The director has his hands on what is, technically, his script.  I’m just the guy trying to put his words on paper.

He once again sent a list of what he’d like to accomplish, visual-wise.  My problem is that everything he wants seems to be more “hey look! artsy stuff!,” rather than “let me show you a story”.

I tried to check out the 2-minute short he’s basing this 10-minute project on, but YouTube just didn’t want to cooperate.  I’ll try it again later.

I also had the opportunity to watch a short he worked on in what I think is supposed to be a comedy.  But I didn’t think it was that funny.  And the ‘plot’ was a little muddled.

I certainly don’t want to come across as mean or snobbish, but it’s hard for me to look at some of these projects and not be critical, at least from a writer’s point of view.

I’m meeting with the director on Thursday to discuss the script.  I really have no idea what to expect.  Based on the draft he originally sent me, I worry he’s going to put a lot of ‘unfilmables’ in it.  Stuff you just can’t show.  I would think a director would know NOT to do that.

He says I’ll get a copy of the finished film, complete with my name in the credits.  “Written By,” I assume.  Based on his assumed timeline, that may be in December.

Even better, at our first meeting, he added that he was also a club DJ, so there’ll be a big party when the whole thing’s done, and I’d be invited. K laughed when I told her that.  Can’t you picture it?  The 40-year-old writer hanging out with the late 20’s film students?  Just gimme my gin & tonic, kid. Grumble, grumble.

-After much confusion, the writing group is still meeting next week.  The woman who organizes it thought it was tonight, but then realized it IS next week.  Nevertheless, I sent everybody the first act of BABY LIKES JAZZ.  I’m very intrigued to get their feedback on that.

-I think I’ve already mentioned this, but I’m doing the midday shift all this week.  That’s usually a very productive time for me, writing-wise.  But the traffic has been frustratingly busy the past few days, so my writing has been non-existent.  Tomorrow, I will do my best to at least work on…something.

No movie tonight, but I did watch the latest episode of ENTOURAGE.  I’m not sure how I feel about this season.  The whole Vince-downward spiral seems like they’re trying to give him some kind of personality; don’t like it.  Drama’s whole “I’m an ACTOR!” thing is getting annoying.  Turtle’s tequila thing – ehh.  Once again, E’s story is the most interesting.  It also seems like Ari is being pushed into the foreground.  The whole Ari-Lloyd thing, which was one of the best parts, has disappeared.  Things need to change.

So I bust my ass trying to get the second draft of the outline done.  I took my pen and notebook to V’s hockey practice both Saturday and Sunday.  I worked on it before going to bed.  There were spurts of creativity, interspersed with dry spells.  Par for the course, but it was really important I get this done ahead of schedule.

I managed to get it to a point where I liked it, and hoped the director would too.  K takes V and a friend to the movies while I stay home to crank out script pages.  I get about halfway there before I have to pick them up from the movies.  We get home; K has to run and grab herself some lunch while V and friend entertain themselves in her room.  I sit down to finish.

That’s when I see I have a voicemail.  K and I inadvertently had each other’s phones while they were at the movies.  The message had come in almost 45 minutes earlier.

It was the morning shift guy, calling to say his relief had never showed and could I do some emergency fill-in for the rest of the afternoon.  This sort of last-minute request is not uncommon with me.  It happens a lot.

I clear it with K and I’m there in 25 minutes, and on the air within 3.

Part of my getting-ready process was to pack the laptop and notebook.  between reports, I finish the script (which has also happened before).

I send it out after getting home.  And wait.

The morning passes with nary a word.  What on earth is he waiting for?  I need to know if he likes, hates it or likes at least part of it.

Finally, he sends me a note.  He likes it, but now HE wants to take a crack at it.

Oh good lord, no.  That’s the last thing he should do.

But this guy is so set on getting what he wants, it’s not worth my time to argue or at least try to dissuade him.

We’re supposed to meet Thursday.  I can’t wait to see how THAT goes.

No movie tonight.  I worked morning drive, the midday, went for a run in GG Park, picked up V from the first day of 2nd grade and just finished a late dinner.

I’m exhausted.  But I managed to stay conscious long enough to hammer out this post, so good night…

So I met with the director yesterday.  I admit I was THIS CLOSE to giving notice, based on how he reacted.  I didn’t expect him to explode, but I couldn’t help but wonder what was going to happen.

Turns out – not much.  I was very diplomatic about what problems I having with the story, calmly explaining why it wasn’t working.  He seemed to get it, but I could tell he wanted to do it HIS way.  Which is fine.  It’s his film; not mine.

We spent the next hour-fifteen discussing how to fix things.  He is very set on what he wants, as he should be.  But a little flexibility could help him.  There were several instances where what he was describing was screaming out “HIGHBROW STUDENT FILM!” To which I say “bleah.”  I don’t give a rat’s ass about how a concept or psychoanalytic term is presented on film.  I want a story told in an interesting way.

