Development Hell

R.I.P. Development Hell

2008-06-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

I just can't seem to get into blogging anymore. I've been writing a lot lately - more than ever - but a blog is not the right place for my output. I've also been playing bass five nights a week in three different bands. And the more time I spend playing music, the less I want to spend time online.

Maybe after a six month break, I'll return?
Maybe I won't. I suspect I'm done with blogging.

I'll leave the content up until Friday. There are a couple of posts I need to move to another server because I want to maintain access to them -- interviews I did with Gordy Hoffman and my roundup of my time at Ken Levine's sitcom room seminar, etc.

Seven Songs Meme

2008-06-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

Tagged by WC Dixon.

Also, check out Denis McGrath's interesting list.

"List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they�??re not any good, but they must be songs you�??re really enjoying now."

1. "That's What Love Will Make You Do" performed by Jerry Garcia Band

The band I'm in has been trying to get this song right for months, a song we all love but we can't seem to play well. Here's Jerry Garcia's classic take:

This is the way we've been playing it but the drummer and I can't seem to find a pocket.

I find this particular clip hard to watch because Jerry Garcia is so burnt out. His guitar playing still screams but his vocals are strained and he looks tired. Two years away from death. It evokes the same response I get when I watch Let's Get Lost, the Chet Baker documentary.

2. "That's What Love Will Make You Do" performed by Gov't Mule

Or, do we maybe take a nod from Gov't Mule and rock it?

I love what Andy Hess does with the bass line, and Warren Haynes always excellent vocals. This is the way I want to play the song.

When I describe the band I'm in to musicians who haven't heard us, I say "bad Gov't Mule" and they get it. It's not a slam on us, but rather a reflection of 4 hours of practice a week vs. 40 hours.

3. "Hey Pretty" by Poe

An old friend sent me a cassette tape of the Poe concept album Haunted when he learned I had an emotionally tortuous relationship with my biological father.

Here's the (soft porn) music video for the single that was deemed too racy to air on MTV:

After the death of their difficult father, Poe and her brother found a box of cassette tapes that were audio letters to them, recorded by their father throughout their lives. Poe uses clips from the recordings throughout the album, which as a whole is stunningly conceived of and produced, and it perplexes me that it was a commercial failure.

Even more perplexing is the dismissive Rolling Stone review by Neva Chonin. She gave Haunted the album 2 stars, but the average user rating is 4 1/2 stars. WTF? User average ratings usually only differ from a critic's by 1/2 star, or maybe one full star. But 2 1/2? Could Ms. Chonin have repressed daddy issues?

The bass player, Mike Elizondo, is top notch. I researched him online and turns out he's a producer/bassist better known for his work with Enimen, Dr. Dre and Fiona Apple. Here, he doesn't just play root notes or rhythm, but comes up with hooky grooves that brings each song to life. This past month, I've been playing bass for a Poe-like singer/songwriter and have had to come up with bass lines for her original songs. My bass teacher and I listened to a couple of songs from Haunted and came up with lines inspired by Mike Elizondo's. They work.

4. "Screenwriter's Blues" by Soul Coughing

A classic:

Love the upright bass.

5. "Nevertheless" by Brian Jonestown Massacre

If memory serves correctly, "Nevertheless" plays over the splash screen of the DVD version of the rockumentary DiG! and to me is like the trademark song for Brian Jonestown Massacre.

I've seen the band like 5 or 6 times live. When they're on, when Anton is having a good night, they're one of the tightest live bands you'll ever see. And if they're not on, they're a trainwreck. But on a good night, like the above clip from Paris 2006, Collin Hegna calmly holds down the bass line, the drummer Daniel Allaire goes wild, and the two guitarists - Ricky Maymi and Frankie Teardrop - do their awesome guitar thing while Anton emotes on his hollow body.

Bonus: if you want to talk to them, the band members are approachable, often mingling in the audience while opening bands play and smoking cigarettes outside the venue after the show.

6. "It's Too Late" performed by Derek and the Dominos

I just finished reading Clapton: The Autobiography. I loved the detail he went into about his early bands, and how excited he was to travel to the United States and meet American musicians. Here he is with legend Johnny Cash, who joins him on stage halfway through the clip.

Check out Carl Perkins' toupee!

And how about the bass player standing behind the drummer. Actually, this would be great. Yes, the audience can't really see you, but if I were to stand behind the drummer, I would be able to keep excellent time. If this were filmed in today's world, the bass player would be standing next to Eric, and that's not necessarily a good thing, except for maybe getting the bass player laid.

7. "Cities" by the Talking Heads

My favorite band in recent years is the Talking Heads, which my old guitar teacher calls "white kids trying to play funk."

"Cities" is my favorite song of 2008, both the original and the Phish cover. This particular performance took place in 1980, three years before they shot the seminal Stop Making Sense. I was like 11 when they filmed this and wouldn't be aware of them for years.

They're so young. They're so talented. They're so on fire in this video. Tina Weymouth is bone thin and blonde, and is playing bass in a white summer dress. I love that, it's so sexy. I think by this point she'd married the drummer, Chris Frantz, a guy my old guitar teacher calls "the father of 4/4 time."

I can understand hooking up with the drummer.

*****

I'm tagging only one person, my music buddy Manuel.

Trip Report: Athens, Georgia

2008-06-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

I've been so occupied with my projects that I haven't taken the time to write about the trip I made to the South over Memorial Day weekend. I visited Josh at his new home in Athens, Georgia. We hadn't seen each other since his last visit to SF in February, so a meet and hang out was definitely overdue.

Five years ago, I traveled often for work and spent a summer flying back and forth between Nashville and Dallas. That summer, I discovered that I love heat and humidity together. I had previously thought I didn't like heat as I spent many summers in Las Vegas and found them unbearable. But what I discovered is that I don't like dry heat. I do, however, like swampy humid heat. So the weather in Athens was perfect for me. Warm and humid during the day and pleasant at night, since it was still only the end of May.

Mostly, Josh and I spent downtime together at the posh residence he's renting outside of Athens from one of the band members who recently moved away.

We both needed a break - the spring tour he was on was stressful and busy, and he didn't sleep more than 4 hours at a time for like 6 weeks. I needed a break from writing and especially from playing bass. When I got on the plane, the fingers on my right hand had blisters under callouses from five nights of band practice.

The trip out was not without some drama. Six hours before I was to leave for the airport, I got a call from Josh (3AM EST) who reported that there was a snake loose in the house. He had to call animal control in the middle of the night to capture it. I'm totally petrified of snakes. In the past, this probably would have prompted me to cancel my trip and visit him somewhere less snakey on tour. But I thought - what are the chances that a 2nd snake will get in? And decided to risk it. (Never saw one.)

On Memorial Day, we walked around the University of Georgia campus.

It's enormous. I've spent a lot of time on college campuses and this was maybe the largest one. In the center, a 90,000+ person football stadium. Not into football, but still - Wow.

We also ate at Waffle House. Josh is not much of a fan (he's a foodie), but he indulged me anyway. I started frequenting Waffle Houses in Nashville and became intrigued by the sort of down and out people who work at them. I even outlined a screenplay about an Atlanta-based Waffle House waitress who attempts to improve herself and get a better job, but no matter what she does, she keeps having to return to WH. I may still write it one day.

