Not because I’ve taken to shaving my earlobs (although that became a sad necessity for me in early 2007), but I’ve become prone to bouts of extreme nostalgia. Walking with him through the streets of our family’s ancestral homeland (Columbia Heights, Minnesota) my granddad would often stop mid sentence, stare off into the distance and say things like: “See that Kmart over there? That’s where the old Rexall Drugstore used to be. They had a lunch counter that’d serve tonic water and a Reuben sandwich thick as a Frenchman’s head for a dime. Of course that was back in the  Great Depression, so we used to call a dime two bits. Anyway, Chopsaw Maloney, Jonny The Sweed and me used to grab some Reubens after closing time at the pool hall then hop a streetcar down to Saint Paul. We wore onions on our shoes, which was the style at the time and….”

I could tell from the look in his eye that he wasn’t simply remembering a seemingly random event from his past, he was reliving it. This wasn’t recollection…this was time travel.

No pithy caption necessary.

The older I get the more I seem prone to these temporal distortions myself. It doesn’t take much. Hearing an old song, finding a toy I used to have as a child for sale on Ebay or driving by an old apartment is usually enough to induce some brief flashback to an early time. But the operative word here is brief. For instance I was walking through Westwood recently and suddenly recalled sitting in a booth at the old Ships Restaurant in the summer of 1981, but I couldn’t tell you what I was eating or who I was with. For me these flashbulb memories have typically been limited and short on detail.

That is until recently.

Last week the wife let me play the hero and take our 13-year-old on a surprise trip to the movies. We don’t see things in theaters very often as a family, largely because our kids are seven years apart and there’s not a lot they can both agree on. Matthew’s too old (or so he likes to pretend) for the average Disney movie and young Jonathan’s not quite ready for PG-13 shoot ‘em ups. So when the older boy came home from his karate class, I quietly told him to change into some non-ninja clothes and meet me in the garage. Then, while my wife distracted our six-year-old, the pair of us made good our escape. Ten minutes later we were at our neighborhood mega plex to see…

Well…it’s not “Black Hole”.

“The Avengers”, which my teenaged son would later proclame “the greatest movie ever”. And you know what….I’m not going to meh that away. It was fun. Darn fun in fact.

Naturally being a Marvel Studios film it came with the obligatory Stan Lee cameo towards the end. I think in this one he played some cantankerous old man in the park complaining about superheros and all the commotion they were causing. Cute. As soon as I saw his face on screen I leaned over to my son and whispered ”That’s the guy who created The Avengers.”

“Really?” he said somewhat surprised, as if he was having trouble believing that one mere human could be responsible for so much awesomeness. “How do you know it’s the same guy?”

How do I know it’s the same guy? Doesn’t everybody know what Stan Lee looks like? They guy’s a cultural icon. I must have seen his face a thousand times in interviews, on Comic-Con panels, talk shows and…..oh, yeah….

“Well,” I said. “I met him once.”

“What was that like meeting Stan Lee?”, my son would later ask as the film’s end credits began to roll.

That was something I hadn’t thought about in years. “It started weird….and got weirder.” I said, as a million long dorment neurons in my brain began to fire.

And that’s when it happened! Suddenly I wasn’t sitting in the mega-plex anymore. I was in Burbank, California…and the year was 1999.

For those of you too young to remember this was the height of “the dot-com bubble”, a period when tens of thousands of internet based businesses sprang up  like weeds promising to revolutionize the economy as we knew it. Investors clamored to get in on the ground floor of history, stock prices went through the roof and the world’s population of billionaires seemed to quadruple every week.

Of course all this wealth was purely smoke and mirrors but none of us knew that at the time. Or perhaps we just didn’t want to know it. Either way times were good, money was everywhere and if a website that sold kitty litter via FedEx wanted to spend $30 millon dollars  to air a twenty second Superbowl commercial staring a sock-puppet, well who were you to argue with that business model.

Hi kids! I burned through $300 millon in investment capital in just two years and ended up with a stock price of $0.09 per share! Not bad for a guy with a sweaty fist up his backside.

Not only was this newfangled thing called the internet reinventing commerce, but there was a serious belief that it would forever change the entertainment industry as well. Many speculated that within a few years television would be obsolete and movie theaters would turn into ghost towns as more people looked to on-line programing. By the late 90′s there were countless web based companies that were essentially trying to be miniature TV networks that you could acces via a home computer. Like any network these companies needed content and the creative types who could generate it.

That’s where Sean and I came in.

