Hollywood Hack

Cease & Deceased

2005-08-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, I'll be offline indefinitely.

The blog may return under my real name in the near future. Or it may rise from its ashes as something else entirely. Or it may slip into the Dead Blog Limbo.

Thanks to all who visited, and continue to visit. I wish you the best in all your endeavors.

-HH-

Have they ever played the game...?

2005-07-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

I often wonder if the suits ever play video games. Let me explain.

I had a general meeting recently at a pretty large production company over on Olympic with its own money. During the standard five to ten minutes of Get-To-Know-You chatter, I mentioned that I'm currently in the early stages of developing a video-game comic-book series [more on that, at a later date, if anything comes of it]. I wish it weren't true, but what follows is more or less what was said, spiced up a bit to make me look good.

"Video Games? Great! I love video games!" the exec. exclaimed, startling me, and produced a pile of lime Xbox cases. "Have you played this?"

"Yep. Awesome action, great storyline too. Really one of the better games to come out last few years. Scared the Hell out me."

The Exec. then proceeded to tell me that they've got a great relationship with the publisher, and are interested in putting something together on it. My enthusiasm spiked tremendously.

"I think it'd make a kick ass movie, I mean, it's all there. Great characters, awesome villain, really mythology and a great cross between something like H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker. It's high concept, but a really original take on it. What were you thinking?"

"Well...we wanted to make it contemporary, you know, bring the characters into the twenty first century, bigger, that kind of thi--We're thinking maybe it could sta--"

"But...don't you think part of its charm is that it takes place in the post World War One years. I mean, don't you think that's what makes it pretty freaky? All the old antiques, massive houses, the atmosphere...?"

The Exec. paused, then winced as if stung.

"Oh yeah, sure...We're thinking that maybe we could make it about the grandson of the character. Like, say he's gotten his grandfathers powers, but this whole time he's thought his grandfather was just crazy. We have a cold opening showing the ending of the game, and then villain comes back into modern day. Sort of like a sequel to the game--"

At some point his voice became about as pleasant as the screams a hippo makes with a chainsaw through its head. I grew irritated. Not just at him, but at the six meetings I've had prior with others like him where we explored to various degrees the adaptation of a game that I enjoyed. Counting back now, four out of the six meetings followed the same trajectory.

Exec tells me they have / are in process of, acquiring rights to a video game that absorbed numerous hours.
I get excited.
Exec tells me they want to do something different and throw out the storyline of the game.
I get unexcited.

Now I'm not one to stifle innovation. If you can make the product better by twisting the subplot, adding new characters, or rearranging the story, then by all means, go for it! It's an adaptation, not a translation. But when the source material works, and not just on me, but on millions of other gamers, why try to reinvent the wheel?

I was fed up. He wasn't the source of the problem, but he was the one closest to the bomb with the matches in hand when the fuse was lit, so he caught the brunt of my wrath. The final straw was when he started spouting off a few movie references that felt nothing like the game what-so-ever.

"The monsters could be real cool, kind of like the wraiths in Lord of the Rings"

Wraiths? Lord of the Rings? This game was a gothic thriller with undertones of reincarnation, demon summoning, and a sleeping God the size of a planet. It owes as much to Tolkein or Peter Jackson as fish do to the internet.

"Have you actually played this game?"

"Oh yeah, they made us a demo tape, so I saw most of it. Really cool stuff."

I lost it.

"Most of it? That must've been a long tape because the game took me at least ten hours to beat. It's got a great storyline, great characters, and its steeped in a kind of Sherlock Holmes mood that works perfectly for post war, post Victorian England. Plus, one of the key points of the game is that one of the characters you play is a female, so the whole notion of a woman being a mans equal, which is taken for granted these days, is a primary source of conflict in this game. Frankly, I think it would ruin the whole tone of the movie, piss off the fans, and just be another piece of unforgettable garbage that has no relationship to the game but the title. Does Alone in the Dark ring a bell?"

Obviously it didn't, but my bitter tone did, because he shook his head, put the games back, and awkwardly shrugged off the idea. "We'll figure it out...

The meeting ended a few minutes later. I didn't particularly care to hear what else he had to pitch me, and frankly, I didn't really give a shit what he thought of the script that got me the meeting to begin with. I left my card, he gave me his, I forgot to get my parking ticket stamped but preferred to pay the $2.00 per 15 minutes than take the elevator back up. I was in an arrogant and pissy mood, partly because of the heat, partly because my agent hyped me up for meeting this guy, but mostly because it's the same thing I hear so often. Spend huge sums of money on acquiring the rights to something, only to make it into something it doesn't even resemble.

Resident Evil? Please...
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Okay, you got the boobs right. But a decent storyline might've helped.
Street Fighter 2? They did their best.
Mortal Kombat? Actually not bad, considering the source.
Wing Commander? Next time skimp on the F/X and invest in a better story.
Super Mario Bros? I hope fucking heads rolled for that.
Alone in the Dark? Stick to producing, Dr. Boll. I know down syndrome film students with a more evolved grasp of cinema than you.

I'm not naive enough to think that your standard executive is going to have enough time to play twenty hours of Half Life 2 or spend the necessary time to Level Up his character just to be able to hang in World of Warcraft. Heck, I don't even have that time half the time [huh?!]. But please...for the love of God...Stop Buying Games Because They're Best Sellers, Only to Destroy one of the things that make them best sellers: The Originality of them!

I hate having bad meetings. You walk away from them with a place you may never be able to go back until you're pulling in seven figures per script and have a Trademark after your name, or until 18 months later when the Exec is fired.

But I'm tired of playing the sycophant writer, nodding my head, saying: Yessuh master sir, issa grand idea indeeeeed! I felt like a dick, and my agent sure thought I was a dick, and I probably was a dick, but if Team America taught me one thing about dicks it's...

...nevermind.

Game Over...

