where are you with all the amazing buzz around this project?

Lisa: I don’t know. I’m so grateful for the interest that people took in it. Honestly, for me the most thrilling part of it was some of the directors and some of the producers who responded to it, and wanted to work on it were fantastic, and the fact that there were those options out there.

These were my idols, and to be able to just have them read something that I wrote, frankly, was so gratifying to me that it was probably the most meaningful part of the process. Not even the sale itself, but just hearing from people I admire, that they liked it and responded to it was truly, for me, fantastic.

The collaboration with Legendary is so fun. They’re a company that invests in big, bold worlds. They have this huge appetite to tell stories, and tell them provocatively. They’re not afraid to take chances and take on big things. To be in collaboration with somebody who’s as keen and driven to create a world that people believe, and love playing in it has been really gratifying.

It’s been really great because you have this baby, and it’s a script, and you just want to make sure you raise it with the right people. To have such great collaborators has been so gratifying, on so very many levels.
In terms of the actual feeling of selling a script — it was pretty unreal. But nothing really has changed in my life, [laughs] I have to say. Except I have some really great meetings with people, and there are more opportunities to work on really cool projects.

But I have this philosophy where, it’s going to sound pretentious…I’m even hesitant to bring up another poem. There’s a line in it, “When you meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same.”


Scott: Rudyard Kipling?

Lisa: Yeah, Kipling’s “If”. My grandmother used to love that poem and had it hung on her kitchen wall. It was a lesson to his son on how to be a “man”. But man or woman, the same lessons apply.

“When you meet with triumph and disaster, and treat these two impostors just the same”, you really have to have that mentality when you’re a screenwriter. Disaster comes, triumph comes, and they never last, either of them. The most you can hope for is that you love what you’re doing, when you’re doing it. I celebrated selling “Reminiscence” by getting back to work.

[jo]

Hope this trailer alert happens!

[jo]

FALSE ALARM!!


I should have known better --

*Hugh usually drops a hint when one is forthcoming.

*It is usually released by the official film distributor ( in this case, Warner Bros).

Oh well -- hopefully, we won't wait too long!


Jo

[jo]

[jo]

Confirmed on Box Office Mojo --

now on Wide Release, with IMAX!


www.boxofficemojo.com/calendar/2021-08-01/


Releases on August 27, and for week preceding and suceeding Reminiscence release.

August 20, 2021

BIOS
Drama Sci-Fi
With: Donat Balaj, Tom Hanks, Caleb Landry Jones, Lora Martinez-Cunningham
Cast, Crew, and Company Info
Universal Pictures Wide

Paw Patrol: The Movie
Adventure Animation Comedy Family
With: Randall Park, Dax Shepard, Iain Armitage, Yara Shahidi
Cast, Crew, and Company Info
Paramount Pictures Limited

Ma Belle, My Beauty
Drama Romance
With: Idella Johnson, Hannah Pepper, Lucien Guignard, Sivan Noam Shimon
1 hr 33 min
Cast, Crew, and Company Info
Good Deed Entertainment Limited



August 27, 2021

Candyman
Horror Thriller
With: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo
Cast, Crew, and Company Info
Universal Pictures Wide

The Beatles: Get Back
Documentary Music
With: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr
Cast, Crew, and Company Info
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Limited

Reminiscence
Romance Sci-Fi Thriller IMAX
With: Rebecca Ferguson, Natalie Martinez, Hugh Jackman, Thandie Newton
Cast, Crew, and Company Info
Warner Bros. Wide


September 3, 2021

Jackass 4
Action Comedy Documentary
With: Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Jason 'Wee Man' Acuña
Cast, Crew, and Company Info
Paramount Pictures Wide

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Action Adventure Fantasy Sci-Fi
With: Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Fala Chen
Cast, Crew, and Company Info
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Wide

Resident Evil
Action Horror Mystery Sci-Fi
With: Kaya Scodelario, Robbie Amell, Hannah John-Kamen, Tom Hopper
Cast, Crew, and Company Info

[jo]

Why watching REMINISCENCE on screen will be a treat - not only will it available on IMAX or Dolby Vision but also on Dolby Sounds --