Of my roller coaster career in the entertainment industry and of my writing partner, the late great Sean Fanning, I have already said much. (See “My Long Strange Road To Daycare Part 2″). But what I didn’t mention was that by 1999 our agent was sending us out to interview for more on-line work than traditional writing jobs. And that’s how, on a bright Summer day, we came to Stan Lee Media.

In a world where most internet start-ups were operating out of some guy’s spare bedroom, Stan Lee Media was the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. It occupied an enormous campus packed with animators, storyboard artists, I.T. people, line producers, writers, marketing experts and the usual coterie of secretaries, interns and production assistants you’d expect to find at a large movie studio. I remember reading somewhere that at its zenith SLM had about 160 employees all of whom seemed to have showed up to work that day and brought a friend.

Ask about our airship parking.

I walked into the lobby, which looked large enough to comfortably accommodate a small Zeppelin, and found Sean sitting on a leather sofa nervously arranging the contents of his sketch folder. To the best of my recollection it was the only time he’d been early for anything, including my wedding where he served as best man. I wasn’t surprised. Despite his male-model good looks and smooth demeanor he was, at heart, a comic book nerd of the highest order. Coming here to pitch a project was like going to Graceland to have a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich with Elvis.

Since we still had a few minutes I left Sean nervously fumbling through his drawings and went off to pray in the bathroom, which  had become something of  a tradition before all our business meetings. I wasn’t asking God to help me close a deal (although in retrospect maybe I should have), just for the grace to make sure I didn’t embarrass myself.

I got back to the lobby and a short time later just as an intern, who was a dead-ringer for a young Angelina Jolie, came out to collect us. Up until this point I assumed we’d be meeting with a development executive or some other underling who acted as gatekeeper for the big boss…which of course is standard entertainment industry protocol. Much to my surprise she lead us past a sea of cubicles, conference rooms and what must have been a dozen air hockey tables…..and right into Stan Lee’s private office.

Lee (I won’t pretend I knew him well enough to call him Stan) was sitting at his desk reading a script. As soon as Sean and I walked in he jumped to his feet. ”Good to see you, boys!” he said with all the ballyhoo of a carnival barker.  ”Get in here. Have a seat.” I’m not sure if we caught him on a particularly amazing day or if over the top enthusiasm was just his default setting when meeting new people. Whatever the case it was fun.

The stuff dreams are made of.

We came in,  exchanged pleasantries and he asked us what sort of things we’d been working on recently. At the time we had one cartoon series in development at Film Roman (who produced The Simpsons) and a couple others that were getting nibbles around town. Sean pulled out some of his character sketches and presented them to Lee.

“These are very good.” he said….and coming from the man who invented the X-men, Spiderman and the Fantastic Four that was no small praise. Sean mentioned that as a child somebody had given him a copy of “How To Draw The Marvel Way”, a book that Lee had written in 1978 with John Buscema, and how that was the single most transformative moments of his life. Lee was visibly touched by this and the pair of them launched into the nerdy-ist conversation about obscure comic books I’d ever witnessed. As a non artist and only a casual reader of comics I was way over my head and spent the next several minutes quietly staring at my shoes. Then, just as I was searching for a way to crowbar my way back into the dialogue, the door opened and Angelina Jolie’s doppelgänger (or Faux-Gelina as Sean would later refer to her) poped her head in with urgent news.

“Sorry. Bob’s asking about the squid thing again.” she said.

Lee rolled his eyes. “Tell him no pants.” He said, clearly annoyed to be revisiting whatever issue this was. “It’s like Donald Duck, he didn’t need them. Mickey did because he was a mouse. Donald’s a duck. Squid, Duck, same thing. No pants.”

Faux-Gelina wrote all that down on a large, pink Post-It note, clicked her heels twice then walked backwards out of the room. While it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever seen it’s definitely on my highlight reel.

With the great squid crisis of ’99 now behind him Lee was ready to focus business.

Okay, fine. But what do we do about the walrus’ hat?

“Let me tell you boys why you’re here.” Lee said leaning back in his chair.

We had no idea at the time but we’d just walked into a legal and finantal vortex of insanity that included (among many others) Fidel Castro, Hillary Clinton and professional hunk Fabio. I wont lie and say that Sean and I were major insiders, our involvement in the madness that followed was purely tangental and much of what I know about the ensuing events I learned years after the fact. It’s a story that starts weird….and gets weirder.

And it’ll have to wait for another time.

On a singlespeed, there is no downshifting to make it up a hill–you must instead build up speed before the crux of the climb in order to make it to the top. On a long climb, you have to meter your energy and power output at a minute level, to preserve as much momentum as you can, and rest anytime you’re able, so that you’re always ready  to explode with power when the going gets tough. (Really some great life lessons in there, right?)

