Weekend Progress

Aftershocks - I did indeed finish the rewrite on Tuesday night, then gave the rewrite to 7 or 8 friends on Wednesday. Quick feedback from the first 2 was positive. Pleased with myself, I took the long weekend off. Then today I emailed it off to the script’s new representation for their notes. We’ll see what they think.

Supervillain - I tossed around a few replacement titles all weekend and ran them by a few friends. Everybody’s a critic. I narrowed those down to 5 lucky finalists (I thought I could decide on 1 but no go) and emailed those to Supervillain’s producers. I think I’m in good shape - I thought they were pretty good and I can live with pretty much any of them. Suggestions are still welcome…

Hancock - helped me out (I think). Good numbers. Now we have to take advantage!

Wall-E - saw it on Friday with the wife and kids. I am a huge Pixar fan and I was not disappointed. That said, I think the claims of “Best Picture” contender are somewhat overstated. Best Animated Feature, sure, but Best Picture material? I liked it but there are a couple of Pixar features I’d rank it below. More discussion soon.

Script Updates

A few things hopping right now:

- Supervillain: Things are still moving forward with the investors, but the rate of speed has not picked up. Yesterday I was told everything is cool, but my producers are looking for other opportunities just in case. With that in mind, this weekend’s opening of Hancock may do great things for my script. When Supervillain made the rounds of the studios, readers liked it but conventional wisdom said that superhero comedies always flop. We’ll see what Hancock has to say about that. So the producers are readying Supervillain for a renewed studio push.

And then there’s the title - “Who Wants To Be A Supervillain?!”. Now, we all love the title and all the game-show desperation it brings. But it does seem a little, well, Y2k. Yeah, dated. At least for getting shown around the studios. If the movie ever gets made, we’ll see (by then it will be WAY dated…). But for showing it around, it needs a little refreshing. Any suggestions? I have the perfect title, but I stole it from a friend who has been trying to get a project with the same name going for years, so I really shouldn’t use it…

- Aftershocks: I’m currently finishing up a mini-rewrite (somewhere between a polish and a rewrite) for the script’s new manager/agent to spiff it up before it gets sent out. This rewrite is somewhat… experimental for me. Not “experimental” in that the script is getting any weirder, but “experimental” in that I may end up chucking it completely and reverting to the original version. I have received quite a few sets of notes on it lately (from Abbot and elsewhere) and after talking with the script’s new representation I decided to address some of the more consistent observations. I have previously discussed the contradictory feedback the script has received (and all scripts receive), but I do have to admit that some points pop up somewhat consistently among those who don’t like the script. Those who do like the script tell me to disregard these points, and there’s the rub: sometimes the very thing a non-fan sees as a weakness a fan will call a strength. So it’s tricky. As I’ve discussed before, Aftershocks is an atmospheric drama, and some people love this. Others say it needs more drive and focus. So the question is: is it possible to crank up the drive a little without destroying the atmospherics that many readers love? We’ll see. The worst-case would be to screw up what is already there while trying to make tweaks to attract an audience that just isn’t going to like it anyway. I’m trying to find a middle ground. But if the feedback on this new version tells me that this middle ground is the worst of both worlds, then the rewrite gets chucked and the original draft gets sent out instead. So it’s still on the hard drive and waiting, just in case.

One more new scene needs to be finished (the scene is 85% done) and then another read-through to smooth things out and it’ll be ready for my agent. Then it’ll come back with his inevitable notes… The hope is to finish it tonight, or at least this weekend.

- Dead Guy and Psycho Ex: Oh, yeah. I’m supposed to be writing those too, huh?

Represented

Some news: The paperwork has been signed - Aftershocks has an agent/manager.

I’m psyched but realistic. The first time I got an agent I thought my troubles were over - they weren’t. Now I’m 14 years older, calmer, and wiser (well, maybe). We’ll see how this round goes.

You keep sending your stuff out, you might just get a bite. Get your stuff finished, get it polished, and get it out there. Again and again.

Fasten your seatbelts.

