screenwriting

As a bee

Maximum Z Apple, Black List, screenwriting, writing gigs
the result of growing up in the 80s

Hokey smokes, is there a lot going on this week!

Might as well get the bad/not-great news out of the way. After all that time I spent slaving away on the outline for the short, the director got back to me within an hour saying that while he could “see” my story, it wasn’t what he wanted. While my first immediate thought was “you arrogant bastard. Of course this is what you want. You’re just too thick to realize it,” I had to remind myself that ultimately it was his movie and I should be a bit more flexible about it.

He wants something a bit more…traditional, in terms of a mystery. For the most part, most of the pieces are there.  I just need to rework them.  Shouldn’t be too hard.  I’m talking to him again tomorrow night. Should be interesting.

-Since I’m still learning how to use a Mac, I got both jack and shit done on both LUCY and DREAMSHIP during my cross-country flights this weekend.  My sister put it rather succinctly: When you’re so used to working on a PC, making the switch to a Mac forces you to learn a completely new way of using a computer. So while I may want to do something the old PC way, I can’t do it exactly the same and have to figure out how it works in the new Mac way.  This is going to be a work in progress.  I still have to schedule my one-to-one meeting with somebody at the Apple store.  My list of questions has been steadily growing.

-Really, really hoping to get back on track with both LUCY and DREAMSHIP. I hate these big gaps in productivity, but you do what you can.  For the most part, any concept of a target end date has been thrown out the window.  My goal now is to finish them. No matter what.

-I’m currently working on a project for a client that requires me to put together a short video script.  This has been quite a challenging experience.  I knew a video script was completely different in appearance from a film script.  I really thought my screenwriting program would have something for it, but doesn’t appear to.

So for now, it’s been manipulating a Word document with two columns.  I don’t mind the work. It’ s been fun.  But again, quite the challenge.

-The 2011 Black List came out today. I skimmed through it, but nothing seemed to really jump out.  The friend who sent me last year’s batch has offered to do it again.  I’ll look through it again and try to pick about 12-15.  Of the ones I selected last year, I think most, if not all, are being made.  Not a bad record.

Done!

Maximum Z comedy, Mike Myers, Movie of the Moment, outlines, screenwriting, short films, writing gigs
how it feels, which is good

This post was originally going to be called “Sad Face” because I’d been struggling to get the outline for the short done before tonight, and didn’t think I was going to make it.

My original idea wasn’t panning out. The one after that was becoming too complicated.  The more I tried to figure things out, the deeper my self-dug metaphoric hole of frustration was becoming.  It got to the point that I was having dreams about it, and that’s just scary.

Would I have to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to make it?  Well, maybe.  But I wasn’t going down without a fight.  I just needed that one spark of creativity to get me going again.

And that spark came to me in the shower, of all places.  I already had a lot of the story elements in place.  What if I tried a different approach in tying them all together?  But how?  How about if the question of what happened is an absolute unknown?  That’s it!  Brilliant!

Oh, wait. That sounds like THE HANGOVER. Okay. Don’t want to seem like I’m completely ripping that off.  Maybe a variation on that.

And I was off.  Two and a half hours of writing, editing, researching and double-checking later (occasionally saving to prevent heartbreak if it accidentally got erased), I had the outline for what I think is a pretty good story.  It has now been happily sent to the director.  I hope he likes it.

-Movie of the Moment. THE LOVE GURU (2008) aka The Movie That Almost Destroyed Mike Myers’ Career.  Bad doesn’t even begin to describe it.  Non-stop, rapid-fire jokes that aren’t funny.  Despite a running time of 1 hour, 27 minutes, we zipped through it in about 45, and it still seemed too long.

This seemed like another case of a megastar project where nobody wanted to say ‘no’. How else to explain a Morgan Freeman vocal cameo, or Sir Ben Kingsley  making an ass of himself?

Only high points: Stephen Colbert and Jim Gaffigan as hockey announcers.  Sorry to say their scenes were the funniest parts.

If you value your time and sense of humor, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE!  And if this wasn’t proof that Myers has gone to the ‘throw every joke at the wall and see if anything sticks’ well more than once too often, I’d forgotten that there’s another Austin Powers movie in development.

I’ll do my best to rectify this situation with my next scheduled Netflix delivery: SUPER 8.

Never throw anything away

Maximum Z rewrite, screenwriting, writing gigs
What you need may be buried in what you don't

I’m so close to the halfway point of DREAMSHIP, it’s gettin’ scary.  While 2-3 pages a day may not seem like a lot, doing that for a few consecutive days can yield some pretty good results.  Slow and steady and all that.  Highly doubtful I’ll be done by year’s end, but if I can keep up this kind of pace, then there’s a strong chance of typing FADE OUT soon after 2012 is a reality.