2005-07-08T15:13:00.000-07:00

Been a bit slow lately, which always gets me a bit freaked out. I think part of me is always expecting work to dry up completely and never return. The few professional writers I know seem to harbor a similiar feeling from time to time. As if their cosmic good karma streak could suddenly come to an end at any minute.

Thankfully, the International Comic Convention, aka ComicCon will offer me four days of mind numbing geek overload. I may blog from San Diego about the experience if I get a free moment. I plan to buy lots of stuff I'll never read.

Has it Really Been 10 Years?

2005-06-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

Flew back to my high school reunion this week as an excuse to get out of Los Angeles until after the 4th of July.

It's so strange how everyone pretty much stopped growing vertically and started filling out horizontally. For the most part, hairstyles didn't change but hairlines did. Nice to reconnect with old friends, swap business cards, and attempt to explain how I earn a living writing movies that no one has seen.

"It's complicated. No, I don't know anyone famous. Really? That sounds like an 'interesting' idea for a movie."

In the future I think I'll say I'm a manager at Starbucks.

Things not to say in a meeting.

2005-06-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

"You think this next draft needs a bit more sex in it? No prob! It'll have more ass in it than a night at Neverland Ranch! Oh really? So you know him pretty well then...Yeah? I've heard he's nice too. Helluva dancer. Great musician, I mean...*wow*"

Scientists create Zombie Dogs

2005-06-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

Looks like Vanilla Sky may not be too far off.

And speaking of Zombies...

What the hell happened George? Land of the Dead blew!

VoIP phone update

2005-06-20T18:19:00.000-07:00

As documented earlier, I had some Technology Problems. And like most baffling technology problems, they often seem to resolve themselves. That slight delay that rendered my Packet8 VoIP phone into an ugly paperweight has disappeared. And the sound quality? Superb.

I haven't changed a single thing on the home network side, and according to my broadband provider, neither have they. So whatever problem it was, Packet8 seems to have figured it out.

I'm using it as my main phone on a probationary basis for the next several months. My TiVo is on the wireless network, and I use virtual fax, so if all works well, I may ditch the land line entirely.

Somebody get these folks a movie deal!

2005-06-17T13:15:00.000-07:00

Found via Boing Boing this glorious set of Bootleg Star Wars: Episode 3 Captions is utterly mind blowing.

As well as the ones for Fahrenheit 9/11.

I'm going to be sued for saying this...but on a side note I bought a few bootleg DVD's in Viet Nam a year and a half back, and I just checked them to see if I have any gems. It turns out that my Gangs of New York DVD apparently uses the subtitle text from what I can only assume to be Pokemon: The Movie on crack.

I'm currently watching Daniel Day Lewis as Bill the Butcher, draped in an American flag say: "Release the monkeys. Gather the coins. This is the greatness of America."

Not enough hours in the day.

2005-06-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

Things have been insane lately, but in a good way.

A new project on the front burner with the dial turned up to 10 to distract me as I await whatever fate befalls my beloved psychological horror project. And another rather interesting diversion that I'll write about at a later date if and when something pans out. It's not exactly screenwriting, but screenwriting related, and it could be a great opportunity to simultaneously dabble in two mediums that I've always loved, comics and video games.

On a related note, I think I finally found my threshold. A few weeks ago I waxed idiotic about my writing routine, and I talked about the dreaded 12 hour day.

Well that has nothing on the 31 hour day.

Yeah, you read that right.

But first, the backstory.

A good friend of mine that I've known since college called me up from his temporary production office in Bucharest, Romania for a modest sized indy film of his that's in pre-production. He wrote the screenplay to direct as an attempt to break out of shooting commercials and music videos over in Europe. Somehow he was able to sell the idea to investors using a trailer he shot, and next thing he knows he's got a start date for filming. The only problem?

His script sucked.

And I mean sucked.

He knew this. It was one of the first words out of his mouth when he sent it to me. It was one of the first words out of my mouth when I read it. It was clearly one of those thinly masked autobiographies first time writers are notorious for spewing out. Plus it was a shooting script, so it was much more focused on camera tricks. The story had no set ups, it just launched right into the second act, and the dialogue, while witty, was hard to follow. So, we rolled up our sleeves, and dug in.

Now when you stripped away 95% of the shit, there was actually a beautiful story in there. Almost a modern day Zorba the Greek. It was one of those heartfelt coming of age movies that was just so fucking honest it made me get all misty. And I'm usually allergic to those types of films.

So this was his problem. Essentially, it was a first draft, albeit a good idea inside a crappy first draft--but he'd anticipated having more time to rewrite it in preproduction. Instead his directorial responsibilities took front seat, as well as all the diplomatic wheels that need to be *ahem* "greased" over in Bucharest. Unfortunately, as the dreaded start date grew closer, the script didn't get better with age.

He begged me to help him rewrite it. And when I mean rewrite it, I mean a page one rewrite. New characters, new plot, all building upon the foundation we agreed worked. But we had to thread this entirely new idea through the scenes he'd filmed for the trailer, some of which, in both our opinion, were straight out of a bad Lifetime TV Movie.

Needless to say, it was chaotic. But now imagine doing this with six thousand miles between us because the cost of flying me out there and putting me up would've cost them a day of shooting. Since we're both at about the same career point [and I'm not in the WGA], I was able to convince my reps that it would be a good idea to accept a job that pays peanuts and ties me up for at least two weeks.

Now we're both rabid Mac fans, so through the wonders of iSight and iChat we were able to bridge the distance relatively painlessly. I've owned one of these beautiful gadgets for almost two years, but in that entire time I've used it for probably ten hours total. Like the George Foreman Grill, the iSight was one of those things I needed to have but ended out rarely using. Ironically, he was given one for Christmas but hadn't broken the plastic on it. It was time to put our geek, and the Romanian broadband, to the test.

