Being My Own Hack

So after AGENT decided to send out SCREWBALL SCRIPT, he told me I should write another comedy. Here's the catch about that: all my other, most-beloved ideas were action-thrillers.

I don't think of myself as a funny person. I didn't have any ideas for comedies.

But it's stupid to ignore your agent's advice.

So I came up with a bunch of comedy ideas and ran them all by AGENT. He said, "Write COLLEGE IDEA."

Now the thing about COLLEGE IDEA is that it's a dumb, schlocky, slapsticky idea. Sure, I can give it my own overtones of gender-conflict and try to avoid stereotypes, but it's ultimately never going to be a smart-people movie. It's to laugh at and enjoy but not to stay in your brain for the next two days like some other movies that never cease to amaze you.

But I'll whore myself out artistically even if I won't do it morally, so I wrote my outline and entire first act.

And then I spent two weeks pounding out the rough cut of that SURPRISE FEATURE I mentioned awhile back. I finished that earlier today, by the way; thanks for asking.

So now it's time to go back to writing and FINISH THE DAMN SCRIPT so AGENT won't forget I exist.

And now I sort of hate the idea.

Not the idea. The idea still makes me giggle like a toddler holding her mother's car keys. It's more that I hate myself for writing it. Even more accurately, my friends have made me hate myself for writing it.

So what am I going to do?

Do it anyway.

Alex Epstein has a post up comparing screenwriting to founding a startup, and he says the following:

On a micro level, every script sucks at some point. Syd Field has his Turning Points. I have the Sucky Point. Most scripts suck when you're about 40% into them. This is also true of outlines and pitch ideas. You've lost your initial enthusiasm, but you're not over the hump yet.

I make a point of finishing everything I start, whether I like it or not. I don't take every idea to script, of course. But if I start writing an outline, I finish the outline. If I start writing a first draft, I finish the first draft. I only let myself stop when I've finished that particular step, and I can evaluate whether it's worth going on to the next step.

Exactly.

I'll see you all in 75 pages.

Don't Ask Dakota

Once a month my church has a movie night. Since it's a big church with lots of Hollywood insiders, they frequently invite people connected with the movie to appear as part of a post-screening panel discussion.

I recently attended their screening of The Secret Life of Bees. Good movie; not what I thought it was going to be.

Their panel this time consisted of some USC scholar no one cared about, the writer-director of the film, and Dakota Fanning (the star).

This is not a name-dropping post.

I am not going to gush about Dakota.

I did not meet Dakota.

I did not get Dakota's autograph.

During this panel, I noticed something stupid about the way people interview actors regarding their roles. All questions seem to be some variation of:

"Your character was such a deep, complex person with so many issues and such a fascinating history. How do you inhabit a character like that, make it your own, and reveal it on-screen?"*

So poor Dakota had to spend the entire evening MAKING STUFF UP—because how do you tell a non-actor about your craft? Acting is a completely mysterious profession if you aren't an actor. I mean, if you asked a writer something like:

"How did you craft such a complex, haunted character with such a fascinating history?"

she would probably say something like:

"There's this girl I knew, who went through something just like this, and there's this other guy I know who has this character trait, and I sort of smashed them together into one uber-interesting amalgamation for your entertainment."

An actor can't say that. She can't explain how it is that she can convincingly portray someone she isn't. So she has to say things like:

"You know, I really thought she was sooo fascinating, and I really respected her character despite the choices she made, and I came to this place of understanding, so I really felt like I connected with her, flaws and all."

Which is a sentence crafted to sound incredibly artistic and sensitive while being, in fact, COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MEANING.

Just shows you how smart actors really are, that they can come up with this kind of bullshit on the fly.

*The correct answer to this question is: "Hell if I know. I'M AN ACTOR. If I could explain it to you, that would mean acting was EASY, wouldn't it?"

Shootin' in the Rain

Instead of going to see some low-quality remake last Friday, I worked an infomercial shoot. Another thing that happened that day: RAIN.

For any non-Angelinos out there, I should clarify that it never rains in LA. This is one of the things that makes it such a great place to shoot movies and TV—you can schedule your shoot whenever you want without worrying about being rained out.

Hahahahahahaha.

So it rained all day at the shoot, which was in Agoura Hills, at the house where they shot the last season of The Bachelor. Most of the shooting was going on inside the house, so the rain didn't really hurt our schedule.

LUNCH, HOWEVER, was outside. So we lowly PAs had to set up all these tents and tables and chairs IN THE RAIN so that the crew could eat while trying to avoid having their plates fill up with leaking rainwater.

By 11 a.m., I was quite wet.