The next day, we ate at Weaver D's. Athens-based REM used Weaver D's slogan as a title for one of their albums, "Automatic for the People." And now I know why. I had fried chicken and squash casserole (served by Weaver D himself) that was so tasty and well prepared that it almost made me cry. I told Mr. D that I hadn't had fried chicken that good since my grandmother passed away.

The last night I was there, Josh had his good friend over for a bbq, a guy who had a couple days off from his jet setting role as a manager of some sort for the band Hot Chip. Both Josh and his friend have a lot of great road stories and we spent hours on the porch drinking beer and shooting the shit the way you can only in the South. In the middle of the evening, some neighbors stopped by to fish in the backyard pond and we watched them catch (and release) bass.

I came home from Athens relaxed and refreshed. For the past two weeks, I've been writing 4-6 hours and practicing bass (and guitar again) 2-6 hours each day. In July, I will begin looking for a high tech day gig. So this is the final push of my lay off-turned-writing sabbatical, maybe the last month where music and writing are my full-time job, at least for awhile, and I'm making the most of it. I hoping to finish the first draft of the non-fiction project by the end of the month, which looks very possible right now.

That Bitch Resistance

2008-05-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

Right now, I'm in Vegas house sitting for my mother while she's on a long trip, working on a tricky writing project. I always write well here, due to a combination of a large, empty house with a view, a semi-social cat and not wanting to drive in Las Vegas traffic. It also helps that the bass and the band are back in San Francisco.

Weekend before last, I had the pleasure of meeting Kristen Havens and her boyfriend Keisuke when they were in town for a conference. We ate dinner at my favorite restaurant La Mediterranee and walked through the Lower Haight at night. We talked about writing and Ventura Boulevard and Keisuke's acting work and lots of other random topics.

In Kristen's summary of her trip, she notes that they walked over the Golden Gate Bridge and she found it...not exactly fun. I agree. I noted in a comment that I ran over it three times last fall during boot camp. I finally stopped participating in the bridge runs when I realized it was cold, loud (from the cars) and the surface is way too hard (concrete on metal). The photo above is one I took with my cell phone at 6:59AM last November. It was raining.

Two days after I met Kristen, I met Billy Mernit. He was in town promoting his novel Imagine Me and You. He gave a 1 1/2 hour overview of romantic comedy at the Academy of Art University where one of my good friends teaches. Strangely, my friend knows three people that know Billy independently, so I'm sure it was fun - and weird - for Billy to hang out with all of us in one room. The students loved the talk and Billy sold lots of books.

I finished Billy's novel last night and thought it was well done, a hopeful tale for hopeless romantics. As I was reading the final chapter last night, I noted that the epiphany the main character Jordan has at the end of his 7-beat adventure is one that dovetails with an insight Julie Gray made yesterday in a post titled We are Miners:

All character flaws are rooted in some kind psychic wound. A lot like life, right? Something messed with your character's head earlier in life. But here's the thing - just like us 3-d people, characters will do anything rather than just plain face that psychic wound. Often, we can't even really articulate it. But as a screenwriter, you get to be the Universe (g-d, Yahweh, Spirit...) You get to deal the psychic wound, you get to decide in what way your character acts that wound up via flaw and you get to decide what the real NEED of your character is.

I don't want to write a spoiler-filled review of the novel, and to say more about how I think that passage applies to the novel would be to do that. But I can say that Jordan's epiphany shed light on my own predicament.

Over and over again, I've been told in notes on my screenplays that I don't go deep enough with my characters, that I just start to get somewhere interesting with them only to run off on another storyline or distraction. (Apparently I'm not alone - Billy said in his talk that character development is the area most scripts are weakest.) In short, my characters don't face their psychic wounds. And most of the time, their fatal flaws, the internal forces that sabotage them when they go for what they want, aren't clearly defined.

Could it be that I myself have not faced my own personal psychic wounds? Perhaps my own avoidance of emotional pain keeps me from being able to fully push my characters into their own hell (and back out)?

I don't know. I don't think all good writers are high-functioning, aware people. Some are; others may have the ability to put characters through paces they personally avoid. I think it's different for each writer. However, I believe that I'm the type who needs to do some interior digging and face some things I'd rather not look at to get to the next level in my writing.

To that end, I've been working on my own personal black hole. It's a project I've started and stopped many times during the past 7 years. I won't go into details about the content until it's finished, but will note the resistance I feel when I dig into it. Overpowering. I become tired and lethargic. One minute, I'm working on it. The next minute, I wake up to find myself organizing my sock drawer like an alcoholic coming out of a black out and finding themselves in bed with a girl they don't remember meeting. Except in my case, it's socks. And laundry. And dishes. And spotless hardwood floors.

I've worked through resistance enough times to recognize it and distinguish it from disinterest. When I was in my 20s, I entered a PhD program in linguistics on a generous fellowship. After two years in the program, it became clear to me that I did not want to be a professor or a researcher in linguistics. I found the subject dry and boring, and my fellow linguists to be pretentious nutcases who never got over the fact they could talk. (I did, listening to them.) I dropped out with a terminal MA and never looked back. I became disinterested and let myself off the hook. I have not regretted that decision, even though many people worried I would.

Resistance is different animal. It wants to trick you into thinking you don't want to complete the task at hand out of disinterest. But when you try to drop it, you can't. It feels sort of like breaking up with that guy you should have never let go of when you were 21. There's a pain inside from unfinished work, and that pain doesn't let you move on until you face it. Damn it.

5 Sites I Like

2008-04-23T10:06:00.001-07:00

Kristen tagged me for meme - name 5 sites you like. I assume they mean non-blogging sites? Okay, here goes...

1. allmusic. I've spent a lot of time on this site, reading band bios and perusing discographies. Want to find out who influenced Galaxie 500? Never heard of Galaxie 500? Now you have! It's the ultimate procrastination site for a music fan.

2. Napster. Napster has saved me a ton of money. For $15 a month, I can listen to 80% of the music floating around out there. Many times, I've gone to band practice and bit hit with - "Let's try Gonna Move by Paul Pena." Huh? Who's Paul Pena? But within 10 minutes of arriving home from practice, I've read all about Paul Pena (they're plugged into allmusic) and listened to "Gonna Move" (a full track, not a preview) and have started to learn it. I can also put full tracks on my mp3 player and listen to them as many times as I want. I think Rhapsody is like this also. Way better than iTunes if you have to cycle through lots of music quickly.

Napster is also good for finding multiple versions of the same song. The other night, the band decided we're going to cover "Taxman" by the Beatles. I had to buy Revolver to get the original version, but found Stevie Ray Vaughn and Bill Wyman's versions on Napster. Our version will be somewhere in between. We're not into performing faithful covers or imitating the affectations of the original artist. Some of my favorite covers of all time (Phish's cover of "Cities" by the Talking Heads, "Hey Pocky Way" covered by the String Cheese Incident) diverge greatly from the originals, at least rhythmically.