An occasional dropped connection aside, we were able to work together in real time while he balanced a dozen different tasks, the occasional buxom assistant bringing him espresso and the constant background chatter of a foreign language [he speaks two, I speak zero]. Unfortunately, we never could get Final Draft to let us CollaboWrite so we ended out having to mash two files together every couple of hours. Still, it was the most impressive use of this technology I've been a part of so far. In some respects, we really are living in a Jetson World.

I quickly learned that since I was working for him, I needed to work at his pace. And his pace was insane. How he operates with absolute clarity on four hours of sleep, I have no idea.

So...in ten days, including the aforementioned 31 hour stretch, we wrote three drafts. One first draft and two heavy rewrites. We averaged about thirty pages a day. I consumed more Redbull, Rock*Star, and espresso than I've ever drank over a month, and at one point I actually needed a Xanax to take the edge off the wretched caffeine high I'd induced.

I absolutely do not recommend this routine to anyone.

I felt like Dirk Diggler during his descent into drug addiction in Boogie Nights. After the initial massive brain storm, I was so behind on my sleep that even seven hours felt like five minutes. My thought process became a scattered mine field, and I honestly felt the fingers of insanity reaching into my brain. I am now convinced that sleep is the brains way of mentally defragmenting your thoughts and memories for more efficient usage.

*Mental Note: when you giggle at something that's clearly not funny, and your girlfriend repeatedly asks: "Are you sure you're okay?", it's probably best to put on the strapped jacket for a little bit of down time.

When it was all said and done, we finished that twisted stretch with what we both believe to be not just a good script, but a great movie. The experience was the truest feeling of collaboration I've ever had. After the learning curve of how he operates, and how I operate, it was like we mind-melded. In the past, working with others, I've often had to explain things [never a good sign], but 4 out of 5 times, he just got it. After we went our separate ways, I literally slept through the daylight hours this Tuesday, and when I woke up shortly before it became Wednesday, I found myself a bit sad that the job was done.

For now.

Would I do it again?

Not for a million dollars.

Coward? Perhaps...

2005-06-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

This site started out a few months back as an experiment in anonymity. Since then, it's grown to the point that my statcounter now shows the 5,000 hit mark. In the last month, it's averaged 534 unique visitors a day. Most of which don't seem to stay longer than a few seconds, but still, I consider that a minor triumph. Not enough to consider quitting the screenwriting gig and supplement my income through Google AdSense, but it feels nice to see some return visitors, and I hope others get a little bit of entertainment out of this blog.

So...

To those of you who keep emailing me asking:

Who Am I?
Am I For Real?
Why should I trust you?

Or the several, 'colorful' variations there of, allow me to retort.

Who Am I?

A lowly screenwriter doing his best to climb the rungs. As previously mentioned, I've had NO spec sales, and as of today, no credits to my name. For the last year I have been, and continue to be, paid for a variety of assignments and rewrites. So far I've worked for only a few real assholes, and a lot of great people.

I would like that to continue. Working for the great people, that is. Not the assholes.

As such, I don't name names, including myself. My feeling is that there's two sides to every story, and I'm sure that some of the people I've been frustrated with have been just as frustrated with me.

Am I For Real?

Yes.

And I'm doing pretty well, thank you.

Why Should I Trust You?

You shouldn't. I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. I ask others, my reps, or I just feel out the situation and adapt on the fly. I make mistakes. A lot of them. And when I do, I'll be sure to let you know. Likewise, when I figure out something that works for me, I'll let you know as well.

That said, I don't have any advice to give that some of the others who post here wouldn't be just as qualified to answer. If you do have a question, from now on, I'll post it for discussion unless it's something that I have direct experience with and am qualified to answer.

Geek Rant!

2005-05-31T00:36:00.000-07:00

Warning, moderate Nerdery follows! Turn back now or be assimilated.

It's no secret that I'm a pretty big geek to the average person. While true geeks would probably call me a half geek, I prefer to think of myself as a functioning geek. I'm not front row at E3 or C.E.S. or W.W.D.C., but I catch the summary on G4TV, just to feed the need to know when the next add on pack for Doom 3 is coming out, or what must-have iToy Steve Jobs unveils that I simply cannot live without.

Two things at the top of my geek To-Do list have been to:
1) Blanket my house in WiFi
2) Check out a VoIP phone.

I'm glad to say that I've accomplished the two, and I'm sad to say that neither of them have lived up to my expectations. Lets start with the WiFi.

Three Apple Airport Extremes and one Apple Airport Express hooked up to a Linksys BEFSR41 v.3 router with 4 port switch, all acting as one great big web of WiFi, and my connections go down more often than a Windows 95 box. I should be sipping iced coffee in the sun and instead of tucked away in a dark corner, on the laptop, ten feet away from the office where the bloody desktop is. That's the whole point of a laptop. Apple is the grand poobah when it comes to simple, intuitive, and easy to use products. I'm a huge fan of them. Yet how come my old $60 D-Link DI-624 can give my neighbor half my bandwidth, while $700 worth of Steve Job's best can't even get a decent signal on the stereo while we BBQ? My triumphant Geek Moment was *going* to be streaming iTunes via Air Tunes over the WiFi network to the outdoor stereo so my guests could enjoy my wide range of Yanni tracks while I overcooked the steak and undercooked the shrimp.

Instead it came out a garbled mess of dropped connections and scratchy tracks, so we did it the analog way.

Burnt CD's and played them through the CD player.

How 1997.

My second geek moment began about a month ago when I bought a Packet8 DTA-310 VoIP adapter from Fry's after hearing Leo Laporte rave about them on KFI. Now if you've never heard about VoIP, or have, but think it's some sort of banned sex act, here's a quick rundown of what it does.