Don't shoot in the rain.

Mysterious Behavior of a Literary Agent

In November, my newly-acquired agent (henceforth known in this blog as AGENT) sent out a script of mine (SCREWBALL SCRIPT) to several production companies. He sent me a list of the companies, along with the names of the executives at those companies who were in receipt of the script.

A couple weeks later, I called him up about something else, and we had the following conversation:

AGENT: And you know that DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE at PROMINENT PRODUCTION COMPANY wants to meet with you, right?

ME: ..... No.

AGENT: I sent you an email about it, didn't I?

ME: (Checks email) ..... No.

He then told me that DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE wanted to meet with me in January, after the holidays had passed us by. So when I got back in town after New Year's, I gave his office a call.

Machine. Message. THREE WEEKS OF WAITING.

This always happens when I call his office phone instead of his cell phone, which in my naive midwestern way, I think is more polite and should be done whenever possible.

But this time, I thought I had a good reason why he would respond, i.e., the possibility (however slim) of me getting paying work.

I think to myself: "Even though I'm not making this guy lots of money (translation: no money at all), wouldn't it still be in his best interest to CALL THIS WOMAN AND GET ME INTO HER OFFICE? What's his deal?"

But I don't like to be a pain, so I didn't call him back again right away. Three weeks later, I try again, this time on his cell phone. AND HE PICKS UP.

ME: Hey, AGENT—remember how EXECUTIVE wanted to meet with me?

AGENT: Oh, that's right. Thanks for reminding me.

See how easy that was?

And the moral of that is (said the Duchess) twofold:

1. Sometimes you have to politely bother your agent if you want him to remember everything you need him to do.

2. If you have his cell number, CALL IT, YOU IDIOT.

In Which I Return to Blogging But Don't Talk Much About Screenwiting

If you're ever trying to use the OS X Terminal to delete invisible files from a hidden folder that pretends the files aren't even there, and you become convinced that it would be a good idea to type the following command:

rm -rv *

DON'T DO IT. You will spend the next 10 hours sitting at that computer running Data Recovery Software and hoping you don't have to tell the guy who hired you to edit his documentary that you lost most of the footage through sheer stupidity.

This is a perfect segue into mentioning that I moved to LA six months ago and am scraping by a living in the film business through a combination of Production Assistant and Editing work.

I could go on about it, but that would be BO-RING.

I'm editing two feature movies right now—the one where I just lost all the footage (and that is now supplying me with the free time to write this post), and another one.

The Other One is a film shot by this Art Director I know. She said to me one day (truncated version of hybrid email/face-to-face conversation follows):

ART DIRECTOR: Hey, I made this short film. Wanna edit it for free? *
RYAN: Sure! What's up with it?
ART DIRECTOR: It's a half-hour drama about a woman who yells at a homeless lady and then feels bad about it, so she goes on a journey to find homeless lady and give her back something she dropped.
RYAN: Sounds EXCITING! I'm in.
ART DIRECTOR: OK.** Here's the script. Don't mind that it's 45 pages long; that's just because I'm not good at formatting a script.
RYAN: Cool. I'll get right to it.

Almost needless to say at this point, her movie is not going to be 45 minutes long. It's going to be more like 60 minutes long. Because while she was correct about her lack of formatting expertise, she was wrong in her assumption that this would make her movie SHORTER than the page count of the script.

So I called her back a couple days later and said: "Uhmmm ... I've done eight pages worth of script and have 25 minutes worth of movie. I think this is going to be a feature."

The awesome part of this story (to me), is that this lady actually shot a feature film, BUT DIDN'T REALIZE IT. She thought it was going to be 25-30 minutes. ACTUALLY AN HOUR. Awesome.

So now I'm editing a feature. And another feature.

If I can recover all this footage I deleted.


*Syntactical challenge: This sentence contains two word pairings that are difficult to pronounce. See if you can figure out which ones!
**Spelling note: I hate it when people spell the word: "OK." But I recently learned that this is actually correct. The people who spell it "okay" are wrong. So now I'm trying to force myself to do it right, however painful.

Reel

CONTENT REMOVED.

Formerly my reel. Now nothing. I'm sorry for your loss.

To my two regular readers: the next post exists to display video clips for reference by a potential employer. Feel free to disregard.

Best. Vacation. Ever.

My vacation is hours from ending, but I have actually accomplished what I set out to do.

Firstly, I finished rewrites on the rom-com and sent it to an agent, as noted below.

Secondly, I banged out the last 86 pages of the book adaptation I started some time ago.

Finally, and most recently, I chopped a fairly ruthless 15 pages out of that script to get it under the 120-page marker.

