movies

Ain’t lookin’ good

Maximum Z Dreamship, Movie of the Moment, screenwriting, The Walking Dead, writing group

The good news is I may have stumbled onto a great new angle for DREAMSHIP. The bad news is Act Two will most likely have to be completely rewritten, which will put the proverbial kibosh on getting it done in time for the Nicholl.  It’s possible I could get it done, but I’d rather take my time.

On one hand, I like how the story seems much, much stronger now. There are also a lot more possibilities regarding what could happen.  Those notes are proving very helpful.

But on the other hand, it would have been nice to get it done by May 2nd.  Ah well.  There’s always next year.

-Finally heard back from the lady who runs the writing group.  She does a lot of freelance work, so hasn’t done any writing since February. She wants to contact the rest of the group at the end of April(!) and suggest two potential dates in May(!!) to meet.  Since I’m still a newer member of the group, I don’t want to make any trouble by telling her that’s a terrible way to approach this.  Which it is.

Exactly what’s the problem with setting a definitive time and see who shows up?  Fortunately, I can still meet with my fellow former-groupmember and we can discuss our stuff.

Another member of the group appears to have moved back to LA, or is at least housesitting there through June.  She seems to be a very fast writer, mentioning that she finished and polished a werewolf script after our last meeting (which may have been in February).

I admire someone who can really crank them out like that.  I can’t, but I also don’t think her life is similar to mine (married with children), so maybe she has more free time to write.  I find it when I can.

Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s not.  But I still enjoy it.

-No Movie of the Moment tonight, but I’m almost done with Season One of WALKING DEAD.  Still loving it.  Great storytelling.

That’s something, I guess

Maximum Z Dreamship, Movie of the Moment, Nicholl Fellowship, outlines, screenwriting, zombies

As I’ve mentioned before, when I do the midday traffic shift, it usually results in some good output.  Something like that happened today.

I’m working my way through the first part of DREAMSHIP’s second act, and was trying to figure out how to approach a sequence from a different perspective. I think I may have reached a solution, so that’s good.

Not so good is a problem just like the one I was having while working on the LUCY outline: what does my antagonist want?  My ScriptQuack comments ask the same thing.  I thought I had an answer to that in previous drafts, but now I’m not so sure.  Once I can figure that out, putting more of this together should be easier – I hope.

I’m doing the midday again tomorrow, and the noon-to-6 shift on Saturday, so here’s hoping those are productive shifts as well.

Movie of the Moment: We started watching THE WALKING DEAD.  Wow.  Great stuff.  I especially like the ever-present feeling of ominous dread.  I’m dating myself, but I like how this is the same station that years ago played nothing but black and white films and their first original series was set in Pittsburgh during the Golden Age of Radio.  My, how times have changed.

There was a trailer for some set-in-space video game or something before it got to the menu page.  It got me thinking: somewhere out there has to be a spec script about zombies in space.  Think about it.  They don’t need air, but that whole vacuum-of-space thing might need a little planning.  The hard part would be to avoid having it come across as too cheesy.

But then again, that could be part of the fun.

First step up the mountain

Maximum Z comic books, Dreamship, Filmsack.com, Movie of the Moment, screenwriting, ScriptQuack, Wondercon

I finally read through my DREAMSHIP notes from the fine folks at ScriptQuack.  Very impressive.  They did a great job of letting me know what the script needs to improve.

So with just under a month to go before the Nicholl deadline, I’m taking their suggestions and trying to rebuild this thing from the ground up.  I had a feeling it may be an extensive rewrite, and I was right.  There’s a lot that has to change.

It’s not insurmountable, but I will call it formidable.  This is really going to require a daily effort.  I think I can get through Act One by the end of this week, then really concentrate on Act Two, where most of the rewriting is necessary.  Act Three I’m still figuring out.

-Final comment on Wondercon.  Fun as usual.  I got to see it from both the Dad and Casual Comic Geek perspectives.  For the former, that involved stopping at all the video game booths, looking for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and commenting on anything and everything V saw.  Since we went on Friday, it wasn’t that crowded. Overall, a good time.

