Year: 2011

Off and running

Maximum Z ideas, screenwriting
Well, look what I found...

After much deliberation whether or not to keep tinkering with the outline, I opted to just delve right in.

I typed ‘Fade In’, and about half a page worth of the opening scene before having to deal with family stuff.  Better to get a little written than none at all.

I’m always guilty of too much self-editing, so I may try to just steamroll through this draft without looking back until I type ‘Fade Out’.

The key word here is ‘try’.  Sometimes I get too caught up in rewriting during the rewrite.  We’ll see.

Still feeling confident about the whole thing. Check back in a week or two to see if that’s still the case.

-I save each script on my hard drive, and have a backup on a flash drive.  I dug up the flash the previous draft was on (having since erased all previous drafts a while ago) and noticed there was a file marked ‘Story Ideas’. This was from about five years ago.  In fact one of them was five years and a day. Wow.

Each one was the super-basic outline of a different story. I remember coming up with one or two of them, but the rest were totally new.  It was amazing to see how much I had written. While one may have just been a logline and five single-word subplot ideas, another was three solid pages of potential scenes.

Again, I couldn’t remember writing some of these whatsoever.  In fact, I wasn’t even sure I was the original author of one of them (which I was).  I thought it was an outline, but it was a lot of possible scenes.

Basically, this was a quite a nice surprise I had provided for myself. When I’m not working on pages, I’ll have to remind myself to put together a folder of hard copies of the ones worth keeping.

No Movie of the Moment today, but I finished EATING RAOUL. Loved it.

That’s almost that

Maximum Z Dreamship, Eating Raoul, Fido, Movie of the Moment, outlines, rewrite, screenwriting, zombies

Except for a few tweaks and added-in details, I think the latest outline is done. Still not entirely sure the last few scenes are a little rushed, but for the most part, I like what I’ve got.

Looking at all that text makes me wonder if I tightened this thing up that much, if at all.  But my initial overall feeling is it’s better than it was before.

I’ve also been wondering about some of the set-up scenes; are they good enough?  Do they explain enough? Will the reader be able to follow along?  I’ve been guilty of writing with information the reader may not have, so I’ll have to be careful about that.

Because I think it may be time to move on to the next level:

Pages. Which I’m pretty excited about.

My s.o.p. in the past has been at least 3 pages a day. Seems doable.

Ideal situation – done by the end of August/Labor Day. Again, seems doable.

Into the abyss.

Movie of the Moment  – K and I watched FIDO, a much better-than-expected zombie flick from about 5 years ago. Imagine WWII was against zombies, and they lost. Now the living dead are outfitted with collars inhibiting their flesh-eating tendencies, so now they function in society as a kind of subservient, manual labor.

This particular story is about a loser kid who at first treats the family’s new zombie as a pet (hence the title), but soon kind of sees him as a sort of surrogate father.

Set in a well-presented 50’s setting, the film takes the subject seriously but adds equal amounts of camp.  Not as gory as you would think, but an interesting take on a subject near and dear to K’s heart.

Added bonus – comedian Billy Connolly in the title role.  He never says a word, apart from the standard grunts and growls, so his acting is all expression. Very impressive.

-I started watching EATING RAOUL, which I remember Siskel & Ebert reviewing way back when on Sneak Previews, which aired on WHYY in Philadelphia.

I knew Paul Bartel co-wrote and directed, but had only seen clips, and even those were a long time ago.

Even though I’m about halfway through, everything so far has been freakin’ hilarious. Extremely dated, especially with the whole swingers lifestyle subplot, but just a smart little comedy that still generates laughs.  Can’t wait to finish it.

-Still don’t know if I’ll get to X-MEN or SUPER 8 in theatres. I’ll try, but looks like they may be sentenced to Netflix while HARRY POTTER and CAPTAIN AMERICA get closer.

Benefit of working ridiculously early hours – catching the first show of the day at the local AMC theatres. ticket price – $6! Makes my bought-at-Walgreens-and-smuggled-in M&Ms taste that much better.

Didja miss me?

Maximum Z Dreamship, Green Lantern, rewrite, screenwriting, travel
Nice to travel, nicer to come home

You never realize how much you miss writing on a semi-daily basis when you don’t get to do it for a while.

But I’m back home and ready to tackle my assorted projects.  Actually, we’ve been home since early this week but I’ve had practically no time to work on the outline or on this blog.

The time away was nice. It’s always pleasant to visit the in-laws, but eating and big meals are a constant part of these trips, so I feel like I gained about 5 pounds.  Lots of carb-, sugar- and sodium-heavy stuff. But now that I’m home, I can eat things my body is used to. Like vegetables.

As expected, I didn’t get a lot of writing done during this trip. The closest I came to anything like that was during the flight out. K took a look at what I had so far for DREAMSHIP. She liked it. Good enough for me.

Problem now is I need to take care of Act Three, but I don’t want to rush through it. I want to make sure everything works the way it’s supposed to.