Basically, it's an adapter you connect to your DSL/Cable/T1 line that allows you to make and receive voice calls over the internet with a standard telephone. What's the catch? Well, you pay a monthly charge. In my case, $20 a month for unlimited calling within the U.S. Still, that's much much much much much much much much much less than my monthly phone bill is, and since I hate the phone companies only slightly less than I hate the Culver City parking cops, any chance to stick it to 'em is a good chance.

Plus, and this is kind of cool, you can hook the adapter up to ANY DSL line in the U.S. [with a router] and it'll be up and running within minutes. If I'm at my Summer Palace in Spokane, and someone calls me on my L.A. number, it'll ring in Spokane. At least, according to their website.

The truth is, the product worked as advertised, and I was more or less, happy with it.

Until I started making a lot of calls.

Then, I noticed a slight hiss in the background. As if at any moment Samara might come on and whisper: "Seven Days" into my ear. A little tweaking on the router, open up the DMZ, and the hiss is gone.

But something else reared its ugly head. An echo. Like I was talking into a hallway where my doppleganger muttered my exact words a half second afterwards. As is often the case with voices I hear, it was inaudible to others. Still, it was bugging me, and making it quite a pain to use the phone. A week after bragging to every man woman and child within three degrees of separation that "I'd gone VoIP", I was suddenly embarrassed to pick up the phone on my new nifty number for fear of driving myself to violence and punting the phone through the office window.

Finally, customer support somehow magically eliminated the gnawingly insane echo, but like all bad things, something else took its place.

A delay.

And not just any delay, but a delay of about a half second to two seconds. I confirmed this by phoning myself and having my girlfriend run around the house going: "Can you hear me now" as loud as possible so I could hear it both in person and over the phone. Unfortunately, taking any sort of conference call while there's such a delay makes the conversation a bit odd. While I was responding as quick as I could to questions and ideas, on the other end I could tell the parties involved thought I was constantly cutting them off. It sounded like one of those old shipboard phones where you end every sentence with "Over" so the man in the middle can properly switch the direction. The natural flow of high speed Hollywood conversation was interrupted by my not-quite-there-yet technological jump, and I ended out just phoning in from the land line I'd hoped to have cancelled.

The final verdict: Not quite there yet. At least, not for me.

Ironically, I worked in a call center doing customer support at one point, and whenever someone insisted that something was broken, even though it clearly was not, and they were simply using it wrong ["that's not a cup holder, it's a CD drive"], we would take their product in for a few days, just to make them feel better, and write: CODE ID-10-T on the ticket.

ID-10-T
ID10T
IDIOT

I think my bad technology karma is cashing itself in all at once.

Next time:
-How to blow up a producers email server with Final Drafts brilliant PDF compression scheme.
-Tips for turning your liquid cooled Pentium 3.2ghz game machine into a $2000 Fish Tank.
-10 best ways NOT to mount your Apple Cinema display.

The MBH Effect

2005-05-30T22:59:00.000-07:00

No, it's not a new drug, or the effect of.

It's the sudden spike in traffic I've been getting, courtesy of fellow scribe, geek, and all around great guy David Anaxagoras. While it's not the Slashdot Effect, it's certainly the most traffic I've seen in this humble little corner of the 'net since opening this blog.

You have to be a rocket scientist...

2005-05-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

...to configure wireless networks!

Is it too much to ask that three airport extreme base stations and one airport express are able to give me a hundred feet of decent WiFi?

A whole sunday spent trying to blanket the house in WiFi and all I've managed to do is amuse the dog and frighten the neighbors.

It's not like I'm trying to penetrate brick or adamantium. It's fucking lathe and plaster!

Go Wide!

2005-05-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

I have an ongoing list of goals that I try to accomplish to push my career forward as a writer and semi-functioning member of society. Every few months I review it, cross items off, add items, and make slight changes based upon new information that I've learned. Things like: Introduce Katie Holmes to mom and dad will be modified given recent events, and other goals may suddenly arise. Such as: check out Scientology.

I reviewed my past goal lists this morning over a cup of nuclear coffee and a bagel, when I realized that it's been over a year since a pretty large event happened. My agents took my first script out *wide* last year.

It wasn't my FIRST script. Far from it. But it was my first script to land me a pair of ace agents, and to make a small but significant dent in Fortress Hollywood. And while it wasn't the High Sixes against a Mil-Five sale I'd hoped for, it was a pretty big moment in my career; something I'm really only able to comprehend in hindsight.

For the non-screenwriting readers, *going wide* is when someone, usually an agency, takes your screenplay and literally blasts the town with it in an effort to create a bit of Jonestown hysteria and get you top dollar for your latest literary opus. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't. As much as the idea of paying off your $20,000 credit card debts in one fell swoop from the riches you suddenly acquire may tempt you, don't give into the Dark Side of Delusion like I did. The primary goal¹ of going wide, according to my agents and manager that handled it, is to introduce you to the Town. Or the Town to you. A bidding war between two studios would be nice, but rarely happens.

Here's a time line of events prior, during, and following my first screenplay "going wide". Keep in mind that no one experience is ever the same, and the Devil's in the details. Like great sex, this was a bit of a blur, and by the end I was left exhausted yet eager to do it again.

Unlike sex, I had no idea what to expect before hand. Just a few vague grins from my more professional friends, and the occasional image of myself, in 2006 saying: ...and I'd like to thank the Academy.

Prologue
Worked my ass of with my manager rewriting an old spec. My manager slipped it to a few agents to test the waters. The reaction was slow at first, but once they read it they didn't stop calling.

Act One

Met with junior agents and agents at virtually all the major agencies, minus Gersh. They never responded. Fuckers...
Met with agents at several medium sized agencies, as well as a few lone gunman types running their own Jerry Maguire solo shop.
Decided on going with one of the major agencies based upon the agents enthusiasm, track record, game plan, and sensibilities. It was a very hard decision.
Made some last minute changes, and planned for it to go out wide on Monday afternoon of the following week.
Submitted my own list of ideal people who I thought the script would good for. Never heard back from Scorsese
The agents and assistants began to make phone calls pitching the script to their contacts, and slipping it to a few key allies. I already had a fan at a major production company, so they put some good words in on the tracking boards.
Threw up a few dozen times.

