So it’s been a while since I updated. But I have one of those “excuse” things that I hear are all the rage with politicians: I and my family are moving. And not a small move, an across-the-country-sell-the-house-find-a-new-job-that-I-currently-have-no-leads-on move. That, to put it mildly, has messed with my headspace a bit, especially since our lovely little 1950s rambler is struggling to find itself a buyer (recession? What recession?!). Additionally, I can’t take Captain Picard’s accusing eyes any longer. They haunt my dreams.

Excuses aside, it’s time to get back on the bus, the wagon, the horse, the tricycle, etc. So new goal: 2nd draft, finished by November 15th. And I promise to blog more, because if there is anything this world needs at a time like this, it’s more blogging.

Continue reading

Project Echo’s first draft is done. Saturday was the deadline to finish but some important life stuff came up and I had to postpone my writing until the next day. So yesterday I hunkered down and wrote for over 7 hours, whipping out 20+ pages (which was more than I had anticipated), and around 8:30 at night I crossed the finish line.

It feels great. For the first time in my life, I’ve written a feature length screenplay. And honestly, I’m a bit surprised - I think some part of me thought I would never really finish.

There is an enormous amount of work to do. The 1st draft is, to put it kindly, a complete mess. Incoherencies abound. I changed plot points, descriptions, and in one case, even the sex of a character in mid-stride, never going back to revise earlier scenes. BUT - and this is big one - I know it’s muddled garbage, and I think I can fix it. The important thing is that I have something to work with, something to look at on the page and objectively analyze.

The most surprising moment for me came as I was writing the final scene. As I brought the story full circle and watched my characters speak to one another for the last time, I began to cry a little (I know, I know, I’m just a big softy). It was completely unexpected and it gave me hope: no matter how bad the screenplay was in parts, I had written a story that had moved me to tears by the end, and that has to count for something.

So what’s next?

Continue reading

I’m a busy man. Apart from my full time job, I also have a wife and two children, ages 2 and 1. I love them so much, cannot even begin to imagine what life would be like without them, but… they are a handful. They ask for a lot of time, naturally. I cherish those moments with them because I know they won’t last. There will come a day when my daughter will no longer ask me to take her to the park.

But when 8PM hits and the kids are finally down, I’m toast. My body is jelly, my brain is mush, and I can barely muster enough energy to watch trashy reality television much less sit down and write (Rock of Love Bus w/ Brett Michaels can be so taxing at times!).  I’m sure many of you can relate.

So how do you write a screenplay when life is so full of responsibilities and obligations and trailer-trash bimbos fawning over washed-up mascara-painted glam rockers?

Continue reading

Logline: (per Wikipedia) A brief summary of a movie, often providing both a synopsis of the film’s plot and an emotional “hook” to stimulate interest.

Sounds thrilling, don’t it? Log lines, however, can be crucial when it comes to building interest in your film, raising money for it, or marketing it once it’s done. They’re simple, short, and should (among other things) make others really want to see the film in question when they hear one. Here are a couple of examples:

The Game
A wealthy financier gets a strange birthday present from his wayward brother: a live-action game that consumes his life.

Memento
A man, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife.

Old Boy
After being kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to discover that he must find his captor within 5 days.

The last two, especially, are gangbusters. Even if you know nothing about the films in question, their loglines are intriguing. I certainly want to see Old Boy now.

Creating a compelling logline can be incredibly difficult, however. Attempting to hook someone with a single sentence (two at the most) is not as easy as you might think

Continue reading

Affectionately dubbed “Zombiegeddon-pocalypse-palooza-fest ‘09″, the shindig involved 4 televisions, 4 Xbox 360s, 4 copies of Left 4 Dead, and 14 participants. One team played the humans desperately trying to escape from the zombies, while the other team played the zombies desperately trying to feast on the humans. Good times all around.

Thursday and Friday afternoon were spent preparing for it. Friday night was spent enjoying it. And Saturday was spent recuperating from it. Thus, I accomplished nothing on my screenplay over the weekend. But it was soooooooo worth it.

Hit the jump for pics.

Continue reading

Here are a few quotes from the excellent resource, The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, on writing first drafts. Since that’s exactly what I’m doing at the moment, I thought I would share.

I especially like writing the first draft, which I blaze through as fast as I can, without even stopping for spell checking or fact-checking that might interrupt the flow. And I liked the editing part of the printed first draft with my trusty red pen, though I hate all the retyping from the edited page into the computer. On the other hand, I never get depressed about what I write, because I know I’m going to rewrite it. I remember seeing an interview with George Lucas where he talks about a trick  he learned from Francis (Coppola), which is not to read what he’s writing until he’s done with it. He writes nonstop, puts the pages in a file, and it’s not until he thinks he’s done with it that he’ll find the nerve to look at his pages.
Steven DeSouza (Die Hard, The Running Man, 48 Hours)

You should be able to write a terrible first draft. I used to think of my first draft as simply laying out the territory, and that all the work was done in rewriting. After finishing my preparatory notes, it would take me 32 days to write a script. I’d do a first draft in 10 days, take a day off, do a second draft in 10 days, take a day off, and then write a third draft in 10 days. This gave the screenplay a sort of velocity, but frequently, it also had built-in plot problems. Now, if I smell a problem, I no longer ignore it. I try to solve it before I go on.
Nicholas Kazan (Fallen, Matilda)

You just write, blindly putting things down on paper. Just put something down, and then put something else down, because it’s a process of thinking through all the choices. You have to be willing to throw it away. If you write something awful, you just say, “Okay, I tried,” and sometimes you make it all the way through to discover it’s not worth it. You’ve got to write. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
Jim Kouf (Rush Hour, Operation Dumbo Drop)

Silencing that inner critic is important, at least through the first draft, becasue when will you have another chance to let it all out, if not in the first draft? I try to finish the first draft before rewriting it, and ultimately, I’ll go over it about 10 to 12 times. But I usually go over the first third of the script and rewrite it until it’s good enough because I feel that if it’s launched properly, the rest will fall through.
Tom Schulman (What About Bob?, Dead Poets Society)

Continue reading

Last weekend, my 2 1/2 year old daughter and I took a trip down Route 66. The purpose was two-fold: first, spend some quality time with my little girl, and second, do some preliminary location scouting for Project Echo.