3. Last.fm. Another music site. It tracks everything I listen to in Winamp and makes neat charts and graphs. After you've listened to a healthy number of tracks, the site lists out "neighbours" - 50 people who have similar taste in music to you. By perusing my neighbours' lists, I've been tipped off to non-commercial music that I may have missed otherwise. Most of my neighbours are male and in their early 20s. I don't know if that's a reflection of Last.fm's user population, or my particular taste in music ;-)

4. Rotten Tomatoes. I can lose myself for hours on this website, reading reviews and conflicting reviews and what some Mormon reporter in Salt Lake City thought of Grandma's Boy

If you're a video game geek and/or a stoner, "Grandma's Boy" isn't a comedy �?? it's a documentary.

Heh heh... I've met the guy who reads reviews and decide if they're rotten or fresh. He's a case.

5. Craigslist. It's part of my life. Using it, I found my last two apartments, my beloved Geddy Lee Jazz Bass (bought from the drummer of local band LoveLikeFire), suffered through a band audition, sold numerous concert tix (for Brian Jonestown Massacre, Phil Lesh and Galactic) and bought tix (Gov't Mule and Willie Nelson), answered personal ads (never again), cruised for vacation apartments out of state, scored a couple of $2000 rugs (with pads) for $500 from a rich guy in Pacific Heights and found the perfect drum set for my mother on craigslist in Vegas.

Meme rules:

1. Must be clean, no R rated material.
2. Tell 5 people.
3. Only 5 links allowed.
4. Link back to person who tagged you.

You can link to business, favorite, affiliate sites, etc.

Now I have to tag people who will actually follow through. Hmmm. Laura, is that so wrong?, Manuel, David and Joshua James (after you return from your bloggin' break).

Nick Cave Returns

2008-04-11T08:56:00.001-07:00

I heard a song on KFOG yesterday that caused me to go to the station's website and look at the "just played" list. (Radio station music inspires me to do that maybe once a year...)

It was the title track from Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Kind of feels like later David Bowie.

Highly recommended.

Video Editing Update

2008-04-10T21:59:00.000-07:00

I finally learned how to use non-linear video editing software...

I had tried to figure it out last January but after a couple of hours of not understanding how to isolate sections of a large file, I gave up. In early March, defeated, I bought a book on Amazon called Classroom in a Book: Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0. I had flipped through it at a bookstore and it looked broken down and thorough, like the material I received back in the late 90s when I was a programmer and took a bunch of week-long Oracle classes.

I forgot about the book until last week.

The people in the blues workshop I was in paid a professional videographer to film our final performance at Cafe Du Nord on Sunday March 30th. I told them I would edit the video and distribute DVDs if they would split the cost of the videographer.

They had no idea I'd never done it before :-)

Never under estimate the motivating power of 5 people waiting for you to send out DVDs of their performance. Tuesday morning, a couple days after our performance, I received the first email - "When will the DVDs be done?" I decided it was time to see if I could even import the footage. I put the tape in my video camera and tried to capture it. It took a good 2 or 3 hours of fiddling to realize I had to turn the setting from HD to DV to match the format of the tape. And another hour and a consult with the manual to find out the camera had to be disconnected from the computer to make the change. (Why?!?) But I made progress. The next day, Wednesday, I successfully imported the footage and could watch it.

Now to edit.

I had to focus on some other things, so I told the group that I'd work on it "over the weekend" which would let me stall for another few days. Saturday, I did other things. Sunday, at 1PM, I sat down at the computer with Classroom in a Book and a big cup of coffee. I did the first lesson. In the middle of the second lesson, something clicked in my brain and I got it. The interface made sense. I abandoned the book and returned the band footage. 3 short hours later, the video was edited and all the tracks for the DVD marked. I went to yoga.

Monday morning, I exported the audio track. But when I listened to it in headphones, I found it was off - left and right were unbalanced. Something the videographer had said kicked in, "There are two audio tracks that you'll have to mix." Uh-oh. I returned to the project and found the audio mixer. An hour later, I exported the audio and it sounded right. I cut that large file into tracks and made mp3s and posted them so the group could listen while they waited for me to make the DVDs. I also made little flash previews, like this:

(Click to play - takes a minute to download.)

Next, I had to make DVDs. Never done that before either. I ran to Best Buy, bought a DVD writer, some blank DVDs and rushed home. But I had to leave for appointments, so couldn't set it up until late Monday night. At 11:30PM, I plugged the drive in, installed the software and burned a DVD directly from Premiere Pro. Thirty minutes later, I had a DVD that worked on my old DVD player with nice menus, a funny background image and background audio.

When I finally decide to learn something, it usually turns out to be easier than I feared it would be. Before last week, video editing mystified me and felt like a black art accessible only to the really smart and clever. After last week, I'm reminded of a secret that technical people don't want you to know. Here it is:

It's not that hard.

It's just a matter of sitting down and opening the manual.

And having 5 people waiting for you to finish.

Diablo's Blog - Read It

2008-04-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hey! No, I guess I'm not done with her yet. Maybe when my life gets more exciting, I'll return to posting about something other than playing bass or Diablo Cody. In the meantime, check this out:

Diablo posted this cool photo on her MySpace blog. [Click it for a full-size version.] I've decided to add Diablo to my sidebar. Right now, she's reporting from the location shoot of JENNIFER'S BODY. It's fun to read her impressions. Check it out.

Doing It For Money

2008-03-31T23:56:00.003-07:00

I've now made more money playing music than I have screenwriting.

A friend of the band I'm in paid us a nice sum to play her 40th birthday party this past Saturday night for 100 guests. We took it seriously - practiced our 25-song set list (2 sets) for weeks, rented a van to haul equipment, brought our own PA and paid another friend to do our sound engineering so we didn't have to worry about levels while playing. And it went well. We made few mistakes and the guests were dancing most of the time.

The hard part was not the performance part. It was the loading equipment part. We loaded the van at 4PM, unloaded at 5PM, set up and did sound check from 5:30 to 7:30PM.

We all took off until 9:30PM when we reconvened and walked into the party just after they'd finished dinner. We immediately took the stage and didn't finish up until after midnight. After a ten-minute break, we had to break down the gear and load the van. We didn't finish doing that until 1:30AM. I got home at 2AM and fell asleep on the couch, with the lights on and the TV blaring.

Sunday night, I performed again with my blues workshop. Blue Bear rented Cafe Du Nord this session, so we all got a good idea of what it's like to play a "pro" stage. All I can say is - hot lights. I felt like I was in a tanning booth the whole time I was on stage. Very uncomfortable. We had a few rough patches in our set, but overall, it was okay. We were better at the Saloon the week before. The best part of doing the workshop was connecting with Johnny Nitro and hitting it off. He's the nicest, most generous pro musician I've met yet in San Francisco and he took a personal interest in me, unlike most Blue Bear instructors who just focus on vocalists and guitarists.