Act Two

Monday.
Script was emailed & sent around town to fifty-odd places. I sat by the phone in a bathrobe and chainsmoked Lucky Strikes while mumbling to myself. Didn't sleep at all.

Tuesday
Tons of requests based upon positive coverage and word of mouth. Still sat by the phone but occasionally moved to eat or shower. Read lots of screenplays by other writers but don't remember a single word of them.
Wednesday
A huge response. We had every studio covered by at least one producer who had a deal there, and in some cases, by several who were teaming up like Gondor and Rohan before the Black Gates of Mordor. The horses were jockeying for position and I was in a state of Euphoria. My agents assistant and I were now on a first name basis. My manager was calling me every other hour to update me. I called up Ferarri of Beverly Hills and asked if they took cash up front. Bought a GameCube just to keep myself from going nuts. A few passes here and there.
Thursday
Shot down at some of the studios. Too esoteric for Warner Bros. Too violent for Disney. Some negative coverage popped up on the tracking boards and suddenly there was a lot of silence. By that evening we'd had about a dozen passes, a few at the studio level, and quite a few at the producer level. "Never-the-less!" my agent screamed, donning his armor. "We're still very much alive!" I was already 1/3rd of the way through Metroid: Prime on the GameCube.
Friday
My telephone was eerily quiet that afternoon. Around mid day I braved a call to my manager and was told:"We took some big hits today. Sony passed. Paramount passed. New Line is taking it over the weekend and Dreamworks doesn't want anything to do with you." I went out for a rollerblade, put in some face time with the girlfriend who thought I had fallen off the planet, and tried to pretend that I wasn't in a delicate state of emotional imbalance. Turned my cellphone off and waited until around six to return home. A few messages from my agents. "We took some big hits today. But it's still very much alive. We'll find out more on monday. Have a great weekend!" as they sped off in their Ferrari's towards Vegas.
The Weekend
Longest one ever. Beat Metroid: Prime. Saw a movie.
I think.
Monday
8 am and I'm already by the phone, pretending to work, but it's not working. Get the call later that day. "They passed." "Who passed?" "Pretty much everyone." "Oh..." "Well it's still alive at a few places, but it looks like our next bet is to get an attachment and go back to the places that really like it." "Cool, when?" "Couple of months maybe...'round the Halloween." "Oh..." "In the mean time, we've got you on the books for some meetings." "Meetings? What for?" "Because a lot of awesome people really went to bat for you. And they want to meet you. Besides, this is where you'll make some great fans, and plus, might even get an assignment out of it. How are you looking for the month of May?" "Well, I can make some time, I guess." "Good. We've got thirty confirmed so far, maybe more. Get some rest. We'll talk later."

Act Three

The Month of May
One meeting after the next, sometimes three a day. All in all, forty eight general meetings. Some went over as well as could be imagined, while others stunk like a fart in church. Twelve of them led to formal pitches for open assignments. Another three led to various stages of developing a story. One went down a strange road towards video game development, and another towards a graphic novel.

So what's my point? Well, I'm not terribly sure, but I can say this. All the work I've done since then, every assignment small or large [I haven't really had any *HUGE* assignment²], has been as a direct result from that one spec going out last year and the meetings that followed.

So while my goal to: SELL SPEC FOR MIL-FIVE was not met, another more realistic goal emerged as a result.

GET AN ASSIGNMENT.

^{1 To most working screenwriters, this is pretty much preaching to the choir, since the vast majority of their income won't be from spec sales. But one year ago, my idea of the Choir was a New York Stock Exchange style pit where scripts are bought and sold like penny stocks.}
^{2 Still waiting for the Lawyers to ink the deal on the Lord of the Rings prequels.}

Development, part Trois

2005-05-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I hit a titanium wall in the development process with all the grit and grace of a bug on a windshield. I found myself not only writing, but outlining, thinking, speaking, and dreaming an entirely different story than I'd started out to write. It was the first genuine Charlie Kaufman moment I've ever had. I literally HATED the story I was supposed to write. Not to mention that I had to dodge the occasional call from the producers & Creative Exec who wanted to hear what the status was and "If I was having any problems, they're always there to help me."

Yeah, lot of help you guys had been, I bitterly mumbled to myself as they drove down Topanga Canyon in their Masarati being rich and powerful.

What started out as a cool and unique concept that no one has done, had evolved into a hodge-podge of ideas tossed together like some story-Gumbo of half-cliches and incoherent motivations. And here I am, left to turn it into some sort of brilliant horror film that not only scared people, but didn't fall apart like a house of cards when a characters motivation was changed.

After mucho stress, half an ulcer, several nights of binge drinking, and the occasional emotional melt down in public (there's nothing like seeing a grown man sob on Third Street Promenade), I realized something.

This is why the job is so fucking hard. And this is why, when it's done well, it pays well.

I've known this, I mean, years and years of saying: "no thanks, can't go out and skinny dip with five single bi-sexual redheads, must finish screenplay" was hard work.

But this, this tortured limbo between writers block and mediocrity, this was gut wrenching. I felt like I was letting everyone down. My agents, who got me in the door. My manager, my personal John Keaton, screaming: "Carpe Diem!". The C.E. who fought for me, an unknown, a hack who bumbled his pitch like Rain Man without Wapner.

Somewhere, a village was missing its idiot.

And I was that village.

Then, out of the blue, something else hit me. A sort of horrible epiphany, like the twist ending of Angelheart.

I was the master of my own demise.