Normally you would not begin location scouting when you’re only 50 pages into your first draft. However, the second act (which starts around pg. 25 and ends around pg. 85) can be a real bear to wrestle to the ground. As my friend Ryan put it, “It’s like you’ve gone from a river to an ocean: the possibilites are endless.” I had decided to weave my narrative down Route 66 but I’d never actually been on the historic Mother Road before. I needed some firsthand experience. So I checked a bunch of books out of the library, noted locations that I thought would be good for the film, and set off early Saturday morning.

Some vintage Route 66 signage.

The trip was a phenomenal success. I cannot begin to explain how valuable it was to the writing process. Seeing pictures in a book was one thing; actually visiting the places, getting a sense of physical space, and envisioning how a scene could play out there, was an entirely different experience. The next morning I immediately begain incorporating places I had visited into my screenplay.

In Arcadia we visited the Round Barn. Initially, I was unimpressed. It looks interesting but that’s about it. Downstairs there is a gift shop and a menagerie of dusty memorabilia and faded photographs. Hardly a good spot to film a movie. Then I went upstairs and the thought that immediately jumped into my mind was: I HAVE to write a scene here! The 2nd floor was spacious and encircled by an expansive wooden dome. The way the light comes in through the windows and skips across the polished wooden floor is gorgeous. Visually its unique and stunning. And the best part of all? They rent it out for weddings and other special occasions, meaning it should be a snap to secure during production.

Down the road from the Round Barn is Pops 66, one of the coolest places in all of Oklahoma. Out front is an enormous soda bottle wrapped in neon lights (which, sadly, are only visible at night). Inside is a restaurant and convenience store. Over 20,000 soda bottles line the walls and 500 different varieties of gourmet soda are available for purchase. An entire fridge is dedicated solely to root beer. I let my daughter pick out an orange soda and I grabbed a couple myself, and then we had a little picnic out front underneath the giant soda bottle. I’d love to shoot a scene at Pops, but the logistics and expense would probably prevent it. Regardless, if you live in the area, you owe it to yourself to take a day trip to Pops sometime.

Ultimately we made it about 140 miles down Route 66 to El Reno, which is on the other side of Oklahoma City. At this juncture Emily was snoozing in her carseat and I was exhausted. It had been over 7 hours and we still had to make the return trip. Thankfully, I decided to soldier through and visit the last place on my list: Historic Fort Reno. There, at the end of a dusty road, I found the perfect place to film Project Echo’s climactic confrontation. I was beside myself with excitement. It was ideal in every way. (I’d show you pictures but I have to keep a couple of secrets underneath my belt, don’t I?) Again, it shouldn’t be problematic to secure the spot for filming, and for a reasonable cost.

Not only was the scouting trip beneficial to my first draft, it was also liberating to get out from behind my computer and do something physically related to my film. It felt like I was one small step closer to making this thing a reality.

How cool is this abanonded drive-thru?

Continue reading

I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Doug Jones (Hellboy 1 & 2, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Pan’s Labyrinth) when he was on the set of Ryan Dunlap’s Greyscale last year. The article I wrote (which a certain publication refused to pick up, mainly out of laziness, I believe) is now up over at MovieZeal. Doug is probably one of the most generous, kind, incredible human beings I have ever met. Also, I’m kind of fond of the piece. Enjoy!

Behind the Prosthetics: On Set With Doug Jones

Continue reading

First things first: I’ve hit page 55 of my first draft. Depending on who you talk to, I’m either halfway or almost halfway. I’m hoping to finish before my August 1st deadline. Any thoughts on what I should do to celebrate?

Secondly, while watching David Fincher’s The Game the other night, I was reminded of all the things I’ve always promised myself I would never do in a film. Let me share for posterity’s sake. Feel free to hunt me down and stomp on my gardenias if I ever break one of these.

1. It will never end with “it was all a dream.”
This one may have worked once upon a time (I’ve actually tried to track down the first film to pull it off), but no more. This gives you license to do whatever you want to during the plot and then erase it all at the end. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

2. The character won’t be dead or dying the entire film
The Sixth Sense is the best example of this. M. Night did it so well that he effectively “screwed the pooch”: no other film can do this now. A couple have tried and they’re terrible. You can see it coming a mile away like a neon-pink freight train and, like point number 1, it feels cheap.

3. No split personalities or characters who are hallucinations
“I know, lets have the bad guy and the good guy be the same person!” This one has also been ruined by repeated overexposure. Inevitably, the ‘bad’ personality takes over at the end and wreaks havoc like a mediocre Jason Vorhees wannabe. The other variation on this is when one character is actually a figment of another’s imagination. Fight Club is still a great film, but that element is its weakest link. Ed Norton’s alter ego (Brad Pitt) beating himself up at the end? Did that ever make sense?

4. No cheating
This is what The Game does. The ‘twist’ at the end is entertaining for only as long as it takes your brain to start processing it. In light of the events of the film, it makes little to no sense. It’s cheating for the sake of shock value. On second viewing, the film is hopelessly broken. Compare to The Sixth Sense which is a richer, more powerful experience the second time through.

So those are my cinematic pet peeves. Any y’all would like to share?

Continue reading