Hello! I’m DJ Holloway, a writer and director in Orange County, California.

I started writing as an independent study project in 8th grade, writing my first “novel.” (50 pages, single spaced!

I transitioned to writing and making movies in high school, completing a 40 minute and a full length movie my junior and senior year. Post graduation, I made three more full-length movies and countless shorts as I also got my English degree from the University of Oregon. Go Ducks! (sorry, that’s a requirement of the program)

Then I moved down south to pursue the career. I teach at a high school in Fullerton, and was lucky enough to be next door to a fellow filmmaker named Sun Kim. He runs the Talent One Media Film Festival, and invited me to make my first professional short a few years ago.

I made the award-winning (!) Pie & Coffee and followed up with Sunset and Stormdragon in the subsequent years.

Last summer I got to check off a HUGE goal of mine, to direct a feature film, and made Innocence Blood with Sun. It’s a drama that follows a retired police officer into his past when his son is kidnapped. His only hint from the kidnapper is to “do it right, this time.”

Currently, I’m trying to work my way into TV writing – I’ve written a Castle spec and an original pilot, and I’m breaking my story for a Justified spec.

I’m also outlining a new novel and preparing to write a full-length script with Sun Kim this summer as a potential “next step” if (when) our film is successful.

Here is the trailer for Innocence Blood:

Credits:

Starring Jun Sung Kim (Late Autumn), Doug Jones (Hellboy, Pan’s Labrynth) C.S. Lee (Dexter), Alexandra Chun, Justin Chon

Synopsis: Sun W. Kim and D.J. Holloway, behind several award winning short films, makes their feature film debut with Innocence Blood. The suspense thriller tells the story of James Park, a retired detective turned college professor, who is forced to face his dark past in order to find his son Cody’s kidnapper. James Park, played by Jun-Seong Kim (Manchu, West 32nd), a well decorated, officer is exposed for who he really is by his son’s mysterious kidnapper. With a handful of past enemies, simultaneous murders, a wife who’s losing faith in him, and two detectives in hot pursuit, James must move fast to bring his son home safely.

Go to comments to provide some feedback to D.J. and crew.

For more of Anne’s IndieWire article, go here.

Note: Next week we get to hear a side of the Moneyball saga that has been largely ignored thus far: An exclusive interview with the first screenwriter on the project, Stan Chervin who received a “Story By” credit.

SM: Okay, so let’s focus on Inside the Machine. Where did the idea for the script originate?

MM: I love crime drama, and I love cops and bad guys. Good characters and stories are drawn from conflict, and the world of law enforcement and criminals is sort of immediately fraught with conflict, and it’s something that I know a lot about, so that was a natural starting place.

Then especially in 2009, the cartel war in Ciudad Juarez was really heating up, and while there have been great crime movies and great undercover movies, there haven’t been a whole lot set on the border. So I set my action down there, and started pulling the strands of the plot together…

SM: How long did it take for you to go from conception of the idea to the draft which enabled you to sign with Circle of Confusion as your managers?

MM: Before the first class meeting of the UCLA program, we were told to have three loglines ready. One was about an undercover federal agent dealing with robbery crews and cartels on the border, which became INSIDE THE MACHINE, and the other two—I’ve since written one as a spec, which my team and I are going out with in 2012, and the third is an idea that I worked on for the third section of the UCLA course, but never panned out.

So August of 2009, I started working on the logline. By Thanksgiving or so we had a 2 pager, beat sheet, step outline (mine sprawled to almost 40 pages) done, then the first act by the new year. I finished the very first draft around March of 2010. I took another pass at that and submitted it to the Independent Filmmaker Project’s Emerging Narrative section of their Project Forum of the Independent Film Week in NYC, where it was one of 25 films selected to be introduced to industry professionals, producers, development execs, reps, etc.

A development executive named Quentin Little who works a bit for IFP gave me some great notes; I had a table read in the summer of 2010 and took a lot of notes from the actors; I got notes from Carson Reeves at Scriptshadow; and I did a rewrite based off of notes from all of those sources.