I returned Sunday with my pal Neil. We usually spend less time among the vendors and focus more on the self-publishers and independents. They’re always more interesting anyway.  I may not be crazy about some of the subject matter, but there’s a certain charm to them and their work. It’s really great to see somebody doing what they love, and a lot of them have a lot of talent.

Even better, you don’t have to wait for hours on end to get an autograph or tell them you like their stuff, and they seem happy to talk to you.  I’ve always tried to support the little guy.

Movie of the Moment:  We watched THE EXPENDABLES last night. Mega-cheesy throwback to the 80s.  Stallone wrote and directed it.  From a writer’s perspective, it could have used a few more rewrites.

I was expecting it to be more mission-centric, but it just dragged and took forever to get to the interesting parts.  K said this would be a perfect Filmsack movie.  I agree.

Tonight we started RED. SO much better.  But it’s Warren Ellis, so I’d expect nothing less.

Not so fast

Maximum Z Lucy Steele, Movie of the Moment, Netflix, outlines, screenwriting

Well, crap.

I got to do exactly zero work today because I was busy doing dad stuff.  Not necessarily that I mind, but I was hoping to get more done on the outline.

I’m going to have to bring my creative hat with me to work tomorrow.

Movie of the Moment: THE SPY NEXT DOOR. Oh, Jackie Chan. The Drunken Master has been reduced to mega-crappy family comedy. But V liked it, and again, that’s the important part.

Also got to finish watching SALT. I liked the first half better.  How exactly would this have been different with planned original lead Tom Cruise?  really glad I did this on Netflix.

Into the home stretch!

Maximum Z Disney, Lucy Steele, Movie of the Moment, outlines, screenwriting

Where have I been these past few days?  Why, making tremendous progress on LUCY, that’s where. I managed to get through the high-action parts of Act 3 and wrapped up yesterday with the death of my bad guy.  No big spoiler there; if you read the story, you know it’s inevitable.

All that remains now is the resolution and denouement, then going back and tightening a few things up, including a recent idea for a small subplot.  I may actually make my self-imposed pre-Wondercon deadline by a few days.  Nice.

I hadn’t looked at it as a whole for almost a week, so I had forgotten how big and imposing it seems at first glance.  Once this draft is finished, I’ll probably go through and hack it down. More darlings may be killed, but I’m willing to sacrifice a sequence like the buffalo stampede rather than keep the whole thing bloated.

I have to keep reassuring myself this is just a first draft and the end result may be extremely different.  Lucas’ original draft of Star Wars about Luke Starkiller is a good example of the benefit of rewrites.

Movie of the Moment: SALT. I’d heard it was a good, fast-paced thriller clocking in at 90+ minutes.  Pretty accurate so far. I can’t remember the last Angelina Jolie movie I saw where she wasn’t utilizing an accent.  Some of the movie requires much suspension of disbelief (freeway chase, assassination of Russian president), but it really moves and keeps you wondering how she’s going to get out of each particular situation.  I also find it amazing that any piece of clothing she steals fits her perfectly.

V is off for spring break this week, so there’s a lot of TV and Wii going on at our place (more than I’d like there to be, but that’s another story).  I took a break from the outline yesterday so we could watch ALADDIN.  I’m fairly certain this was from the tail end of Disney’s “animated Broadway show” period.  I didn’t realize two of the four credited writers were Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, future writers of the SHREK and PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN series.  A quick check of IMDB shows that there were 19(!) writers connected to this.  Further proof that story is everything.

It’s still a fun movie, especially the Robin Williams/Genie scenes.  Talk about perfect casting.  V really liked some of those parts.  Although it was a little sad to see some of the very dated pop culture references such as the William F Buckley and Arsenio Hall impressions.  I suspected she’d like it, but I’m not holding out for THE LITTLE MERMAID.  All that girly stuff just ain’t her thing.