Tonight I stayed home (for the first time in 10 days) and processed the giant wave file produced by our digital recording gizmo Saturday night. I cut it into individual songs and posted some of them on our MySpace page. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Tomorrow is April Fool's Day. Let me state loud and clear - I can play piano, I can play any woodwind instrument you put in front of me (including oboe), I can play guitar and I can even play trumpet - but I absolutely cannot sing. So tomorrow I'm gonna tell the guys in the band I want a microphone and want to sing. And I'd like to start by doing the lead vocals on Dear Mr. Fantasy. They're gonna freak. I can already feel their phones ring as they call each other. "Dude. She can't sing. What the fuck are we gonna do?"

Heh heh...

An Open Letter to Diablo Cody

2008-03-28T17:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Diablo,

I'm sorry, but this open letter will be my last post that is even tangentially about you.

Each time I praise your formidable writing skills, some film school grad goes off the rails and claims that it was in fact stripping that made you famous, and not first and foremost your writing ability and unique personality. Check out the comments section of Mystery Man's post The Diablo Cody Backlash for a grand display of it. I hope you find it as amusing as we do.

The most recent reaction was a humdinger. A new-ish blogger in LA and I both interviewed the same screenwriter. She posted her interview a couple weeks before I posted mine. I read her interview and thought it was sorta well done, so I formed a follow up question based on one of her questions and linked back to her. However, instead of thanking me for a bit of traffic (which she could use), the blogger felt that I had totally misquoted her in reference to you. In response, she didn't comment on my post and confront me directly with her criticism like a seasoned blogger would have done, someone like bad-ass blogging buddy Joshua James. Rather, she posted a windy, defensive rant on her own blog. Therefore, I will call her "Windtalking LA" from this point forward. And I won't link, because she's doesn't like that.

Here are some of the highlights from her bizarre post, and my responses. I hope you laugh too, Oscar in hand.

Cheers,

Christina

xxxxx

Windtalker's 2nd comment to the only comment I posted:

Christina,
Keep the comments coming!

Uh, I actually only posted the one comment in response to your rant. I guess you want to make it look like I posted multiple times and that you're rejecting my comments because I'm flaming you. Nice. What are you? 40 going on 16?

This is my blog ;-) so there won't be any flame-outs and it will more than likely be a one-sided debate. Ie -- mine! hahahaha.

No worries. I have my own blog and can host my own one-sided discussion.

Yes, I'm a writer and it's a little blog and I get a little kerfluffled... when you call up someone I interviewed just to misquote me and then edit their response to make your own point! LOL. So color me sensitive, if you wish, I don't care! I felt the need to clarify.

Yes, you've made it abundantly clear that you're more than just a little self-involved ;-) Seriously, I interviewed that someone last year at this time and we started working on this interview two months ago, so no, I didn't call him up just to misquote you. This may come as a surprise, Windtalker, but I'd never even heard of your little blog until last week.

Her [Diablo Cody] memoir and her blog were about stripping!

Ms. Cody's blog and memoir were about her take on stripping. That's where you film school grads get hung up. I've looked - there are some lame blogs and crass memoirs out there written by strippers. What made Diablo's work rise above the crap is her original voice and unique POV. Furthermore, JUNO wasn't even about stripping. It was about one of the most mundane topics ever, teenage pregnancy, but she managed to make it fresh. On top of that, I bet Diablo Cody is fun to work with and probably meets her deadlines.

BUT and this is the big but that seems to have been an issue that's arisen with many female screenwriters I know... if she had sent out JUNO's logline to agents, the traditional way many writers do, everyone doubts she would've gotten representation, meetings, a sale, a film made, and an Oscar.

So? The take away here is to try non-traditional routes to get your work out there, not to point out that had she followed the rules, she might be bragging about being a runner up in some screenwriting contest instead of taking home an Oscar.

That's the beauty of being a writer -- it doesn't matter what you do for your day job or how you look or your age... it's all in the work, the script.

Bullshit. It's like any other job - it's about doing good work and being able to work with people and being able to take criticism without taking it personally (nudge, nudge) and being able to pitch and small talk producers and being able to network with peers and probably ten other things.

Don't take your looks for granted. Film is a visual medium and if you're a writer with some personal style, you're gonna stand out of the pack. It doesn't mean you need to try to look artificially young, but you do need to polish what you have. I've met more than a few female screenwriters who have let themselves go and I'm like - Jesus, get a make over and work out a bit. The writers that are pulled together always get more attention. It may not be fair, but it's reality. But reality isn't something you seem to grok, Windtalking LA.

Gordy Hoffman Redux

2008-03-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

Last year around this time, I interviewed Gordy Hoffman. We covered topics like how he got into screenwriting, his background in the theater, his favorite movie of 2006, his experience directing A COAT OF SNOW and of course, the BlueCat Screenplay Competition. Towards the end of the interview, he brought up the future of BlueCat, noting that he intended to "go beyond" the contest in 2007. Indeed, he followed through on that with the addition of a lab and weekend workshops. We pick up at that point...

1. You've done a number of workshops now in different locations. The ten-page workshop focuses on ten pages from a script, but not necessarily the first ten pages. Do most people bring the first 10 pages? (I find those are the hardest pages for me to write.) What's the best advice you can give writers about their first ten pages?

GH: Yes, most people bring their first ten pages, but others have brought other sections. They both work in this format. The best advice I can give about the first ten pages is not to think they are the most important pages. They are all important. So relax, and give it a whirl.

2. You have a more intensive workshop that's limited to five attendees. Scripts are circulated a month before the workshop to allow everyone to read and analyze the other attendees' scripts. It sounds intense! Any surprises when you've done this workshop?

GH: I think the most surprising thing about these longer workshops is how everyone's challenges all come together around a few principles: honesty and originality.

3. And the lab. Are you done selecting the winners? When will it be held? Do you anticipate the lab will be an annual event?

GH: I am actually announcing the last few winners in a day or so, and the Lab will be held in May. We are very excited. Right now, we don't know if it will be coming back next year------check back and see if I survive this one! Kidding aside, we are very excited about bring our three writers to LA to work with us.

4. I noticed on the website that you only received three video pitches for the lab. BlueCat decided to split the prize money for that category amongst the three entrants. That's so generous! In the future, will you keep the category and educate the community on how to create a video pitch, or ditch it?

GH: I would love to have a pitch contest every year, but I'm not sure if people feel comfortable with the video format. I definitely need to do one of my own and get it out there. When people see how badly I do, maybe they will get motivated to try it out for themselves. :)

5. What was your favorite film of 2007? And, why?

GH: I liked a few films last year, but I would have to say THERE WILL BE BLOOD, as I think it was a milestone in the history of our art form. It was turning point for Anderson, and we will look back to it as a gateway into the later chapters of his life's work.

6. When I interviewed you last year, I raised the "where are the female screenwriters?" question and this year, voila, four of the ten nominees were women. I was especially excited to see that LARS AND THE REAL GIRL and THE SAVAGES were both nominated, pictures that may have not gone wide but were expertly written, directed and acted. And RATATOUILLE, an animated picture, was also amazing. But I imagine the competition was just between JUNO and MICHAEL CLAYTON. Thoughts?

GH: I thought MICHAEL CLAYTON was expertly written, but it was very special for Diablo Cody to win. This was very important.

