Bamboo Killers

Steam on my television

2012-02-01T12:31:00.000-08:00

I was thinking yesterday about chemistry between actors and wondering how much of it is in the performance and how much of it is in the writing.

When I think back about scenes that scorched on screen for me, most of them were from TV, and I think that's because I've invested so much in this couple that I'm overjoyed when they finally get together.

Buffy and Spike are first in my mind. When they finally sexed that house to the ground in season 6, I was fanning myself from the heat coming off my television.

Spike wanted her SO much for so long that when she finally consented I knew how much he poured his desire into her.

I heard from someone who worked on Buffy that almost every time a female actress did a guest spot on the show, she wanted to have a love scene with Spike. Apparently James Marsters is just fucking hot.

So actor with good writing, coming together?

I was thinking this because I've been enchanted by the Canadian show that's now on Syfy, Lost Girl, and the incredible chemistry between the leads. I mean, Kris Holden-Ried is hot as hell, which probably helps, but in every scene he has with the lead (Anna Silk), they burn up the set together. Even dialogue-heavy scenes between them are hot.

Usually it takes an entire season, or six, to get to a point where you feel that energy, but I felt it from the very first kiss between them, which happened in the pilot.

Yet sometimes you'll have characters come together in a way that is supposed to get me all hot and bothered, but I got nothin. And I wonder if the relationship between them just wasn't set up very well or are the actors just not compatible. I dunno.

It's just a thing I was thinking about.

The kind of script you should be writing

2012-01-25T10:00:00.000-08:00

I'm going to try as much as I can and without causing myself trouble, to blog about things I'm learning that nobody told me about when I was hunting for a rep.

Today, I'm going to talk about the biggest challenge ever: THE NEXT BIG IDEA. People will often tell you to write commercial, but they don't tell you what else you need to write. Just having one good script is not enough. You need to show that you can continue to produce work the town will want to read, and hopefully buy.

So I've got a script worth reading. Heck, I've got two scripts worth reading. I'm taking meetings, working my thing, getting introduced to the town.

Meanwhile, I have to figure out what to write next. Those ideas I've been saving up for years on little color coded index cards? USELESS.

When you're on your own you can write whatever you want. Want to write a Civil War martial arts story? Knock yourself out. Passion can drives your work. You write the idea that excites you the most.

Once you start building a career, you write the idea that excites you the most but which also 1) has a commercial concept, 2) fits within the genre of your previous work, and 3) can have a star in the lead role so you can make attachments.

Never underestimate the importance of a star vehicle. When you're writing a script to get the attention of a rep, you need something that will attract a star, and not just one or two stars. If the only person who can star in your movie is The Rock, it's going to be a hard sell. What happens if he's not available, or if he doesn't want to do an action movie right now? You're stuck.

So the best thing you can do to get noticed is write something commercial with a lead who is a white male in his early 30s. Then write another one.

This is a lot harder than it sounds. That's where I am now, trying to beat out an idea that fits that criteria and has obvious potential to make money. I think getting my masters degree was easier.

Thoughts on the film: Haywire

2012-01-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

I liked Haywire, and here's why:

It was refreshing to see the camera lay back and let the star do all the work during action scenes. We've come to expect our action scenes to have a zillion cuts, largely so we don't notice the big stunt double who's doing all the tough stuff in between close-ups of the beautiful star's face looking intense. In this movie, there was no need for the star to have a stunt double do all the work, so we got to watch the pure action scene without cutting in and out and back and forth and shaky-cammed to death.

She looked like she could kick ass, she acted like she could kick ass. I felt like Gina Carano's acting was just fine as long as she had something to do, although the scenes when she was sitting still and talking were not so good. Anything that took place inside a car was cringe-worthy.

BUT-

The MOS stuff in Barcelona was terrific, and for once I actually liked Channing Tatum, and you just can't beat those action scenes. I'm jealous of how well that woman can move her body to kick major ass.

Is it a perfect movie? Definitely not. I barely understood the plot, and the parts I did understand had some serious holes, but it was shot beautifully and clean. No extra bullshit. I wish more action movies were shot that way, because sometimes I feel like the constant movement of the camera is trying to make me think there's more going on here than there is. I loved that in one scene, Carano was just running after a guy. Just running, trying to catch him, doing what a woman like that would actually do. It wasn't super fancy. It was just straight up, old school running.

The problem is, the marketing made you think this was a Bourne movie with a chick. It's not. The premise is similar, but the shooting style is vastly different, and if you went in expecting Bourne you'd be angry at what you got. That's probably why audiences responded so poorly.

I'm sad about the audience response, but at least nobody can blame the weekend on a strong female protagonist. Thank you, Underworld 4. And Haywire will make its investment back because of its low budget. Hopefully this was a great introduction to Carano and we will see more of her soon. I'd write something for her in a heart beat if the job came up.

Go to Haywire.

2012-01-20T11:57:00.000-08:00

This has been an insanely busy week. I had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday to get started on therapy for my wrist, I had a walk through with the caterer Wednesday to plan for the wedding, I had a studio meeting on Thursday, and in between I've been managing a big sales push for yearbooks at work, so I haven't had any time to actually sit down all week. I had a whole slew of blog posts planned and no time to write them.

The more stuff I have to do, the more wired I become. I'm sure by the time I walked into the office on the lot yesterday I looked like a cocaine addict. I hope I wasn't too frightening.

Tonight's activity is Haywire.

Haywire. Go see it, everybody.

As of this writing, it's got 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. Hey, that's good! It's got an ass kicking chick who actually knows how to fight. Did you see that arm bar she pulled on Channing Tatum in the first five minutes? Textbook. Don't know what an arm bar is? You don't have to! It's still awesome to look at!

Like Ewan MacGregor? This movie has that!

If this movie does well, cool options open up for me. If this movie does not do well, I've got an uphill climb with some of my projects. So believe me, I'm completely self-centered when I say please, everyone, go see this kick ass movie. You know you want to. You've been thinking about it. You said to yourself, hey, maybe I want to see that tear jerker about the kid and his dad and whatever? No, you don't. That kid doesn't even punch anybody in the face in that movie.

Remember how George Lucas has betrayed you? Yeah, you don't want to go through that again.

Underworld is okay, but we all know the fourth of anything isn't all that great.

So go see Haywire, because it's awesome, and also because seriously go see this movie.

Meetings: Part 1

2012-01-16T17:23:00.000-08:00

Now is the time when I go to meetings. I haven't done too many yet; I hope to fill my calendar with them in the coming year. These are great meetings because I'm just going in to chat with people, make sure we like each other, see if they have any projects for which I'd be a good fit.

Driving on a studio lot is cool. I've been on the Warner Brothers lot before as somebody's guest at one of those bi-annual sales where they sell off all the shit left over from old TV shows and movies, but I've never been on a lot in any kind of official capacity.

So when I drove on a lot the other day, I admit I got a little giddy. I've seen enough movies to know how you're supposed to act, so I just pretended this was like any other day for me when I told the guards where I was headed. It's a nice feeling when your name is on a list. And not a list of people who've been banned from Putt putt for climbing the fake rocks.

Anyway, I took the water like everybody else, but the problem with drinking water during a meeting in an unfamiliar place is that I always have to ask where the bathroom is. And in all that talk about water bottles, here's something nobody ever mentioned before: Tip the valet a dollar. I had to ask some guy who was standing next to me waiting for his car.

I've got another meeting this week - thankfully within a short distance of my house this time so I won't be in traffic for an hour, not that I mind, then another at the end of the month. I'm excited about both meetings, and I hope they shove another one in there soon.

Meanwhile, I'm writing, writing, writing, and finding ways to avoid grading papers.

A few general thoughts on reps

2012-01-10T12:47:00.000-08:00

Having a rep is amazing, but as I learned last time I had a manager, it does not guarantee any kind of success. Their job is to give you opportunities. Your job is to make the most of those opportunities.

Reps sign you on because they think you can make them money. They can get your career going. The few I've dealt with have struck me as people who love getting excited about working with someone they believe has talent, and that excitement is contagious. Your job, as an unrepped writer, is to get that excitement going over you.

But there are different kinds of reps. If you don't know about hip pocketing, that's when the rep doesn't do any work on your behalf, but if you need someone to submit for you, they'll do it. So let's say you're at a party and you meet a studio exec. You pitch him an idea, he likes it, tells your rep to send it over. That's when you call your hip pocketing agent to send that requested script over. And maybe if he likes you enough, or if you show signs of promise, he'll decide to fully represent you.

Any "agent" or "manager" who wants money up front is a fraud. Period. I don't care how much they gush over you. They are full of shit and you shouldn't do business with them.

There are plenty of stories of reps who sign a writer then forget about them. It happens quite a lot, actually. But as a very successful A-lister once told me, a rep who never calls is not a rep. If you end up with a rep who hasn't contacted you in months, break it off. They're not interested in you. Remember the excitement the like to feel? As soon as they lose that sense of excitement, you've lost them.

But it's not the end of the world if you have to fire a rep, even if you have to go back to being without one for a while. Sometimes it's not a good fit. I know plenty of successful writers who've been through three or four reps until they found the right one, and I know successful writers who stuck with the first one they landed. It's different for everybody.

But the important thing is, no matter who is representing you, keep working. Bust your ass, do what they say, and maybe you can keep that excitement going. That's where I am now: busting my ass to take advantage of the opportunities I'm being given.

And now, the busying

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

You guys are amazing. I actually had to block off a couple of hours on Friday morning just to respond to all the nice emails and posts and tweets.

I figured I'd at least have a couple of people making snide comments, but it was all positive. All people who are happy for me. That was great.

The nature of this blog will probably change now, but I think it will be helpful to chronicle as much as I can the journey as it happens. I can't go into any specific or name any names, but I can talk in general terms about what I encounter.

I had a rep before, but I didn't have this kind of attention, so now I'm bracing myself for the amount of work I have to do. Obtaining a rep is step one; Step two is taking advantage of the opportunities with which they provide you.

I have to come up with my next project, which is a lot harder than you'd think. I was working on a Civil War martial arts story. That is obviously nixed for the time being, because while you're fucking around on your own, your dream project is all well and good, but when you're trying to build a career, you need to write material more than three people would pay to see. I'll go back to that script some day. It will be my Inception.

In the meantime, I must come up with something commercial that fits the kind of work I consistently want to write. I had a lot of ideas I'd been saving over the years, none of which are good enough for this task. So I'm in the process of developing something new. I'm also revising an old script to get it up to par.

This week I start taking general meetings. I've had one of these meetings ever, so I'm still really green on meeting etiquette. But I'm not worried. If I can make 46 juniors read a novel silently in a classroom, I can probably handle a polite conversation with a studio exec.

But I am busy. Busy busy busy. I'm so busy I'm thinking of ways I can change my original plan for the rest of the school year so I don't end up having to take so much work home. The kids shouldn't suffer because I've got a second job, but there's no way I can do my job the way I always have and still have time to build my screenwriting career.

Then again, I'm at my best when I have 100 things to do. It's a good busy. I couldn't be happier to have no time.

Winning

2012-01-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've had a lot of time to think about what I'd say here today because I've been sitting on this news for weeks, unable to tell anyone. I wrote about four posts already before settling on this one. This must be what it's like to work on Project Runway.

In case you haven't yet heard, I was one of the three finalists in The TrackingB feature script contest.

I entered Nice Girls Don't Kill the first week the contest opened for entries, then I got busy working on my next script, How My Wedding Dress Got This Dirty. It turned out that the contest still had a week to go when I finished the script, so I entered it at the last minute.

Now that I had two low budget commercial scripts completed, I got back to work on my Civil War martial arts story. Things were going swimmingly, moving along at a casual pace. I wrote pages. I graded papers. Ladeda.

Then one night while I was entrenched on the couch, grading essays, lamenting that fact that it was taking me longer to give notes on these essays than it took the kids to write them, when I got a message from The Insider, the guy who runs TrackingB and the contest, asking for my phone number.

This can mean only one thing.

I pretended to be all cool and nonchalant as I answered the phone, and he told me I was one of the finalists with How My Wedding Dress Got This Dirty.

I probably said "That's awesome!" about eighty times during that conversation. Adjectives are not my strong suit.

This was a Sunday night.

Monday I drove straight from work to the Circle of Confusion office, where I met with Ken Freimann. I thought he was just awesome, and even though I knew other managers were reading my script, I signed with him on the spot.

I spent the next couple of days letting people know I'd already found a rep, thank you for your interest. All the while, The Insider let me know who he'd sent the script to, asked how I was doing and what I had decided, and gave me great advice on how to make the best choices in the middle of all this heat.

Tuesday, between grading more essays (I feel like for the past three years, nary a moment has gone by when I did not have an essay to grade), I approved the new cover for my script, complete with COC logo.

Wednesday Ken and I met with Ava Jamshidi at ICM. I loved her. Even though I knew we were waiting for other agents to read the script - agents you would cream your pants to meet with - I decided on the way home that I couldn't do any better than Ava. She's awesome, and she gets shit done. She and Ken had some terrific plans for me.

My team was made official on Thursday morning.

So to recap: Sunday night I was grading papers in front of the TV, watching a marathon of MI5 episodes. Thursday I had a manager, an agent, and my script was already in the hands of three production houses, one of which I'd been trying to get my work to for years.

And now here I am, still grading these fucking essays while my team gets my career started.

It's pretty awesome.

Keep going

2012-01-03T22:28:00.000-08:00

I'm an eternal optimist. It helps in this town. There's an interesting dynamic here, where half the people tell you that your shit smells like roses and sunshine, and the other half fling poo in your face. Somehow you have to let your ego ride straight down the middle. So, it helps to always think everything will be okay.

Sometimes I'll write a script and think it's pretty damn solid, so I get notes. And sometimes those notes tell me to shove my head in an oven. I'll get sad, spend a day weeping, think about giving it all up and resigning myself to turning teaching into Plan A.

But that feeling lasts a few hours, until I think about the notes and figure out how to incorporate them into the script. Then I get all excited about the rewrite and figure it will all be okay eventually.

Because eventually, if I keep working and I keep learning and I keep searching for the best story, someone will take notice.

The only people who don't make it in this town are people who refuse to learn. Don't give up, Listen, Learn, Work hard, and it will happen. I firmly believe that. You have to have faith that it will all be okay, then you have to work your ass off to make sure it does.

Bye, 2011. Long live 2012

2011-12-30T09:20:00.000-08:00

It's cursory year-end post time.

You know how it doesn't matter how great a movie was, if the ending sucks all you remember is the sucky ending? Or the opposite. A good ending can sort of wipe away the bad memories.

I spent six months of the year in constant pain. I managed to write a script during that time - How My Wedding Dress Got This Dirty, a script that turned out pretty damn good. I have high hopes for the script in the new year.

But I don't even remember the pain now. My surgery was a major success; I even painted the living room this week. Writing is easy, and good exercise for my recovering wrist.

So in 2012, I'm going to take advantage of my new capability and write like crazy. I also want to get back into martial arts. I'll probably start with Thai Chi and yoga and move on from there to Muy Thai again, hoping eventually to get into Jujitsu.

But first, I will write this new action comedy I started last week. I've written the first draft of the outline, because I've gradually become a fan of detailed outlines after seeing how well it worked on the last script. I hope that having a great outline will allow me to write the first draft of the script super fast again. Before it was a necessity to write fast because of how little time I was able to write through the pain, but in the process I realized how much easier that made the work, pain or no pain. So I just spent two weeks on an outline on the hopes that it will reduce the amount of time I spend on the script. If I solve the story problems in outline stage, I don't have to stop and ponder solutions after I've already written pages of script.

I got engaged, finally. It was an inevitability, but it's glad to finally be able to throw my carefully laid plans into action. I'm going dress shopping next week. How funny that I just wrote a wedding script.

So I think 2012 will be a good year. I've got some cool stuff coming up besides the wedding, which I'll talk about a bit next week. I'll be doing a podcast again toward the end of the month where I can talk about it at detail, a fun way to start a good year.

2011 taught me a lot about writing and time management and controlling my ego. It has prepared me well for the year to come.

How was 2011 for you? What's up your sleeve for 2012?

Planning

2011-12-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

For someone who loves multitasking and planning as much as I do, 2012 is going to be the best year ever. I've got screenplays going on, I've got a job to do, and now I've got a wedding to plan.

Although I confess the wedding was already planned once I decided this was my groom. I love watching wedding shows, and I was engaged once before so I already planned on wedding, and I enjoy planning things and making lists ever so much. It was really a given that I'd have a file on my computer with my wedding plans.

I've already called the caterer and the dress salon. I'm making up a guest list today, but I'm leaving room for all the celebrities I'm going to meet this year.

I'm also working on an outline for a new project, and it was flowing along nicely until I got to the final sequence. I can't figure out the magical clue that gets my protag to find where the bad guy is. I hope that as I use up those Christmas gift cards over the next two days, brainless shopping will unlock the answer, so I can go into the new year with a well-laid plan for an awesome script I can bang out.

And somewhere in there, I have to grade papers. I hate grading papers, but it must be done. Fortunately I don't have to do much lesson planning because one class is going to read Romeo and Juliet, and the other The Great Gatsby. One of the good things about teaching literature is that a lot of your class time is spent just reading. So that will help me spend more time planning weddings and screenplays and shit.

Okay, 2012. Let's do this.

Thoughts on the film: Battle Los Angeles; How this film could have been great

2011-12-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've spoken many times to anyone who will listen about how much I love Pitch Black. The reason I love Pitch Black so much is that you think you're going to watch a silly B horror movie about some people fighting off monsters on another planet, but what you get is a philosophical treatise on what it means to be human and the nature of sacrifice. I love when a film surprises me by being way better than it needs to be.

Most horror movies are about the scare, and Pitch Black had some scary moments, but the story was a delivery system for an intelligent conversation, not just scares.

So flash forward a number of years and here I am, on Christmas Eve Day, watching Battle Los Angeles. This looks like it will be a pretty generic action movie, mostly about effects. The majority of action movies released these days seem to be delivery systems for explosions.

And this one was no different. It paid some lip service to character development. (The black guy is not a stereotype because he wears glasses! And his nickname is Specs!) It tried to get me to care, but it didn't take advantage of opportunities to elevate the material into something to make me think.

Minor Spoilers Ahead.

There's a scene on a roof top where that hot redneck from True Blood tells another soldier how he wonders if these aliens get scared. What if they're just like us? Then Aaron Eckhart observed that the aliens have their weapons welded onto their bodies or something, as if they are 24/7 soldiers. Okay, we're getting somewhere. We can run with that. We're fighting these creatures, but we're just like them. Could we become them? Were they like us once? Is there a way we can get to them and talk this out?

No, they didn't really go that way.

There's your now cliche scene where the humans find an alien and drag him into the base to examine him so we can learn how to fight the enemy. They decide to stab it in lots of places to find out what kills it.