This post is not about singlespeeding, however. It’s about the summer screenwriting workshop I applied for through UCLA.

You may recall that over the winter, I received the news that I’d been rejected from Temple University’s PhD program in Mass Media and Communication. After some reflection, my biggest disappointment was that I wouldn’t be able to take an elective screenwriting class in the Fall. (I know….really? Like shouldn’t I have been crying my eyes out about not being to conduct a staggering amount of research about media and interpersonal communication issues?)  Sounds like I need to take a screenwriting course, right?

This is where the singlespeed comes back in. Just like I’m trained to preserve forward momentum at any cost on the trail, I wasted no time, once my teaching was done for the summer, to find a summer screenwriting course and sign up. The UCLA program is a 10-week online, non-credit, master’s-level course for people like me, who already have a degree but want to explore the craft of screenwriting. I had to submit a statement of purpose, a writing sample, and my transcript.

The beginning of my 1-page statement of purpose? “Last autumn, I applied to the PhD program in Communication at Temple University and was rejected. Strangely, I was not particularly upset; in fact, the only real disappointment I felt was not being able to take a screenwriting class as an elective in the program. This realization made me reconsider my goals, and has led me to your door.”

Then I talk about my writing experience and what I want out of the program, etc. I seriously hope UCLA doesn’t write me off after reading the first sentence. I had to go for a dramatic opening, though…after all, it’s a screenwriting course! Nobody wants a boring story.

So take a lesson from my singlespeed: use your forward momentum to pounce on something you want to do, right now.

NONE OF THE FOLLOWING IS GOING TO MAKE YOU A WRITE A GREAT SCREENPLAY but hopefully they will make you better.  If you read, pay attention, and practice they will help you understand screenplays and screenwriting better.

For more experienced screenwriters reading this, please let me know if there is something I should add.

Internet Resources

http://screenwriting.io/ is a search engine just for basic questions about screenwriting.

http://johnaugust.com/ has a ton of information about screenwriting from a current working screenwriter’s perspective.

http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/ is an online news magazine on what’s happening in the business of film and television.

http://www.scriptmag.com/ has information, advice, news and listings of events, all geared toward  screenwriters.

http://www.wga.org/ to learn about the union you will have to join if you become successful.

http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/ By far my favorite internet resource is Go Into the Story which is the official blog of The Black List. (If you don’t know what The Black List is you must go to their website and click the about button.) Lessons on everything from dialogue to taking meetings can be found in the archives of this blog.  Start with this post and go on from there.

One of the greatest things I ever did for my screenwriting career is taking Jeanne Veillette Bowerman’s  Breaking in Outside of Hollywood webinar.  She opened the world of internet networking to me.

For Scripts

http://www.imsdb.com/

http://www.mypdfscripts.com/

https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-library for info on visiting the Writer’s Guild Foundation script library

Networking Sites

On twitter, I would recommend following a mix of established screenwriters and struggling artists like yourself.  Also screenwriting information feeds are great.

Here is a short list of @’s that regularly post advice or news to follow.

@Gointothestory @Jeannevb @Stage32online @johnaugust @thescriptlab @screenwritingU @theblcklst @scriptshadow

@scriptquack @LaFamiliaFilm @FluideyeFilms @onthepage @networkISA @writersguildF @scriptmag @bittrscrptreadr

@dannymanus @xanderbennett

Books to Read

The Save the Cat books focus on making marketable Hollywood movies. Personally, I think Save the Cat is interesting but it doesn’t give the specificity and practical applications of its two sequels.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_12?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=save+the+cat&sprefix=save+the+cat%2Caps%2C193

The Syd Field books are older but still talked about because of their focus on three act structure. The Screenwriter’s Workbook was my very first screenwriting book and did help me understand what all the other books were talking about.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_12?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=save+the+cat&sprefix=save+the+cat%2Caps%2C193#/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=syd+field&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Asyd+field

Robert McKee’s Story is another staple in the industry.  Though most of the examples in the book are from movies Story is a book that does not focus on screenwriting exclusively but storytelling of every kind.  There is a lot of controversy over Robert McKee’s Story Seminar.  It’s a very expensive four day lecture with some audience participation.  I say if you have the money go.  I have attended and liked it very much. The first day is a  review of the concepts in the book and the following days are lots of knowledge.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_12?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=save+the+cat&sprefix=save+the+cat%2Caps%2C193#/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_11?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=robert+mckee+story&sprefix=robert+mcke%2Caps%2C220&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Arobert+mckee+story

Villains should be just as interesting as heroes; maybe even more so

It’s been a real process working my way through the end of the current project’s Act Two. I know what comes before it, and how Act Three plays out; it’s all that stuff in the middle that’s throwing me.

