CASABLANCA is coming! One night only!

CITIZEN KANE can go suck it. If film historians were HONEST, they would admit the movie is slow and pretentious. CASABLANCA, however, deserves to be one of the top films of all time. It's not only hilarious and wildly entertaining, it's "invisibly" directed - which is much tougher to do, unlike CITIZEN KANE, where you're aware every time the camera moves.

Still "cleaning the bathroom" on the novel...

Did I mention how TEDIOUS it is to make changes on MS WORD from a marked-up hard copy? There's no "creating." It's line by line, page by page of add a comma here, change a word there, correct this or that sentence - i.e., "work." I want to scream.

The Novel...

Once I e-publish it, I'll do an in depth write-up of the origins, etc. For right now, let's see...I wrote a very first draft, did a round of rewrites, and printed it out. I marked up that hard copy, and as I made those changes on MS WORD, I did another pass. Printed THAT out, marked it up, and now I'm making THOSE changes on MS WORD, and keeping an eye out for any other changes I need to make and may have missed. (So far, there's been only a few.)

This is the part of writing I loathe - the final, "cosmetic" rewrite, where the story is done. All the changes being made are just tweaking a word here, or a sentence there. It's the writing equivalent of cleaning your bathroom. (It HAS to be done, can't be avoided. It's just no fun.)

Noah Baumbach and Nicole Holofcener Are The Same Person

Seriously. Both make indie dramatic comedies that are well-written, well-acted, and well-made, but feel almost free form. Both had tremendously good debuts during the awesome indie relationship comedy era of the 90's - WALKING AND TALKING for Holofcener, KICKING & SCREAMING for Baumbach. (See? Same movie.) Both now make more dramatic movies that feature neurotic, high-strung, and highly-verbal characters. (For Holofcener, it's with Catherine Keener.) Both are very talented...but need to get back to more "focused," albeit "commercial" fare.

Oh, right...

...I'm also writing a novel. Well, re-writing one. It's horror. (Oh, how I love horror books. The best of all junk food reads.) I hope to have it finished by the first of March. A full write-up about the origins of it then.

I Write To Music

Some writers do, some don't. For me it sets the mood. It helps create the atmosphere of the genre in which I'm writing, and makes it seem more like I'm writing a movie, not just writing a script. (Therefore, it's more fun to write.)

Atmosphere is everything in film. Think about it. The good-to-great films have a specific vibe. You feel like you're placed inside the world of that movie for 90-120 minutes. The fair-to-bad films usually feel like they could take place anywhere. They feel like widgets.

If the screenplay I'm working on is horror, a thriller, or action, I write to scores of other movies. Some I've purchased over the years. A lot comes from Rhapsody - which is a Godsend for music lovers and screenwriters who write to music. Comedies, relationship comedies, drama and dramedies, I like to write to artists who fit the mood of the genre. I'll compile a massive playlist on Rhapsody. As I write the rough draft, I'll choose the best songs off each record, and form a final playlist of 40-50 songs that I can write to for the final rewrite later.

"The Fate Script: The Soundtrack"

Right now, the Rhapsody playlist is just Death Cab For Cutie and Cary Brothers. It's a modern relationship comedy about 30-something professionals in the city, so that's who they would be listening to. I will add more artists as I go along.

"The January Partial Script"

My first goal of finishing rough first drafts of partial scripts was a tiny character drama. I had written about 15 pages of it a few years ago. I knew the ending, parts of the middle. With all of that, I managed to bang out an 80 page "ball of wax" to work with later. I love those semi-impressionistic indie dramas. Where acoustic folk plays over a series of images that tell the story along with the dialogue scenes. STATION AGENT is one of the best ones. The plot was (accidentally) straight out of Nicholas Sparks, but instead of sappy melodrama, it turned out just how I wanted. The Rhapsody playlist was Iron and Wine and Kings of Convenience. They fit perfectly with the breezy, nostalgic feel of the story.

"The February Partial," "The Fate Script"

There are many movies dealing with the inner workings of Fate. The best - NEXT STOP WONDERLAND comes immediately to mind; as does SERENDIPITY - deal with flesh and blood characters who are moved closer and closer together through the story by the machinations of Fate. The worst treat the characters merely as chess pieces, as the machinations are the focus of the story. (Oddly, this works fine in the FINAL DESTINATION movies, which are the flip side of the same coin - showing Death (Fate) working in a sequence of events. It works because it's horror. Horror is about the horror more than the characters.)

Several years ago I co-wrote a romantic comedy that was more overtly about the hand of Fate in our romantic lives. Being obsessed with the subject, I wanted to write another one, but how to do it without repeating myself?

Enter "Mad Men" and TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY.