7. Last year's BlueCat winner, Ana Lily Amirpour, played bass and sang in a San Francisco-based indie band before focusing on screenwriting. Is this common? I.e., when you learn the backgrounds of BlueCat finalists and winners, do you often find that they've been successful in another creative field?

GH: Not necessarily, but they do seem to be proficient in other fields, this is not a surprise. Sometimes it's a sport! But it all adds to making for a great storyteller.

8. One thing that stood out about Diablo Cody's work was her incredible voice on the page. Let's say you're teaching an intro to screenwriting course. How do you define an abstract concept like "voice" for new writers?

GH: "Voice" is what you care about. Write about what you're passionate about, what is deeply meaningful and important to you as a person, and you will find yourself writing in an entirely individual way, and that is your voice.

9. What fallout from the writer's strike do you see? Are studios and independent producers still buying projects? Or is the town in reshuffling mode? It seems like this is a good time for amateur screenwriters to get their work out there via contests. I read in your interview with bluestocking that the winner of BlueCat is a script that's either making your laugh or cry while you read it. When is the last time a comedy won the contest?

GH: If anything, the strike reminded everyone how important the writer is, and I'll leave it at that. :)

A comedy won in 2005, and was made into a movie which Sony is releasing this summer: BALLS OUT: The Gary Houseman Story.

10. The final deadline for the BlueCat Screenplay Competition is around the corner - April 1st, 2008. What percentage of screenplays come in the final two days of the contest submission period?

GH: 25-35%!!

11. In 2007, you added the weekend workshops and the lab. Any new developments for BlueCat in 2008? I imagine you're probably near max output...

GH: We're looking to produce our 2007 winner, THE STONES, which should be very exciting. And we're also heading over to London for our first international workshop. Soon, we're also going to start releasing ASK BLUECAT videos, which will be posted on our website, answering submitted questions on screenwriting. Lots of stuff!

12. Have you ever thought about writing a screenwriting book?

GH: I am asked often about writing a book-------maybe I should!!

And with that, I'll leave you with Part 1 of Gordy's interview of last year's winner, Ana Lily Amirpour.

Don't forget to enter BlueCat if you're sitting on a good script. The deadline is April 1st at MIDNIGHT. I'm sending one in this year :-)

Easter in San Francisco

2008-03-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

Last night, the blues band workshop I've been in opened for our leader Johnny Nitro at the Saloon in North Beach. We're really lucky to get two public performances as the other workshop bands only get one shot on stage, and then for a generous audience consisting of family and friends. There were less than five friends of the band in last night's audience - the mother of our 16-year-old guitarist, my BFF Keith and his friend Scott, and the drummer's partner. The rest of the bar was filled with crusty regulars, middle-aged tourists, drunk hipsters and according to Keith, more than a few random characters that looked like they'd just stepped out of an episode of Twin Peaks. Bald guys in sunglasses and $1000 suits, women in cocktail dresses, some semi-homeless, a few fresh-faced college students and a punk girl with cherry red hair. It was an incongruous mix. Halfway through our set, Keith told Scott, "All we need in here now is a midget." And on cue, a little person walked into the bar. Later, I told Keith that it looked like much of our audience had been drunk since noon. Keith replied, "Noon? Try 2003."

The set:

Pride and Joy - Stevie Ray Vaughn
The Thrill is Gone - BB King
Nobody Knows When You're Down and Out - Derek and the Dominos
Tightrope - Stevie Ray Vaughn
Me and My Woman - Shuggie Otis
Stormy Monday - Etta James version
Love Me So - local artist Kevin Russell
Trouble in Mind - Freddie King
Game of Love - local artist Lara Price
So Excited - BB King
Cissy Strut - the Meters

People danced. Of course they danced, they were drunk. It's the only time I can really stand drunk people - when I'm playing and they're dancing. We got through each song without any major missteps, faded live (twice) and generally nailed the set. Afterwards, the bass player for Johnny's band complimented the chick rhythm section, told me we were the best part of the band and that's why people were dancing. (I think they were dancing because the room's collective BAC was like .10 or higher.) Keith told me that our best song was the instrumental Cissy Strut. We had planned to drop it for our shorter set next week but I'm thinking maybe we'll keep it and drop one of the slow songs.

After I packed up, I bought my friends a round of drinks (cheap gin and tonics that were mostly gin with a splash of tonic on top - I stuck to beer) and we watched Johnny and his band the Doorslammers play. Wow. Like take it up ten notches in ability and energy. I did not have my camera with me and was sorry for that, because within ten minutes, Johnny's wife Silvia was walking the bar while playing her tenor sax. She had the audience completely engaged, moving drinks as she approached. Johnny kept shouting, "Happy Easter!"

This will go down in my journal as the weirdest Easter ever.

Is YouTube Killing Hollywood?

2008-03-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

According to Michael Wolff in his March 2008 Vanity Fair article The Plot Sickens, both YouTube and reality TV shows are changing the rules of the Hollywood game.

My first reading of the article inspired equal parts fear and amusement. Fear, because what if he's right? What if conventional feature-length films are going away? What if my beloved sitcom fix a la Two and a Half Men is at the end of its life? And amusement, because the article itself is sort of haphazardly put together. He starts off talking about writing the great American screenplay and then subtlety segues into a discussion about network television. Huh? Two different businesses, Mr. Wolff. But both mainstream "Hollywood" in his eyes, so whatever.

Towards the latter part of the article, he notes the following:

What happens if the value of the story keeps going down?

And it is going down. Cheap production technology, no-barrier-to-entry distribution, and a Niagara of "product" (65,000 new videos are uploaded on YouTube daily) mean the entire Hollywood story-development complex is now in a daily competition with do-it-yourself writers.

Hollywood product itself is remade, reduced to clips, bites, fractals, and mixes. Sitting through an entire feature film more and more feels like an unreasonable commitment. (We use DVRs to fast-forward, to pause, to hold for some other time - anything not to have to watch something from beginning to end.) The narrative is disposable.

First off, I don't think the value of story is going down. If anything, it may be going up. Hence, the need for audiences to satisfy story needs outside of standard network television (and studio movies) in the form of graphic novels, video games, YouTube videos, pay-cable networks and even blogs. Never before have the barriers for entry been lower for talented writers to be discovered by mainstream Hollywood. A former stripper - discovered through her blog - just won an Oscar. That's like a woman in the Oval Office.

Second, I don't think the hour-long drama, half-hour sitcom or two-hour movie will be going away anytime soon. I don't find my attention waning when watching most films. Okay, it waned a bit when I watched The Heartbreak Kid and I couldn't watch it all at once, but that's because it was standard studio schlock. Most of my friends use their DVRs so they can save programming for when they won't be interrupted - to view late at night or Saturday morning - and also to skip commercials.

I've been reading Anatomy of Story by John Truby. In the 3rd chapter, he describes a basic, seven-step story structure (Weakness and need, Desire, Opponent, Plan, Battle, Self-Revelation and New equilibrium) similar to many other story structure breakdowns out there. But that's not what I want to highlight. Rather, it's this:

The seven steps are not arbitrarily imposed from without... they are based on human action. They are the steps that any human being must work through to solve a life problem.