“Playing With the Pieces” or “Why It Takes Me So Long”

I don’t like to outline. I used to, I may again, but not right now.

In school I outlined - we all did. I wrote 3 features this way, with each outline getting better and more detailed than the last. I would refine the outline first and then write. If an idea came to mind while I was writing, I would stop writing, add the scene to the outline, and then tweak the outline again and again before resuming writing. By the third feature, my process was disciplined and precise.

And completely lifeless.

It was actually a chore to complete that third feature. Part of this was because I was writing the script on spec for a producer (based on his idea) who bailed halfway through, but the other part was because the writing was so lifeless - all the “fun stuff” had been explored and laid out before, at the outline stage, so the writing itself felt like dictation. The script turned out okay I guess, but the process was an exercise in drudgery, without life or spark or energy. Without discovery.

So with my fourth feature I decided to try an experiment: I would take the 4 structural chunks of the script and only look at 1 at a time. I could outline, use index cards, anything I wanted, but I could only work on 30 pages at a time - thinking about anything beyond that 30-page unit was off limits until it was done and polished. To challenge myself, I consciously tried to write myself into a corner every 30 pages. And each section would end with an ambitious climax or cliffhanger, one which I had no idea how to top or get out of. It was great.

The good news is that this fourth feature ended up being Aftershocks, still the script I am most proud of. The bad news is it took 7 years to write. I honestly had no idea how to end the thing as I would set it down and then pick it back up months or even years later, letting it breathe as I worked on other scripts and other ideas in between. False starts and dead ends on the second and third acts took years. But once I figured them out… well, as I said, I’m pretty proud of it.

Something changed when I started writing Aftershocks: I started writing an idea that

Four Years

Stay with me here - a few related ideas swirling around.

Last week (May 3 or 5, I can’t remember) I hit a milestone of sorts at the day job: including the time I was temping there (I temped for a few months as a temp-to-hire ), I have now been there for four years. Four years. Is that a long time? It is and it isn’t.

It is also an additional milestone for me: it is now the longest-held job I’ve ever had. In my entire life. Four years. Is that pitiful? For a guy my age? It is and it isn’t. I worked in TV for 6 years, but that was 12+ jobs (that I can think of right now) for 7 different companies, each of which lasted anywhere from 9 months to 4 days. Even of the pre-TV day jobs, the current one is the marathon winner.

All this means at least a couple of things: (a) it has been 10 years since I started working in TV and (2) it is now impossible to deny that I am officially out of the TV business. So my current day job is no longer a fluke, it is the all-time duration king. It is now the rule, not the exception.

A friend of mine (an entrepreneur, which is pretty near-identical to being a screenwriter/producer) is now getting ready to start her first “day job” in several years, maybe ever. She has emailed me asking for any pearls of wisdom I can throw her way, because she doesn’t want the day-to-day crap of the day job to overtake its real purpose: merely funding her passion. To her (and myself), I say good luck. The day job is supposed to enable you to follow your real passion, but it can so easily overtake it and become

Loglines

I just renewed one of my scripts on inktip.com and I need new loglines. I am happy with the loglines I have on there currently - and I have been for a long while - but that is the problem: they have been up there for a long while.

 

The site advises that writers change/improve their loglines fairly regularly because there are a finite number of companies searching the site, and if a producer sees your logline and thinks s/he is not interested, and then s/he sees the same logline still up there month after month for years, s/he will surely recognize it and think (a) I didn’t want to read that then and I don’t want to read it now or (b) that script still hasn’t sold? It must suck. The logic goes that shaking up your loglines will make them appear new and fresh and perhaps emphasize other aspects of the script which may then appeal to that producer who has read right over it many times. My current loglines have been up for at least 12-18 months, which is much much longer than they suggest before changing them.

 

Hey, I’m stubborn.

But I’m also happy with the current versions. These are the loglines that need to be replaced:

Aftershocks: Jim Noone erased his memory, disappeared, and adopted a new identity to escape his past. His plan worked perfectly - until the woman who loved him follows one last hopeless lead to find him. Semi-linear “puzzle” movie with a twist ending. Character-driven drama.