Now it goes out to my trusted readers (and some new readers, hurray!). If they have major quarrels with it, there may be rewrites. Otherwise, or whenever the rewrites are done, I will have three quite solid feature scripts to toss at the semi-curious or, failing that, the merely unwary, once I move to LA.

Or whenever I might happen to meet them.

I can now focus my energies on getting my stupid house into shape to rent and trying to land a job in the movie business, however menial.

If only I had more vacation ....

... Even the Small Victories

I make my return with the preceding image. This is the copy of my rom-com that I just finished sending to a talent agency, one of three that requested it.

Celebrate even the small victories.

I took vacation this week to spend every day working on writerly things. Broadly, this means writing, although I did spend the last three hours proofreading, making copies, hole punching, and visiting the post office.

The rest of the week I'll be working on my book adaptation. This is a change of plans, as I had been planning on writing the script for a movie to be shot on a nonexistent budget here in my own town.

But (here follows the other Big News) the wife and I are moving to LA, so now the plan is to finish this adaptation quickly so I have three truly solid scripts to flog around town.

Wish me luck.

Ah, Truisms.

I'm really starting to realize the validity of the idea that you should only write what you're passionate about.

Plunk me down in the middle of a draft, two months into writing (since I have the discipline of a kitten), and I won't have the faintest idea what the career implications of this project are.

I won't remember why I started this stupid script. I won't be able to think straight about whether I could use it to whip up any interest from an agent. Or a producer. Or anyone who matters.

The only thing I'll be able to tell you is whether I'm enjoying what I'm doing. So it better be something I enjoy, or most of the motivation goes straight out the window.

There is the odd exception. Like that rom-com that I kept working on (and will continue to work on later) simply because it was such a beautiful, golden, commercial idea (with a correspondingly golden title) that I couldn't justify not finishing it. But ordinarily, I'm going to have to be really stoked about what I'm doing, or despair quickly sets it.

Which is why this book adaptation is so great. In addition to being easy to write, as I've mentioned over and over and over, it's just the kind of story I really like. It's a movie I would race to the theater to see: dark, compelling, and full of veiled metaphysical ponderings.

My only regret about writing it is that I won't be able to take any credit if it turns out to be great. All that credit will have to go straight to the author. *Sigh*

But if by some wild chance it got made, I would be so excited to see it. And that's the kind of thing to write.

I Blame My Wife

Marriage kills your discipline. Well, that's not true. It just gives you a million additional things to think about, so you never think about writing ever again. At least, not enough to do any.

So I blame my wife. :) *

But actually, I do have 23 pages of the Nightmare book adaptation done. It's going quite well, when it's going. I loves me my adaptation. It's like Michaelangelo and sculpting: I just cut away anything that isn't the movie.

In other news, David gave me some notes on my rom-com, so once I'm done with the adaptation, I have somewhere else to go. I'm not going there yet, because I'm still a little sick of that script, but eventually I will have to give it some final attention.

And finally, I have made my first dollar as a screenwriter. Really. $1.00.

I've had a short script on inktip.com for almost a year now, and after many other dead-end inquiries, these guys finally liked it enough to at least plan to produce it. There's no money in shorts, so they were only willing to part with a dollar for it.

But I don't care. It's a production credit (hopefully). And it's at least a tiny bit of validation. Writers need validation.

I've also noticed that adding an option (albeit a free one) to my profile on Inktip actually results in more hits for my other scripts. Thus, a "halo effect," if you will.

That's right: Shorts are the iPod of screenwriting, baby.

I'm such a geek.

Anyway, things are moving, if a little slowly. And also, despite my above complaint, marriage is great.

And yes, Greg, I know I'm supposed to do that 10-item list for which you tagged me. But you can't jump back into blogging after a two-month-long absence with something like that. You just can't.

* It's okay. She knows I love her. ↩

I Hate Other Writers

I would just like to say, after reading a fine new feature screenplay by this guy, that I hate other writers.

Stupid, talented people. Why must they exist to feed my self-loathing?

And Just a Few Weeks Later ...

So I still exist, and I still write things down, and I still blog with the diligence of a baby goldfish, but the main difference, the really essential thing that separates the me who last posted from the current me is that one of us is wearing a ring to match the one pictured below.

In short: got married.

If I'm feeling really nice about it and if my attention doesn't wander, sometime later you might see an image or so from the happy event and subsequent vacation, but right now, I have more important things to talk about.

I don't blog to talk about my personal life. It's not how I roll.

No, the real news here, my friends, is that bare days before being linked up to the beautiful blonde of recent mention, I posted a feature script on Inktip.com.