Now, here's what I was thinking. Hey, aren't they basically torturing that thing? And nobody there has a problem with it?

There's a veterinarian in the room. She offers to help by staring at them enthusiastically as they stab the creature with various pointy tools. It would have been neat if she had spoken up. Maybe, instead of torturing it, we can find a way to communicate with it? I'm not saying she'd be right, but she'd be on theme. There would have been some interpersonal conflict. There would have been a moment for our characters to argue about strategy, about what defines us, separates us from the enemy. They're the bad guys, but we're torturing a prisoner. Is that okay?

I'd love to have had that conversation with this film, but that's not what happened. They stabbed the thing until they finally found its weakness, then went on blowing shit up, restricting the interpersonal conflict to cliched gripes about who's in command. Michelle Rodriguez is tough. The black guy wears his glasses. The guy with the pregnant wife.... well just that, there's a guy with a pregnant wife. Have you ever seen a movie about a bunch of soldiers at war and one of them DIDN'T have a pregnant wife?

I guess this was supposed to be about Eckhart's journey as a leader, but then the rest of the movie should have been about the nature of leadership or something. Let's see the aliens have chain of command issues. Let's see the civilians question the leadership decisions. Maybe Eckhart's character questions the decisions of the higher ups.

The film really did give us some character arcs, but the main reason Eckhart's didn't work for me is because I didn't buy it. This guy's men think he's a douchebag, that he left some guys behind and is a horrible leader. From the second he steps onscreen, I know that isn't true. So I don't feel any real conflict, just a misunderstanding that will get cleared up eventually.

But I digress.

The point is, the script needed to pick a thesis and stick to it.

I tell the kids all the time: Once you pick your thesis, the entire essay revolves around it. So if you say a hero is someone who likes to wear purple underwear, then every paragraph needs to go back to that purple underwear. It doesn't need to veer off and talk about spikey hair, it needs to be about purple fucking underwear. Your theme is your thesis. If your thesis is the nature of humanity, then by god, every choice you make in your story should reflect that theme.

That's how you go from just okay to great. Don't let your script be nothing more than a delivery system for explosions/scares/sex/laughs. Let those elements help your story be a delivery system for a question we can think about when we leave at the end.

Say hello, but not anonymously

2011-12-22T15:37:00.000-08:00

I finally had to turn off anonymous commenting. I've had a run on what I suspect is the same person spamming me with strange comments that made me uncomfortable, and after asking the person to stop, they kept at it. So now you have to log in to post comments. You can log in as any of the standard methods, I think, although I'm not sure. Let me know if you have a problem with the process.

I know I get a fair amount of readers, but I rarely get more than a couple of comments. So I invite you, this holiday season, tell me about yourself. Log in and tell me who you are. How many screenplays have you written? What kind of stuff do you write? What kind of things do you want to know about screenwriting? Whatever. Say hi. I'd love to get some questions I can try to find answers to in the new year.

And while we're at it, Merry Christmas everybody. I hope this weekend is as good for you as it is turning out to be for me.

Advice for new writers in despair

2011-12-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

There's a guy on Done Deal asking for advice on what to do with his second script. He's frustrated because he's not getting anywhere with it, and he's spending way too much time obsessing over it. His script is not an easy sell, and he says he doesn't care because he's only writing what he's passionate about, not what will necessarily sell.

I wrote a post in response to his dilemma, and I thought it was worth repeating here. So here's my advice to any writer who despairs when their first, second, third script goes nowhere:

If you don't care about whether or not your stuff is marketable, that's actually great for you at this stage. It means you can just write what you want, toying with ideas until you get it right. It also means you should stop obsessing over trying to get your script made.

Know what my second script was? Nobody but me does, because it was a piece of crap and I want it to stay buried forever. Same with #3, #4, #5.....

Right around #8 or #9, I started to produce things I'm not embarrassed to show people. That number is different for everybody, but there is absolutely no shame in writing just to learn the ropes. Every script gets better. If you stop focusing on how to sell this one, you'll be able to spend all your time on the next one.

Once you've written a great script, try to put it out there. Give it some time. While you wait, write the next one. And if the third one goes nowhere, move on. Rinse, repeat, until one day someone will read #4,#5,#6.... #32, and they will say "WOW this is really good! Let's talk."

It would be so nice if we could all just write a script early on in our careers and he could sell it for a billion dollars, but for most of us, that just will not happen. It's obvious at this point that it will not happen for you. Not now.

But if you shrug this script off, move on to the next one, and keep improving, it will happen for you some day. And who knows? Maybe then you can come back to this one and put it back out there.

Once you've tried to get your script out there and it doesn't work, move on. Try again with the next one, but make sure you've learned something from this one first.

Otherwise, you're wasting your time.

Think twice

2011-12-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

At the beginning stages of developing a spec, your job is THINKING.

One of the things I've learned throughout the years, and occasionally need reminding about, is that you have to reject your first one, two, three, maybe four ideas. Keep working the story until you get the most creative possible series of events.

Need a maguffin? A character's on the run from the bad guys. What object do they want from him? Quick, think of something.

Was your first thought:

-A microchip/flash drive with sensitive government secrets?
-Photos of a politician in bed with a prostitute?
-A briefcase full of cash/drugs?

Too cliche, all of them. Think again.

Your first instinct is usually going to be everybody else's first instinct. Over time I have learned to get that out of the way until I get to something that will surprise the audience.

I was working on picking a maguffin yesterday, and the wise Bill Martell reminded me to use the story's theme to find it. What's this story about? Now what kind of object could lead us back there?

So I thought of something, then rejected it and thought of something else. Then I slept on it, woke up this morning, and had my answer.

It took me almost an entire day of thinking up ideas and rejecting them to get to one I think is pretty great. If you leap on your first idea and run with it, you'll end up writing a mediocre script when you could have written a great one.

Christmas Vacation

2011-12-16T12:35:00.000-08:00

At this very moment, Los Angeles is shutting down. People are locking up doors, packing for flights, making last minute phone calls.

I love LA at Christmas. Nobody is here.

I am about to have three weeks to start something. I think I need to write something commercial, something easy to sell to back up against what I already have. I want to come back to this script, but for now I'm going to start working on something new, something that proves I know what I'm doing.

What is that something? No idea. I'm going through my idea file, looking for things to work on, but so far nothing has popped out. So the first thing I'm going to do this weekend is flesh out some ideas and look for new ones. Then I've got three weeks to work on a treatment and maybe crank out as many pages as I can before the town winds back up and I have to go back to my day job.

I also have 87 papers to grade.

"Vacation." What a lie that word is.

Scriptshadow reviews my pages

2011-12-15T09:22:00.000-08:00

Scriptshadow reviews my first ten pages today.

He's completely right. I've gotten a lot of read requests from querying this script, and they've all either been passes or I've been told "I love your style, but I don't think the script is there."

Carson points out a scene in the first few pages that doesn't need to be there, and he's right. The thing is, when I was writing that scene it seemed important somehow. I'd gotten so many notes on this project that I was trying to address all of them, and this particular scene fixed a problem somebody had, but now for the life of me I can't remember what it was. I don't remember why this was so damn important, because the scene now feels completely unecessary.

So that was a good review. Now, to read the comments, where no doubt my intelligence and general worth as a person will be called into question.

Black List 2011

2011-12-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

As you all have probably heard, The Black List is out today. I've only read a few of these, but I'll gladly use these scripts as a distraction from the expository essays I'm supposed to be grading over winter break.

It's weird how stuff trends. Not only have we had a surge in fairy tales, but we had a wave of Snow White, a wave of Peter Pan, and now, apparently, Pinocchio.

Zombies are still in the fight, but they've gotten more complicated. Gone are the days when you can write a script about a group of people fighting off a zombie horde. Now your zombie spec needs a gimmick. John Scott III found something new with his drama script Maggie, which I really enjoyed, and there is also a script about a group of people who make a deal with a vampire to protect them from zombies. I don't know how anyone can improve on The Kitchen Sink, but I'm willing to give it a read.

Lots of assassins. There are always lots of assassins. I wonder if real assassins read about these movies and shake their heads.

I think they're now legally required to put Tarantino on the list.

If I'd realized what Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses was about I'd have read it sooner, but I never saw the second half of the title so I thought this movie was about a dad taking his daughter to a baseball game or something. Now I plan to read it.

Other scripts I'm most looking forward to reading: Chewie, Blood Mountain, Desperate Hours, The Slackfi Project, Sex Tape, Flashback, The Hitman's Bodyguard, and 77.

What are your thoughts on the list?

First ten pages at Scriptshadow

2011-12-10T14:48:00.001-08:00

Over at Scriptshadow, Carson has posted links to the first ten pages of each of the top five winners of his recent contest. My pages are from entry number four, Nice Girls Don't Kill. Feel free to download and see what you think. They were all interesting reads, and one script in particular kicked my ass, but I won't elaborate until after Carson posts his own reviews.

I learned quite a bit from reading these pages, particularly how easy it is to do nothing for ten pages when you think your reader is a little slow, and how much better it is when you get to the point as quickly as possible.

Have a read. See what you think.

I placed in something!

2011-12-08T11:42:00.001-08:00

Carson over at Scriptshadow just held a contest. He was looking to review the first ten pages of a script on his site, and wanted people to submit their title and logline. People voted on which title and logline they wanted to see reviewed and the top five vote-getters were picked.

This is a good contest for me because I know my first ten pages are usually pretty strong. No matter what you think of the rest of the script or the direction I take the story, I do a pretty whiz-bang opening. Chances are, somebody's gonna die and there will be an explosion or gunfire of some sort. So I entered.

I picked Nice Girls Don't Kill to enter because first of all, I know the title kicks ass. It's my favorite title and it gets a lot of love from everybody, and I've gotten a lot of takers on my query, plus my first ten pages are pretty fun. The wedding script is more commercial, but although I like the title, it's not as jazzy as Nice Girls, and I don't feel like I've perfected my logline yet. Plus I absolutely love the opening scene to Nice Girls. Wedding Dress has tighter plotting, but Nice Girls was oodles of fun for me to write and I want to show it off.

So I picked Nice Girls. And it came in 4th! Huzzah!

I voted for It's a Long Way to Tipperary, myself.

To see the other winning loglines/titles and to follow the discussion, go here: http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/2011/12/article-whats-in-logline-winners.html

Bamboo Killers

An incest joke

2011-12-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

The other day I was teaching Irony, which I always do by first explaining why Alanis was wrong, although now kids don't even know that song anymore. Then I tell them the story of Oedipus. Then we read something ironic, in this case Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour."

Irony is a tough concept to grasp for a lot of people, so you've got to triple the explanation. I'll probably have to explain it a few more times to really get it to sink in. But so far they seem to be following along okay. When I asked them why the ending of "Story of an Hour" is ironic, most of the kids got it.

I love teaching that story because it is two pages long, but it teaches about so very many literary concepts. Plus feminism. After the lesson we had a discussion about the purpose of marriage, and I thought the boys and girls were going to start a gender riot. They were seriously pissed off. Kids these days are jaded.

But that's not what this post is about.

While I was telling the story of Oedipus, I got to the part where he goes in and finds Jocasta hanging from the ceiling. I said "And then Oedipus found her dead. And he was distraught. He slapped himself and yelled MY MOTHER! (slap) MY WIFE! (slap) MY MOTHER! (slap) MY WIFE!"

Although they enjoyed watching me slap myself, they did not get my Chinatown joke. And I thought, if one of you guys was there, you'd have laughed.

So often my brilliant comedy is lost on 16-year-olds.

Smoke gets in your ass

2011-12-06T17:13:00.001-08:00

This is a post for people who haven't experienced the joy of living in Hollywood. I wish somebody had explained this to me when I got here.

In Los Angeles, you often meet somebody, and they tell you they have a deal with a studio and you think WOW He's amazing! And then you start thinking about how you better hang out with this guy because he is going places.

The thing is, most of those people are full of shit. They say, for example, that Brad Pitt is reading their script, but what really happened is that an assistant at Plan B read their query and asked to read the script.

Most of the time these people aren't completely lying; they've just taken a tiny truth and blown it out of proportion. Because if you've been here long enough and had enough people ask you how your writing career is going, you start really wanting to have more to report than "Well, I'm still hoping somebody wants to read my script." You want people to think you're on your way. You want to be more important than you are.

So you make shit up.

When I first got out here I met a guy who had placed in the QFs of the Nicholl, or so he said. Thinking back, I'm not sure that was true. Then he said he knew a bunch of managers and would gladly introduce me to them. So naturally I jumped on it. But then he said I probably shouldn't have a manager; I should have an agent. He'd wait and introduce me to some agents some day.

Then he told me he was a studio deal to make his pilot and that he was probably going to start running a TV show on a major network soon. Maybe I could write on the show! Except at this point I knew enough about how TV worked to know that was ridiculous.

People in LA do that kind of thing ALL THE TIME. Not that everybody who claims success is lying, but it is always a good idea for you to be suspicious of anyone who has no IMDB credits or story in the trades and claims a huge success on the way.

People will blow massive amounts of smoke up your ass. Be skeptical.

Why do my bosses hate me?

2011-12-05T11:45:00.001-08:00

They've started blocking all Google sites at work including Google itself. So I guess we're being discouraged from assigning research papers.

Unforrunately that means that until they get enough complaints, I can only use blogger on my phone during the day.

This is why I haven't posted much in the last week.

It's also absurdly cold in my classroom. I might freeze to death in front of the kids. Thanks, LAUSD!

Thank goodness for British television

2011-11-29T17:59:00.001-08:00

I’m back at work now, but while I was resting up I watched alot of British television. It started with Sherlock Holmes. I’d been meaning towatch it, so between naps I watched some, then fell asleep, then watched somemore, then slept. And it was quite enjoyable. I especially enjoy saying thename Benedict Cumberpatch. How very British.

Then I caught a recent episode of Primeval and realized I’dnever seen the pilot, so I watched all seasons up to this one. Dinosaurs inLondon. When you watch all the episodes in a row, it’s a lot easier to followthe plot, but it’s also a lot easier to spot the ridiculousness of that show. Idon’t care, it’s fun. Dinosaurs in London. And since there’s only 12 episodesper season, it didn’t take me long to work my way up to the present.

Then I remembered that I used to watch MI-5 (AKA Spooks) untilit suddenly stopped appearing on BBCA. So I checked and sure enough, Netflixhas it on instant. I managed to get through the first two seasons before I hadto go back to work, so now I’m inching my way through the rest. There's a lot - that show's been on forever.

Watching Spooks makes me realize how silly 24 was. Fun, but very silly. Spooks has a muchmore sinister feel. Bad guys aren’t so black and white, and neither are thegood guys. And when you look at the actors who have cycled through this show,it’s easy to be impressed with the casting people. And Tony Head, who hasofficially appeared on every show ever filmed in England.

The other day I was watching an episode and some young blondguy did one scene in a chair and I said to myself, Hey, I think that’s BenedictCumberpatch! Which is, of course, fun to say. Benedict Cumberpatch, everybody!And I looked on IMDB and yep, that blond fella was indeed Sherlock Holmes. Andwe’ve come full circle.

Writing!

2011-11-22T14:25:00.001-08:00

The project I'm working on right now is three years old. I wrote it and revised it and then put it away and now I'm getting it back out. I never stopped thinking about it. Occasionally I'd ask someone to read it and give me some advice, and then I'd put it away again to think about that advice.

Recently I spent a lot of time compiling the perfect outline of the story. I wrote down all kinds of specific details, did full character bios, filled in all the gaps, pondered the most effective story choices.

Then I had surgery. Before my surgery I could type for maybe 15 minutes with slight pain. I still usually typed for an hour at a time then rested, but that last 45 minutes was excruciating. I was cringing with every letter, which makes writing comedy extra challenging. It's fun writing hilarious action sequences when it feels like a professional strong man is repeatedly slamming a hammer into your wrist at top speed.

After the surgery the doc gave me an assignment: Type, text, play video games. So I did. First I finished LA Noir over the weekend.

Then yesterday I typed and typed and typed. And it didn't hurt at all. A little stiffness after a while, but no pain.

NO PAIN. I can write with no pain. You have no idea how amazing that is. I've been alternately crying with joy and laughing like a maniac for the past four days as I discover new things I can do now that I used to take for granted. Watch me unlock this door! Watch me put on a bra! Watch me brush my hair! IT'S AMAZING!

Remember all that work I put into planning this story? And now I can write with no pain? Fuck yes, kids. I just ran with it. I wrote 10 pages in 2 1/2 hours. I cranked the tunes and just typed and typed and typed and the words flowed out of me like never before. So far it's a shitload of dialogue for an action flick, but I'll fix that on rewrite. I'm just excited to throw those words up on that screen.

And today when I went to see my doctor he told me I was making amazing progress. "I typed for two and a half hours yesterday," I said.

"Yep, that's probably what did it," he said.

So how about that? Screenwriting is good for me.

And thank you to everyone who has wished me well during this process. I appreciate your kind words.

Post op

2011-11-18T18:21:00.001-08:00

Today my doctor told me that in 17 years of medicine he as never seen a wrist as fucked up as mine. The majority of his clientele is professional athletes, so I feel a dubious pride in knowing I did the most damage ever in the history of his practice. "I did some amazing work in there," he said. Apparently my ligament was twisted and torn and littering debris across the inside of my wrist. It was ugly.

So it's pretty cool to know that after therapy I'll be able to do normal human things like pick up a mug of hot chocolate or brush my hair. The best part is that for the next few weeks I can't pick up anything heavy, but I must type. I must text, play Xbox, and Miss America wave. Yes, I am under doctor's orders to play video games. But no washing dishes or taking out trash. Oh, the humanity.

I can type now - I'm supposed to type now. It's good exercise, I'm told. This week I'm going to go kick this screenplay's ass.

An old interview with Alan Ball that I find inspiring

2011-11-17T09:05:00.001-08:00

I just wrote the most therapeutic long post about my current state of mind and the process of waking up to some truths that I've experienced over the last two weeks, and then I realized it would piss somebodyoff, so I decided it's not worth it. Who cares if other people know whether or not you're over their bullshit?

Instead, I'll post this:

Like I posted Tuesday, I've been wrestling lately with the idea of writing a passion project that is not terribly commercial, a project I've been working on for some time and have been dying to write. I have a more commercial idea waiting to be written, but I'm meh about it, and I want to get back into darker stuff anyway, but it's still risky to spend time working on something that people may not think they can sell.

But you only have so many years to live, and if I'm writing for free then I'm going to write something fun.

Then I came across the old interview with Alan Ball about his process with American Beauty. A relevant portion:

I pitched him two fairly standard romantic comedies that were pretty, you know -- if I couldn't pitch them in one sentence, I could pitch them in two. And then I pitched him American Beauty, which I had tried to write as a play years ago and I had sort of been toying around with these characters and their stories for years. And as you can imagine, the pitch was rambling, but I think I was really excited, you know.