FLASHBACK TO: the dozen or so creative meetings I'd had with the producers and creative exec on the project. They'd throw an idea out, I'd write it down and try to figure a way to make it work. Always eager to please, to be a writer they'd say: "Hey, lets work with that guy again, he was uber-nice."

But not all the ideas they had worked. And some of them blatantly sabotaged the story. It's not like my ideas were gems, in fact, I'm utterly embarrassed by a six page section that seems ripped out of Hellraiser 2. Still, they called me out when they didn't work. They played ball, I didn't.

I should have raised issue with those ideas then and there in the room. Should I have battled them out? Called them "Idiots!" while throwing a stapler? Keyed their cars and blamed it on an intern? No, not at all.

But by not contributing to the ebb and flow of the spitball process, by not explaining why something didn't work, or may have to be tweaked, I was, in a bizarre sense, validating that it would work. That mental priest that says: "Speak now, or forever hold your peace" was off with an Altar Boy, and I was left there, wed to a tangle of plot threads that amounted to the worlds biggest ball of yarn. My mental image of the story and their mental image had, at some point, filed for divorce and were now eating the children. It was the difference between 2001 and Plane 9 From Outer Space, and I was writing Plan 9.

So here I am, a few weeks to deadline, and I call them up, get everyone on the phone at the same time, and explain my problem. They ordered Sushi, I brought them Calamari. They were both from the sea, but not quite the same thing.

I'm expecting: rage.
I'm expecting: fury.
I'm expecting: You're Fired!

Instead, after careful explanation, aided by 2 pages of notes, there's a long silence on the other end. Finally: "Okay, let's roll up our sleeves and dig in, say...next monday?"

BEAT

"Monday works."

CUT TO: Next Monday. The best story meeting I'd ever had. Ideas were tossed out and shot down. Feelings were hurt. Names were called. Cigarettes were smoked and assistants scurried for shelter like vampires at dawn. I talked, they talked, we all talked and two hours later, we'd dug up the faulty pipes, poured a new foundation, and I was off to build a new house. This was how it was supposed to work. This is how it should have worked. In all my eagerness to please, to play the bookish, sycophant writer, I'd ignored one of the basic tenants of this business. It may be a collaborative medium, but I wasn't the one collaborating. I was the story expert in the room, and I wasn't doing my job by explaining why something wouldn't work, and then trying to figure a way to make it work.

These producers and C.E. rock.

I walked off into the Santa Monica sunset with a smile on my face and a tune on my lips. I haven't had been blocked since.

I turned in my draft this week.

And fuckin' A.

I like it a lot.

Treat it like a job, and it is a job.

2005-05-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

I hate giving advice, because frankly I'm about as qualified to speak on screenwriting with any sort of authority as a mechanic is to give me story notes on my musical horror movie. Yet, something that drives me up the wall is the vast amount of starry eyed dreamers that seem to think a three hour session of pretending to write on your laptop in Starbucks while mentally undressing the cute barista with the pierced eyebrow somehow makes them a screenwriter.

Congratulations, you wrote one draft in six months. You equals screenwriter. At least to yourself.

Okay, enough venom for one day.

It's no secret that I'm still teetering in the grey nether between what some would call being a fully professional screenwriter, and someone who has gotten a few hard earned breaks. As such, my friends tend to run the spectrum of Hollywood employment. Some are still struggling a few years after film school, while others are earning a sizable paycheck and have very recognizable credits to their name. Yet there's one thing that the majority of us have in common, and that's the way we approach our writing routine. Sure, there's a few with that starry eyed belief that they'll be the one discovered beneath a rock by a lucky producer or agent who just stumbles upon their brilliance and can't wait to usher them into the inner circles of Hollywood. But for the most part, friends with these ideas are openly mocked and tend to be driven off with stones and pitchforks on a regular basis.

The bottom line is this: most writers I know, professionals or soon-to-be, treat their writing routine like a job long before it ever becomes a paying job.

So what's my routine? Every day is different, depending on who I'm working for, what I'm working on, but there's generally one constant, and that is my ass. It's parked on a chair in front of my desk for over eight hours a day. After all, I firmly believe that if you treat your writing like a hobby, then that's all it's going to be.

Etch that behind your eyelids because that's about the only piece of advice I'm qualified to give.

Okay, here's MY routine.

8-9am
Sit down, check email, surf the web, procrastinate.

9-10am
Warm up, review the previous days work, get a second cup of coffee.

10-Noon
Edit, make changes to the previous days work, return phone calls, start writing.

noon-midafternoon
Write Write Write, break to eat if I remember.

3'ish-5pm
More writing, occasional phone call, but mostly it's just the sound of fingers on the keyboard.

5pm-6pm
Phone call time. Usually this is where I'll address any issues I have with the days writing, places I'm stumped, notes I'm struggling to execute. Sometimes this bleeds over into...

6pm-8pm
Magic hour. Or a last ditch race to preserve my social life. Usually the brunt of the days battles lead up to this two hour period because I absolutely need to address the issues discussed while they're still hot in my head. I'm not Rain Man, so I can't remember every detail unless it's in front of me and I'm actively trying to untangle it. And if I don't at least partially untangle it, I'll be sitting there at one a.m., wide eyed and thinking: "How do I get the dog into the mineshaft when the door's already been closed by the zombies?"

8pm and beyond
This is the Dark Zone, not a time I like to write during, but often find myself forced to if on a deadline. Otherwise, I'll close down the Powerbook, save backups to my iPod, and try to either catch a flick, hang out with friends, head to the gym, or simply sit in a corner and mutter to myself. If I'm feeling ultra-geeky, I'll play some video games, but most of the time I try to put in some analog face time with the Real World. Having a girlfriend helps, but beware of too much time in the Dark Zone, Girlfriends rarely tend to like that place.

As you can see, that breaks down to almost twelve hours of work during the day. Well, twelve hours of billable work if I were a lawyer, but let's be truthful, it's just as often less as it is more.