Right there, he hits something. Years ago, I wondered - why the fascination with stories? Why do I read novels? Why do I watch movies? Why do I get excited waiting for the next episode of my favorite sitcom? Why do I give a rat's ass whether Jim and Pam end up together? Why did I make a point of seeing Blades of Glory on opening weekend? (Studio schlock that worked, I might add.)

It's because in the movie theater (or a TV series, or a novel), I get to live by proxy and see how characters solve (or don't solve) their life problems. [Most people just know this, but I always have to have a concrete explanation for why I do something.] So I don't think Mr. Wolff is right. I don't think narrative is disposable. As long as I have psychological issues, I'll be watching movies about people with psychological issues and they're going to be generally structured the way Truby and others describe.

Another bizarre claim:

But... nobody, writers or executives, remotely has an idea about how to do what they do, how to apply their trade - creating these elaborate, hoary, three-act or four-act divided-at-the-midpoint stories - in a new form with a new means of distribution for an audience that seems more and more to want some radically different thing.

Tell that to Shakespeare. If somebody told me that "Othello - The Video Game" was just around the corner, I wouldn't be surprised. It'd be like, "Oh yeah, Shakespeare, video game, some swords. Cool." We're as likely to get rid of basic, dramatic structure as we are to rid the world of yoga.

I did a little research on Mr. Wolff and found that he is the author of Burn Rate, a book detailing his experience in Silicon Valley when he ran a start up called Magellan. (I remember the company.) I'll have to get the book. My off-the-cuff read of him is that he was probably so scarred by his Silicon Valley experience that he's now unnecessarily cynical about changes afoot in Hwood. I too was cynical after (over-)working 4 years in Silicon Valley, so much so that I turned down an interview at Google, pre-IPO, because I thought the company would bomb. One of my bigger mistakes.

I understand cynicism, and Mr. Wolff has a big case of it. He's too burnt to see the opportunity in the changing landscape. Some of my friends have reported to me that there is some upset-ness down in Los Angeles, i.e., people getting laid off of production companies and agencies and the like, but I doubt it's the end of feature films.

That Time Of The Year

2008-03-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

Mmmmm.

Cheap too.

I feel like I should add more content.

Okay, so last night I dreamt that my car wasn't parked in my apartment building's garage like it normally is, but rather around the park I live on. It was street cleaning day and I was in my car, sleeping. I woke up right after the street sweeper went by and people were reparking their cars. There was a parking ticket on my windshield. I rolled down my window and snatched it. They didn't fine me for the typical $40 street cleaning violation, but rather a $13 fine for sleeping in my car. (Doesn't exist.) Hmmm.

Hard Candy != Juno

2008-03-15T23:33:00.000-07:00

Whoa.

That Ellen Page is quite an actor. I didn't know what to expect from Hard Candy, but I didn't expect castration! Great film, but see at your own risk. Easier on women than men, I imagine.

Sick

2008-03-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

I have the constitution of a horse, but that's not always a good thing. About two weeks ago, I came down with a sore throat and felt a little under the weather. I still went to boot camp, band practice, etc. But when I'd try to run, or towards the end of the 2nd hour of band practice, I'd feel really fatigued. Meanwhile, after about five days of me being sick, people around me started dropping like flies - most of the band, some of the boot camp women, the sixteen year old from band workshop, some folks from the screenwriting group, etc. They were like flat-out, in bed, fever, etc. I still felt under the weather, but not enough to stay home. However, I got the uneasy feeling that I was giving the flu to everyone around me and decided I better cut back on my activities. I wrote one of the Zoetrope editors and told her I couldn't come to our reading party on Wednesday because I'd been sick 10 days and she's like, "As a Future Mother in America, I think you should go to the doctor! Now!" I read that and thought, "Wow - I have insurance. I could go to the doctor..." It'd never occurred to me that that was an option.

So I went today. Day 12 of the illness. Turns out I probably have walking pneumonia. She said bed rest. Fluids. And I'm supposed to take some pills if I don't stop coughing up blood this weekend. I finally admitted to myself that I feel like I've been run over by a truck. I even started writing a list of people my mother should call if I die soon. Always a to-do list...

I really like living alone EXCEPT when I'm sick. If a few days pass and you smell something funny, be sure to call my mother.

Concept is King: Why Juno Worked

2008-03-07T13:59:00.000-08:00

I've been watching the Diablo Cody backlash with great amusement. Check out the comments section of Mystery Man's recent post The Diablo Cody Backlash for a good display of it.

Many comments express the same sentiment, that Juno was a good screenplay, but not great, and certainly not Oscar-worthy.

Well, then, why did it win? Simply because Diablo Cody's every man's dream, i.e., a stripper without emotional baggage? No, if it were just that, she would have ended up the wife of an actor.

Folks, it really does come down to the writing. Juno had:

A strong voice. Love it or hate it, Ms. Cody has one.

Great characters. Juno was full of characters that actors wanted to play. Ellen Page said she read the script and immediately wanted the part. The primary buyers of spec screenplays are actors and producers, not writers or critics. So it doesn't really matter what you, fellow writer, think.

Sound structure. It opened and bam, you're in the story.

But note that there were two other movies in 2007 with the same basic structure. Waitress and Knocked Up were also about unwanted pregnancies; all three movies opened with a pregnancy test and ended with a birth. So what made Juno stand out of the pack?

It was High Concept.

Huh? You're probably scratching your head right now. There are a bunch of definitions of High Concept and they differ a bit, but most entail that the project be easy to understand by a lot of people and contain a hook that makes it unique. I maintain that Juno fits this definition.

A couple of months ago, Blake Snyder asked his readers to try to come up with a logline for Juno. It only took me a minute:

Plucky pregnant teen from broken family arrives at crossroads when seemingly perfect adoptive parents decide to divorce.

That's the thrust of the story. Putting a pregnant teenager who has been abandoned by her mother in the position of handing over a baby to a couple whose marriage hits the skids as she watches? Boom! High stakes and conflict in a primal situation everyone can immediately understand. Add in a dry, comedic voice and well-developed characters, and it was a shoe-in for an Oscar. Forget Diablo. The Academy - and the public - love movies with inter-generational family conflict. I maintain that Juno has more in common with Terms of Endearment than it does with, let's say, a tonally similar teen comedy like Napoleon Dynamite.

It's the comedic tone that's tripping people up. Juno is a high-concept picture wearing low-concept clothes, just like Diablo Cody is a calculating achiever dolled up in stripper garb.

Don't be fooled by appearances.

Coming Soon: The Foot Fist Way

2008-03-05T11:48:00.001-08:00

I guess this was a hit at Sundance a year ago (?), so for those of you in the know, the existence of this little indie film is probably old news. But it's new news to me. Check out the positive review in Variety. And the website. But most of all, watch the awesome trailer.

EDIT: They took down the trailer on YouTube, probably because it's soooo Rated R. Go to the website to watch it.

Anybody else excited? Release date appears to be May 30th, 2008.

Movie Quote Quiz

2008-02-29T13:05:00.000-08:00

Kristen tagged me.