"You think it's about this, but it's about something else, and you're feeling it -- oh, and underneath it is all about this whole sort of what's the nature of reality and there's this kind of metaphysical thing." I was totally expecting him to just sort of go catatonic and fall out of his chair.

And to my surprise he says, "That's the one I think you should write."
And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Because it's obviously the one you feel the most passionate about." It's the best piece of advice I ever got.

He goes on to talk in great deal about the creative choices he made and the process of working the script through the system from start to finish. It's a great interview, and it inspired me to feel more confident in what I have to do.

The full interview is here: Inside Film Online.

If you've never read it, do. And thanks to Greg Beal for mentioning this interview in a recent Done Deal thread.

Back in the saddle

2011-11-15T09:40:00.001-08:00

I wrote three whole pages today. I needed those pages. They felt good.

I'm trying not to push it too hard - I had a panic attack after I picked up a too-heavy Pyrex bowl and convinced myself that I had undone all the work the surgery did - but three pages is not too bad for a day's work when one hand is wrapped in thirty thousand bandages that are getting really dirty.

The project I'm working on now is my old passion project. It's really risky because it's a period piece with a really modern flair but some old fashioned ideals. But I figure, if Alex Litvak can do it, so can I. And the time just feels right to rework this script. This is very much me. I've spent the past couple of years writing more commercial fair, so even though I enjoyed each of those script, I've missed getting dark and gritty. A lot of the assignments I crave are grittier scripts, but all I've written for the last couple of years were light and fun projects, so I hope this will showcase my dark side.

I'm going to take a few months to enjoy writing this material as much as I can before I start to think practically again. And who knows? Maybe this script will blow people away with its originality. I can only hope. All I know is, I'm going to try as hard as I can to make it as good as I can.

Isn't that what they say? Write the best script you can and the rest will follow? So to hell with the market or the gurus, I'm just happy to be writing again without pain. I'm going to be grateful for the freedom I am getting back and write something I truly love.

I'm alive

2011-11-12T07:32:00.001-08:00

I just wrote a whole post about surgery and how awesome my perfect doctor is and my mom has been cool enough to detail my kitchen and make most of my thanksgiving dinner while I slept. Then my supposedly smart phone deleted my post to go update my Groupon app.So suffice to say it is weird to be talking to a guy about tequila and my mom having a panic attack trying to drive in LA traffic, and the next minute I'm watching my doctor pass out flyers for his book signing while a nurse offers you the world's most necessary apple juice.I hope to be back to writing soon. The goal is to type for hours with no pain. And to do push ups. And maybe if I work really hard in therapy I can punch a heavy bag again and learn Jujitsu.That would make me happy.

Thoughts on the film: A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas

2011-11-05T16:51:00.000-07:00

So Harold and Kumar was fucking great. The third one was better than the first. Yeah, I said it. I loved that Christmas 3D movie. Best comedy I've seen all year.

Here's why.

1) It was funny. Jokes galore. Self-referential stuff, 3D absurdity, general absurdity, and the glorious Neil Patrick Harris. Neil Patrick Harris was fucking hysterical. I can't imagine anyone having a better time playing a drugged up lunatic, except maybe that kid who played the baby. I laughed from the opening scene all the way to the end. This morning the Beefcake and I were freely quoting from the film, particularly when I started preparing our pancake breakfast.

2) This movie was about stuff. Friendship, growing up, accepting responsibility, waffles vs pancakes. There was deep emotional stuff. So while on one end you have NPH trying to sexually molest a dancer and a penis getting stuck to a pole, on the other end you have a story about two friends who have grown apart - one because he's too much of a grown up, and one because he's too much of a child. All that theme stuff was perfectly executed. The story was more than just a delivery system for jokes.

3) I related to this one far more than the other two. There's a scene where our boys find themselves a party full of silly kids. The kids make fun of them for being old and washed up, and they have to remember when they used to be cool, way cooler than these little punks today. As a grown-up who spends all day around teenagers, I could 100% get with that. The kids I teach often declare that they hope they never turn 30 because it's SO OLD. And I just smile and think of all I've learned and accomplished since I was that age. I could have been Harold in that scene with the kids at the party. I never was a pothead, but I was young, and I have worried sometimes that this house and the dogs and the suburbs have made me a chode.

So what I'm trying to say is, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas made me feel better about life.

Harold and Kumar do Christmas in 3D

2011-11-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

For some reason, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas is coming out before Thanksgiving. Why? Why not at Christmas, since it's a Christmas movie? It's just weird. It's not enough that Rite Aid starts selling Christmas stockings the week before Halloween, now we have to enjoy Santa in early November. Weird.

But I will see it, and in 3D even, despite the fact that I despise 3D.

I enjoyed the White Castle thing. That was good. I'm not into pot movies and I'm not sure I understood the weird shit with that inbred tow truck driver and his slutty wife, but all in all, solid film.

Then I saw Guantanamo Bay, and it was more inbred truck driver than fun with Neil Patrick Harris, so I didn't enjoy it so much. I think where White Castle was a movie designed to be enjoyed by potheads and straights alike, Guantanamo Bay was pretty much a movie you only enjoy while high. And I don't get high. The stuff just makes me want to take a nap.

Anyway, then I saw the trailer for the Christmas movie on Youtube and thought it looked stupid.

Then The Beefcake and I went to see Fright Night, and it turned out when we got to the theater that the time we chose was for the 3D screening. The next 2D screening wasn't for a couple of hours. So we ponied up and saw it in 3D. I enjoyed it, especially David Tenant, but that's not the point.

The previews were also in 3D. One of them Was Harold and Kumar.

Ladies and gentlemen, THAT is why 3D was invented. Ping Pong balls flew at my face, people waved their hands over my head, explosions came out at me.

3D ain't no artsy fartsy color enhanced shit. 3D is silly, in-your-face ridiculousness, and Harold and Kumar appears to have embraced the potential for fun. The preview without the 3D looked dumb, but for once, adding 3D suddenly enhanced the film. I suddenly understood.

So tomorrow night, the Beefcake and I will go see this film, glasses and all. And then we will laugh about it over Japanese barbecue. I hope.

And I will take an Ibuprofen beforehand in case it's headache inducing.

I really hope this silly film is good.

Because backstory is important.

2011-10-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

I am a newly minted zombie. I was in the hospital recovering from surgery on my hand, chilling in my pajamas when the outbreak came. And as you know, hospitals are ground zero for zombie outbreaks. I haven't been a zombie long, but I find it unpleasant so far. I just spent all this money and time on surgery and then some asshole goes and removes a piece of my neck with his nasty teeth. That's a great way to spread stds, zombies, all that indiscriminate biting. We probably all have herpes.

Some nurse started to wrap my wound, but then I ate her. Now I'm off to see if this eating people thing is all there is to being a zombie. If we're taking over the world, I feel like we should have a more cerebral objective. But first, I'm hungry. Who here still has brains?

Droid Apps

2011-10-28T12:47:00.000-07:00

Up until a couple of weeks ago I had a red flip phone with no bells and whistles at all. Now I have a fancy pants Droid phone with crazy technology. I'm not over the moon about the loss of privacy this kind of technology creates, but you can't argue with the simple awesomeness of it all.

I've loved watching TV episodes through Netflix instant and HBO Go. I'm now among the legion of Angry Birds players, and I'm stoked about being able to check the traffic every time I get in the car. In a meeting the other day our assistant principal mentioned an academic word list. Within minutes I googled it, downloaded the PDF and emailed it to my work address so I can print it out later. This morning I added Engrade, so now I can walk around the room and mark down which students have completed their assignments.

I know to some of you guys this is old hat, but I'm still amazed at what we can do with these tiny computers in our hands.

Yesterday I got Evernote and have been noodling around with it. Other than creating a grocery list and reminder that I need to buy a roll of raffle tickets for the yearbook raffle, I'm not sure exactly how else to use it. I read the John August post, but I also know that different people use it in different ways. I'm still figuring out my way.

Are there any other Apps you love? Particularly apps that you use to help with your screenwriting? I'm still figuring out how to get the most out of this absurd little piece of fantastic.

Kids need good TV

2011-10-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

The other day I was sitting in my classroom during my planning time, making the most out of my opportunity by ~~grading papers~~ watching Farscape on my laptop. A couple of girls who love me asked if they could use my room to work on their sewing assignment, and since they promised not to get in the way of my vital TV watching, I agreed.

Before you get all "Teachers don't do shit and get paid too much" rant, you should know that it was a Friday.

Anyhow, when I told the girls I was watching episodes of an old show, they rolled their eyes. I tried to explain by asking them what was their favorite fictional show. The plan was to tell them that one day they'd enjoy watching old episodes of that show to reminisce about how awesome it was.

Know what shows they immediately named? A bunch of reality shit. The first show one girl mentioned was Fact or Fiction, so I said No, girls, and actual fiction show, with a story. What shows do you watch with a story?

Know what one girl immediately said? Jersey Shore. Dammit to hell.

Eventually I got her to mention The Office, but then she confessed that she doesn't actually like The Office.

People, something has got to be done. This is just wrong.

So as they cut the shapes out of their pattern or whatever they were doing, I continued to watch Farscape. Then one of the girls asked what I was watching. "It sounds interesting," she said. "I want to watch that."

So I told them the premise of the show and that it was made by the Jim Henson company and included puppets and crazy creatures, and they both looked like they wanted to check it out. "That sounds cool," they said.

I don't know if they'll go home and watch Farscape today, but at the very least I planted a seed.

Stuff I'm up to

2011-10-21T16:57:00.000-07:00

My rewrite is almost done. I'll do one more pass this weekend, then submit it to TrackingB. I gave up on most contests, but you can't argue with John Swetnam's success in last year's TrackingB - Evidence is filming now. So I enter TrackingB, The Nicholl, and sometimes Austin. That's about it.

During my last round of queries, a couple of people told me they want to see my next script, so that's the second thing I'll be doing with this script - sending it to the agents who want to see it. Hopefully it will give me the edge I need to land a new rep. I feel pretty good about this script. It's commercial, but still very much me.

Once that's done, I get to leap back into Burnside, which I've been dying to get back to for a very long time. It's a much more serious, straight action film that makes me want to run around and destroy shit.

The last three projects have been comedy, and even though I enjoy being absurd, I enjoy being dark and badass more. I love Martin Blank, but sometimes I really really want to be Neo. And let's face it, Neo has no sense of humor.

So that's my plan. Next week I'm going to try to post more. I have a lot to say about Halloween/Christmas movies, which seem to come around at the same time for some reason.

Locked away in a hotel room

2011-10-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

I've heard of writers spending a few days in a hotel room to jumpstart a draft, and I always wanted to try it. Then we got termites, tons and tons of termites. All the neighbors have them.

So Friday the pest control people came and threw one of those beautiful tents over the house and we took the dogs to stay in a hotel down by LAX. So for all of Saturday and Sunday I was locked away in a hotel with a pool and a jacuzzi and a desk with a great view of the city. And I wrote.

The Beefcake had to work, so he wasn't there most of the time. It was just me and the dogs.

I got notes last week on my latest project, so I was determined to complete an entire rewrite in two days. I wrote for an hour, walked the dogs, watched an episode of Farscape, wrote for an hour, walked the dogs, got lunch, wrote for an hour, walked the dogs, swam in the pool, wrote for an hour, walked the dogs, got dinner, watched a movie.

And I got it done. I did some major improvements, more than I thought I was going to, but this morning I woke up hating the new ending - way too schmaltzy - so I'm going to go back to my original ending today. Then I'm going to put it back up tonight for more notes.

I had few distractions, someone else preparing my food - fortunately there was a Subway nearby so I didn't have to subsist on burgers alone - and a change of venue to jumpstart a little creativity. Plus I loved being able to swim at the end of the day, then sit in the jacuzzi and meet people. One of the cool things about staying in an airport hotel is that there are new people in and out every day, so every night the jacuzzi holds different people from distant lands with different stories about where they're from and where they're going.

So the first night it was two rich couples from New York on their way to Hawaii. The second night it was a hippie lady learning some new healing technique from a local hippie guy, and a mom whose son with Leukemia was on his way to meet with people from the Make A Wish Foundation. I hope he gets better soon.

I really liked doing this. I think I'll start making this a regular habit for first rewrites. Next time I'll try to stay by the beach.

My hand hurts

2011-10-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's time I talked about it.

I have a torn ligament in my right wrist. I've had it for years after I fell in my kitchen while dancing around. I'm sometimes a very sparkly and easily excited person, and I am also clumsy, and this combination means I regularly injure myself while doing silly things. This time I was spinning around and slipped and made a choice: slam my hip into the corner of my counter or spin the other way and land on the floor with all my weight on my hand.

I went to the doctor, but he said it was fine. No X-Ray. No big deal. Went home.

Five years later I took up kickboxing, and that's when I must have busted loose the only thing keeping that ligament together. I've been in steadily worsening pain ever since.

I went to my doctor a few years ago, and he told me to "just stop using it." I'm right handed, asshole. Anyway, I won't bore you with the details, but it took a year, three other doctors, a physical therapist, two X-Rays, an MRI, and an Arthrogram to finally get me in front of the right orthopedist. He gave me an injection which made it better until one day I grabbed a medicine ball the wrong way, and it's been downhill ever since.

A few weeks ago I also had an ultrasound. I like to say that the only way left to examine my hand is to send a shrunken Dennis Quaid in there.

Anyway, I cannot write anything without pain. Signing my name hurts. I can type, but even that hurts after a while. If I go on a three-hour writing session, I'm in pain for the rest of the day. It's a little better with some Ibuprofen and Icy Hot.

I can't grade papers effectively. I'm requiring all students to type from now on, but even then....

Even thought I wear a brace, people still keep trying to shake my hand and hand me boxes to carry. I think they all assume I have carpal tunnel.

But all this is part of the reason I don't blog as much as I used to. Right now at this minute, this shit hurts. And what's worse is that it hurts to write my pages. This weekend I'm going to be in a hotel for three days with only my laptop and the dogs who I can't leave alone for too long while our house is tented for termites, so it's the perfect time to write. I just got these terrific notes, and I wrote up a list of what I need to change, and I'm excited, but I'm scared I'll be in too much pain to get the job done.

I'm having surgery in November, but what if it doesn't work? This keeps getting worse almost by the day. I'm afraid that soon I won't be able to use my hand at all.

I hate that I had to give up kickboxing, which I love, until this is fixed, if it is ever fixed. And I never got to start learning jujitsu. I'm scared that now I never will.

So the lesson here is, don't fall on your hand if you can help it. And if you do, get an X-Ray no matter what the doctor says. And if your doctor says years of pain is probably nothing, punch him in the gonads and insist on a replacement doctor. These are things I have learned.

But mostly, if you have a perfectly functioning hand, don't take that shit for granted. Write some pages this weekend or tomorrow or tonight or right now. Or give me your hand. I'd use it to do some pushups. I haven't done a push-up in years. Hell, I can't even do Downward Facing Dog.

Here's hoping come November I can get back to normal. Normal would be good.

Good notes

2011-10-10T09:21:00.000-07:00

I just got some of the best notes I've ever had. Last week I posted the first draft of my latest, How My Wedding Dress Got This Dirty, to a group of amazing writers, and over the past couple of days I've gotten three sets of notes. And they were great.

Usually when I get notes on a first draft, they're all about a page one rewrite. This time I got notes about how to fix problems in the existing script, positive notes about how the whole things works as a whole but needs some tweaks with character relationships.

So for once, I did it right the first time.

I think moving slowly and rethinking my decisions paid off. Normally I rely on my first instinct for the scene. I see a character behaving a certain way, so that's how I write it. Sure, I'll adjust the scene a bit to make it stronger, but I usually don't consider erasing an entire day's worth of work and starting over. This time I did. If I woke up and realized the last 6 pages were crap, I deleted them outright and wrote a whole new scene.

It probably helps that this is quite possibly the most commercial thing I've ever written.

Anyway, I'm glad. I didn't write anything this past weekend, partly because I was obsessing over my new phone (I finally found out what the fuss over Angry Birds is all about) while watching episodes of Farscape, and partly because I wanted to sit with the notes a while. Usually as soon as I get notes I dive back in, but for this script I wanted to continue the slow, thoughtful method I've been using. Think first, then write.

So far so good.

Doctor Who does it again

2011-10-05T21:07:00.000-07:00

Did you guys see that Doctor Who season finale? Spoilers for that to follow.

SPOILERS FOR DOCTOR WHO SEASON FINALE.

Okay? Okay.

We knew he was supposed to die, but we as followers of the industry also knew Matt Smith wasn't leaving the show, and there's no way the writers and producers and the BBC were going to just end such a great show, and a lucrative show, out of nowhere. So the question in the minds of all the fans was "How the hell are they gonna get out of this one?" Which is a great situation to be in. I love it when I have no idea how they'll get out of the hole they dug themselves.

Which leads me on a brief tangent. I loved Farscape dearly, like more than any other show, which says a lot, but I was watching old Farscape episodes recently, and it still bugs me how they'd get out of these crazy impossible season ending puzzles by saying basically "And they got out of there somehow and ended up here" or "And he was not really dead" or some equally lame solution to a complicated problem. But who cares, really, because the show was badass.

Anyhow, the point is, we knew the Doctor wouldn't really die, but the show backed itself into a corner. How were they going to worm their way out of this? We were all looking for the answer.

And they gave us the answer. The Tesselacta showed up in the Previously On so we were all thinking about it. The Doctor is totally a robot when he's shot! He's got to be! But then they used The Tesselacta and some of the information it provided, so okay, maybe that's why they showed it. And then there's the fact that in the season premiere when we saw his death scene, he tried to regenerate. There's no getting around that. He definitely did that gold glowy thing he does. The robot couldn't have done that.

So it couldn't have been the Tesselacta.

And there it was, right in front of us.

I don't know about you guys, but I rejected the idea that it was the Tesselacta as soon as I realized that he regenerated. But when we went to the actual scene where River shot at him, we didn't get to see him regenerate. And as we flashed to the new present where River decides to save him, we still never see him regenerate. But we've forgotten that we already rejected the Tesselacta because he regenerated. All we remember is, we rejected it. So we never saw it coming.

What a great red herring. That's textbook; show me the answer, then give me a reason to disbelieve it, then make me realize I forgot that I had the answer all along.

And that's why Doctor Who continues to be number one on my list of shows to record on the DVR.

Commence Burnside reboot

2011-10-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I tried to write a Civil War era action drama called Burnside. It was a really cool idea and I was super excited about it, and then I wrote it and rewrote it, but got the same results from everyone except my mom - it just doesn't work.

I was trying too hard to do lots of unconventional things, and I was so stuck in the scenes I'd planned out in my head that I couldn't see any other way to tell the story. I put the script away and continued to work on other projects, knowing that one day I'd return to Burnside to fix what was wrong.