I brought that to NYC in September of 2010, gave it to a bunch of producers, etc., and to my (now) manager Lawrence Mattis from Circle of Confusion. By November he signed me; hooked me up a second manager on my team, Zach Cox from Circle; hooked me up with my agents at UTA by January; we went out with the script in March and sold preemptively to CBS Films. They never gave me notes and the version we sold was the version I took to NYC (and is the one you read.) So, seven months from logline to first draft; several weeks in summer of 2010 for a rewrite; and sold just about a year exactly after I finished it.

SM: One narrative element in the story that really helps to humanize the Protagonist is the relationship he has with his ten year-old son who has a particularly intriguing psychological condition. How early in your process did you come up with that idea and how did the character of the son evolve?

MM: That was there pretty early; I knew I wanted to present a married couple who were partners and teammates, even though they have problems. I just really didn’t want to do the boozing, philandering cop…I sort of feel that’s been done to death, and may never be done better than by David Simon and Ed Burns’s creation of Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) in The Wire.

In fact, I was inspired by the relationship between Julia Child and her husband in JULIE AND JULIA—Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci were very clearly in love, and challenges and conflict came from outside their lives, and so that was a goal. Hence, having a son with issues became a way to challenge these characters, still from a place within their family, but not from within their relationship. The character of the son evolved in the sense that I had to do some very character-specific passes to ensure that we stay deeply invested in him, yet allow him to be at the remove that the character requires.

SM: Once Circle of Confusion took you on as a client, how much rewriting of the script did you do?

MM: None. They sold the version I e-mailed to Lawrence Mattis the day I met him.

SM: How was it that CBS Films basically took the script off the market before it went wide?

MM: My producer Tripp Vinson got his hands on the script a little early, and he flipped over it. Being a smart producer, he did whatever it is that smart producers do when they dig something and he brought CBS Films to the table.

SM: Where were you when you found out Inside the Machine had sold? After so many years of toiling away at your craft, what did that moment feel like?

MM: It was late March, and it was a Wednesday night. My wife is a working actor, so she works a lot of nights, and as usual for those nights, I had made and had dinner with the kids, cleaned up, was doing bedtime, and planning to write for a few hours after they were asleep. I knew the script was supposed to “go out wide” on Monday, but by Wednesday afternoon I hadn’t heard anything. I knew a fair bit about the mechanism for a script going out, but I also knew that when it got hot, I’d hear from my reps, so I didn’t hound them and I generally tried not to think about it, and I was working on my new spec to keep myself busy.

So Wednesday night, I go upstairs to read to my son and I dozed off in bed with him, got up at 9 and went downstairs to a message on my phone. It was my manager Zach saying to please call right away, they had to talk to me—and he had the whole team on the phone, himself and Lawrence and Charlie Ferraro and Emerson David from UTA. I called Circle, spoke to Lawrence, and he said that there was some back and forth to be had on various numbers, but that we were looking great with CBS.

At that point, the script wasn’t technically sold, but it was clear it was gonna happen the next day, there was just a little working out of the numbers.

So I went and woke up the kids and told them Daddy’s life just changed, and that I think I sold my script. Both these kids are under ten, but they know I’m writing ALL THE TIME and that despite the day job, writing is what it’s all about. So they got that it was big deal, they hugged me and went back to bed. A couple hours later, my wife came home, I let her tell me how that night’s show had been, then I told her the good news, and she was thrilled.

That moment felt amazing. Just waking my kids up and letting them know that it had finally happened—this journey I’d been on since before they were born, and even though they can’t totally get it, they got that it was a big deal—that was awesome.

The next day I went to work as usual, and got a call midday, which I took in private. The team updated me on the details, and I authorized them to close the deal. I went back to my supervisor’s office to deal with some paperwork, and fifteen minutes later got the call and my agent said “Congratulations. You’re a professional writer.” I felt damn good, then I went back to work for the rest of the day, just like I still do everyday.

The next night, three families with whom we are very close (and all of our kids are friends) came over with champagne, steak, salad, beer, etc., and we celebrated a bit.

It felt fantastic at the time, and it’s felt amazing every day since.

SM: What is the status of the project?

MM: I’m finishing the first of a few steps I got on the project. I’ve been to LA a few times, and I’ve met with Tripp and my executives at CBS, who I really, really like. Their notes have been really smart and character based and supportive and open. I recognize that I may not always say that about studio notes, but for a first time, it’s been amazing so far.