I did the midday traffic shift yesterday and was frustratingly blocked.  I like to think it’s my subconscious saying “For crying out loud, don’t mess this up!”  Or at least hope that’s what it is.

Hoping to get the outline done this coming week, fine-tune it as necessary, then start on pages.  Fingers firmly crossed.

-Movie of the Moment.  Never got around to seeing SUPER 8 or X-MEN in theatres, so will probably catch ’em both on Netflix.

The day after we returned, I took V to see GREEN LANTERN. What a disappointment!  I’d tried to not read too many spoiler-laden reviews, but the one thing I kept hearing was “lame second act.” And that really applied.

When you’re watching a comic book/superhero movie, you should not be thinking “why isn’t the main character doing more superhero-ish stuff?” Hal should not have returned to Earth. I wanted to see him really learning what it took to be a Green Lantern.

It didn’t help that it took Carol telling him something like “you don’t need to be fearless; just have courage to face your fears” for him to complete the character arc.  Just awful.

Why would you make a movie about a space cop and keep him on his home planet for most of the time?

I didn’t have a problem with the cgi/ring effects.  I thought they were pretty good, and there should have been more of them. After all: that’s what the ring does.

And that mask?  Ugh. I was really worried they were going to go the ‘can’t recognize him ‘ way, but was pleasantly surprised they didn’t.

In summary” First act: pretty good. Second act: terrible. Third act: good for what it was, which isn’t saying much.  I feel bad for Warner Brothers, but you should make a good story to appeal to all moviegoers. Not just the fanboys. They’re never happy.

I hadn’t realized it until the other day, but this summer movie season seems to be going on forever.

I’d still like to see CAPTAIN AMERICA and COWBOYS & ALIENS, but those don’t come out until later this month.  And CAP would have been an appropriate open for this weekend, but I suspect everybody was already suffering from comic book movie fatigue.

Been down this road before

Maximum Z Movie of the Moment, outlines, rewrite, screenwriting, True Grit, westerns
Seeking out the right road to a workable outline

It’s been a busy past couple of days, including lots of work on that other thing I’ll reveal next week, as well as more work on the rewrite.

Good news on the latter – hit the end of Act Two today.  Looking at the previous draft, Act Three needs to be severely streamlined. Way too much going on.  I don’t think it’ll be too hard.

I’ve been making a point of trying to make sure everything ties together. Seems to be working so far.

*side note – didn’t get to the movies at all this week, due to all the above-mentioned work.  Still hoping to catch X-MEN, SUPER 8 and GREEN LANTERN in theatres before it’s too late.*

I don’t know how much I’ll get done over the next week, since we’ll be visiting K’s family back East (as well as reclaiming custody of the two-weeks-absent Ms V).  I always bring my notes and notebook in an attempt to work on the plane.  Sometimes it’s productive.  Hoping that’s the case this time.

As long as I have an outline I’m happy with by the time we return.

Movie of the Moment – TRUE GRIT. I knew there was another Best Picture nominee I wanted to see.  This was it.  And it should have won. Hands down.

I loved it, despite being a sucker for a quality Western.  Phenomenal writing by the Coen Brothers. Excellent acting by all three leads, especially Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld.  I saw the John Wayne version years ago.  This is just so much better.  Easily re-watchable.

Man at work

Maximum Z Movie of the Moment, rewrite, screenwriting, writing gigs
This script ain't gonna build itself...

I’ve been pretty busy the past few days. Unfortunately, not with the rewrite.

There’ve been other tasks occupying my time, so while my brain works on figuring out story and scene details, the rest of me is taking on a few new responsibilities.

I can’t go into too much detail now, but will say they each involve getting paid for utilizing skills I’ve been honing for years.  I’ll spill more info at a later date, but that’s all I’m currently willing to say.

I was concerned that devoting time to something other than working on scripts would be a bad thing, but it may not be. Sometimes I’ll set aside a few hours in the afternoon with the intention of focusing exclusively on, say, getting to the end of the first act.  And as any writer will tell you, you can’t force creativity.  So maybe I don’t get as much done as I had hoped, but at least it’s something.

As long as I keep my notebook handy, or take a break from ‘regular work’ and give myself a few minutes to try and figure my way out of a scene, I’ll be fine.  I’m not in a rush, and this way I’m not pressuring myself to move forward.

And if these new developments take up more time than I anticipate, that’s what lunch breaks are for.

-Movie of the Moment – BEHIND THE BURLY Q, a documentary about the heyday of burlesque, as told by the people who worked in it. Written and directed by Leslie Zemeckis (wife of noted director Robert, who exec produced), this is a fascinating look at a truly unique form of showbiz.

A majority of the people interviewed are the dancers/strippers, now all advanced in years.  Each has a story of how she got into the business; some funny, most tragic. And hearing their tales of life in the trenches will definitely hold your attention (as will the plentiful footage and photos of barely-dressed beauties).

This is the kind of film that needs to be watched with a good stiff drink and the lights off.