Today is that day. I don't think I was ready for this script a few years ago. I'm ready now. The answers have been coming quickly every time I ponder the characters and their actions. I had a eureka moment in the shower last night where I literally yelled out "HE KILLS HER BROTHER! OH MY GOD OF COURSE!" And then clapped as I realized I had solved one of my toughest story problems.

Last night I cranked out my treatment in no time flat. I know these characters and this world - I just needed to rearrange their order of operation. I had been stuck on my original plan and unwilling to re-envision it the way it needed to be seen.

The first step was realizing that my protagonist needed to be my antagonist, and my love interest needed to be my protagonist. That one switcheroo changed everything for the better. The challenge is changing the way I think of these people. The person I used to side with is now the enemy, which is a little difficult to wrap my brain since I've now known this character for years. The upside of that is that my antagonist now has a really clear goal and backstory.

I want to use the same opening scene and a couple of moments in the middle, and at first I opened the old file to copy and paste that first scene into the new folder, but then I stopped.

I want to start over. I'm scrapping every word. I am older, wiser, a better writer now than I was a few years ago. This version doesn't need to be handicapped by an old me. This script HAS to be good; it's my constant labor of love.

So while I wait for notes on my last project, I'm going to start pumping out pages of Burnside: The Reboot. I have a feeling this won't take nearly as long as other projects because of how well I know this one. I've changed everything. I kept most of the characters, the setting, and the basic premise, but the plot is completely changing.

Because sometimes you have to scrap it and start over. And sometimes it takes a while to get there.

You guys should totally read these books

2011-09-29T21:17:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a good E-book, or just a good book book, you should read my buddy Harry Connolly's book Circle of Enemies. It's the third in a series of urban fantasy books called the Twenty Palaces books.

Sometimes Harry posts comments here so maybe you've seen him around. He's a good dude who can write great stories.

But more importantly, he writes good books. You know when your friend writes something and they're all excited about it and you're like Oh man this is gonna suck and I'm gonna have to pretend to like it? Well I didn't have to do that with Harry's books. They are really good. Like super good, like read-the-whole-thing-in-a-day good, and I don't even like fantasy stuff unless you count Wizard of Earthsea, and that was when I was like 12.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, Child of Fire, Game of Cages and Circle of Enemies are like A Wizard of Earthsea for grownups, and if you're a fan of Buffy or really anything where a dude gets in over his head in a world where people spontaneously combust and shit, this is the series for you.

I am often reluctant to try modern literature. The librarian at school had to talk me into allowing the kids to use living writers for their American authors projects; I am reluctant to read anything that wasn't written a century ago. Except Harry Potter, I guess, because I dove right into those things. But I included Harry's first book, Child of Fire, on the list, and the kid who chose that book devoured it and asked about the next one.

The point is, you should read Harry's books because they're really good and I want to share them with you.

Thoughts on the one episode of Ringer I watched

2011-09-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

I missed the pilot of Ringer, but I did see the clip they showed on The Soup, so I feel pretty caught up. I loved Buffy so much, no matter how stupid this show looked I would have watched it, so I watched episode two. Oof.

I don't know what happened. I loved Buffy. She was great, but this girl sucks. That guy who played Pip in the BBC version of Great Expectations (you know him as Mr. Fantastic, but you are not an English teacher) made me interested, but not enough. I was about to stop watching and delete the recording and then I saw D.B. Woodside and I was like yay! D.B. Woodside! Buffy and Principal Wood, together again! And also the president's brother who was then briefly president!

And if you understood all that, you watch too much TV.

But then I realized it was a completely different dude who kind of looked like D.B. Woodside. So I was back to not caring. But then there was that chick who was on Hustle and Warehouse 13 and she's pretty cool, but not D.B. Woodside cool. And that eyeliner dude from Lost whose story never got resolved with any real satisfaction.

Still, based on all these people I recognized, I watched the whole episode even though I decided about five minutes in that I wasn't down with this show.

I just thought it was interesting that the actor made such a difference. I think there's such a glee to seeing someone who played a role you love that you're willing to sit through things that suck just to relive that feeling. I'm not saying Ringer sucks, but it wasn't for me.

I don't know. I just know I didn't like the protagonist. Maybe I should have caught the pilot, or maybe seeing The Soup make fun of the pilot set my mine in a certain direction. Maybe it's too CWish. Maybe I just don't see where this is going. Maybe that redheaded chick's hair is entirely too red and it bugs me. Or maybe it's that I'm supposed to feel for a chick who has just walked into a life with a great job and a hot husband and lots of money and I just don't. I don't know.

But now I'm going to watch the second episode of Unforgettable, whose pilot I also missed.

A drink along at the Downtown Independent

2011-09-23T17:41:00.000-07:00

Last weekend a friend mentioned he was going to a "drink along" screening of The Lost Boys and The Goonies. How could I not go? Actually I thought about flaking because I had already had like the busiest day ever (pep rally, unrelated assembly, dentist appointment), but I already paid for my $10 ticket so I went.

The Downtown Independent, which is, of course, located in Downtown LA next to the Civic Center, occasionally hold drink along film screenings. What is a drink-along screening, you ask? Good question.

With your ticket you get A beer - in this case, a Tecate, which is acceptable. You can always buy more beer in the lobby. On this night they were selling more cans of Tecate 2 for $6. Then they ran out and sold whatever was in the fridge.

Anyway, so it's a drinking game. In the case of Lost Boys, any time someone caved to peer pressure, did anything super eighties, had anything to do with vampires, or said the dog's name you took a drink. And naturally a few people reminded us all to drink, so any time Michael caves to peer pressure - which is a lot - half the audience would yell out "PEER PRESSURE!" and we'd all drink.

I had to drive, so I took teeny tiny sips, and then a woman on her way to the bathroom knocked my entire beer to the floor with her purse and disappeared without so much as an Oops, so I took tinier sips.

By the end of the movie, though, a lot of people were good and wasted. Intermission. A beer pong game kicked up in the lobby. A mariachi band came into the theater to play for some guy's birthday. A girl almost kicked a fat guy's ass.

While two members of a group of four were in the lobby waiting for beer, the fat guy and his date took their seats and refused to move. The manager spent ten minutes trying to reason with them while the whole crowd looked on and shouted "MOVE" repeatedly. Eventually they moved and we all cheered, but then the chick with the guys whose seats they stole stood up and called him an asshole. But he was never going to fight her. He was a nerdy fella. She would have beat his ass.

So then we watched The Goonies. This time we drank when Mikey took a puff of his inhaler, when anybody spoke Spanish, when anybody said Willy... I don't remember if those were the real drinking cues. By this point people were just shouting things and drinking. Oh such fun. I highly recommend it. I don't know how often they do it, but I know they are planning something for Halloween. I'll probably go.

My rant about remakes or reboots or sequels or whatever continues

2011-09-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

School started so I got busy and then time just flew by and screenwriting didn't really get done. But this week I read a screenplay and did a set of notes for a colleague, so I'm back on the screenwriting train. I should be back to posting regularly now. And this weekend I'm going to sweep through my first draft making major changes and cleaning things up so I can get notes next week.

I posted on this recently, but I was thinking more about the whole "why remakes upset us" thing. Because they do. Some people don't get it, and all the time on Done Deal someone will ask why the hell everybody cares so much if a movie is remade.

I've never been a huge fan of Scarface, but I think I get why people are up in arms about the remake. So I guess this is part two of my remake rant.

It can be summed up in one anecdote, really.

The new Star Wars Blue Ray commercials have plastered the TV lately. I love Star Wars. I've been a Jedi for Halloween on three occasions. I own life size cardboard cutouts of Han and Leia and an official Jedi robe and a pair of light sabers that light up and make noise and I played Knights of the Old Republic like five times and I've already pre-ordered the Kinect game and I own the original Gendy Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoons on DVD. So I'm a fan. And a dork, but obviously a fan.

But when I see the previews for those Blue Rays and that little Anakin wanders onto Tattooine with that silly bowl cut and a scowly face, I get irritated. And then they show Jar Jar or Hayden Christenson doing whatever the hell he was doing in front of that green screen, and I just want it to go away. And then they pop in a shot of Luke in front of the two suns.

That shot. That beautiful shot, is ruined. All I think now when I see it is how much Star Wars sucks now. The magic is gone.

Maybe other people can separate what they love from what they hate, but I can't. A remake is a completely different film, so maybe they don't have to ruin the movie you love. After all, the Scarface everybody loves so much was a remake in its own right. But I don't know. There's something magical about a movie you love, and when someone comes along and fucks with it, that magic just sort of fades.

Tomorrow I'm going to talk about this awesome Drink Along thing they've got going on over at the Downtown Independent.

Sinister ladies are trending

2011-09-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

New new idea

2011-09-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

Just the other day I realized I hadn't thought up a new idea in quite a while. I'm booked solid on ideas for a while, but I like being ten ideas deep to be comfortable. And it concerned me that I hadn't gotten excited about a new concept for a few months.

Then I got this idea last night for a new spin on an old story that hasn't been touched in feature form for decades. I was watching a thing on History Channel or Discovery or something and there was like this throwaway line and I just went Oh my god! I suddenly realized there was this story just waiting for me. It's so perfect for me it's ridiculous.

The thing is, on the surface the story's a bit of a western, and we all know westerns aren't really selling like hot cakes, but as I started to do preliminary research and put my own spin on it, I realized there are all kinds of neat non-western directions I can take this. So it could be like a western but not a western.

It's a period piece, but you never know. I think I could pull this off. I have to finish what I'm working on now first, then I'm going back to Burnside for a page one rewrite, but that won't take as long as starting from scratch, so I hope to be working on this new western/non-western thing early next year. And then I'll be set.

"Reboot" is a dirty word

2011-09-12T17:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Powers that Be,

Stop rebooting things. Just stop it. There is nothing wrong with Point Break. There was nothing wrong with The Highlander or Total Recall or Blade Runner. Stop trying to fix things that aren't broken, or to "update" movies that don't need updating.

In fact, if you really want to be productive members of society, you will find a way to go back in time and erase Highlander Two from existence. And also stop George Lucas from hurting us. But I digress.

People are not as retarded as you think. They rejected Bucky Fucking Larson. They can still watch a movie with Patrick Swayze in it. Kids may not know who he is, but they can learn. We can show them. We can sit down with our kids and say, "Hey kid, check out this movie. It's the best movie ever made about surfing and bank robberies!" and the kid will be like "Ooh, cool, the '80s sure did have some neat movies! I didn't know Neo was an actor!" Not every movie ever made has to star Shia Labeouf.

And then, if you stop rebooting things we love, you can hire people to write new things, things that new people will love, things that add to our culture.

I'm not saying don't remake anything. The Crazies remake was pretty good. Not sure what else was. I didn't hate Fright Night. But did Fright Night NEED to be remade? Did it really? Could someone have written a different movie in its place? Something new, something that would generate its own following one day?

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, Point Break is a perfect film. There's no way to improve upon it, and if there's no way to improve upon it, all you're going to do is fuck it up. A lot of us never recovered from the whole Greedo incident, and I'm not sure how much more we can take of the fucking up of things we love. Stop fucking up things you made us love.

With love,
Emily

I figured out my theme

2011-09-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

I haven't written any physical pages on my script in over a week, but I have been working on it. I was thinking. In the shower, the car, lying in bed at night...

As the story has gone on, I've developed more confidence in it, figuring out problems here and there, getting to know the characters - but it has always felt that something was missing. So while I was busy working on school stuff, I kept my brain going on how to fill the missing pieces in the story. It all comes down to theme.

Most writers don't choose a theme for the story before they start writing. With most scripts, the theme appears while you're working. One day you write something and suddenly - oh! there it is! I kept trying to figure out what my primary themes was in this story, but nothing emerged.

I just went back to scene construction. I was thinking about the big confrontation scene at the climax and how I wanted that conversation to go. Then I said a line of dialogue that was very trailer-friendly and realized I finally knew what my character wanted more than anything else - family. I created this dysfunctional family dynamic with her, and this close family dynamic with her love interest. And as I pieced together their climactic conversation, I realized she didn't just want him, she wanted his whole family. And there it is.

With every script, there is that eureka moment when you suddenly figure out what the whole story is about. It's weird how we can do that, isn't it? We're so determined to find meaning that even without conscious thought, the story just assembles itself in a thematic way?

Anyway, I still have a lot of work to do and I'm going to write as much as I can this afternoon, but at least now I have a better sense of direction. You start with an idea, you put together a story, you develop the characters, and eventually you figure out what it's all about.

Help me fix this black background shit

2011-09-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

EDITED TO ADD: FIXED! Thanks for the help!

The blog is showing up fine for me in Firefox but not in IE, and I presume it's looking black to most of you as well, but I looked at my HTML and it looks the same as the old copy I have saved, so I can't figure out where the problem is. Blogger doesn't really have a traditional tech support. I have limited knowledge in this area. Can anybody help me out here?

Work work work

2011-09-07T20:25:00.000-07:00

School started today. I'm tired.

One of my classes has 46 students. I'm short two chairs, but had one absence, so one girl literally sat in another girl's lap today. I hope I have more chairs tomorrow. Or fewer students. Fewer students would be nice.

When school's in session I usually write only on weekends. I probably have about 18 pages or so left on the first draft, so it will be at least two more weekends before I'll be ready to move on to notes.

I wish I had been able to finish it before last week. Now I've got lesson plans to create and papers to grade. Work always gets in the way of all the cool stuff.

Business cards

2011-09-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

I posted not long ago about how I occasionally get query letters because of my abandoned website. I kept meaning to do things with the website, partly because it's on all my business cards so I didn't want to get rid of it. This morning I realized I can use the money I save on not having a website and use that money to buy new business cards.

I don't have business cards for my teaching career. I just have them for writing.

So here's what I learned about business cards and screenwriting.

First of all, have one. A few years ago I volunteered at the Creative Screenwriting Expo - back when it was cool - and I met a ton of people. At the end of the weekend we all went to exchange info and scribbled our numbers and emails on loose sheets of paper. I immediately went out and made business cards.

I have handed out a lot of cards to people I met at parties and events and whatnot. It's handy to have them right there in your wallet, ready to grab and deliver.

The first card I used I made myself with those printer sheets you get at Staples. Those suck. They're flimsy and they look like shit. Suck it up and spend the money to get a decent card.

Beware that some cheaper online websites are fraudulent places. They send you business cards, sure, but they also collect your personal information and if you sign the agreement without reading the fine print you accidentally sign up to join some kind of club that charges your credit card on a monthly basis.

The online place I used for the past two cards is Overnightprints.com. They did a good job, cheap, and they don't scam you.

The cards I've been using a friend designed to resemble the website design. They have the logo, the website, and my contact information. They also list me as a "Writer, Producer" and have a black back side.

I really, really regret putting "Producer" on my cards. Like REALLY regret. I feel like an idiot every time I hand that out.

A lot of people will tell you not to put Writer on the cards either, and I get why they say that, but sometimes if I go to an event I come home with a stack of cards and don't remember who's card is whose. So I put Writer on mine so the person who looks at knows how to categorize me. It's just my personal preference.

But the producer thing is stupid. I produced one short film; I am not a producer. When I bought the cards and created the site I had all these big dreams that I abandoned when I realized how ill suited I was for the purpose. Yet I keep handing out these damn cards, cringing and explaining to people that I'm not really a producer. So the first thing I did with these new cards was remove that word.

The cards list my website, but I never use that site. I use this blog. So I changed that on the card. It doesn't list the site anymore, it lists the blog.

The last thing I did was leave a white back on the card. My old card looked really cool with that black designed back, but when your entire card is black, nobody can write anything on it. What if someone wants to make a note of something they want to remember about you? They can't do that if the entire card is black.

I also ordered far fewer cards. Years ago when I ordered these cards I was going out every weekend meeting zillions of people, and I thought I'd be handing out cards like water at a marathon. It was also cheaper overall to order more cards, so I ordered 1,000. Yes, 1,000 cards that say "Producer" on them. Most of them are still in a box in my office and will shortly be recycled.

This time I ordered 250. Much more reasonable.

These are the lessons I learned about business cards. Obviously if you don't live in LA you won't hand out quite so many, but you may still want some for the few events you do attend when you're in Hollywood, or for screenwriting related stuff that goes on in your town. I don't know. But this is my experience.

My main piece of advice is seriously, don't put "Producer" on your card unless you're actually a producer. Don't be like me. Dumb.

Thoughts on the film: Colombiana

2011-08-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we have a guy coming over to start some renovating at the house, so for the next few days I have to hang out and observe the proceedings. Then school starts again. So today was my last day of real vacation freedom where I can drive around town on a week day and do stuff.

Every vacation I like to take myself on a daytime date. I dress nice and go see a movie alone, then apparently I take myself grocery shopping because I am a practical date. I almost got through the whole summer without seeing a movie alone, so I rectified that this morning.

There's a theater in North Hollywood - Century 8 - where there is plenty of parking, it never sells out, and tickets are cheap. The line is rarely longer than 4 people and the first showing of the day is $5.25.

This morning I got dressed in nice clothes and went to the 11am screening of Colombiana. There were 3 men scattered throughout the theater, so I sat in the prime spot in the middle.

The up side of seeing a movie at 11 on a Tuesday morning - you sit wherever you want. The down side - the other people in the theater may be crazy. Then again, they may think I'm crazy since I switched seats like eight times. I feel that if you've got the entire theater to choose from, you have every right to demand perfection in your seats. You also have every right to take off your high heels and put your feet on the seat in front of you.

Anyhow, there was a movie.

This was pretty obviously a Luc Besson film. He cowrote and produced it, and even though he didn't direct it, his stamp was all over it. Great action scenes - particularly the big bathroom fight at the end, although I wish there were fewer cuts - some great character moments from the protagonist, a fun story. BUT there are ridiculous plot holes.

MILD SPOILERS

Young Zoe Saldana's dad gives her a ~~Maguffin~~ chip that the bad guys want. This chip is supposed to be her passport to America, and when the Americans see what's on it they flip out. We don't know what it is, but clearly it means the bad guys are fucked. They almost killed lil Zoe for it, and they did kill her dad for it, and it's cool enough to get her into America and lots of cash on the US government, so man, it must be really heavy.

Except when we see the bad guys again the chip seems to have affected them not at all. In fact, their lives are better since they chased that kid out of Colombia. So what the fuck was all that fuss over the goddamn chip?

And when Michael Vartan finds out his sex buddy is actually a badass assassin, he's like "You're super!" How about "What the fuck, you kill people? That's pretty fucked up!" You were fucking a professional assassin, Michael Vartan! You should be pissed she didn't tell you! She could have gotten your white ass killed! I'd be pissed, anyway. I'd get a really good security system installed in my house. And a dragon.

END SPOILERS

Overall I did enjoy the film. One of its best features is that her actions as a warrior made complete sense. She's a slim woman, and she used that to her advantage. She didn't run around getting in a bunch of fistfights with large men and win. And when she did finally fight a guy hand to hand, it made complete sense.