Now, I've been doing this routine with minor variations for almost two years. Far longer than I've been able to convince someone to pay me to do this routine. Yet, it's only BECAUSE of this routine that I built up the skill base and drive as a writer to be able to convince someone to pay me to do this.

That's what we call 'round these parts a Catch-22.

So how does one manage to work for a year without getting paid a single penny? My suggestion: improvise. Work odd jobs and quit often. Save up. Live humbly. Eschew the consumer lifestyle. Buy in bulk. Go to Matinees, not Midnight Premieres. Get a coffee or tea instead of that Venti Soy Mocha. Don't have a girlfriend and don't get her pregnant. Be a cheap bastard. Hit up happy hour instead of Friday Night. Steal Wi-Fi or Cable from the neighbors. Give blood. Or sperm. Or eggs.

Basically, do whatever you need to do to preserve the glue that keeps your writing togother: the day to day grind of being at a desk from nine-to-five, or eight-to-eight, doing what you should be doing.

Writing.

Sorry About That.

2005-05-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

After an uber-quick three week quasi-research vacation around the states and parts of Europe I'm finally back and writing full time, and I promise, will have quite a few posts in the coming days. Overall, the Vacation-Research-Trip was a blast, and I had brought my trusty Powerbook, my iPod photo, Treo 650 with a bunch of SIM cards, and a bazillion packs of American Spirit cigarettes, all with the intention of getting some top quality writing done as I took various Trains, Planes, Taxis and Boats around Old Europe.

Alas, that idea was jettisoned in the first 72 hours when I discovered my self-designed itinerary barely factored in enough time for sleep, and lets face it, there's nothing more pretentious than an american screenwriter sipping top notch 'spresso in some French cafe as he works on his "masterpiece". I had promised myself to post a few updates while on the road, or even figure out how to "future post", but in the whirlwind of last second traveling, I managed to forget to do it (along with a host of other things, like shave, and bring electrical outlet adapters).

I never thought I'd say it, but it's good to be back to Los Angeles, where the drivers are at least half-sane.

Life, The Universe, and Everything...Part Two

2005-04-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

Go see it.

It's great.

In Other News...

2005-04-29T09:36:00.000-07:00

According to This supposed BBC news site^*, there's an outbreak of "Zombism" in a remote corner of Cambodia.

I, for one, welcome our new zombie overlords.

^*Please note the sketchy IP Address. I've mirrored a JPEG of the page in case it goes down.

Life, The Universe, and Everything...

2005-04-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

Warning: Sickeningly Longwinded Nostalgic Geek Rant follows.

Like many writers I know, I'm a big geek.

Not just because I gravitate towards the latest functional techno-gadget, like my trusty Treo 650 and iPod full of Audible.com audiobooks; not because I spend too much to much time on Fark or Kingdom of Loathing; and certainly not because I can program pretty much any VCR or Universal Remote in five minutes flat.

No, that's merely technical proficiency which is only a few steps away from a job at Best Buy.

I'm a geek because, in essence, I love to learn. Whether it's my lame attempt at HTML, another language, travelling to a far off place, or finding out something amazing about our own little world. A geek, in my personal dictionary, is someone who never stops learning because they love the challenge, but more importantly, at their core, they find this world so full of amazing things that they simply must explore it. Most Geeks I know were never beat up or hung from the flagpole by their underwear during Highschool, and some even played football or Lacrosse. Yet, most never embraced their full geek potential either, operating in sub-geek mode until around college or afterward; as if they'd been a half-geek, a geek caterpillar waiting until it was a socially safe time become a full blown Geek. At the heart of it, I think, there was a repressed fear of appearing too interested in something, too excited, and too knowledgeable for fear of being labeled a card carrying member of the Pocket Protector Posse.

Anyway...

Two or Three years ago, a friend lent me The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on audio book for a drive I was making from L.A. to Boulder. Now, I'd heard of this book, and even vaguely recall at some point there being a video game, but outside that menacing green ball with no eyes and a hideous tongue, I had little desire to read a subgenre of a genre I found taxing 94.5% of the time. To me, Humor and Science Fiction had been synonymous with a guy in a skin tight leotard at a Star Trek convention giggling like a sugared up eight year old as he says: "So this Klingon walks into a bar..."

I wasn't too thrilled, but I promised my friend I'd listen to it on the drive if all else failed. I'm fairly certain he muttered "42" under his breath with a grin, but it could have just been my medication wearing off.

"Whatever," I shrugged, then promptly chugged a Red Bull and bitterly spent next eight hours of my Friday evening staring at tail lights going 15-20 mph on the I-15 from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

" border="1">Somewhere past Vegas around two in the morning Art Bell's tales of UFO sightings and IntraDimensional Demons grew boring, and I popped The Hitchhikers Guide into the tape deck. A cheerful British accent followed which sounded about as appealing at that time as chewing razorblades, and I promised myself that if it wasn't damn good, I was going to re-listen to either Fight Club or The Beach or simply put the car in cruise control and catch a quick nap. After all, much of the drive is a straight line, so if I simply held the steering wheel between my knees and kept a solid 70 mph, I could probably get a few hours of rest before I drove into the side of the Rockie Mountains. I ended up listening to that cheerful British voice chirp on as I drove through the desert in darkness, occasionally glancing up at the arm of the Milky Way high above, or the lonely glow of a passing car or truck in an otherwise empty landscape.

Six or seven hours later, the sun had come up and I had just come back from a journey to the end of the universe with an ear to ear grin. I had actually pulled over at a rest stop to listen to the last tape, rather than attempt to navigate Utah. I was floored. For once, I felt like someone else Got Me, like someone else not only understood the vast level of absurdity all around us, but the overwhelming beauty to this universe as well. From the sheer perfection of the Norwegian Fjords, to the mindless bureaucracy that results in Arthur's house being demolished contrasted with, on a larger scale, the destruction of earth to make way for a Galactic Super Highway, or the improbability of a sperm whales first and final thirty seconds of thought, and most of all, to the sheer joy of exploring something new and all the bumps bruises and bad poetry that ensue.