In newspaper and magazine articles, you should never "bury your lead." In this case - the doings of Fate - I would have to, so not to copy my previous script. But how? Mad Men" and TINKER served as models. They bury important information in a mound of chitchat. You think you're just listening to conversation, until you realize you're being told very important information. In this new Fate script, why not "bury" the connections underneath the character interactions? The connections are there, but obvious attention aren't drawn to them. Only after the movie is over will the viewer think back and say, "ah, okay: this happened, which caused this, which caused that." At the time, it's just a movie dealing with what most of us deal with - that ever-elusive search for love.

I know, I know

Almost two years? Wow. What happened? Eh, life. You know - you miss one week of blogging...that turns into a month, which turns into a year. From now on I promise to post once a week. Deal?

Where have I been? I'm still writing; still sending things out. But, life again. Problems that arise that don't so much derail you but cause you to lose 100% focus. You still write every day; still e-mail queries...but not quite with the same intensity. Suddenly, a year pass, and you realize...that a year has passed. ANYWAY.

Like most writers, I have a hard drive full of partial scripts. It's 10 pages of this, 30 pages of that. For some reason this had begun to bother me. It never had before. Some of these are as old as 1999 - and written on MS WORD to boot. But, for whatever reason this had become a point of irritation. Like a progression in music left unfinished, they need to be finished.

Fueled by this sudden and mysterious OCD-ness to finish these scripts, I decided to spend a month on each partial script and write very rough, "ball-of-wax" drafts. These drafts are just to get the general idea/story down in 80-90 pages, to expand, fine tune and finish later.

Oddly, this is a very freeing writing exercise. Your subconscious isn't constricted to a strict outline - so there's no "pressure," for lack of a better word. You already know points "A, M and Z" of the story, and the themes, and the general mood or vibe, so the ideas that flow fit what you're doing...not like stream of consciousness just to fill pages. Some ideas may stay in the final draft, many might be replaced; right now it's just to get that very rough draft down.

The "BOURNE" Series And May Spies

I love espionage books and films, especially set in post-Cold War Europe. The "BOURNE" movies did this so, so very well with the usage of old world locales. And three of the best action movies scores of all time by John Powell.

Last year, I had an idea for an older, retiring spy that would be found in the same basic area of the film world as Jason Bourne. Using the "BOURNE" flicks as general inspiration, I set off to write the first draft in May.

I'm behind. As you know, my writing schedule is three days a week, my days off: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and sometimes Monday. That's approximately twelve writing days a month, multiplied by eight pages a day - about a 100 page script a month. It looks like I may have to extend into June.

I had the general idea for the script - no outline to speak of, just the basic framework. As I was writing, the story took an unexpected turn for the much better, which required me to go back and completely rewrite about 20 pages. So is the peril of writing without a treatment, but I believe if you know the basic story, in some cases it's better not to outline, as you can discover the story along with the main character.

This isn't always recommended. Some genres lend themselves to planning - suspense thrillers, con game, mysteries - as the plot twists drive the story forward. Others, if you have an overview of the story and where it's going, it's much more fun to just get in there and write, and let that first draft be almost like a treatment. Sometimes you get lucky and a screenplay comes almost completely hatched, with only minor revisions to make before it's ready. Every project is different.

"24" and April Revisions

And the polishing-of-older-scripts continues...

"24" is one of my fave shows, and one of the best television series of all time. It succeeds so greatly because it takes all the B action movie standards - Heroic Good Guys, Terrorists With A Plot, Government Conspiracy - and filters them through a topical reality. (To quote Kiefer's favorite word of all time, it adds "gravitas" to them.) Also, it always has a political layer - Presidents, VP's, First Ladies and First Families that adds even more complexity to the arching storylines

I wanted to write an action script captured the spirit of the show. Not necessarily written in real time, but over the course of a single day, like John Woo's "BROKEN ARROW."

All in all, this is a very good genre action script, with a female protagonist to boot. Let's hope it gets made one day!

Late March/Early April, More Polishing...

After rewriting/polishing the sports comedy, I still had several days remaining in March to work on something. I divide projects up by months: "I'll finish this by the end of this month; start this draft the next month." Psychologically, it helps my brain to focus. Knowing I only have x-amount of days to finish a project, my creativity turns into a laser, locked in on completing it. Otherwise, I'd be scattershot - writing here and there - turning a single screenplay into a year-long endeavor. (It's amazing how creatively freeing it is when you shackle your mind with time limits.)

So, I took out a neo-noir, suspense thriller that I had in my drawer. Its muse drew from the superior John Dahl neo-noir "RED ROCK WEST." I love that flick and used that as...well, the muse. I'd completed a rough draft, polish and another draft in which I had a marked-up hard copy of revisions. Thumbing through the pages that would need to be changed in Final Draft and comparing them to how many writing days I had left in March - it was doable.

Some pages remained completely untouched. Others, the revisions on the marked-up hard copy were fine. And, others, I had to revise the hard copy revisions.

All and all, I got it done. It's also caused me to go through my files and see what other scripts need a read-over for a possible polish.

The Month Of March

The other greatest sports comedy of all time, "SLAPSHOT."