Past revenge movies about women have seemed ridiculous; I don't really identify with the lead or believe her actions, but Zoe Saldana pulled it off perfectly. She pulled off some beautiful moments here where I really felt sympathy for her, and that ain't easy. I'm telling you guys, she is the next big thing.

Looking for reading suggestions

2011-08-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately my vacation nears its end this week. Next week I have to go back to school. That means today, instead of writing, I worked on a pacing plan for the school year. It's actually shaping into a beautiful pacing plan.

As I went through our American lit book to determine which stories I want to cover this year, I noticed we are seriously lacking in two things: Civil War and Slavery. I checked our novel list - same thing. It's like we're intentionally ignoring stuff that makes us uncomfortable. How can you read about American lit and ignore the Civil War?

Yet last year I'm pretty sure I did exactly that. I usually don't do chronological order when planning, but this year we're linking English classes to science and history classes. In other words, I will have the same set of 11th graders as a specific history teacher and a specific science teacher. It's called a Cohort, and I am soooo happy we are doing this.

But history teachers usually work in chronological order, so I decided to plan my readings the same way this year.

So long story short, I need some recommendations. I can't teach Roots - way too long. I have a selection from Frederick Douglass and one brief and somewhat boring slave narrative in the book, but that's it. I'm looking for some good slave stories. The kids need to learn about this and they never really do. A lot of you guys are really well read. Anybody got any good suggestions?

And then there's the Civil War. I may anger some people with this confession, but I am not a fan of Stephen Crane. I'm already reading The Things They Carried for a war novel, so I'm looking more for short stories and poems and non-boring essays about The Civil War. Any suggestions for that?

This all needs to be 11th grade appropriate, so nothing as complex as something like a Lolita or a Catch 22.

I figured it can't hurt to get some input from the group.

Win tickets to Psycho at the cemetery!

2011-08-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Congratulations Captain Wow for winning these tickets by entering the contest! Captain Wow, please check your email! If you have no email from me, please email me and I will send you the tickets! Have fun! Thanks for playing!

Hey Los Angeles residents:

Ever been to the Cinespia movie screenings at the Hollywood Cemetery? Want to?

I have two tickets and a parking pass for Saturday night's cemetery screening of Psycho. Right after I bought them, I remembered a prior obligation. I can't go.

I don't want them to go to waste, so I'll make it a contest.

If you'd like two tickets to see Psycho at the cemetery and one parking permit, post a logline for your script in the comments. If only one person posts a logline, congrats! You win! If several people post, I'll give the tickets to the person with the logline I like best.

You have until 3pm Saturday.

Make sure you leave a way for me to find your email or check back to see if you've won so you can send me your email address.

Do your research

2011-08-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I'll get a query letter. Doesn't happen often - maybe three times a year - but it tells me something about the writer.

I have a website that lists me as a producer. At the time when I set the site up, I really intended to produce short films, starting with my own. I produced one film, did very little with it, then decided producing was not for me. I have plans to work on the website and retool it, but have been super lazy about it.

So the website sits there, mostly abandoned, but every now and then someone sees it and emails me their logline to see if I want to produce their screenplay.

This tells me something about the person who sent the query. I'm sure they're very excited and worked hard on their script, but they didn't do shit for research.

If you look me up on IMDB you'll see that my only credit thus far is as a zombie victim in a terrible web series. I had no lines. I walked down an alley, I got bit, I died. My other uncredited work includes voice over on an unfinished comedy short about colonoscopies, a murder suspect in a short film about an interrogation, and of course directing, writing and producing my own short film, Game Night. I don't look that great on paper.

This reminds me, I need to put Game Night up on Vimeo. I'm adding that to the list of things to do next week.

The point is, anybody can call themselves a producer. I'm a producer. I don't actually produce anything, but I'm a producer. But if I were producing things, they'd be my own projects, and maybe the projects of my friends. I'm a writer first and foremost. I don't even want to direct. So I definitely don't have the clout or the interest to develop something that comes to me through queries.

It wouldn't take much to find this out. A quick check on IMDB, a glance at the Tracking Board, a Google search. That's why I always assume the logline I get in these queries is probably a first script. You write your first script, you get super excited, you send it to EVERYONE, then you start learning the ropes. Then you discover how ridiculously ignorant you were in the beginning. We've all been there.

Everyone in this town exaggerates their accomplishments, and they all blow smoke up your ass. You have to learn to discern between the truth and the fluff.

So when you send your script to every producer ever in the history of producing, you run the risk of being scammed, or at least used. There are a ton of "agencies" and "production companies" that LOVE your work, but they need a little cash up front just to get this thing of the ground. Those are ALL scams, particularly the reps. Any agent or manager who asks for money up front is a fraud. They feed on the kind of desperate writers who don't do any research.

And there are producers who will give you a $1 option then tuck your script away, never to be seen again.

So please, everybody, look up the people you want to query. Find out everything you can about them. And if she, say, rewrites your logline and gives you a couple of good websites to check out so you can learn how the business works, don't take it personally. I'm only trying to help.

Alumni

2011-08-25T17:01:00.000-07:00

When I came out to California I knew one person. It didn't take me long to make new friends, though, and eventually I went to every event I could get my hands on. I met new people all the time, industry people even.

One night a talent agent I'd talked to earlier tried to approach me at a party right at the moment I picked up a phone call from a then-friend who I now hate. Knowing he prevented me from connecting to a talent agent makes me hate him even more.

Anyway, I wasn't ready then. I had a couple of scripts under my belt, but they weren't good enough. I didn't know that. I don't regret moving here when I did, but I do wish I met people now the way I did then. I feel like I wasted a few opportunities on some not-ready scripts.

So last week I was invited to an alumni thing for my college. I miss home a bit, particularly the Southern accents, so I went. In the back of my mind I thought maybe there might be a producer or something.

There were no producers, but I had a grand old time. And toward the end one of the guests mentioned a successful producer who graduated from our school and lives out here. She knows him well.

Now I knew about this guy when I moved here but I never made contact. I was never sure what to say and didn't want to sound like a douchebag. "Hey, we went to the same school, what can you do for me?" No way. At least, not then. I did recently query Rough House pictures (all guys from North Carolina) with what basically amounted to "Hey I'm from North Carolina too. Read my shit."

The shame just sort of fades the longer you're out here.

Anyway, my mom went to the same school and was briefly in the theater department, so I mentioned this guy to her. Turns out he knew my dad really well. Why didn't she tell me that before? So now I'm going to email this guy and say hi. No expectations (I'm still trying not to be a douchebag), but it would be cool if he cold give me some professional advice, at least.

What's the worst thing he could say? "Your dad is an asshole. Never call me again." And I would sigh and go back to work.

Thoughts for the weekend

2011-08-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

I'm going on a brief vacation out of town. You gotta get out of town at least once a year, I say.

I got to page 60 in my script, which was my goal. I didn't want to leave town until I had at least 60 pages. I also enjoyed these last few pages more than the rest, which hopefully means I can go back to the beginning and rewrite those pages to make them even stronger now that I have a clearer sense of the script's identity.

Things that have annoyed me on television lately:

I hate that Hughes Net commercial. I don't know if you guys get it where you are, but it comes on ALL THE TIME on my TV. Hughes Net is some kind of internet service provider, and their whole schtick is this idea that you may be in the middle of nowhere, but that doesn't mean you have to settle for dial-up internet! But I'm not in the middle of nowhere. I'm in the greater Los Angeles area. Nobody here is getting back to nature. Where do they think they're advertising? Drives me an unreasonable amount of bonkers.

Dear Colby on Top Shot, please stop smiling like the Joker. It creeps me out. You don't actually have to talk through your teeth.

I wish high school kids were played by people who look remotely like high school kids. When your high school junior has forehead wrinkles he is not believable as a teenager. I'm looking at you, tough slutty guy on Glee.

A thing that made me happy recently:

Fright Night was fun. The lead had forehead wrinkles and the high school scenes were a bit silly, but once things got going it was quite enjoyable. But by far the most joy to be had in that film was.....

VERY SLIGHT SPOILER THAT YOU COULD DEDUCE FROM LOOKING AT THE CAST LIST, WHICH I DID NOT

...When David Tennant showed up. I was looking at this magic guy thinking, this dude is basically Russel Brand, so why didn't they just hire Russel Brand? Why hire this random actor guy? Who is this guy anyway? Seems familiar. And then he pulls off his wig and his facial hair and I squealed. I ADORE David Tennant in all forms. And he wasn't just a cameo, either. He was a liquored up leather-clad badass with a filthy mouth. He made that film way better than I expected it to be. I just wish I hadn't been tricked into watching it in 3D because the 3D was completely unecessary.

Have a good weekend, everybody.

Making your script stand out

2011-08-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

My former manager told me once that she generally gets 10 queries a day. I know reps who get way more than that, and as you can imagine, most of them are terrible. It's not enough to have a good script, you have to let the person reading your query WANT to read that script. She could be reading 30 queries in a row at the end of a very long day - what makes yours jump out at her?

I have a lot of problems when I write, but this has not been one of them for a very long time. I'm good at getting read. Whether I live up to the read - that's a different issue.

I'm not above providing my own examples, so here's the logline for Nice Girls Don't Kill:

When a meek and universally abused copy editor is mistaken for the professional killer she accidentally bumped off, she decides to take on this violent new identity until the killer turns out to be not so dead, and very pissed off.

This logline has served me very well. I wish they were all this easy to write, by the way. Usually it takes me ages to figure out the right logline, but this one just poured out. When I'm done sending out queries, I'll post my whole thing.

If you've never read this article by Christopher Lockhart on constructing the perfect logline, read it now. He says it better than I ever could.

Mainly, though, I was thinking about concept. Just yesterday a few writing colleagues were discussing the "hook" in your concept. One of the writers was expressing his frustration with figuring out what a hook is.

A hook is the thing that makes your script sound new - like something I'm going to enjoy as a reader.

One of the writers mentioned the Bourne series. There's been a million assassination movies, but here's one about an assassin with amnesia. And there's your hook.

Of course, you may remind everyone about The Long Kiss Goodnight, which had the same premise, except she also had a husband and kid so it was a slightly different hook.

So here's an example of a generic logline you see over and over:

When a former CIA agent is framed for murder, he must find the killer before he's the next one to end up dead.

I made that logline up, but it's based on a multitude of similar loglines I've seen over the years. We've seen this story. It's old news, and it's the same story half the screenwriters in town are telling.

When you see that logline, who do you picture as the protagonist? A white male, right? Maybe 30s, early 40s? In good health? Well educated? Trained in tactics?

Change some of that.

Three Days of the Condor was about a white man in his 30s in good health, educated, all that, except he was not remotely trained in tactics. The guy reads books for a living. There's your hook.

North by Northwest was about a guy who not only wasn't trained in tactics, but he wasn't trained in anything. He was an advertising exec, for heaven's sake.

Enemy of the State was about a black guy who wasn't trained in anything.

La Femme Nikita was about a female street criminal.

What if your protagonist was deaf? Gay? Fifteen? Ninety? An illegal immigrant? A dog?

Suddenly your story changes and bends and starts to develop a hook. What if your story takes place in an unusual location or during a major event? What if your antagonist is deaf or gay or fifteen or ninety?

You can take a generic idea and fiddle around with the details until what was a boring old idea turns into something any reader would like to see.

Sometimes the characters know best

2011-08-12T19:34:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting writing day. I have these two groomsmen at this wedding. Early in the script, the groom disappears. So today I had them walk out of the room to look for him, when it suddenly occurred to me, Hey, they're looking for him.

What I mean is, in the treatment and the outline and all my other notes, I kind of dismissed these guys. I said they were off looking for the groom and figured that got them out of the way so I could go on with my plot. But while I was writing their dialogue, I realized that they need a place to look, and that place had to be logical. They'd start with the groom's house. I know where this guy is, but they don't. Maybe they think he got cold feet and went home? That would be anyone's first assumption.

But somebody else is at his house right now, so if these guys go to the house they'll interact with the bad guys and OH MY GOD OF COURSE THEY GO TO THE HOUSE!

And then it all came together. I realized that by letting the characters decide what to do and following their logical behavior, they solved one of my other story problems. In fact, they gave me the perfect ending to my story, the ending that was right in front of my face the whole time.

That happens a lot when I'm writing. I just let a character decide where they're going to go and they fix a problem. I love when that happens.

Revising as I go

2011-08-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

I know a lot of writers who all write in completely different ways, so any time I write a new project I try a new method I've heard somebody else uses. I figure it can't hurt to toy around with process and see what sticks.

Normally I tear through a first draft without stopping, then go back and revise in complete passes over the whole script. That's not working this time.

Action scenes are my thing, so when I write a script heavy on action I just race through those scenes, rarely doing any serious revisions after the initial burst of energy onto the page. This script, however, is light on action and much heavier on dialogue than anything I've ever written before. So my technique has had to adjust.

Dialogue's tough for me. I don't like to watch people standing around talking and I hate blatant exposition, so I'm never satisfied with my big dialogue scenes. I know a handful of writers who edit as they go, so I decided to try this. I've been writing, then revising, then writing, then revising. The bad news is that it's taking me longer than usual to get through the first draft, but the good news is that the first draft will be closer to something complete than it usually is.

I'm still deciding whether I like this method or not. I guess we'll see how it turns out.

Over the hump

2011-08-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness I've finally passed the slump.

Whenever I start writing something, no matter how detailed the outline, I still feel like it's a piece of crap for a while. I usually know the opening scene cold, but after that I start fumbling around until things start to lock into place. In this case that came with some character work. I did my bios, but I also posted my first 3 pages on Done Deal and got some feedback that made me realize a couple of things.

Sometimes, stopping and examining everything in a new light really helps.

And now I'm over that annoying hump. For the first couple of weeks, I had to force myself to write, and I was lucky to eek out three pages in a day. Now I'll sit at the computer to check email, and I'll accidentally end up writing a page or two.

To get here, I just have to trust myself and my concept. I had a slump like this with Nice Girls too, and I love that script. And now I've gotten over the slump with the Wedding Dress script.

I feel pretty good. I think this thing's gonna kick ass.

A note about posting

2011-08-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

Obviously, I love to have anybody comment here on the blog. I like hearing different perspectives and discussion. But I do ask a couple of things.

Don't be a dick. You can disagree with people, me included, without making personal attacks.

And please choose an identity and stick with it. It's become pretty obvious that at least one person has made several comments under different names and thinks nobody will notice. I appreciate your opinion, but when you come back and post the same stuff over and over under a different name, it becomes spam, and spam gets deleted.

And people who just lurk and never say anything, never feel like you can't join the conversation. I'm just a girl blabbing on about her experiences and theories. No reason you can't join me.

For those who contribute regularly and always have cool stuff to say, I love you guys.

Time for bios

2011-08-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

I totally believe in writing backstory and substantial character bios, but I can't seem to write them until I've delved into the story a bit. I write the plot ahead of time, but I like to discover the characters as I go. Eventually I'll hit a wall, and I need to stop everything and establish who the people are.

That was today. One of my characters learns that another character is not who she claims to be, so he asks the antagonist, "Who is she really?" and the antagonist says "She's my sister."

And I sat back in my chair and kind of went Huh. I had no idea they were related until it came out of his mouth, and once I knew that, their whole relationship brought on a new significance. It fit completely with everything they'd said to each other so far, but it was much cooler.

So the next scene I tried to have two characters talk but it didn't feel real. That's when I know I have to stop and do bios. I've had this breakthrough - that lets me develop something more fully, but I need to stop writing for a day or so and establish who these people are. Then I will go back through the 33 pages I've written and rewrite them to accommodate these new developments.

For some reason, this is the way that works best for me. Since I started doing these bios, I already realized some things that will make writing the rest of this story much easier, but these are things I never would have realized had I not started writing first. I don't think I would have realized the brother sister thing if I had planned it out first.

Writing is weird.

Cowboys and Aliens and all the plants

2011-08-03T13:09:00.000-07:00

I finally got out to see Cowboys and Aliens this weekend. I enjoyed it. It wasn't great, but it was fun and action-packed and had all the major tropes of a good Western.

I had one major issue that jumped out as to why this was not a great movie: PLANTS.

A plant, in case any of you don't know the term, is when someone introduces an idea or object that will return in a later scene at an important moment. For example, if a character looks at an orange and take the time to put it in his pocket, that's a plant. Later in the, let's say, television episode, it will most likely come back into play.

Cowboys vs Aliens is loaded with plants. Way too many.

SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

Although, one could say that all of these examples are spoiled the minute they're planted.

Plant #1: Doc shoots his gun
Sam Rockwell, the local doctor/bar owner, has never shot a gun. A preacher suggests he learn. He gets a hold of a rifle and shoots at some bottles but hits nary a one. In a later scene he tries to shoot some bottles again and still hits nary a one. Guess what happens in the final battle scene? Did you guess? Correct! He shoots an alien right on the button in a lovely moment of deus ex machina. It's so predictable, I just sort of shrugged when it happened.

Here's how that could be fixed. Let's say he's got this gun and he shoots the bottles, doesn't hit them. Okay, we've been introduced to the idea that he can't shoot, and now we expect him to learn. Instead of showing him shoot at bottles again to remind us of the plant, let's show him shooting at a person in a battle, maybe that final battle. Maybe he misses and misses, and finally he sets up that perfect shot and he just knows this one will hit and the music swells and - he misses. Aw, hell. then, he flips around and BAM! He hits! hooray! It's his big moment, but it's not so damn contrived.

Plant #2: The kid with the knife
Early on, Harrison Ford's character, Dolarhyde, sits around with this kid and makes a HUGE deal of giving the kid his knife. Then, in a later scene, Dolarhyde takes the knife back, explains its significance, then hands it back to the kid. So during the big battle scene, an alien chases the kid, backs him into a corner, and we're sitting there waiting.... and waiting.... and waiting for the kid to remember that he has the knife. We know he has the knife because we were reminded of it, and because we keep seeing it poke out from his belt. So it's a boring scene because we're just sitting around twirling our thumbs while we wait for the kid to figure out what we already know.

Remember that example with the orange I mentioned up top? Well, in David Tennant's first full episode as The Doctor, he woke up in a bathrobe and found an orange in his pocket. He made an offhand comment about it and shoved it back in his pocket. Then he did some stuff. At the end of the episode, an Alien came at him. He had no weapon, and his back was turned to the alien. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the orange, and threw it at a switch that made the alien fall off a cliff. THAT is how you do a plant. You mention it, let us forget about it, then pull it out just in time, so we go "Oh hell yeah I forgot about that!"

If Dolarhyde had loaned the kid the knife in a casual way, or the kid had stolen it, or found it, or we at least weren't reminded of its existence, we might have had a chance to forget about it.