So while that occupies part of my attention, I also need to build up the antagonist’s story line.  Right now, he’s pretty absent from most of the story, which is not good. I came up with some stuff early on, but it was too silly, so out it went.

I thought about watching/studying something to get a better sense of how to approach this, but I’m not sure what would be comparable.  Basically, the protagonist is actively pursuing the antagonist, who doesn’t know it and is going on about his usual bad guy business until the protagonist catches up to them.  My first thought was RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, but any other suggestions would be welcome.

Developing that storyline will also mean cutting back on protagonist scenes.  At first this was a negative, but eventually became a necessary positive.  The last thing I want to do is drag this out.

-Movie of the Moment – BATTLESHIP. Wow. Somebody was actually paid to write this? Shouldn’t they have done a couple of rewrites before production began? This reeked of amateur. Cliched characters straight off a checklist. Bad guys with ambiguous intentions. Unoriginal dialogue. Predictable to the nth degree. Major overuse of rock music to ‘emphasize’ the mood of a scene.

Imagine a second-rate 80s action flick spruced up with 21st-century special effects.

What’s even worse is that this is NOT the last movie based on a board game. Apparently we can look forward to catching RISK, MONOPOLY and CANDYLAND at the local cinema sometime soon.

And the studios wonder why they’re losing money.

Full-length Screenplays

1. No Longer Human: A story of obsession. Inspired by the deaths of the artists Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan.
2. Valentine: A retelling of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, focused on the story of Maximilian Morrel and Valentine de Villefort.
3. The Man Who Never Smiled: A contemporary film noir.
4. Houdini & Conan Doyle: An exploration of the friendship, falling-out, and rivalry between the escape artist Harry Houdini and the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Short Screenplays

1. Robots Are a Girl’s Best Friend is the story of a troubled middle-aged man who attends a Halloween party dressed as Marilyn Monroe. A life-changing encounter with an “inanimate object” helps him come to terms with his identity.
2. Death Is No Bad Friend: Based on the life and works of Robert Louis Stevenson. Robert Louis attempts to escape his guilty conscience through honeymooning on Mount Saint Helena. But his illness catches up, forcing him to face his demons.

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For more information, please visit my homepage: www.wix.com/gegallas/writer.

For more updates, don’t forget to follow me on tumblr and/or twitter.

***

Copyright 2012 by G. E. Gallas

There are many challenges when embarking on a new screenwriting adventure. Finding the right tone, the right story, the right idea, the central dramatic beats, decent dialogue, believable and compelling characters etc. But one of the biggest challenges that I believe most screenwriters face, especially beginners and non-professionals is the challenge of completing that elusive first draft.

The first draft is always the hardest thing in my opinion. We’ve done all our research, we’ve done all the planning, the character bios, the outlines, the plot points everything. Then we sit there, staring into the overwhelming void of the white abyss of the blank page as it stares back at us, afraid to face the challenge head on. Oh wait, there’s just a little bit more research you need to do. You know, you should really pay those bills, and so on and so forth as we find new and more exciting ways to procrastinate delaying the inevitable. Or we go the other way, loving the idea so much that we decide to meet the challenge head on and throw themselves headfirst into that abyss. Naturally, more often than not, those that throw themselves in, become lost around about the thirty page mark.

It happened to me a few times when I was around 16-17, foolishly believing that screenwriting was a piece of cake and that it would be smooth sailing. I’d seen a few movies, read Syd Field, how hard could it be.  I soon learned my lesson there.

I’ve just completed my latest first draft to my latest feature script (my third) and I have to say, in all my time in writing screenplays, there is no other feeling quite like completing that bastard of a first draft. Completing that first draft is the toughest challenge that any screenwriter faces in my opinion. Rewrites are tough, yes, but my God they are a hell of a lot more welcoming when you’ve got something to work with.We have to constantly convince ourselves that this is good, that this is going to be the one, trying to ignore that new fresh amazing idea that conveniently just popped into our heads that we would rather be working on before it gets away from us. It’s tough to just sit down and write the fucking thing. But it’s done, when you write those long awaited words FADE OUT at the end, so matter how bad the first draft (and lets face it, all first drafts are not that great) you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the hard part is done.