We’ll be traveling next week, and I’m seeing those plane trips as prime LUCY plotting time.  A perfect scenario would be having it completely finished before the return flight touches down.

I’ve noticed while working on rewrites in general that while the new take on the story may be extremely different than its previous incarnation, there are always a few parts that fit perfectly in the new draft.  A scene or idea of a scene here, a line of dialogue there, and so on.

Sometimes when I’m done with a draft I’m absolutely certain is the final one, I’ll delete the numerous drafts that came before it.  Then, months or possibly years later, when I decide to take another stab at it, I’ll dig up that “final” version and see if any of it can fit in the new draft.  A lot of the time, a lot of it does.

-Got some good feedback from a writer friend regarding my short mystery project.  My goal this weekend is to develop the twists and red herrings of the second half.  A lot harder than expected!  He also agreed that one particular subplot of the director’s was completely ridiculous and made absolutely no sense.

Once again proving that you really should trust the writer.

Who done it?

Maximum Z mystery, screenwriting, writing gigs
The right detective and how they handle the case can make all the difference

Ever watch or read a mystery and think to yourself “I could do that.”?  Well, let me tell you something:  It ain’t easy.  Especially since I’m not especially adept at figuring them out from an audience point of view.  K and I could be watching a mystery, and within a few minutes, she’ll say, “Got it.  Do you want to know who did it?”  And I’ll say no, because I’d like to try and do it myself, thank you very much.  Besides, I usually stop trying around halfway through, and most of the time she’s right anyway.

This short is eating up a lot of my focus and creativity this week.  The outline’s due Monday. I’ve got somewhat of a grasp on the basics.  Guy murdered, suspects all around, and each with a valid motive for wanting to bump him off.  I think that takes me to about the halfway mark.  I’ve been working on coming up with some nice plot twists and red herrings to keep the reader/viewer guessing, so that’s what I’ll be working on for at least the next day or two.

I keep going back and forth as to who the actual killer is.  It may work better to decide that, then work backwards to where I am now.  We’ll see how it works out.  I don’t know how professional mystery writers do it.  I guess it’s just hardwired into their brains.  More power to ’em!

I got an email from the director the other night that was labeled ‘character updates.’ Basically, it was a bunch of photos of scantily-clad women, each one labeled with who they represent in the story.  I’m beginning to have some suspicions about why he’s doing this. An ulterior motive, perhaps?  But that’s not for me to say.  I’m just the writer on this thing.

here we go again

Maximum Z mystery, plot, screenwriting, story, thrillers, writing gigs
Seeking out clues to a strong script

I had a very interesting chat last night with the director of  my new short project. His latest venture: a whodunit/thriller.  Materials so far include character descriptions, a scene-by-scene breakdown and a one-paragraph synopsis.

I’ve never written an out-and-out thriller before, but am always up for a challenge.  Even more so when I’ve got a maximum time limit of 25 minutes.  I know this isn’t going to change cinema as we know it, but it’s fun to try.

He’s a very nice guy, but I worry he’s too influenced by what’s out in theatres when he comes up with an idea. He referenced some aspect of the recent release ANONYMOUS as being particularly well done, and thought it would work well in his story.  I haven’t seen it, and think it’s already gone from theatres, so there’s not much I can do with that.

This happened when we were putting together his previous short. He was concerned his story was too similar to INCEPTION, and feared people would think he was ripping it off. I had to reassure him his script was nothing like it, and just because something was done in a certain way in Nolan’s film, didn’t mean he had to follow the same rules.

Reading over his materials, I noticed a few potential red flags in terms of the story (in this case, the structure of a mystery) and voiced my concern. What did he want to do about this? How did he want to handle that?  A few times, he sounded a little caught off-guard (which I’m not faulting him for; I suspect he’s not that experienced in this genre), but said nothing was written in stone and I could make changes where appropriate.  I doubt major studios are this lenient with writers, so I’ll take my breaks where I can get them.

There are some traits of a few characters that present a challenge to work with, but he seems pretty set on them, so I’ll do what I can.

My deadline for an outline is Dec 4th, which is fine by me. He also mentioned how he likes how I’m pretty good at fast turnaround.  But another hurdle is now how much time to I can allocate to all of my in-development projects (which I get a certain thrill out of saying. That’s projectS. Plural.).

I can get the outline done, but also want to be able spend time on DREAMSHIP and LUCY.  Overall, no complaints whatsoever. Every writer should be this busy.