Plant #3: Resolved arcs
Every single character in Cowboys and Aliens gets a resolved arc. They all have something to learn, and without exception, every single character learns it. Not everybody needs to have closure, and after a while it feels too contrived when each person gets their learning moment.

In the end, I felt like a lot worked in this film. Like I said, I enjoyed it, but I also felt like it was a little too neat, particularly for a Western.

Bye again, Nicholl

2011-07-30T12:11:00.000-07:00

Rejected from the Nicholl again. This time I didn't even get a PS, which I did the past two years. I'll take some solace in the fact that this script has been revised a good bit since I submitted it, and that it's being read by a handful of people around town.

I figure you can deal with the rejection in a few ways: Do something to distract yourself from the sadness, drink yourself into oblivion and sob, or get on your computer and start typing up some kickass pages.

No more fucking around. For the last week I've petered along on Wedding Dress, one page here, a few edits there, like plinking on piano keys. I haven't had the energy to do much else.

Nothing like rejection to light a fire under your ass, I suppose. Fuck being a failure - I have the power to turn it into a win. You guys with me?

Great movie weekend

2011-07-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

You hear all the time about how much Hollywood sucks, movies are all derivative, there's nothing worth seeing, it's the worst year ever, blah blah blah.

This weekend I am flummoxed because there are so many things I want to see, but I don't have time to spend all day in the theater.

Forget about the fact that I still haven't seen Harry Potter. I'm not fond of small children, and I'm even less fond of them in large groups in movie theaters with parents who prefer to eat their smelly nachos and let the kid run up and down the aisle, cry, or my personal favorite, discuss the finer points of book to film translation very loudly as each scene goes by. So I will wait for DVD.

That leaves me with Cowboys and Aliens, which I will see for sure. It's made of all the things I like - Cowboys, Aliens, laser guns - and though reviews have been mixed, I can't imagine not enjoying it. We'll see, I suppose.

It's also an amazing weekend for limited releases:

1) The Devil's Double, a film about Uday Hussein's body double. It looks like fun.

2) The Guard, Brendan Gleeson's Irish cop has to help Don Cheadle's FBI agent track down a bad guy. The trailer had me in stitches, and guess who wrote it? John Michael McDonagh. Guess who's brother he is? Count me 100% in.

3) Attack the Block, which is one of the cooler titles I've heard in a while. Aliens invade London and some kids and Nick Frost have to take up the city's defense.

So up yours, naysayers. You can complain about the state of movies; I'm having trouble deciding what I want to see. Probably The Guard. Probably.

The ladies are coming

2011-07-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

I'm excited about all the female protagonist action movies we've got going on theses days. It seems like Salt may have opened the flood gates a bit. There was Hanna, and soon there will be Clombiana, and Haywire, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Okay so maybe not floodgates, but still. That's some good, substantial badass chick love right there. I hope it continues.

I hear ALL THE TIME that nobody wants to make an action movie with a female lead, and yet here we are. I've been told I should start writing only male protagonists, that I'm dreaming if I think anyone will ever finance what I love to write.

I firmly believe that whatever anyone says "will never sell" just hasn't seen the script that could sell it yet. People DO want to see an action movie with a female protagonist, it's just that the offerings in the past have been so poor. Was Catwoman a bomb because it starred a woman? I think not. The story had issues.

I think maybe it's the super hero aspect that's not working, or that a lot of writers are creating women who are TOO invincible, too angry, not feminine except for sex appeal. But a woman is more than sex, she's a mom, a sister, an innocent to some degree. She's softer than a man. It's hard for anyone to root for a woman who's completely cold. So a good female action hero has to have some major vulnerability, more than a man does, if you want her to work.

That's why I'm excited about Colombiana the most. I ADORE Zoe Saldana, and I've been convinced for a while that she would be our next badass chick to break through, but I also see from the trailer that her character seems to have that vulnerability that female action heroes need. She's not just angry, she's HURT, and I think that's an important distinction. A man's revenge story can be about rage because he was humiliated, emasculated, and that matters to men. They can hurt too, of course, but their primary emotion in a revenge tale is rage. Look at Payback or Death Wish or a million Westerns.

I just don't think a woman's story can work that way. People won't buy it. But they will buy a woman who's unable to get over the pain, and wants to inflict the same amount of pain on someone else. And the pain has to feel real.

Plus, she can't be invincible. It's ridiculous to think a woman can take a large, well-trained man in a fight without some kind of edge. I'm pretty tough, but I know my limits.

So I've never believed a single person who told me the industry would never make another action movie starring a woman. I'm very glad to have been right.

Now, let's all go see these movies so they'll keep making them. Assuming they're good, of course. I really really want Colombiana to be good.

I love you, movies

2011-07-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

The first day of my first college writing workshop class, the professor made us all fill out an index card - your name, your major, your favorite writer - and this one guy named Elton asked if he could list himself. He just didn't read other writers' work, he said.

As you may imagine, his work was dreadful, and he refused to take criticism like an adult. He argued every single note until the professor refused to critique any more of his stories.

When you don't study other writers, of course you'll think you're the best. You have no comparison.

I remembered this the other day when I overheard an aspiring screenwriter say to her companion, "Oh I haven't seen a movie in the theater in four years." Apparently she also didn't have a Netflix account.

I hear that every now and then, people who brag about how no film made after 1972 is good enough for their impossibly specific taste. They're such amazing writers, so very gifted, they just don't reduce their standards. So they think.

Our primary job is to write great screenplays, but part of that is knowing what else is out there, what the trends of the day are, and to learn from the great ones who went before us.

The first time I saw In Bruges I immediately drove home, turned on my computer and started working on my screenplay, because I realized that what I had written was not even in the same hemisphere as that film. I write movies for the same reason I teach English - I am in AWE of a great story. I could go on for hours about the underrated genius that is Pitch Black or the way Donnie Darko made me feel. Sometimes a movie is so good I want to hug it.

Sometimes a movie is so terrible I want to cut off its face. And that, too, I could talk about for hours. I LOVE MOVIES. That's why I write them - I want to be like those people who make the movies so I can live inside the thing I love.

I am chomping at the bit to see Cowboys and Aliens. I'm so excited I might pass out on the floor before I get to my seat. I promised to wait until Monday because Beefcake will be out of town this weekend, so I will try to distract myself from my impatience with a cocktail of writing and LA Noir, which I am horrible at but quite enjoy.

Anyway, I can't imagine why someone would want to put themselves through all the trouble of cranking out script after script, dealing with rejection and rudeness and feeling like you wasted your life unless you love movies. And if you love movies, don't you want to see them?

I just don't get it.

Eye surgery and epiphanies

2011-07-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

They* put valium drops in my eyes but did not give me, the person, any actual valium. I could have used it. They did, however, give me a stuffed moose doll to hold. I squeezed the non-life out of that thing.

The hard part was when the doctor cut away the flap over my iris. Your eye goes completely black for 9 seconds, during which time you can hear him cutting into your flesh and smell it burning. I strangled that moose and panicked internally.

After that, no problem. It was actually really easy. No pain, just a red light and a green light to stare at until they were done, which was in 3 minutes. Literally. Whole thing took about 3 minutes per eye.

So now I can see stuff. It's pretty cool. I got my first pair of glasses in the 8th grade, so being able to actually see things without help is fucking amazing. I woke up in the middle of the night and just stared out the window at all the stuff I could see.

On the way to my check-up visit (20/15 in one eye, 20/20 in the other), I suddenly realized what's wrong with Burnside. Burnside is my Civil War script, my labor of love, my non-commercial beauty that nobody will ever make ever because it involves all the things executives hate taking a chance on - female protag, period piece, interracial sex scenes, ambiguous good guys, heroic bad guys, etc..... But it's my greatest challenge to make it sort of like Killing on Carnival Row - a script nobody can make, but everyone has read and loved. If it takes me 50 years, I will make this happen.

And today I suddenly realized that I have the wrong protagonist. As soon as I realized that, most of my biggest problems just fell by the wayside. I realized that I can keep almost exactly the same story, but if I tell it from someone else's perspective, things that felt wrong start to make sense. My protagonist becomes the antagonist and a lot of those non-commercial things I mentioned a minute ago disappear. Suddenly, as I realized this, I also started to realize that my script might not be as unfilmable as I thought.

I have four projects circulating in my mind right now, including the wedding script I'm currently typing, but someday, somehow, I will return to Burnside and I will fix it.

*LA Sight is the name of the place. My only negative comment is that the bathroom key did not work so I had to go to the third floor to pee. Other than that, stellar chaps over there. I trusted them with my eyeballs and they delivered.

Eyeballs

2011-07-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

I have to take another short break from posting and writing, but it's for a good cause.

I've worn eye glasses or contact lenses for 20 years, and today they're out of my life until I get old and need reading glasses. I've wanted Lasik forever - even did a project on it in anatomy class in high school back when it was brand new and still experimental. Today is the day my dream comes true. Soon I will be able to swim in the ocean and find my towel when I come out of the water.

I can't type or read for at least a day or so. I'm very excited. I've never been so stoked about someone poking around in my eyeballs.

I'll be in and out in half an hour, and by next week I should be back to writing. I'm going to try to crank out a couple of pages today to make up for the time I won't be writing over the next couple of days.

Tomorrow I plan to tell everyone I know: "Now let me look upon you with my own eyes."

Back in the saddle

2011-07-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

I've been off writing for two weeks, and not like the usual break where I don't actually type but I still think about my story. This time I didn't write, didn't think, didn't do NOTHIN' writing related.

So by the time I got back to my story yesterday, I was pretty out of practice. I eeked out one terrible page.

This is the time when giving myself permission to suck is most important. That page yesterday was indeed terrible, but I know that I'll get my groove back, and on my first rewrite I'll see how to fix that problem. So I just wrote it, knowing I could fix it eventually. That's tough to do - leave the garbage on the page - but it must be done.

Today I started to suck again with the scene I was working, but I felt pretty confident about the next scene. Tonally, what I was writing just didn't match the rest of the script, so I just made a note about what goes there - running through woods - and moved on to the scene I DID know - my characters climbing up a tree. This restored my confidence a bit.

I think the scenes I don't feel good about are a problem because I don't yet have a feeling for the chemistry between my leads. I need to take the scenes that are all about the plot and build the chemistry there so I can go back and inject into the "filler scenes" that involve characters moving from one place to the next. That moment when they're running is going to rely on that chemistry. It doesn't work until I figure it out. So I put in a placeholder until I do.

Sometimes it's best just to skip over the stuff that sucks so you can feel good about yourself.

Sorry I missed you: I'll return tomorrow

2011-07-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

I've had guests at my house for two weeks, but today is the last day. First it was my niece, then my parents, then Beefcake's parents.

We did lots of touristy things, then we fixed the house and spruced up the yard. Because that's what parents do - they come to your house and then take you to Home Depot SEVEN TIMES in four days. The lady in the paint aisle now knows my name and my mom's name and my mother-in-law's name and much information about our lives and household chore needs.

Tomorrow I plan to watch two weeks worth of TV. I will take a two-hour break in the middle of the day to get back to writing and I will try to work out, but my day is primarily devoted to vegging out, because I am emotionally drained.

It's been so long since I saw my screenplay, I don't even know what it's about anymore. Something about a wedding dress, I guess.

What I learned from having a kid

2011-07-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

Having a teenager around has taught me some things.

Time is harder to come by. Now, she's on vacation, so much of our time has been spent driving her around and showing her stuff. I'm sure if she was here all the time I'd do a lot more of what I'm doing today and letting the TV babysit her.

She loves Firefly now, by the way. I have done that, at least. We watched the entire series and then the movie.

But I saw just how much of your time kids can sap. She, at least, can take of herself. I can only imagine how time consuming a younger kid can be. So those of you with kids who still find time to write, kudos.

But the big thing I have observed was Friday night when we went to the movie theater. These were the films playing:

Super 8 - she already saw it.
Horrible Bosses - she wanted to see it, but it's rated R, and for a reason.
Cars 2 - none of us wanted to see it
Monte Carlo - thank God she had no desire to see this either.
Bad Teacher - even if we hadn't already seen it, there was no way we were taking her to this
Bridesmaids - no way.
Zookeeper - we all thought this was silly

So basically, every movie is one we either saw, didn't want to see, or was not appropriate for children. That left us with two choices:

Transformers
X Men First Class

Beefcake and I didn't really want to see Transformers, but given the limited choices I figured we could tolerate it, as long as she agreed to go 2D so I didn't end up with a headache. But really if we're all going to be happy, that left us with one choice: X Men. All those movies available and only one - a film that was released a week earlier - suited the whole group.

I never really thought about it before because I never had to worry about what was appropriate for a kid before. The whole need for PG-13 films over R isn't just about the kids. It's about the parents. I can't imagine how distraught I would have been if she had wanted to see Zookeeper or Monte Carlo. At least I know with Cars 2 there would have been something for me in there, but either way, taking a kid to the movies means some sacrifice on the part of the parents.

It's given me some thought over the past few days.

Aborted plans and X Men

2011-07-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

Took my niece to Camarillo Outlet Mall yesterday. I planned to spend all kinds of money on her, because isn't that what aunts are for? But she didn't want much until we hit Forever 21. Good thing she didn't buy anything else all day except a Glee button, because she nearly cleaned out my bank account in that place.

Anyhow, we ended up spending quite a bit of time there, and of course we had to introduce the girl to In and Out because she thinks McDonald's is good food, so we found ourselves racing to get home. We had tickets to see Clueless followed by a Q&A at the Aero in Santa Monica.

It took me a while to find the Clueless screening. I knew I wanted to take her to see something she couldn't get back home, something that would give her real exposure to the movie industry, and Clueless was the perfect PG-13 film. It was to be followed by Fast Times, but we weren't staying for that. I can just see myself trying to explain to my sister why her daughter watched Judge Reinholdt masturbate in a bathroom. We kind of hoped she'd fall asleep after the Q&A so we could stay and watch guilt free, but the girl does not sleep. It's ridiculous.

So I bought the tickets ahead of time because these things usually sell out. There we were, racing to get home in time to let the dogs out, change into our about-town clothes we just bought, and hop back in the car.

I live in the Valley, and as I said, the Aero is in Santa Monica. Know what that means? The 405. Know what time it was? 6:50pm. Movie started at 7:30. So if you live in LA, you see my problem.

We were just merging from the 101 to the 405 and it was 7:28. We finally had to admit it was not going to happen. We could make the Q&A, maybe the last half of the movie, but that was it. So I sighed away $30 in tickets and we took the next exit, which happened to bring us past the Sherman Oaks Arclight.

So it wasn't exactly a Q&A, but at least we introduced the girl to a quality theater. We looked at what was showing, and even though she really wanted to see Horrible Bosses and swore up and down that her mom lets her see R rated movies all the time, we gave her a choice between Transformers 2D or X Men First Class. Thank God she chose X Men.

In the end we spent $73 to see one movie. You're welcome, Hollywood.

By the by, they had Bridesmaids showing there. They also have Bridesmaids showing down the street from me at the $3 theater. Just thought people should know. Arclight is expensive.

If you don't know the Arclight theaters, they don't have commercials, just previews, and they have assigned seating so you don't have to do the mad rush to claim and save seats.

So we get in there and take our proper seats, and this dude comes in with his lady. He sits down right in front of my niece, but there's no empty seat next to him. The girl plops down in his lap and whips out her cell phone, texting away as the lights go down. There are empty seats in the theater, even two together, just not good ones.

So I say to her "Do you have a seat?" She insists she does. I say "And you're going to sit there texting?"

She put the phone away, and to her credit, we didn't hear a peep out of her or see her phone at all. I guess I scared her. The men on either side of that seat were too polite to complain about her all up in their personal space as she sat and watched the entire film in that dude's lap.

I really enjoyed the film overall. I had a few slightly spoilerish logistical issues - how did Mystique know Kevin Bacon had a helmet on? and why didn't Magneto make that Azreal or whatever dude take Charles to the hospital before he zapped away? I mean if they really are friends and all - but by and large I thought it was solid as hell. Loved all the cameos. It was like the movie gave us a game to play as we watched.

A whole bunch of people stayed to the end to watch the extra scene that didn't exist. There was a lot of grumbling when it did not appear.

My niece is coming

2011-07-06T07:32:00.000-07:00

My 12-year-old niece is coming to town this week to stay for a while, so I get to do touristy things like stroll down the Walk of Fame and scope for celebrities. Fortunately she is really interested in how movies are made, so I've got us tickets to a screening with a Q&A. Universal Studios, a drive down the PCH, a visit to the Farmer's Market.

The challenge will be finding time to write. I know my writing will fall off a bit, so I'm lowering my expectations for the next couple of weeks, but I'm still going to try to write most days. I'm hoping to use the dogs in this capacity. Kids love dogs. I figure if I give her a dog and some toys and an hour to go entertain herself, she'll probably give me time to write. And if that doesn't work, we have an XBox.

I'm just hoping she understands why I have to shut myself off for an hour or so and doesn't feel slighted or something. I'm not that good with younger kids.

The 14-18 demographic I get, but any kid younger than that is kind of a mystery. She's too old for kid's stuff and too young for adult stuff.

Then again, this may be my chance to shape her appreciation of film for years to come. We may have to introduce her to The Terminator. And Star Wars. And Buffy. Time to turn that girl into a film nerd.

How I write a Fight Scene

2011-07-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

The Podcast is up! Last week I sat in on Scriptcast, a weekly radio show with Script Doctor Eric and his buddy Matt.

Check it out on ITunes under "Scriptcast."

One of the questions Matt asked was how I write fight scenes. I talked about using the terminology and order of the fight to push the story, and I thought it would be helpful to show an example of how I do it.

So here's a scene from Nice Girls Don't Kill where my protagonist has to kill an evil Korean physical therapist while her partner in crime waits in the lobby. The don't realize a hooker is smoking meth down the hall.

Ahem.

WHIRLPOOL ROOM

Park lounges comfortably naked.

Mary Beth puts her gun up against his head.

Park opens his eyes, sees the gun.

At first, his eyes open wide in panic. Then, a smile.

He stands up, dripping whirlpool/sperm water.

PARK

You are here to kill me?

MARY BETH

Yes.

He gets out of the whirlpool and dries off.

He shakes his head as he puts on a pair of speedos.

PARK

You have already failed.

In a quick Hapkido move, Park twirls Mary Beth around and SLAMS her against the wall, forcing the gun out of her hand.

She gasps.

PARK

You didn't shoot.

RECEPTION

Elliot stands up. He inches toward the whirlpool room. He peeks around the corner to see Mary Beth FLY into the hallway between rooms.

Hooker pokes her head out of the bathroom, a meth pipe in her hands. She's high.

She drops the pipe.

HOOKER

The fuck?

Park and Mary Beth fight in the hallway - Mary Beth with her Muay Thai and Park with his Hapkido, both tight between hall walls.

Mary Beth kicks Park in the chest. He catches it and starts to twist her foot.