Look up 15 of your favorite films on IMDb and take a quote from each. List them below. When someone guesses the quote correctly, cross it off the list. NO CHEATING. [I didn't get any of Kristen's - mine range from super easy to a couple of toughies.]

Leave a comment with your answers.

The Quotes: 15 of My Favorite Films

It's funny, because in my family nobody ever committed suicide, nobody... this was just not a middle-class alternative, you know? I - my mother was too busy running the boiled chicken through the deflavorizing machine to think about shooting herself or anything.
~~Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!~~
Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
~~Trent, the beautiful babies don't work the midnight to six shift on a Wednesday. This is like the skank shift.~~
No, no, that's too limited... nobody in Hollywood wants to work with you either. I can't even set you up for a commercial. You played a *tomato* for 30 seconds - they went a half a day over schedule because you wouldn't sit down.
~~When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions. Why am I me, and why not you?~~
~~This is a red wine glass. Can I have my water in a water glass?~~
~~The pen is open and that's a mean-looking bronc. Our next contender is Miss Doralee Rhodes. Let's see how long it takes her to hogtie this sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.~~
~~Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but it's on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you'll miss.~~
~~I mean, not many girls in contemporary American society today would give their underwear to help a geek like me.~~
~~Self control? That's funny coming from the guy that slept with every Terrakian slave and the Moon Princess on the show.~~
~~I like you. But I don't like the way you say with your face all scrunched up, "you're French, aren't you?" And then I don't like how you say, with your eyes all squinty, "all men are bastards."~~
Yeah, well you know, nine dollar beer night. From 40 Year Old Virgin. I love this line. I hate those places that charge $9 for a beer. I tend the frequent the places with $3 Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Charlie, attempt to be cool. Jesus, people. This is from Something Wild. One of my favorite lines. The black cashier in a mini-mart says this to Charlie when he starts taking off his clothes in the middle of the store. Heh heh...
~~Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.~~

I tag Joshua James, R.A. Porter and Manuel.

Catching Dengue Fever

2008-02-26T14:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, my bandmate called to tell me the band Dengue Fever was about to be interviewed on NPR. In the evening, another friend emailed and said her husband had caught the interview, and now wants to the see the band. (I had asked them to go with me to a DF concert last year sometime.) I found the interview online and listened to it, and decided wow - this is worth pimping.

I became aware of Dengue Fever about two years ago when my brother made me listen to their first album at his house one afternoon. My brother is married to a Cambodian woman who survived the Killing Fields, so the music has special signficance for him. My brother and his shy wife:

If my brother were a pop album, he'd be Escape from Dragon House - he's a trippy American male who's found his home in Cambodian culture, especially the older music. He cannot speak Khmer, but he can sing all of the traditional songs, which cracks me up. There's nothing like a big white guy singing in Khmer. Wait -- there is! It's called Dengue Fever.

Except the star of Dengue Fever is not one of the American founders. It's Cambodian singer Chhom Nimol who steals the show. Live, she has a pitch perfect voice, like Elvis Costello or Jeff Tweedy. When she sings, the audience is completely engaged even though sings mostly in Khmer. I have rarely heard such a beautiful voice. It doesn't hurt that the rest of the band is solid.

Director John Pirozzi followed the band to Cambodia and caught it on film in the documentary Sleepwalking Through The Mekong. Check out the trailer and the website for upcoming screenings. I have not seen it, but my brother has and said it's excellent.

Here's some concert footage, though the audio quality isn't ideal:

Anyway, good stuff to check out. Dengue Fever will perform in San Francisco on April 18th at the Independent, a few blocks from my house. I'll be there with entourage, i.e., a person I've bribed with a free ticket and a couple of beers...

Developing a Writing Practice

2008-02-23T08:22:00.000-08:00

Last week I posted an exhaustive list of what I'm working on in 2008. Priority #1 - the 4th rewrite of the mainstream rom com - is now done. I flew to my mother's house in Vegas a week ago and spent the past 6 days in seclusion. I wanted to do this draft fast. So no band practice, no boot camp, no contract work, no socializing. Just non-stop writing, a daily 4-mile walk and the company of my mother's sort of standoffish cat, Valentine.

Right now I'm in the airport, hoping my flight leaves on time [update - it's not, we're on a weather hold, at least this airport has free Wi-Fi] so I can make it back to San Francisco for my weekly writing group with Cary Tennis. Tonight, I'm going a party thrown by the woman who runs the boot camp I attend. Tomorrow, I'll proofread the script, go to band practice and then watch the Academy Awards - my Super Bowl.

Monday, I'll send the script to a couple of people and then move on to the next rewrite. My plan going forward is to keep writing screenplay pages EVERY DAY. It seems like I'm either all or nothing with scripts - either blocked and cranky and not making progress OR writing 12 hours/day to the exclusion of the rest of my life.

A couple of years ago, I read The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Insider's Secrets from Hollywood's Top Writers by Karl Iglesias and found it instructive about what constitutes a consistent, professional writing practice. I'll repeat the bullet points I highlighted in the earlier post, as they're more relevant than ever to my current situation:

Highly successful screenwriters have a regular habit of writing every day. The ones that are parents are especially disciplined about start and stop times.
They also make the impression of being very moderate - at least half of them have given up coffee (!) and sugar because those substances lead to too many highs and lows. Imagine that! Writers who don't drink coffee.
As a group, they don't make the impression of liking parties and socializing very much - with the exception of a Scott Rosenberg. They seem to gravitate towards screenwriting and not something else (like TV writing) because they're comfortable with creating in relative solitude or with one other person.
They're prolific. They're not rewriting the same project over and over again. One talks about an unsuccessful writer they know who keeps pushing the same script year after year. Ugh. If I ever do that, shoot me. And they're prolific because...
The minute they finish something and send it out for feedback, they're onto a new project. They don't wait for feedback (approval) to move on.

I've spent about 45 hours in the last week writing actual script pages. Now if I can just keep it up at a nice rate of 20 hours/week and add some bass playing and boot camp back in...

A report next week, for the five of you who read this blog.

Say Anything

2008-02-18T11:02:00.000-08:00

Saturday night, the guy I'm dating and I were walking to meet a friend for dinner, discussing our plans for the rest of the night. We thought we'd have some time for a movie afterwards and I told him, "I've never seen Say Anything, somehow I missed it and I hear it's a great teen romantic comedy." We made tentative plans to pick it up later in the night, but ran out of time and forgot about it.

Sunday, I flew to Vegas to visit my mother and last night, what comes up in the cable listings for 7PM? Say Anything. So my mother and I watched it. It totally lived up to the hype I've listened to for the past... What? 19 years. I can see why it's considered a teen classic. John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler is an attractive (in a normal guy way) and honest lead character who wears his heart on his sleeve. His friend Corey (Lily Taylor) is a depressed, guitar-playing buddy who provides comically dire warnings about Lloyd's goal - to win over the beautiful but distance Diane Court (Ione Skye). But it's not the romance or the wonderful depiction of Lloyd's social milieu that engaged me so much. Rather, it was the way the whole subplot involving Diane's father was developed. The film didn't skirt real drama, instead plunging the Diane character through the horror of finding out that her father is seriously flawed.