I just completed my first step (rewrite), and it has been an incredible experience, in the sense that no money could buy the expertise, intelligence, and story sense that my CBS executives and producer brought to the notes process and the rewrite process. I left my studio meetings in LA with a batch of notes, went home and executed them, and then Tripp and I refined, cut, massaged, and worked over the script until it was truly, immensely and meaningfully better, smarter, and more powerful than the draft I sold. And that experience, over the last three months, was like a master class in professional screenwriting, and will inform my approach to both my rewrite of my new spec which we’re going out with in 2012, as well as everything I write hereafter.

And of all the smart notes I got, the single best and most valuable task I got was to address the “emotional character motivation” for my protagonist. I already knew what was making my protagonist “go”, but it needed to be a bit more expansive in the script, and taking a pass wherein I identified each and every individual beat where I could address (and then did so) the protagonist’s overarching internal, emotional, motivational thrust made it so much better. It’s a lesson I’ll utilize from the start on all future scripts.

So I just got the studio a new draft, and I have a sense of what might happen next, but that’s really up to them, so we’ll see.

I think that’s the first time I’ve ever interviewed a screenwriter about selling a spec script to break into the business where they shared the good news with their kids! Terrific story.

Tomorrow: Part 4 of my interview with screenwriter Marc Maurino.

Setup: Travis Bickle [Robert DeNiro] comes looking for young prostitute Iris [Jodie Foster] only to run into some interference.

                         SPORT
            What's going on?

                         TRAVIS
            I'm here to see Iris.

                         SPORT
            Iris?

TRAVIS pushes SPORT back into the dark recesses of the
corridor.

                         SPORT
            Wha -- ?

                         TRAVIS
            Yeah, Iris.  You know anybody by
            that name?

                         SPORT
            No.
                   (beat)
            Hillbilly, you'd better get your
            wise ass outa here and quick, or
            you're gonna be in trouble.

TRAVIS is being propelled by an inner force, a force which
takes him past the boundaries of reason and self-control.

                         TRAVIS
                   (restrained anger)
            You carry a gun?

SPORT looks into TRAVIS' eyes, saying nothing: he realizes
the seriousness of the situation.

TRAVIS pulls his .38 Special and holds it on SPORT, pushing
him even further back against the wall.

                         TRAVIS
            Get it.

                         SPORT
                   (submissive)
            Hey, mister, I don't know what's
            going on here.  This don't make any
            sense.

                         TRAVIS
                   (demanding)
            Show it to me.

SPORT reluctantly pulls a .32 caliber pistol (a "purse gun")
from his pocket and holds it limply.

TRAVIS sticks his .38 into SPORT's gut and discharges it.
There is a muffled blast, followed by a muted scream of pain.

                         TRAVIS
            Now suck on that.

Agony and shock cross SPORT'S face as he slumps to the floor.
TRAVIS turns and walks away before SPORT even hits.

As TRAVIS walks away, SPORT can be seen struggling in the b.g.

TRAVIS, he gun slipped into his jacket, walks quickly up the
sidewalk.

AROUND THE CORNER, TRAVIS walks into the darkened stairway
leading to IRIS' apartment.

As he walks up the stairs, TRAVIS pulls the .44 Magnum from
behind his back and transfers the .38 Special to his left
hand.  He walks up the steps, a pistol dangling from each
hand.

AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, TRAVIS spots THE OLD MAN sitting
at the far end of the dark corridor.  THE OLD MAN starts to
get up when TRAVIS discharges the mighty .44 at him.  BLAAM!
The hallway reverberates with shock waves and gun powder.

THE OLD MAN staggers at the end of the corridor: his right
hand has been blown off at the forearm.

There is the sharp SOUND of a GUNSHOT behind TRAVIS: his
face grimaces in pain.  A bullet has ripped through the left
side of his neck.  Blood flows over his left shoulder.

TRAVIS' .44 flies into the air.

TRAVIS looks down the stairway: there SPORT lies choking in
a puddle of his own blood.  He has struggled long enough to
fire one shot.

Falling, TRAVIS drills another .38 slug into SPORT's back
but SPORT is already dead.

TRAVIS slumps to his knees.  Down the corridor THE OLD MAN
with a bloody stump is struggling toward him.  TRAVIS turns
his .38 toward THE OLD MAN.