One of the scenes he wants is set in a pool hall, the highlight of which is a game of pool played without sticks.  He didn’t explain how it was done, but my first thought was CG, but it sounds more like it would be camera tricks.  Then he added that he thought this would show something nobody had done before (possibly), and maybe somebody would think it was so cool they would hire him to direct something like a commercial or video.  Based on what I know about getting into this industry, I highly suspect the odds are not in his favor.   But as always, I wish him the best of luck.

We part ways with me saying I’ll do my best to write something closer to what he wants.  The rest of the day I’m thinking “what have I done?”  But I said I’d give it a try, so that’s what I did.

But I decided I would approach it not as one of my scripts, but more like an adaptation.  Start with his materials, see how to work with it and take it from there.

I plotted out how I wanted to it to go, what the conflict and resolution for each scene was, then tried to figure out if there was a way to say what he wanted to be said, but without actually saying it, as well as seeing if there was a way to put a twist on it so it still worked.

So far I’m up to just past the midpoint, which is more than I expected to get by now.  If I can figure out the end of the scenes, I’ll get this done by the end of the weekend.  And that would be nice.

I have to keep reminding myself that in the end I will have an actual film that was written by me.  Which in some ways is what it’s all about.

And another potential good thing that happened today.  A guy out of Boston writes a screenwriting blog I occasionally check out.  He tweeted to contact him if you had a family-friendly comedy or adventure.  Since I have both, I responded.  Turns out the request comes from an agent in Vegas(?!) looking for that sort of thing.

I’m still working on the query to send to her.  I think once I get the script done, I’ll drop her a line.

Movie of the moment: LONELY ARE THE BRAVE, a 1962 modern-era Western with Kirk Douglas as a cowboy.  It’s not bad, but reeks of the studio system.  Hey, that’s Bill Bixby as the helicopter pilot!  I don’t remember where I first heard about it, but it’s one of those “what sounded good about this to make me want to put this on my Netflix queue?”  It was written by Dalton Trumbo, so maybe that’s it.

Tired.

Will update tomorrow in midday studio. Again.

In case you were wondering: met with director. Nice chat. May have hit upon successful formula for 2nd draft. Rewrite underway.

Going to sleep now.

So the director read my draft.  He liked it, but felt it wasn’t what he was looking for.  Not that this kicks me off the project, you understand.

He is sticking to his original version of the story, which I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around.  The more I look at his notes, the more I wonder “Does this guy have a grasp of screenwriting basics?”

For example:  the hero is not only a film student (natch), but a really good one. “No matter what he writes, it will be awesome.”  But his crisis is that he’s not inspired to write his final script before graduating.  As a writer, I can relate to it, but it’s a boring crisis.  Where’s the conflict?  Why not have it be about the ramifications of NOT writing it?  In my version, he was worried that the script wouldn’t be good, and he kept having these dreams about overcoming self-doubt, inspiration and so on.

But it wasn’t what he wanted.

This guy wants what sounds like ‘representation of concepts’, like one character to represent inspiration as arousal of the mind, and another to stand for the hero’s gratification.  What does that even mean?  And one character is a link between his motivation and his inspiration.  This is where the cartoony question mark appears over my head with a ‘boing’ sound effect.

I’m very concerned with how this is all supposed to fit together.  Some of the scenes and characters don’t have any basis.  It’s like he thought “I’d like to have this happen,” but FOR NO REASON.  I hate when that happens.

He wants this to be an action/thriller/fantasy.  As I told him last week, where’s the action?  Right now, it’s a whole bunch of talking heads.  The hero is passive, not active.  The thriller aspect means suspense, intrigue and mystery.  What he’s suggesting has none of these.  The fantasy refers to him wanting it to be all set in the hero’s mind; it’s all a dream.  I can make an exception for the fantasy aspect, but SOMETHING HAS TO HAPPEN!

He sent me the character descriptions today.  They were much more extensive than I expected.  As I mentioned above, the hero is a film student and his work is awesome, etc., etc.  Making the Golden Boy your hero is boring, unless something happens that conflicts with him.  The Girlfriend character is listed as angry; why is she angry?  I was told because she thinks he cheated on her.  But it was in a dream.  And she’s angry in the dream.  But is she angry in real life?  There’s a bossy call girl, who is supposed to be doing ‘naughty things’.  And her pimp, who is an orphan but was raised by the call girl’s mother and promised to take care of her.  SO NOW HE’S PIMPING OUT A WOMAN HE PROBABLY CONSIDERS HIS SISTER?  AND THEY WANT TO OPEN AN ‘EXOTIC CLUB’ TOGETHER?  This is creepy on so many levels.

Then there’s the wise pool player, which I guess is supposed to be a kind of Obi-Wan character.  I think.  I don’t even know what he’s supposed to do.

Like I said, this is what the director wants.

I’m meeting with him tomorrow, armed with a whole bunch of questions.  If it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings.  I gave it a shot, but if he’s dealing in abstracts, then I’m not the right guy for the job.

He said he’s moving to LA/H’wood early next year.  No matter what happens, I wish him all the best.  He’s gonna need it.