Mary Beth pushes with her foot, pinning him to the wall while he tries to get a lock in. Balancing on one leg, she hits him with a right hook, follows with a left.

Hooker screams and runs at Mary Beth, arms flailing.

Elliot rushes in and grabs Hooker around the waist, pulls her into the

RECEPTION

And slams her to the floor.

HALLWAY

Park yanks Mary Beth's foot and pulls her in, flipping her onto the floor face down.

He drops to his knees on top of her.

Mary Beth pulls her hand up to her chin just in time to block Park's arm as it wraps around her neck.

RECEPTION

Elliot pins Hooker into a chair, but she squirms and screams in his ear.

Then she BITES his ear.

Elliot yells.

ELLIOT

I do not want to hit a woman but I fucking will if you don't chill the fuck out!

She spits in his face.

ELLIOT

GODDAMMIT!

She kicks at him. One shot hits his kidney. OW.

He sighs, then punches her in the face.

HALLWAY

Mary Beth tries to squirm her way out but she's stuck. The only thing preventing her from being choked out is her hand between Park's arm and her neck.

He digs a knee into her back.

PARK

Tell me, why are you here?

She reaches down into his Speedos with her other hand and WRENCHES the holy hell out of his nuts.

Park yelps and loosens his grip. That's all she needs.

Mary Beth squirms out of his grip and runs for the gun back into the

WHIRLPOOL ROOM

But Park recovers fast. He sends her a flying kick right into her chest.

Mary Beth crashes back into the cabinetry, spilling little therapy aids everywhere.

RECEPTION

Hooker grabs the lamp on the table next to her and CRASHES it into Elliot's head.

Elliot crumples to the floor.

Hooker runs down the

HALLWAY

Where she passes the room where Park strolls up to Mary Beth.

She stops.

HOOKER

That bitch ain't no mermaid!

She throws open the door to the bathroom.

WHIRLPOOL ROOM

Park strolls toward Mary Beth.

Mary Beth grabs a five pound dumbbell, and with all her might POUNDS it into Park's face.

He stops. Blood seeps from the side of his mouth.

Mary Beth's face is bruised.

He smiles.

In the Hall behind him, Hooker shuffles by with her bag.

She's leaving.

PARK

Who sent you?

MARY BETH

Who do you think? The father of the girl you raped, jerk.

RECEPTION

Hooker steps over Elliot's unconscious body and leaves.

WHIRLPOOL ROOM

Park chuckles.

PARK

Aw. It's not rape if you enjoy it, and they all enjoy it. I'll show you before I cut your throat.

Mary Beth grabs him by the arm and trips him with a Judo takedown.

He falls into the whirlpool. SPLASH.

She races to the corner, grabs the gun.

Park begins to pull himself out of the whirlpool.

Mary Beth takes a deep breath.

I'm a big fan of mini slugs in action scenes, especially when switching between two fights or moving from room to room. It makes the pacing faster and the read simpler. I also always try to find interesting locations for the fights. So in this case, I thought at first about an office building, but that's been done to death. So I started to think of other locations.I had been seeing a physical therapist for a wrist injury, so I thought his office woul actually make a pretty good fight location. I almost never go for my first instinct - I always think about how I can up the ante.

Fine. I'll get HBO.

2011-07-01T19:08:00.000-07:00

HBO finally got me. They gave out a week and a half of free programming, just in time to catch the season premiere of True Blood. And it just so happens, True Blood's last season was up next in my DVD queue, and I just watched the first disk. I do not want to wait for the next disk. There is something horribly addictive about that show.

And then they showed that usual montage of all the shows they have. And you know I really love Eastbound and Down and Entourage, and I did enjoy the pilot to Game of Thrones....

Damn you, HBO. I resisted you last time, but you got me. You finally got me.

Where I discuss my feelings on Tarantino

2011-06-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, I got the chance to sit in a radio booth and chat with Script Doctor Eric and his buddy Matt about movies and stuff. That was a ton of fun, even if I had difficulty staying on subject.
It should be up on podcast pretty soon.

I realized on the way home something that might have seemed confusing. We talked a bit about Tarantino, and I expressed my mixed feelings about his work. I mentioned that while he has flashes of genius, I don't like the way he suddenly switches genres in the middle of his films. I mostly had this issue with the first Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds and Django.

Then I mentioned how great Martin McDonagh is, largely because he changes genres in the middle of his stories. He bounces between comedy and drama and action with ease. So it seems I criticize Tarantino for the same exact reason I celebrate McDonagh.

I guess it comes down to the showing of the seams. Tarantino announces his style in grand fashion. He says "Oh, you thought you were watching a World War Two action movie? Guess what, bitch? You're watching a BLACKSPLOITATION FILM! Just for a minute, though, and then I'm changing this shit up again."

And that works for some people. There are people who eat that shit up. I'm just not one of them. Reservoir Dogs was consistent in its style, and Pulp Fiction, despite being a collection of shorts, followed its own rules. I love those two films to death. I just don't like suddenly being yanked out of what I thought I was watching and being shoved into a whole different film.

McDonagh does it with nothing but the story. His style is consistent, and the story flows from humor to action to drama as part of the narrative. It doesn't announce itself dramatically - it just flows. So even though both men like to flirt with expectations of genre, I just feel more in love with McDonagh's style.

This does not mean I hate Tarantino, and it doesn't mean you can't love him all you want and we're still cool. It's just how I feel.

I shall be podcasted

2011-06-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Script Doctor Eric runs a fantastic podcast called Scriptcast, where he and his buddy Matt discuss screenwriting and the Industry in a fun, casual atmosphere. For some reason, they'll be talking to ME tomorrow, Tuesday June 28.

I appear to have fooled them into thinking I have something to say. For all I know, we'll spend an hour discussing my adoration for Zombie Strippers.

But if you want to check it out, go here to subscribe or search for "Scriptcast" on Itunes. And even if you don't want to listen tomorrow, I encourage you to check it out in the future or listen to past episodes. It's a podcast for people like us, working from the sidelines to get into the big show.

Time to get organized

2011-06-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

Grades are almost in and graduation is almost here, and I am completely ready to launch into my working vacation. The first thing I have to do is clean out my office. It's the room where we've shoved all our crap when we cleaned out other rooms, and right now it's a disaster. So I've set aside two days to clean out the office and put some stuff up on the walls so it's a perfect place to work. Since we moved in, I've just had a space carved out on the desk. No more. Now it's going to be a real office.

I have written on the sofa, the desk, in my classroom, at meetings, anywhere, really. I'm easily distracted by people watching, and I need a routine to get my brain in gear, so I've chosen a structured office setting for my work space. I have a nice paint color on the wall, but that's no good if I have to shove shit out of the way every time I want to put down my laptop.

I need to go to The Container Store and get some containers, is what I need. You cannot have too many organizing containers, I always say. Unless you're a hoarder. But I'm just tired of not being organized. It's distracting when I'm trying to write and I look over at a stack of shit that needs to be dealt with.

Anyway, what's your work space like?

Update on the great class zombie project

2011-06-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

Since it became clear we had neither the resources nor the time to make a solid short film out of any of the scripts the kids wrote for their screenplay projects, I assigned it to them as a final exam. Each group was to take their script and somehow present their story to the class. They could make a video or a play or a comic book or a puppet show or anything in between.

First of all, the screenplay have been great. This started as a zombie project, so most of the kids did exactly that, although there were a couple of exceptions. So you'd think, given how many zombie stories are out there, that I'd see pretty much the same shit over and over. Not so. Sure, some of them went the traditional route of people being chased across the city. Some of those were well done, some not so much. But some totally surprised me. I had zombie love stories, intelligent zombie comedies, and one story that was supposed to be serious but the kid who wrote it was so unintentionally funny I laughed my way through the damn thing.

My favorite line: "Guy bites her skin off, which appears to have caught her off guard." Always a joyous surprise to laugh that hard when you're grading papers. She did not understand what I thought was so goddamn funny.

Anyway, today they started presenting their projects. One group used Photoshop to turn pictures they took into a comic book that they then showed in a PowerPoint presentation. That was super cool.

The best part of all this is how some of the kids who did the most amazing work on this thing were some of my laziest kids. It's like they came alive as soon as I showed them the literary value of film. Hopefully that will carry over into their classes next year and they'll realize that what they learned applies to all the stories, not matter what the genre.

I'm definitely doing this next year.

Joshua James interview at Scriptshadow

2011-06-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

Joshua James, whose screenplay Jones Party just received a positive review at Scriptshadow, did an interview today. It's full of great information from a guy in the trenches who works his ass off.

There are a couple of gems that I found myself nodding like crazy to as I read them:

I'd been given the following advice early on, and I should have heeded it but didn't, said advice being: It's better to have no representation than it is to have bad representation or the wrong representation.

I scoffed at this at the time, but now I can see that's indeed true. I should have stopped worrying about agents and focused harder on my work. If you write enough scripts that people love, you'll find the right people to represent you.

Having been in a similar situation, I could not agree more. I have no regrets about walking away from a situation that didn't work (not a bad manager, just not the right one for me at that time), even if it means I had to start all over with the search.

And then he said this, about making time to write:

You have until the end of your life, but when is that? Fifty years. Ten? A week? Tomorrow? No one knows, right?

My friend Scott Myers has said, "Writing doesn't owe anyone a living" and that's so very true, so if you're doing it, do it because you love it, and try (this is hard) to write like there's no tomorrow.

I feel guilty if I don't write for a long time. Even if I'm not typing pages, I'm ALWAYS workshopping something in my head. In the shower, in the car, as I'm trying to fall asleep at night, any down time I have I spend working on my story because I don't want to waste anymore time than I already have.

It's a really good, informative interview, and he also has a great rant about passion that filled me with loving feelings. Check it out.

Title selected

2011-06-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

Titles are important. I've discovered that with Nice Girls Don't Kill, I don't have to say much else because the title speaks for itself. You know what that movie is, or at least you have an inkling. I've had scripts that didn't have such great titles - Salvage, Burnside, Jacking - but that one I knew was perfect. It's got a suggestion of humor, obvious irony, and it reflects perfectly the theme of my story, plus it implies violence.

From now on, I want all my titles to be that perfect. Yesterday I asked for suggestions, and thank you guys so much. Even though I ended up going with something completely different, it was those suggestions that sent me in the right direction. I needed something with the right tone - a bit of fun, a suggestion of mischief, something that implies a short time frame and a wedding. I ended up dropping the moon thing entirely because it always ended up sounding too dramatic. The wedding thing is what gave me fits. EVERY wedding cliche has already been used as a movie title. Shotgun Wedding would have been great if it hadn't been used by a 2006 Black List script. I had to be creative this time.

I finally figured it out in the car on the way home. It's not quite as perfect as Nice Girls Don't Kill, but I think it sets the right tone:

How My Wedding Dress Got So Dirty

.

Title me, please

2011-06-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

I'm having some trouble coming up with a cool title. I've been going over every possible permutation that reflects the script perfectly, so right now I'm on the verge of calling it "Action Thief Moon Thing," which is accurate but terrible. Right now I'm calling it "With a Rebel Yell" but nobody except the Beefcake seems to know what the fuck that means, which tells me something about why we are together but doesn't do so much for this script's publicity options.

I have a great title for my last thing and a great title for my next thing, but this thing is giving me fits.

So I'll see if you guys want to chime in with some possible titles based only on a few key words. Think of this as a brain exercise that benefits me.

Okay so here are the words:

Thief
Wedding
Moon
Old enemies
Betrayal
Run
Time limit
Countdown
Kidnapping
Love
Fear of commitment

Okay make up some titles. I'll wait.

The Matrix lesson plan

2011-06-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

We spend a good part of our year at school preparing for standardized tests, so once the tests are over we get to do fun stuff. Since the kids have been working on screenplays, which turned out to be pretty awesome so far, I figured this week I'd show some clips from some of my favorite movies and talk about why they work.

The best lesson ended up revolving around The Matrix. I showed the subway battle with Agent Smith from the first film and explained why it works. Then I showed the playground fight with the billion Agent Smiths in the second movie and explained why it doesn't work.

In a nutshell, the first one has a plot. Neo doesn't believe he is special, but at the beginning of the fight he starts to wonder if he might be. Then he actually hurts Agent Smith and it pisses him off, so Agent Smith kicks his ass. And when you think Neo is about to give up, he stands and signals to Smith to bring it on, he's ready. But Smith is still stronger. And just when you think all is lost, Neo says he knows who he is. And he wins.

The fight in the playground Agent Smith talks and talks and talks and talks, then finally they fight. And Neo is never not winning. And then he beats them all up and flies away. It takes five whole minutes, which is super long in fight time. And no plot happens, just fighting.

If the first movie is about Neo accepting that he is special, that fight is very much about that. If the second movie is about Neo's fear that he can never live up to that image people have of him as a messiah, I guess the fight proves.... he is a messiah?

The kids all agreed completely. They found the second fight boring.

Then one kid goes "Miss, you're going to make us think when we go to the movies, aren't you?"

I nodded and smiled.

"But then we won't like the same movies anymore."

I laughed maniacally.

Good day bad day

2011-06-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

So on the down side, the two producers/managers that have read my script have both said they love the writing, but aren't sure about the concept. I'm a little stumped on my current project because I'm not sure I have a full story, and I still have tons of papers to grade so I can't do any writing for a little while, which I guess doesn't matter since I'm still cracking my story.

On the upside, both producers/managers have said they love my writing and would read something else of mine. School is almost out so I'll have time to do nothing BUT write pretty soon. I think I'm just going to take the outline I've got and start chugging away at it, and I hope some of my issues solve themselves once I get cracking. If not, notes will do the trick. And today someone one of my friends said about The Beefcake that launched a screenplay idea that has consumed my brain all day.

My Fraggle Rock movie

2011-06-07T17:21:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, someone in a position of some influence suggested putting my name in the mix for the Fraggle Rock movie. Of course I realize now how ridiculous the odds would have been for me to have landed that job, but at the time I thought it sounded reasonable.

I loved Fraggle Rock. I don't think you can possibly understand how much I loved Fraggle Rock. I would stay up on the couch at my grandmother's house as a kid, completely glued to that television, refusing to go to bed because I wanted to watch more episodes of Fraggle Rock.

So when I heard I could somehow possible be THE writer to tackle Fraggle Rock the screenplay, of course I said NO. I didn't even hesitate.

Have you read what I write? Cuss words and violence, that's me. Strong women who like to beat ass because it's the only way they know how to express their feelings. I do not write about sharing and trash heaps. My Fraggle Rock movie would revolve around a bloody raid on the Gorgs to get revenge for the death of Wembly. And everybody'd be all pissed, and they'd carry little Fraggle guns, and Red would be a badass Muy Thai warrior who would push Gobo to the side when his leadership proved ineffective.

I'm pretty sure that's not what they're looking for. Sometimes I think back to that moment and wonder if I should have said yes, just throw my hat in there, what's the worst that could happen? I don't know, but I know they wouldn't have picked me.

My favorite spec scripts

2011-06-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

I reorganized my files. First I fixed my own script files, giving each project its own sub-file so I can easily identify query letters, loglines, outlines, drafts, whatever has to do with that particular script; it's now all in the same file. I shoved all abandoned projects into their own folder, so now I don't have to cringe every time I pass by that project about a team of brothers who pull heists on nudie bars or whatever the hell that crappy thing was about.

Once I got done with that, I decided to tackle my collection of other scripts. I marked all the ones I've read so that I can easily see which scripts I haven't checked out yet, and I deleted some that I have downloaded more than once. I also simplified the titles.

It didn't take that long, and it really gave me a nice excuse to not grade papers.

As I cleaned up my files I reminisced about all the great scripts I've read. Of course there's Tonight, He Comes, which if you know me at all you know is my very favorite script ever. Then I saw Me and My Penis, which I'd forgotten about and enjoyed remembering ever so fondly. My Mother's Curse and Gravity are two of my other favorites. And who doesn't love Killing on Carnival Row?

There are so many scripts I still haven't read. I should have a few hours to myself this weekend when I should be grading papers. Sounds like an excellent time to read something.

So what should I read? What are your favorite specs of the last year or so?

Nice Girls Don't Kill Queries - round 3

2011-06-01T14:18:00.000-07:00

Good lord, it's already Wednesday. What the hell.

I just got done with another query push. I did okay with my last one, but haven't heard back from everyone who's reading the script. I got one mixed response. (Liked it, didn't love it, send me your next one.) I plan to wait a little bit longer before I try any kind of follow-ups. I hate follow-ups, though. They sound so desperate.

Please, sir, have you read my little scripty script? Do you want to tell me how much you like it? PLEEEEEEEEASE!

So much of what we do feels like subtle - or not so subtle - grovelling.

So over the last three days I waded into boutiqueland. I went in alphabetical order through my list of managers. Before I picked only ones I'd heard something about; now I went deep into research mode and found out as much as I could about those little companies that chug along behind the scenes, getting things done quietly.

It takes work to find people who want what you've got. I'm big on fun, but some places push a long list of serious shit. A lot of firms are somewhat polarized - their scripts are all intense thrillers or ridiculous comedies. But then every now and then I found someone with a history of selling scripts like mine - fun and actiony, to the point of quirkiness.

I sent out about 20 queries this week. I got one request right away. Now I twiddle my thumbs and wait some more.

Stuff from this week

2011-05-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

I was wondering where the week went when I remembered where the week went: yearbooks and Fable.

Yearbooks came out this week, and the senior class has been a real asshole about it. This is the coolest book we've ever done and it looks great even though we had extra work to do this year and less time in which to do it. I had no seniors on my yearbook staff. Actually, scratch that - I had one senior who was responsible for the senior section who just disappeared along with the pictures halfway through the year. So the senior section is thin. I begged and pleaded with the senior class to give me some photos and they shrugged their shoulders. So now they're all pissy and spreading bad press about the book, which is making it difficult to sell.

So get ready. Class of 2011 seems to want a whole lot for nothing.

Anyhow, I also got a new XBox. Ours was stolen over a year ago, but we finally got a new one last weekend so I could start over with my character on Fable 2. This time I'm doing all the side shit and dyeing my hair and stuff, and I'm taking the relationship shit seriously. Like, sure, I could go buy a shitty house and marry the first villager who demands a ring, but fuck that. I want a guy who's going places like Sam the alchemist or Greg the bookseller: upstanding citizens of Albion. And I will buy a nice house in a nice part of town with my earnings. No sleeping in the Gypsy caravan for me.

I love games like Fable because you control the story. The first time through this game I married a nerdy dude, but he seemed unhappy, so I took him to his favorite place to try to cheer him up with a picnic. We were attacked by bandits, and while I ran off to kill them all he was stabbed to death. That was really sad. Like for a minute I was really broken up about that. I just wanted him to be happy, and I got him killed instead.