I finished another draft of the sports comedy. (Since BlogSpot won't let me do links, see September and October 2009 entries.) The first/rough draft ran 120 pages. The final count is 114. So far there hasn't been a lot of revisions. Some line deletions, additions, or alterations but no wholesale changes in scenes. No addition or subtraction of plot points, scenes, or characters. This seemed to hatched whole.

I'm moving it to the backburner for now. It seems, however, that it'll only require one more pass before being releasing into the world.

The Kidnapping Of Kristin Kreuk

Wait. Before you call the FBI:

Just as I write to music, I also write to certain actors, directors, writers, tones, atmospheres, and/or vibes that fit the mood of a particular project. Not specifics, just their gist; the feeling they evoke and inspire. At the time of the first draft of my kidnapping horror thriller, Kristin was doing her incredible, and incredibly undervalued work, on "Smallville." She quickly had become one of my favorite actresses in television or film. Here was the living and breathing embodiment of the tried-and-true trope of "The Girl Next Door" - an actress who was warm, smart, beautiful, likable, lovable and authentic all in equal measure.

She was the perfect person to get kidnapped in my screenplay.

Kristin's spirit-slash-aura became the muse of my main character, but as time went on she became more distant in my mind. Later, I saw the great Katie Stuart in "TAMARA," and thought she'd be a great fit for the lead. (That story can be found in August 2009.) The very talented and lovely Katie loved my script, but after a period of time moved on, and the script went dormant.

Until now.

After doing a page-one polish-slash-rewrite, it's my hope that this project comes full circle and Kristin ends up playing the very lead her persona inspired. As for the wonderful Katie Stuart...I've got a script just for her.

Small Town Romantic Drama Complete

It's still poignant, with universal themes of long lost love, just the right amount of humor, and a lot of heart. I'm proud of how I walked that very fine line between somber and sad, maudlin and morose, pining and whining - much like "Party Of Five" did - to create realistic characters facing emotionally realistic situations. I wrote this to New Age guitarists - mainly David Cullen, Billy McLaughlin, Alex De Grassi and Will Ackerman. (Others are scattered over the Rhapsody playlist.) Their pretty and nostalgic instrumentals set the tone perfectly. Surprisingly, these guys have never scored a film. Maybe this will be their first.

Now, it's time to fine tune the query and get this out to production companies far and wide.

Change Of Plan

I'm all about diligent writing and hard work, but I've decided to extend the polish of the small town romantic drama until the end of the month. This way I'm not killing myself to get it finished; I can take my time, to a certain extent. Writers will polish a project for years if given the opportunity. (Many do; that's why they never sell anything.) Like the Coen Brothers (I think) once said, if you're bored reading your script, and you're just replacing "and's" with comma's, it's time to let it go.

I'm on page 45; almost halfway. I'm making dialogue tighter and scene descriptions shorter. The story is fine - scenes work, the characters feel and act real. This is purely cosmetic.

February Horror And Danielle Savre

I'm winding up the polish of my small town romantic drama. It should be finished by the end of next week.

Next will be the final polish on the November/December '09 horror project. Danielle Savre was fantastic in "BOOGEYMAN 2." She would be great in this. (In the small town romantic drama, too.) A very talented actress.

2010 - The Year It Happens

2009 was a waste of time. I take that back - yes, I wrote new screenplays and polished old ones, but that was it. No e-mailing queries to production companies, or chasing down leads for my manager. Instead, I sat in the comfort of the ivory tower of my study, clacking away on my keyboard, expecting someone to kick in my door and demand I hand over the latest draft of my latest script.

It wasn't arrogance; it was just laziness.

This year, though, I'm determined to sell a screenplay. I'm not talking about just redoubling efforts or reupping my commitment. Those imply I'm just returning to a previous, status-quo level of dedication. This is raising the bar to a whole new level of commitment.

I will be tireless. I will not rest. I will track down leads and send out e-mail queries until I sell a screenplay. Nothing or no one will stop me.

My first project is a polish of a small town romantic drama that will be aimed at the indie and cable market. "Party Of Five" is one of my favorite TV shows of all time. I used its reality-heavy melodrama as a model - everyday people dealing with everyday problems. I plan to finish it out next week, and then start the e-mail query.

The time is now.

November/December Horror Project

I guess my plan of penning a first, rough draft of a screenplay for September, October, November and December is a bust. Lesson learned: the human brain can only be pushed so far before it pushes back.

Instead, for November and Decemeber, I've been working on a rewrite/polish of a horror script. You should always be writing on something. If a new idea isn't striking your fancy, then pull out an older script, polish it, and put it out there. That should always be Plan B.

Even though this horror script is a few years old, the idea is still as fresh as the day I wrote the very first draft.

I'm a fan of the annual After Dark 8 Films To Die For horror film festival. I've only missed one. One of my goals is to get a film made that makes it into one of the line up. The 2006 festival introduced me to two of my favorite horror films of recent years - "THE ABANDONED" and "THE GRAVEDANCERS." (I also liked "DARK RIDE.")