The door to No. 2 opens: IRIS' scream is heard in the b.g.
The bulky frame of the PRIVATE COP fills the doorway.  His
blue shirt is open, in his hand hangs a .38 service revolver.

The PRIVATE COP raises his gun and shoots TRAVIS.  TRAVIS,
blood gushing from his right shoulder, sinks to the floor.
His .38 clangs down the stairs.

THE OLD MAN grows closer.  TRAVIS smashes his right arm
against the wall, miraculously, the small Colt .25 glides
down his forearm into his palm.

TRAVIS fills the PRIVATE COP's face full of bullet holes.

The PRIVATE COP, SCREAMING, crashes back into the room.

Here is the scene in the movie:

Questions to ask to analyze the scene:

* What elements in the movie scene are the same as the script?

* What elements in the movie scene are different than the script?

* Regarding the differences, put yourself in the mindset of the filmmakers and speculate: Why did they make the changes they did?

* How did the changes improve the scene?

* Alternatively are there elements in the script, not present in the movie, that are better than the final version of the scene?

* Note each camera shot in the movie version. Which of them does the script suggest via sluglines or scene description?

* How does the script convey a sense of the scene’s tone, feel, and pace through scene description and dialogue?

* What ‘magic’ exists in the movie that is not indicated in the words of the script? How do you suppose that magic emerged?

I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this scene from Taxi Driver.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a weekly series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

– Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), Taken (2008), written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is death threats, suggested by Chris Schipper. Today’s suggestion by Lloyd Morgan.

Trivia: Before any action takes place, Bryan already has scratches to the left side of his face. Hinting at his “spare time” activities.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Compare this threat to the one from Fatal Attraction we had for Monday’s Daily Dialogue. You just don’t buy that Dan the Yuppie has it in him to kill Alex. He just blurts “if you tell my wife, I’ll kill you” as a response to Alex’s threat. But this has some bite, words spoken with quite conviction that suggest this dude knows what the hell he’s talking about. And of course… he does.

PART 2: BRAINSTORMING

Once I find a story concept I think might make a good movie, I create a Word file in my computer and start brainstorming ideas into that file. I can not emphasize enough how important brainstorming is. To begin with, this is where I discover if my concept is, indeed, good enough – if ideas for the plot and characters leap into my imagination, there’s a pretty good chance I’ve got a decent concept.

Also when I brainstorm, I start to ‘see’ the movie. Key scenes emerge, characters morph into being, I hear bits of dialogue. Of course, that all represents potential story stuff, but more than that, ‘seeing’ these elements fuels my passion… which drives me deeper into brainstorming… which gives me more story stuff… which gets me more excited. And so on.

Finally, and most importantly, if I do enough brainstorming and the creative stars align, this is where I uncover gold, those fantastic bits of story business that appear as if from nowhere, totally unexpected, surprising ideas and beats.

The key to doing it right: no prejudgment. All ideas go into the master brainstorming file. Upon further reflection, I may choose to toss them aside – fine. But any image, scene, line of dialogue, action, or theme I have as I brainstorm goes into the file. I find this process frees up that special part of my consciousness so that those wondrous gold story nuggets can reveal themselves.

I spend days, even weeks brainstorming (in connection with research, our next subject). The process is a lot like wallowing in a sea of ideas, but again, this is where a majority of the story ‘stuff’ emerges and, more often than not, the Plotline and sub-plots start to show themselves, too.

Many aspiring screenwriters do not spend enough time brainstorming, their impatience getting the better of them. That will almost always come back to bite you in the ass. You’ll either get stuck in the writing because you didn’t ‘find’ your story or your story will have little, if anything special about it because you didn’t brainstorm enough to surface the gold.

I have a whole set of prompts I’ve developed over the years to fuel my brainstorming, but there is a common dynamic to all of them: Get curious. Get curious about the plot. Get curious about the characters. Get curious about the story universe. If you keep asking questions, that help you go deeper and deeper into your brainstorming process.

In Part 3 tomorrow, we look at another important part of the script-writing process: Research.

[Originally posted June 6, 2008]

BTW we’ll be switching over to Google+ soon in place of Friends Connect which Google is retiring and I think that shift could be a very good thing, allowing much more interaction among the members of the GITS community.