This weekend The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy opens after twenty years in development hell. Let's say that with the respect it deserves.

Twenty.

Years.

And here I am, nowhere near as clever or as articulate on the page as the late Douglas Adams, and I'm bitching about months of my own foray into development Hell? And this weekend, one of the quintessential Geek masterpieces opens nationwide without it's author in attendance. I can think of little in the literary world that is more sad and absurd than that, and most of those that I can involve either a suicide in a river or, like Grady Tripp in Wonder Boys, watching the only copy of ones literary opus flutter away in a gust of wind.

Not since the new Star Wars movies, or the amazing Lord of the Rings films have I had such high hopes for a film. I've declined a few early screenings for this movie because I want to financially support Spyglass Entertainment and all the others involved with my overpriced movie ticket, as a small way of thanking their investment in something I loved, and even if it doesn't turn out as good as I'd hoped I'm prepared for that, because at least it turned out.

But most of all, I want to watch it with a live audience who paid to see it, who knocked back a Pan Galactic Gargleblaster, grabbed their towel, and embraced their inner Geek.

I have a feeling there'll be a few in attendance.

My Gift, To You...Mr. Know-It-All...

2005-04-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

To:

The Fucktard behind the desk who insists that every horror movie MUST have someone die in the first five minutes. I sincerely hope you wake up to find this staring at you.

You can't Produce shit other than excuses.
Can't afford WGA minimum? Sell that fucking Lexus and buy a Prius.
If ain't broke, quit trying to fix it.
Leave the story telling to me and stop pretending you have a single original thought in your head, and yes, I saw that episode of the Twilight Zone too.

In Summary: Get Fucked.

Sincerely,

Somone-Who's-NOT-Going-To-Be-Working-With-You.

Development, Pt. 2

2005-04-24T17:05:00.000-07:00

A weekend spent unraveling and rewriting a treatment that I'm trying to rescue from the Ninth Circle of Development Hell, and this is about how I feel right now.

'Nuff said.

Our Lycanthropic Friends

2005-04-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of the modern evolution of the werewolf.

While movies like American Werewolf in London and The Howling hold a near and dear place in my heart, I'm glad that the cinematic portrayl of the lycanthropic form has become more of a fusion between Man and Wolf, and not Man becoming Wolf.

About the only things Van Helsing had going for it, beside Kate Beckinsale in a corset, were the werewolves. Same thing with Underworld, only this time we got Kate Beckinsale in leather. Or even the low budget and rather goofy Dog Soldiers, which showed as little of the werewolves as possible. But no Kate Beckinsale.

I know some purists out there are crying "Blasphemy" as they long for the days of Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolfman, or the snarling pig-beast on all fours running amok in Piccadilly Circus, but to me something that's as big as a bear, as fast as a tiger, can leap like a monkey, and can kill in an instant is pretty much the pinnacle of terror.

But that's just me.

Status Update!

2005-04-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to David Anaxagoras over at Man Bytes Hollywood for the inspiration and code to utilize the fun little "Progress Bars" I've added to this site. I'll do my best to keep them current, especially now that this site seems to be drawing a little bit of traffic from some other great sites. How I ended up in their List-o-Links, I haven't a clue.

Inspiration for a sick and twisted mind

2005-04-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

A friend met up with me today for espresso and cigarettes to discuss my latest horror spec she just finished reading. After a brief run-down of what she loved and what she loathed, she paused, took a drag off her cigarette, and and said: "You have the most twisted mind of anyone I've ever met."

My first reaction was to take offense, which she sensed and immediately backtracked, adding: "I'm not saying you're psychotic. More like...you don't mind going to those dark, uncomfortable places of the mind where real nightmares dwell."

[Okay, so she didn't say it exactly like that but I'm a writer, not a secretary]

It took a second to realize that this was an enormous compliment. She followed by asking: "So where do these ideas come from?"

I couldn't really answer then because I was still gushing from the glowing review and subsequent compliment to form an articulate answer. Plus she's hot and smart and that always intimidates me, even tho' I've known her for years. Anywho, it got me thinking: where do the ideas come from?

Frankly, In horror, or at least the kind of horror that I enjoy, I write what scares the living shit out of me. Not a black cat jumping out of a bush when I pass by, but a concept, an idea, and ultimately an image that at a more visceral, spiritual level really gets beneath my skin.

Of course many of those things change over the years, but there's a few things that are constant, such as:

Abandoned Places with a History ["Don't worry, those murders were YEARS ago...they've put in new carpets and all."].
Old Music coming from radios that aren't plugged in.
Doors that are chained, boarded, and bolted shut.
Clowns or dolls with porcelain faces.
Crying coming from between the walls.
Rabid dogs.
The illogical.
Little Kids with Hollow Eyes.
Going insane.
Going insane and not knowing it.
Windchimes when there's no wind.
Creaky floorboards.
Feeling like someone is looking over your shoulder even when you're alone.
Dead nurses with scalpels.
Dust covered books.
Being locked in a trunk.
Hitchhikers.
Being buried alive.
Old Grandfather Clocks.
Waking up and finding a room full of old people dressed in clothes from the 1920's staring at you and smiling.

Each of these items conjours up a mental image connected with an emotion that, ultimately, when I'm alone at night, makes me keep the lights on. Sometimes it's a matter of stringing the mental images together coming up with a relevant plot, while other times it's just the thought I might turn a corner and find a little girl with a porcelain face sitting in the corner and and singing to herself.

Horror is about the unknown, the unexplainable, the irrational, and ultimately, it's about that fear you felt as a kid when your day time back yard suddenly became a haven for monsters after dark.