James Court, played by pre-Frasier John Mahoney, is not a simple man. He's a great father, invested in his daughter's education and providing an open household where she can say anything to him and not fear his disapproval. He runs a home for old people and cares for them, bringing them flowers, feeding them and taking a personal interest in them. He appears to be a saint UNTIL the IRS shows up and accuses him of stealing from his clients' estates.

At first, his daughter (and the audience) can't believe the charges. But then Diane investigates and finds that her father is indeed a criminal. The way the relationship between Diane and her father - and then Lloyd - is handled is realistic and messy and not finished. Diane is shattered by her father's dishonesty but she's moving on and offers him some measure of forgiveness.

It's the last scene that's perfect. Anyone who has seen the movie knows it. I was watching my mother watch the scene and at the end, she gasped. She's like, "That's a perfect ending!" But it's not a neat ending. That's my take away from this great teen flick.

What I'm Working On In 2008

2008-02-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

I was inspired back in January to write up a project list like Scott did for my own recording keeping. I started noting everything I touched while trying to spend a focused 1-4 hours a day on my non-fiction book project. I found it overwhelming.

In February, I started tracking all of my projects (screenwriting, non-fiction, music, multimedia) explicitly in a spreadsheet and have a somewhat final working list. Here it is:

Writing Projects

1) Mainstream rom com feature screenplay. I'm in the middle of a 4th rewrite. This is the #1 priority, the one that faithful readers (thank you, Mystery Man), and others, are waiting for.

2) Non-fiction book proposal. Currently in the outline stage. Don't really want to detail the contents too much, except to say that it's autobiographical.

3) Short non-fiction. Essays related to book proposal. These are primarily about former boyfriends. (For a column like Modern Love in the NY Times.) I sent the first completed piece off to a lit mag in January and workshopped a 2nd one in my (prose) writing group. Now I need to write another draft and think about a 3rd piece.

4-7) Other Screenplays. Four screenplays that are candidates for quick rewrites for contest season, depending on how much time I have after I finish (1) above:

- Jerry's Kids (previous Sundance finalist). A dramedy about a family of Deadheads recovering from the death of Jerry Garcia. I abandoned it when I found out there was another project about Deadheads in development, a project that had the rights to the music. Dommage. But I think I was too quick to walk away. There were 3 films in 2007 about unwanted/unplanned pregnancy - Waitress, Knocked Up and Juno. Each one started with a pregnancy test and ended with a birth, and still, they were very different films. I think mostly JK could be a good contest script. I also want to practice incorporating notes into a rewrite as I have two set of notes on the script that I've never worked with.

- Downsizing (not entered anywhere). An office comedy set during the dot com crash, about a bunch of junior engineers who end up running a start up when all of the middle managers are fired. [That actually happened a lot in Silicon Valley in 2002-2003-2004.] Think it might be too dated, but I may be able to spin a different script out of the material. I read it a few weeks ago and found it to be sloppy but funny. I wrote it in 3 days in 2003 over Labor Day weekend fueled on Diet Coke and Pringles. (The junk food I typically eat when creatively stressed.)

- Kung Fu Bridesmaid (Austin 2nd rounder). You know, about a jealous bridesmaid who has to deal with a best friend turned out-of-control bridezilla:

I've been told the budget on this one is way too high for a chick flick and to just leave it alone and use it as writing sample. Maybe a good contest script and worth another rewrite. Don't know.

- Whacking Betty (Scriptapalooza quarter-finalist). I don't know. I never got notes on this one. It's an ensemble script set in a halfway house for recovering female addicts. When the house mother is found dead, the local police/coroner pass it off as death by natural causes, but a veteran officer on the outs with the rest of the force suspects foul play and declares, "Ol' Betty was whacked!" He then takes it upon himself to follow the suspects (the recovering addicts) as they go about their chaotic lives and figure out which girl did it. It's a slapstick comedy. Out of all of the screenplays I've written, it's my favorite and the one I would direct if given the opportunity. But probably the least marketable.

8) A new script from my idea journal. Don't know which one yet.

9) Blog - keep it. Sometimes I think I should just ditch it, but it keeps me in touch with people I otherwise wouldn't know, i.e., Joshua James, Kristen, Mystery Man, Dave A., Billy Mernit, Fun Joel, Julie Gray and others. So I'll keep it and try to focus it more on writing/craft and less on music.

But not yet! Music Projects

10) Bootie Cooler. The casual, very amateur cover band (our tagline should be: more poker night than band) I've been playing with practiced a few times since the new year, but it'll ramp up now that our ring leader is back from his travels and we have a private party to play in April.

11) Band Workshop with Johnny Nitro. In January, I enrolled in another band workshop through Blue Bear Music School. This is my fifth one, and so far, it's the best. Solid players, little drama and no turnover so far. (Turnover hurts a workshop more than anything. That, and bad drummers.)

Speaking of drummers, here's how the drummer for Bootie Cooler parked a few weeks ago:

He didn't even know he was up on the curb. Drummer parking. Anyway...

12) Spring/Summer Band Workshop. One of the BB band workshop teachers and I came up with an idea for a high concept workshop for a handpicked band. The program director agreed to let us do it, but probably won't schedule it until Summer. More on this to come when/if we can pull it off.

Multimedia Projects

13) Vineyard documentary. I'll keep going to Healdsburg once a month and shooting footage of my Godfather narrating the growing process. Or something. (Don, I'm thinking! I'll get something more compelling, I promise!!)

14) Learn non-linear editing software. Argh.

15) Improve web development skills. I'd like to put the whole storyboard for Kung Fu Bridesmaid online. I have the domain name and hosting, now I just need to spend time on it. But this is very low priority.

16) Contract design work. One week a month, I work 20 or so hours on a bleeding edge speech application. More on this later, it's pretty cool. But kind of in the confidential stages.

Networking/Support Activities

17) Continue reading the slush for Zoetrope: All-Story. I learn so much about story in my conversations with fellow readers and the editors. Worth the couple of hours I volunteer each week.

18) Weekly writing group with Cary Tennis. I started attending this back in late October and have found it perfect for my needs. We're following the method outlined in the book Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider. (See Amazon sidebar for info.)

19) Biweekly screenwriting group with Terrel Seltzer. I started this in January. I've only attended a few meetings but have already received feedback on pages and am finding the group exactly what I've been looking for in a screenwriting group. We're informally using Anatomy of Story by John Truby as a text book.

Whew. That's it for now. Read Kristen's Bucket List. Edit: And Laura's.

Newest Addition To My Amazon Wish List

2008-02-11T17:17:00.000-08:00

To be released on May 20, 2008:

Yeah! The audience I'd most like to see a Seagal film with is a theater full of drag queens. It's an audience that could do him justice.

Cracked Me Up

2008-02-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

I laughed so hard I cried:

Cracked asked its readers with Photoshop skills to send in posters for Next Year's Oscar Nominees (If the Strike Doesn't End). I'm tempted to post the winner, but that would take away the fun of scrolling through all of the entries to get to it. Instead, I posted Tayser's hilarious mock up.