I Hate That Guy!: The world’s biggest a$$hole has had enough of the world’s biggest saint and decides to bring him down. Raunchy dark comedy - Hard “R.”

Thoughts? I am particularly reluctant to change the Aftershocks logline because I think it communicates quite a bit in a tight package. But then again, the logline hasn’t generated many hits in quite a while.

Like they say, writing is rewriting.

Script Frenzy Wrap-Up

Script Frenzy 2008 wraps up today. Congrats to all participants. As I expected, I didn’t come close to writing 100 pages, but I did get a good shot in the arm. Which, at least for me, was the point. I got 25 pages written on Dead Guy and Psycho Ex combined, and I was actually doing pretty well early in the month before the day job sucked me back in with evening and weekend OT obligations.

3 pages a day sounds insignificant and trivial, and whenever I actually sat down to do it, I was able to make it happen. But it doesn’t take long for those 3 pages every day (or so) to add up. And precisely because those 3 pages sound so insignificant and trivial, the pressure goes away and you can actually get productive. And creative. And that’s the point. 

Here are the stats as of morning 5/01/08:

Writers: 7,898

Pages: 129,743

Average: 16.43 pages per writer

At least 889 completed screenplays.

Robb: 25 pages. Let’s do this again. Every month.

Which Story Should You Write?

Back when we were discussing Abbot Management and the various issues related to feedback, a friend emailed me a very simple yet profound question:

How do you know when to listen to feedback and change your story?

This question really gets to the heart of it. Superficially, it is pretty easy to know if you agree with feedback telling you beef up a scene, hit a story point harder, punch up dialog, etc. But what about real, substantial change? What do you do when listening to feedback would fundamentally change the very story you originally set out to tell?

In terms of Abbot’s feedback on Supervillain, one of their readers wanted more comic book superhero action. He said this is what the audience expects and what the genre provides, and despite an action-oriented opening and climax, my script suffers from a lack of it. Superhero action is fun, it’s visual, it’s dramatic and external, and it fills seats and sells popcorn. He’s right. But here’s the thing: it is fundamentally inconsistent with my premise. In my story, the superhero desperately wants comic book action - it would solve all his problems. The superhero tries to get it, he makes pitiful ill-fated attempts to generate it, but there is no superhero comic book action. This is the source of the comedy. That’s my premise. So if you add comic book superhero action to my premise, you get… a different premise.

It would be like adding a time machine and car chases to Aftershocks; these would transform it into Back to the Future. Back to the Future is fun and Back to the Future is great and Back to the Future is better than Aftershocks, no question. But I didn’t want to write Back to the Future. I wanted to write Aftershocks.

So what do you do? I can hear all us artist types laughing, saying it is obvious that this reader

Page Count = 3

Script Frenzy 2008 - I’m in. And I invite all other writers to join in as well. Let’s do this thing. The idea: to write a screenplay (100 pages) in April. Come on, that’s less than 4 pages a day.

I’m kind of tweaking the goal for my purposes - instead of writing a 100-page script, my goal is to write a total of 100 pages combined of Dead Guy and Psycho Ex. If I do that, I will possibly finish both scripts in April (or at least be very, very close). Plus I have a pretty powerful idea for a short story or short script - maybe that will get played with as a little (or even big) experiment.

And I even put my money where my mouth is and got started today - 3 pages of Psycho Ex. First new pages of that script in a long time. It feels good. Hey, 3 or 4 pages a day is all it takes. I’m just going to take it one day at a time.

If I can keep it up all month, I’ll have (rough) first drafts to start rewriting.

And if I can’t, at least I’ll get a little kick in the pants. The Challenge needs all the momentum it can get…

Who’s with me?

Script Frenzy 2008

Anybody participating in Script Frenzy 2008? Anybody know anybody participating in it? I’m fantasizing about it. It’s highly unrealistic for me right now… but isn’t that the whole point?

It sure would kick-start The Challenge back into gear, wouldn’t it?