So I'm waiting a while before I get married this time. I want to be a responsible ass kicking wife and homeowner. Sure I like to raise the dead to slaughter my enemies, but that doesn't mean I don't have love to give.

I still can't be a bad guy, though. No matter how many of these role playing games I get into, I still can't be bad.

Story Epiphany saves my sanity

2011-05-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

Way back I used to do the index card thing when I started working on a project. I wrote up a loose summary of my story, then very neatly printed color coded index cards with scene summaries on them - sometimes as many as 25 - and posted them on my bulletin board.

Then I had to write a treatment for a producer that as far as I can tell never actually read it, but in the process I realized how useful a full treatment can be when you're doing prep work, so I started writing up treatments for all my projects. I printed them out then set them up next to me as I wrote the script.

I used this method when I wrote Nice Girls Don't Kill: draft 1. And the group generally bashed it. I needed a major overhaul of everything, so most of my first draft became pretty useless as I started over. The group discussed how often we end up having to start over like that - it happens all the time to all of us.

I had to do it two more times on that script before I finally got a draft I love.

So this time I swore I would not do that again. This time I would minimize the macro notes. I wrote up a treatment and carefully went through each of my major characters creating a lengthy backstory. I did stream of consciousness for my protagonist to get a better idea of who she is.

Then I started writing and after the opening scene which I liked, it slowly began to occur to me that this wasn't working. Something felt off, forced.

Page 20. I left it alone for a couple of days. I couldn't figure it out.

Then I passed my treatment around to a few people. They hated it. At first I was frustrated. They pointed out things that weren't working, but I wasn't getting that epiphany.

THE STORY EPIPHANY: That magical moment when you get that one note that turns on the light bulb and suddenly a seemingly unsolvable story problem becomes the most amazing idea you ever had.

So I wasn't getting my story epiphany and I was whiny about it. I was all "WAAAAAH. I feel bad."

And then one friend of mine said "The stakes of why the guy's after her need to be higher." Then another friend said "The backstory sucks." And then another friend said "Why don't you have her keeping something from this guy? Maybe she buried some cash that belonged to him."

And then there it was: STORY EPIPHANY. She didn't bury cash, but she did bury something else. And as soon as I knew that, I knew she was a totally different person. And as soon as I knew that, I knew her love interest was a different person, and his mom was a different person, and the antagonist is a different person. All that's left is the setting and the premise, so I'm really glad I only wrote 20 pages.

So now I'm doing a page one rewrite on my treatment, which is much more fun than doing a page one rewrite on a completed script.

Martin McDonagh: Personal Hero

2011-05-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

For a long time I only wrote dramatic action stories. I tried a couple of time to write sitcom episodes back when I was still considering television, and it always turned out kind of crappy because I can't do "jokes" very well. I figured, even though in person I'm a cheeky bugger, in script form I just couldn't do comedy.

Then people kept telling me to do comedy and I kept saying no, no, I'm no good at it. Then my friend Mel at PitchQ listened to my pitch for Not Dead Yet and told me that my pitch was so high energy and kind of humorous, but the story I pitched was so serious that it didn't match.

I got that a lot. Tone doesn't match the story.

So I thought, to hell with it, and wrote a comedy. And what do you know, I enjoyed it. So I wrote another one. And now I'm working on a third. It feels more natural in many ways, but there are still times when I find myself struggling to turn a scene funny.

So now I get the note that the tone is uneven. Sometimes funny, then suddenly serious.

I'm too funny to do drama and too serious to do comedy.

That's why my hero is Martin McDonagh. He was a playwright who won an Oscar for his first film endeavor, a short called Six Shooter that you can see on ITunes. It's a beautiful little flick starring Brendan Gleeson, about a train car full of messed up people in different stages of grief. In this little movie we have death of a child and a wife and a mother and a horrible suicide, and in the middle of it all there's this long joke about cow farts. You laugh and then you feel kind of sick about laughing.

It reminds me of Catch 22. There's a scene in the book where you're just roaring with laughter over some stupid Army regulation or whatever, and suddenly out of the sky comes an airplane flying super low over the water because the pilot is fucking around, and the propeller slices a guy in a raft into pieces. That scene was one of the pivotal scenes in my development as a writer. I didn't know stories were allowed to do that.

So here's Martin McDonagh with his short film, and he goes on to make In Bruges. I came out of the theater pissed off than nothing I'd written was anywhere near that good. But In Bruges has this tragic child death and suicide, yet it was billed as a comedy. In Bruges isn't a comedy, and yet it totally is. And it's also a tragedy.

I'm sure at some point someone told Martin McDonagh, "You can't do that! You can't have a child murderer be your protagonist and crack jokes!" and he said "Go fuck yourself" and made a brilliant film.

And now he's making Seven Psychopaths, a story about......

I have no idea what this story is. It's some dudes and they're writing a screenplay and it's all very meta, but there's a dog and a mobster and a lot of violence, and I don't know what all. All I know is I read it in an instant, and then I just sort of sat there in awe of its brilliance.

And once again there's gruesome death and I rooted for bad people and I laughed until suddenly I felt sad.

I love you, Martin McDonagh. I want to do what you do, but, you know, with some female characters.

My Wonder Woman Cold Open

2011-05-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

Today my buddy Hamboogul over at Done Deal posted one of his ongoing writing throwdowns. The challenge? Write a cold open for the Wonder Woman TV show you'd like to see. I managed to sneak by without participating in the other throwdowns, but since this one was pretty much aimed directly at me, naturally I have to put up my take.

I felt a lot of pressure on this one because I've talked a lot about how I'd like to write the Wonder Woman film. This is TV so my take is a little different than I'd do it in a feature, but here's what I contributed, written this morning while I gave a state standardized test:

INT. INTERNET CAFE - DAY

This place is wrecked. Two customers lie passed out on the floor, covered in spilled coffee. Computer screens are busted, chairs pulled apart, pretentious artwork smashed on the floor.

THREE GOONS advance on a woman, but not just any woman.

This is DIANA PRINCE, 19, dressed in an equestrian outfit - jeans, red tank top, cowboy boots, a pair of super thick bracelets and a headband. She's olive-skinned with dark, soaking wet hair, and she's astoundingly gorgeous if you can get past her current appearance as a drowned rat backing away from these big muscle-bound dudes.

A guy cowers a bit behind her, a cute sciency type in his late 20s, STEVE TREVOR. There's a welt on his neck. He grabs a broken chair leg and holds it out to Diana.

STEVE

You want this?

DIANA

No!

STEVE

Come on, Diana, don't be-

HEAD GOON punches her in the face. Diana grimaces, yanks the proffered chair leg. Swings it at the Goon-

And SLAMS it into his gut. He FLIES across the room, crashing into a percolator. Coffee splashes everywhere. He is OUT.

STEVE

(to the goons)

We were kind of in the middle of something, guys. You should probably head on home now.

SECONDARY GOON thinks about this, but THIRDARY GOON dives right in, grabs Diana by the waist and POUNDS her into the floor. He's got her pinned.

This gives Secondary Goon the confidence he needed. He rushes Steve, who runs like hell.

While Secondary Goon chases Steve over the obstacle course that is this cafe, Thirdary Goon tries to ground and pound Diana on the floor.

But Diana sweeps her leg around in a lock on Thirdary Goon's leg, and SNAPS it. CRACK!

Thirdary Goon screams. Diana clocks him in the face with one of her bracelets, breaking his nose, then THROWS him off. He lands a few feet away.

She reaches under a table and grabs a LASSO, whips it at him, catches Thirdary Goon around the neck. She yanks. He struggles to breathe.

DIANA

Where is he?

Thirdary Goon just wheezes. Diana loosens the noose.

DIANA

Where?

He grabs the noose and RUNS at her, full force.

Diana whips the headband off her head and flings it like a boomerang. It CRACKS right into his skull. Thirdary Goon drops like a sack of potatoes.

Diana turns to Steve, who races around the room, throwing muffins at Secondary Goon as the big guy nearly catches up to his prey.

Diana kneels over Thirdary Goon, rifles through his wallet.

DIANA

You can't run forever, Steve.

STEVE

Oh yes I can!

DIANA

You're going to have to fight some time.

STEVE

Tomorrow!

He hops over the counter.

Secondary Goon tries to follow him, slips on a coffee puddle, THUNKS to the floor.

Steve stops, spots the Goon, cheers, almost falls off the counter himself.

STEVE

See?

Steve hops down, kicks the Goon on the floor. He pours himself some coffee from one of the unbroken pots. Drinks.

STEVE

Still warm!

He offers her some.

Diana ignores him, reads some info she pulled out of Thirdary Goon's wallet.

DIANA

I've got the address. Shall we?

STEVE

Who's our back up?

Diana grabs the coffee, chugs it.

DIANA

We don't need backup, Steve. We've got moxy.

STEVE

And a gun, right? Please say we have a gun.

DIANA

Just moxy.

STEVE

I never should have pulled you off the island.

DIANA

But then we wouldn't be having so much fun, would we?

ROLL CREDITS

Naturally, this is where we'd cut to her back on the island of the Amazons and show how she got here.

To see the thread and the rest of the entries as they go up in the next couple of days, go HERE.

My Query Method

2011-05-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

When I'm bored I like to take on a research project and pursue it all over the Internet. Sometimes I'll say I want a rose bush. So I spend all day looking at rose bushes, figuring out what is the best kind for my yard, learning all about them and how to prune them and whatnot. So in one day's time I suddenly went from knowing nothing about roses to knowing all kinds of great things and sounding like someone who knows things. Then the next day I'm on to something else. Lock picking or thai chi or dog training. I like learning, but I have a short attention span.

This is why my students think I know everything, because it's really easy to trick kids into thinking you're an expert on something you read two articles about.

Except calculus. They're well aware of my calculus deficiencies.

Anyhow, I took this energy for short-term research projects and put it toward querying. I go to IMDB pro and look up each company that interests me, scroll through each rep's client list, looking for writers who make material similar to mine. Then I go to Tracking Board and look up those reps, searching for what kind of deals they've made lately. Any who look like they might take a shine to my material I put on my list. I go to Done Deal and search for them to see what kind of reputation they have among other writers. If they pass inspection, I query.

I think it's important not to query the entire town, because why query people you wouldn't want to work with? Having the right manager is more important than having any manager at all, and having the wrong one can actually hurt you. I only query those I'd be happy to work with if they liked my material.

So once I have a rep in mind, I find their email, shoot them the query, and mark the date in my Word file. If they respond positively I highlight their entry in yellow and list the date I sent the script. If they respond negatively I highlight it in red and add a note about exactly why they weren't interested. Most places, of course, don't respond, so I just leave them as they are.

After a few weeks, I follow the process all over again with a new group.

I also add to this list people who've requested my script because they know me through this blog or some other place, along with a note about how they know me and why they were interested.

So far including both groups I have 28 entries on my list, with five yellow entries and two red.

This is the first time I've been so methodical about it. In the past I was sort of random, taking the approach that anybody with an office is good enough, and not really keeping an organized record.

This way I feel a little more proactive. I also feel a lot more confident about my script this week than I did before, and I think one of these people will like what I have to offer. Nice Girls Don't Kill is my point of view, my story the way I want to tell it. It's the perfect showcase of my work, and the draft I have now is as good as I can make it. Of that I'm sure.

So now I wait. And in a few weeks, see who else I can find.

Stupid proofreading

2011-05-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

The Nicholl reader line of the day is this:

"This writer opens with . . . character and plot intrigue that hooked me, then followed it up with a different character/plot one two punch that hooked me even more, then put those two characters on a collision course impossible to ignore. This script works on so many levels because this writer understands that no plot works well without characters who clash and learn from each other."

I'm a pretty optimistic person, so I thought hey, that could be my script. It's possible they're already reading mine because I was number 900-something.

I open with my antagonist in a pretty cool scene. Then I go to my protagonist, and then I lead them to each other until they crash. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this, but still... could be me. I decided to look back over my script to see if they learn from each other at all, and as I read I discovered a bunch of tiny mistakes I didn't notice last time I did my check for errors. That time I was looking specifically for spelling and grammar, but this time I wasn't looking for anything, just reading. Maybe next time I should just do one last minute read of the script for shits and giggles with no agenda and I'll see things I wouldn't otherwise.

I noticed places where I had changed things and forgot to adjust a line of dialogue. Like originally an old lady died in an apartment so a character says "Who's the old lady?" except later I decided to let her live and took her out of the apartment. Now that character's line makes no sense. There are half a dozen little lines like this all over the script.

These aren't things that will get my script thrown out, and none of my readers have mentioned them so they must not be a huge deal, but I'm still kicking myself. One thing I learned as a copy editor back in college, it doesn't matter how many times you read something, you'll never catch every single mistake. Still, you want to catch as many as possible before someone else does.

Rap

2011-05-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, this is a great moment for rap and comedy in our society. Jon Stewart rips Fox News a new one again for being hypocrites, but this time he does it in the form of Spoken Word.

I don't post this so much because of the politics, but because this whole issue is about words. Rappers used to push boundaries and force us to think about the nature of our society, and even though we've gotten away from it with modern rap, there is still a culture in hip hop of challenging the status quo, and there is still a gaggle of people who like to take lyrics out of context and use them to support silly agendas.

Common's great, and Public Enemy, but here's my favorite: KRS-One.

Nice Girls Don't Kill Queries - round 2

2011-05-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

I made a few changes to my script after the mini melt down I had yesterday. Not a major rewrite, but a line of dialogue here and an action there - enough to add a whole page to the script. I hope that settles the issue, but I don't know. I'm getting another opinion.

I also discovered I forgot to change my title page back after the Nicholl submission, so everyone I've sent the script to has a version with no name on it. Hope they remember who I am.

That also burned through all my connections. Every person I know who could have put this script in good hands has passed on it mostly because of the issue I described yesterday.

And unfortunately I did all my changes after I sent it away to everyone who requested it, so I hope they don't have the same problem, and I hope to get more requests.

Speaking of requests, I clearly have a decent query letter. All in all I sent out 22 queries, and I got four requests - all managers so far. So despite my angst of yesterday, the concept is NOT fundamentally flawed. My logline works. Two of the requests were sent half an hour after I emailed the query.

I'll share the query after I no longer need it, but I play up my voice because I know that's my strength.

I will most likely figure out what kind of changes I want to make, then wait a couple of weeks, then ask somebody else. And we persevere.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

2011-05-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

I have a dilemma.

I finished Nice Girls Don't Kill and started the whole sending it around town and querying process, but something keeps getting to me. Three of the people who've read the script I considered finished have come back with notes. Moreover, it's been the same note.

Early in the script my protagonist makes an unusual choice. I completely understand her choice, and it's important to me that it is, in fact, a choice and not a necessity. But three people have all said they don't understand why she makes that choice, and suggest she instead end up on the run from people chasing her, so she HAS to do what she does.

Two things. That would involve ANOTHER page one rewrite (#4 if you're counting) of the script. And it would fundamentally change the story itself into something I don't want it to be. I feel like it would make my script into a generic action film, because I feel like the fact that my protagonist makes this choice is one of the things that separates it from other stories.

I even have dialogue that specifically says why my character makes her choice, but obviously the dialogue is not enough.

If three people give you the same note, you have to acknowledge that it's not something you can ignore.

I have a choice. Do nothing and hope the right person reads it - seems unlikely. I could do another page one rewrite and turn it into the script everyone else wants to see. I could try to find the note behind the note and make her motivations clearer.

I have a feeling that no matter what I do I'll still get the same note, because I already thought I addressed it with each other previous rewrites to no avail.

It may be that I have a fundamentally flawed concept.

It's frustrating as hell. I worked my ass off on this script and I am completely happy with how it turned out, but even though everybody loves my voice and my pacing and the fun action scenes - they all say the same thing about my character's motivations. And it's something I do not want to change.

For now I've taken the note-behind-the-note approach and added a few bits here and there to make her decision a little clearer, and I'm still thinking of possible tweaks her actions that will give her more tangible reasoning, but I'm still afraid it won't work any better than what I've already done.

Frustration.

The Great Eleventh Grade Zombie Project moves along

2011-05-07T08:58:00.000-07:00

My eleventh graders are having a blast learning about the movie industry. They're in groups, writing scripts for a zombie film. I used a few scenes from existing films they like to teach them script format, but there are a few things they're still having difficulty with.

They all keep writing themselves into the script, for one thing. So a kid named Mario will write a character named Mario. And when character Mario gets raped by a zombie he gets all mad at the other members of his group for making him the victim of zombie rape. I keep telling them not to make themselves the characters and just focus on writing a script, but they're having trouble getting the idea. So now Mario thinks he's going to get Zombie AIDS.

The other big problem they've been having is putting the screen on the page. They keep writing scenes like "Joe and Fidel are brothers. They talk shit while they walk up to the crack house."

They don't realize that they have to describe everything that goes on screen. So I handed them a script to a short film and then showed them the film so they could follow along reading as they watched. After that they said they understood, but we'll see.

If one of the scripts turns out to be super cheap and easy to shoot, I may act as producer and let the kids make the movie. In the mean time, I'm having a couple of guest speakers come in and talk to them about the film industry. So this is turning into a mini film school, all on the suggestion of one kid who wanted me to talk about zombies so he didn't have to do any work on Monday.

Things to do in LA

2011-05-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

Last night The Beefcake and I went to see a taping of Web Soup, so if you watch tonight you can catch a brief glimpse of us in the audience. Chris Hardwick is adorable and always excited and I want to put him in my pocket and carry him around.

This is one of the major benefits of living in LA. You deal with the traffic and the violence and the smog and the loud noise and the tourists and the movies that close down busy streets and the high cost of everything, and as a reward you get to do cool stuff. I can go to a drive-in movie or a movie in the Hollywood Cemetery. I can go see a taping of some show or a preview screening of the pilots we'll be seeing on TV a couple of weeks later.

I've been an audience member at tapings of the following shows:
Web Soup - my favorite! Who doesn't love nutshots? Besides my mom, I mean.
The pilot taping of a sitcom starring Fred Savage called Single White Millionaire. It did not get picked up.
A sketch show by some dude that was briefly popular and has since disappeared and I can't remember his name.
The AMAs. I got a free sweatshirt.
An episode of Crumbs, also a brief Fred Savage vehicle. I love Fred Savage. On both shows, he made sure to entertain the audience between takes, often by mocking his own career. He's great, and I would work with him in a heartbeat.

And I've been lucky enough to see a few movies at cast and crew screenings or at Creative Screenwriting screenings. I stopped going to those, though, after the third time I waited an hour and a half to be the second person in line when they cut it off and stopped letting people in.

Every couple of months I realize I haven't done anything cool in a while, so I'll check Twitter or Film Radar and find something in town to do. I've yet to look and not see something I wanted on my activities list.

And that's one reason I love LA.

So to sum up, watch Web Soup tonight on G4.

Tomorrow I will tell you guys about the awesomeness that in one week has become the Great Eleventh Grade Zombie Project.