That's right, with complete disregard for whatever my fellow scribes may eventually say about this script whenever they have a chance to read it, I surged ahead and sent it out into the world all on its own.

It was only the free Inktip 10-day trial, which since expired. But it seemed to be garnering at least a little attention, so I just now this night shelled out the cash to put it back on for the full term of six months.

We'll see what happens.

If I can get some feedback on it, and make what will hopefully be relatively small corresponding adjustments, I will later start querying it out. That's a hint to some of you. *Insert Winning Smile Here*

But until that happens, we are moving on.

If you will look to the right, Ladies and Gentlemen, you will see that the "Polygamy Rewrite" has been pushed down in favor of a new spec adaptation, which I am going to refer to for the moment as "The Nightmare."

Feel thrilled.

I'm excited about this adaptation. I've never done one of those, and I really love this source material. And I'm excited about starting my first new script in (I think) eight months.

So scamper off and let me work.

Note for my Xanga-using friends: surprising as it may seem, I am one of the last Blogger bloggers to allow non-Bloggers to comment. So you can keep commenting at my Xanga blog, but you don't have to.

I think that about says it.

Random Thoughts After Watching Borat

So finally I saw Borat. And it's really funny, I won't deny it. I laughed. A lot. And I was watching it alone—I don't laugh when I watch movies alone.

It's also quite clear that Sacha Baron Cohen is a genius. Borat is an very smartly-developed character portrayed with stunning consistency throughout the film. It's too bad for him that Oscars do not get given to comedy actors.

But Borat is a disturbing film in a few ways.

Firstly, it's a mockumentary. I have no problem with mockumentaries (three cheers for Christopher Guest), but the difference between this and many previous such films is that only (I believe) four of the characters were actors.

So?

So that means I just spent 84 minutes laughing at real people. That smarts a little. I don't really mind laughing at people when they really deserve it, but one couldn't help feeling that many of these people were unfairly represented. In the "Southern Manners" scene, for example, it seems pretty clear that the hostility comes after the deception is revealed, but that the reveal itself is edited out. This paints the real people involved in a very negative light.

Which brings me to my next point: editing.

This may be true worldwide; I don't know. But it is definitely true in America that people do not understand that it is possible to lie in a documentary. Fahrenheit 9/11 probably helped to dispel this misconception a little, but overall I think most people believe whatever TV-like footage you show them.

And that sits a little uncomfortably with me. I don't like the idea of playing on the audience's ignorance.

And overall, Borat seems designed to highlight the most outlandish, bigoted, intolerant and insane aspects of middle-class America. Apparently I live in a country populated mostly by racist, sexist, homophobic idiots.

But you know what I thought while watching many of these scenes? "Wow, Americans are really nice people."

It's true that some people in the movie have little excuse, however they were edited. That guy at the rodeo who says all gays should be hanged? It's hard to think of a context in which that could have been an okay statement. That's pretty damning footage.

But scene after scene depicts people who were manipulated into self-condemnation simply because they didn't want to be impolite. They wanted to be nice to this strange but friendly foreigner, and they tried to just nod along and ignore some of the crazy things he was saying. And then their responses were quite obviously edited and their intents twisted.

Now, to be clear, I have no sympathy with the people who are suing Fox and Baron Cohen. Suck it up, Cupcake: you signed the release. Next time read more closely.

But I found Borat to be intentionally misleading. I don't like that. And don't come telling me it's okay because it was just a comedy. If anything, that makes it worse.

Lie to someone with a straight face, and they might be able to see through it. But get them laughing, appeal to their sense of the ridiculous, and they're at your mercy. You can feed them all kinds of half-truths, and they may never notice.

So while I cracked up (and so will you, if you see it), I wasn't deceived. But that's only because I keep my brain on at all times.

I guess that's my moral, if this post has a moral. Keep your brain turned on. There's no such thing as "pure entertainment."

On to the Next!

So I went to London to see my girlfriend. Man, that girl is haahhhhht:



Anyway, I'm back and ready to go on to my next rewrite, which I call the Polygamy script. Note the new progress bar to the right.

This should kill some time while I wait for notes on the Rom-Com from Greg and Blair and David.

Other Eyes

All the cutting is done on my rom-com. I think. It's six pages longer than I wanted, but I think that might be okay.

While I was at it, I worked in some character development and dialogue adjustments. I could probably keep tweaking this thing indefinitely, but I really feel like it's very close to finished, so it's time to get some Other Eyes on it.

Other Eyes are good. They're fresh, and they can look at things with perspective, whereas I am mired in my own work and may be currently incapable of honest evaluation.

It's a great feeling.