More on that soon.

But for now, let’s get that number over 2,000!

And thanks to all of you for your continued support of the site!

UPDATE: Well, that was pretty grand! Blew right past the 2,000 mark. It probably doesn’t seem like all that much, but seeing that number of GITS members is one of the few objective ways I know that what we do here matters to people. So thanks for taking the time to sign up.

Writer Geoff LaTulippe just closed his first directing job at Paramount. LaTulippe, who scripted Going the Distance and Breathers, will write and direct an untitled comedy ensemble based on his pitch at Paramount. What makes this particularly interesting for Deadline is that his studio shot came about after Par Film Group president Adam Goodman saw on Deadline a short that LaTulippe’s made for WME’s all-company retreat in which Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s J.B. Smoove took over the agency on Yom Kippur. That got the aspiring director a meeting, where the studio bought his pitch and set him to direct. Dawn Olmstead and Marti Noxon are producing the project. LaTulippe is WME-repped.

Here is the video:

Congratulations, Geoff!

You can follow him on Twitter: @GeoffLaTulippe.

1. You are creative.

2. Creative thinking is work.

3. You must go through the motions of being creative.

4. Your brain is not a computer.

5. There is no right answer.

6. Never stop with your first good idea.

7. Expect the experts to be negative.

8. Trust your instincts.

9. There is no such thing as failure.

10. You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are.

11. Always approach a problem on its own terms.

12. Learn to think unconventionally.

I think my two favorites are this:

There is no such thing as failure. Whenever you try to do something and do not succeed, you do not fail. You have learned something that does not work. Always ask “What have I learned about what doesn’t work?”, “Can this explain something that I didn’t set out to explain?”, and “What have I discovered that I didn’t set out to discover?” Whenever someone tells you that they have never made a  mistake, you are talking to someone who has never tried anything new.

Learn to think unconventionally. Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers which mean they look for ways to include everything, including things that are dissimilar and totally unrelated. Generating associations and connections between unrelated or dissimilar subjects is how they provoke different thinking patterns in their brain.  These new patterns lead to new connections which give them a different way to focus on the information and different ways to interpret what they are focusing on. This is how original and truly novel ideas are created. Albert Einstein once famously remarked “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

And then this summary:

Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

The thing about creative writing: We’re not dealing with widgets, rather we’re pilgrims in a universe infused with mystery. As desperately as we may want to believe there is some foolproof routine or all-knowing system to write a great story, the truth is writers are wranglers of magic.

And that’s the way it should be, at least in terms of being authentically creative, perhaps nowhere more than screenwriting. Anybody can write a formulaic script. It’s only writers who go into their story and engage their characters within the context of their story universe as organic, alive and real entities with their own back-stories, personalities, wants, needs, fears and so forth that we tap into the magic.

And so a toast, fellow pilgrim. May we commit ourselves each day to the ever-challenging task of engaging our Creative Self in order to Wrangle the Magic!

For more of the Psychology Today article, go here.

The official synopsis:

“How far would you go to re-experience the past?”

Uncovering the truth behind his recently euthanized grandfather, film director Torsten plans the unthinkable. In an attempt to relive the torturous experiments his grandfather performed as a Nazi guard, Torsten hatches a plan to put himself in the shoes of the tortured, for the sake of self redemption and making sense of a past he had no idea existed. With two willing volunteers he gets to work in an abandoned industrial facility on the outskirts of town. With the experiment continuing to take its toll on all three, cracks begin to surface which eventually halt his deranged plan. The experiment maybe over, but the torture is only beginning..

Wail Away was shot over 9 days in an abandoned mill in Melbourne’s western suburbs. It was shot without any government funding (which is very rare for a local film) and all the actors and crew are on differed payments. The film is bypassing a theatrical release, instead opting to move straight into international DVD and VOD distribution. Wail Away is set for a US release in mid-late 2012.

Screenplay by: Mark Lipkin, Guy Skinner, Rob Naumoff and Jon Fabian

Produced by: Mark Lipkin, Gareth Thomas (Associate Producer), Becki Bouchier (Associate Producer)

Directed by: Mark Lipkin.

And stars: Amos Phillips, Trevor Vaughan, Peter Muir and Sara Cooper

Here is the movie’s trailer:

And here are the film’s pages:

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