Random Question #28

What makes you feel powerful?

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.

Random Question #27

Have you ever been totally clueless that someone was in love with you?