I did the same thing when I was a graphic design student. In an early 2-D design class, I had to produce a work incorporating (I think) seven different tricks for creating the three-dimensional illusion.

I spent days just thinking about what I was going to do before I ever started drawing. I figured out how I was going to use each and every one of these tools, and also how in the process I was going to paint something totally kick-ass.

I worked it hard, and felt pretty good about my watercolor masterpiece when it was done. The instructor critiqued everyone's project in class those days, and when he got to mine -

I got 3 out of the 7. Four, if he was being nice. And he probably wasn't.

If only I'd asked someone else whether they thought the piece was complete, instead of just making an assumption.

You know what happens when you make an assumption?

I'd rather not make an ass out of you and umption when it comes to sending out this script. So hopefully some cat like Greg will be able to help me decide if it's ready for the world or needs some more TLC.

It better be ready soon. I'm sick of writing comedy.

Cut, Cut, Cut

So when last heard from, I was trying to cut 148 pages down to 100ish pages. Special thanks to Emily Blake for the progress bar info, which adds some snazziness (oh yeah, it's a word).

I thought at first that I was going to have to cut huge chunks out of some of my favorite scenes, which kind of run a little long. However, I discovered that I can probably just go through and tighten them all up and still come out significantly shorter. The real cutting is in my connecting scenes between the set-pieces, which tend to be horribly extended by pleasant but irrelevant dialogue.

So I had all kinds of fun last night writing an eight-page replacement for a 20-page sequence. In the process I got to take it out of the realm of People Talking In Rooms and make it fun, with snappier dialogue and physical abuse. Great stuff.

So that's all. Nothing else too exciting, just working away. I hope to be done with all of this rewrite by February 28, when I go see this girl

Polishing the Jet Engine

At 5:08 a.m. EST, I finally finished this damn draft. Absolutely unbelievable, how much that thing grew in the writing. I already wrote it once! And it still wanted to get bigger when I wrote it the second time.

I sound bitter, but I'm not. I'm just not as excited as probably some people (including me) are when they finish a rough draft, because this rough draft is actually also a second draft. It should have been smoother and quicker and resulted in something much more finished-looking than this.

Now, there are good reasons why this is not the case. The first draft had kind of a pathetic plot, necessitating pretty much a page one rewrite. So as noted in my previous post, the is the jet engine to the first draft's steam engine.

But still. It took a long freakin' time. This is the kind of script that should be 100 pages. It's 148 pages. I have to cut a third of this thing. And most of it feels important.

I know, I know, everyone thinks all of his material is important. I get that. But unlike some other writers (the ones I call "bad"), I actually try to make all my scenes mean something, not just be fun or funny or exciting. Probably that's because without some sort of character development, I wouldn't be able to make most of it fun or funny or exciting.

So I now have to cut probably at least 30 pages of story that I think actually matters.

Plus, I kind of have the feeling that one reason it's so long is my paragraph structures. I break paragraphs often. My action is all diced up into little manageable chunks, often one sentence long.

This makes for some really long scenes, purely from a page-count standpoint.

I'm not sure what to do about that. I have a feeling if you actually shot this movie, it would come in closer to 120 minutes than 148 minutes.

But readers and managers and agents and producers like thin scripts. Thus, I must keep the pages down.

So my rewrite now commences. I need a progress bar like Emily, so I can show how I reach my goal of being done with major rewrites by February 22.

How do I find one of those? Anyone know?

Building the Jet Engine

I know my two faithful readers have been wondering what happened to me, and here's my explanation, but I warn you: you won't like it.

Here it comes ...

Ready?

You know you want it ...

Okay then, fine! The explanation is:

I've been working my ass off.

That's right, I've now become the thing that all blogging writers hate: someone who, when offered extra time to blog, chooses to actually write instead. You know it, baby.

I would love to follow up on The Explanation by saying that all that dedication has paid off with a finely-crafted and ready-for-querying script, but the fact is that it's only gotten me a very, very rough and not-even-quite-finished rough draft.

I did finish the ending to my own current satisfaction, but I went right back to work on the beginning I'd never quite gotten to work how I wanted, so it doesn't count.

But hopefully this week is the week. Or tonight the night, who knows?

Anyway, there's this Alex Epstein quote that I'm too lazy to look up, but I can remember it enough to make the point. It goes: "You don't want to be left polishing an old steam engine when you could have a brand new, dirty, smelly jet engine instead."

And that's how I feel right now. I'm almost done building my jet engine. Sending it to the detailing crew for cleanup and paint is a mere anticlimax away.

So stretch ye the metaphors as you will—I'm going to be over here, working away.