I love completing the first draft of anything. There is something euphoric about it. Something magical. You have something tangible. Yes, you’ve still got a way before you reach the summit of the screenwriting mountain but at least the hard work is done. You can actually print it out as a physical thing, scrawl on it, make adjustments, scribble notes, anything, but you’ve got something. It’s no longer a blank page, but something that is there, tangible, something you can touch and work with. The first draft of this latest feature, a coming of age story set amidst the backdrop of an alien invasion, is by no means perfect. It still needs a lot of work but what I know now in completing that first draft is so valuable in making my story better. I know my characters a lot better than I thought I did, I know what my actual story is ABOUT, and I know where the problems are.The rewrite for me is where the real fun begins as I know that with each subsequent draft that is to follow, my story can only get better.

Finding out who my central characters were was the most important thing I learned about writing in completing this draft. A lot of “gurus” and “story experts” I’ve read and followed over the years in my time learning about the craft of screenwriting, have stated that to construct characters, the first thing that is essential is to create a biography of those characters, getting to know them, who they are, where they grew up, were they good at school, their favorite food, drink etc etc. They say that this is what you have to do before you can even think about putting words onto paper. To truly know those characters.

And I’ve done that. I’ve done the whole biographical thing and what not but I’ve never really “known” who these characters are at this stage. My biographies tend to be towards the more emotional side of the characters, how they felt about their lives, their relationships towards others and such yet still I have never truly known these people.

In completing these biographies I’ve only had snapshots of who they are. For me, the moment when I truly come to know these people is when I start writing that first draft. It doesn’t happen straight away, but sure enough, I tend to know them by the time I write FADE OUT. Writing the first draft is when you truly get to know who your characters are, when you really meet them for the first time, when they actually come alive. I now treat character biographies as snapshots, like I’m looking through a photo album of these peoples lives, getting a brief understanding of their lives and what they’ve been through. But you never truly know a person until you get to meet them in the flesh and spend time with, and when I meet my characters is on the first draft.

Writing my coming of age story, it was about midway through when I first got to know them, I mean really got to know who my two central protagonists were. I focused on my main two the most in my first draft, really getting to understand them and for the most part it worked. I know who they are now, which in turn is going to make things a hell of a lot easier come rewrite time.

Do I believe that character biographies helped? Yeah, probably, but not to the extent that most gurus say. Biographies cannot substitute of actually writing the first draft and meeting them first hand. I realized that I didn’t have to stick to the character biographies.  I didn’t panic when I ventured off the back story slightly, I didn’t just because I had written that my main character liked pasta instead of fish. I just kept on going because I knew that I was staying true to the emotional core of that character and surprisingly enough, the first round of feedback I have received is that my characters are the strongest thing about my script, which is what I cared about the most. I’m not saying don’t do them, by any means, no no no no. Do them, review those snapshots of their lives, but a snapshot is only half the story. It’s only when they start speaking and acting and doing things that they truly come alive.

Biographies are good and a necessary thing but I learned with this draft, that they are never set in stone. They can never really teach you about the characters you are writing until you actually write them down and throw them into those situations and obstacles that you have set for them on their path.

It was a powerful moment for me and taught me a lot about my working methods as a writer. Saying this, I’m probably just saying what all other writers have experienced at some point or another so…

Another thing I tried was in my descriptive and action writing. In my last couple of screenplays, I used description– a lot, probably too much to the point of reliance. In my very very first script it was almost like I was writing a novel. My second script much less so but there were still traces on occasion.

With this draft I tried something different. I tried writing as sparse description as I could, setting a challenge to myself to write a maximum of only two to three lines per description or action. Sometimes it went over but, hey, there are always exceptions. I found it quite liberating. I found that I wasn’t doing all the work for the reader and I found myself working harder to write better subtext than I have done before.

Granted it wasn’t always successful. At times I was too vague, too sparse. As I have an alien invasion force in my script, I only vaguely described their appearance, never really going into detail. I only said that they wore armor, tinted helmets and had humanoid faces. That was basically the extent of their description. Obviously much much too vague, something that I will no doubt rectify in the following rewrites.

It’s that old adage, writing only what we see and hear. Writing in this style was actually incredibly liberating for this. It allowed me to focus on the dialogue, the interactions between characters and the actions of the characters themselves within scenes, being able to reveal character through dialogue and action. Starting out I used to focus a lot on writing what a character was feeling in the scene descriptions, getting into the psychology a lot more, as if I was writing a novel. Naturally these early scripts were stilted and boring and didn’t read well as screenplays.

I did this less so in my last script, a horror film, but it was only in this newest script where I actually felt free in the writing. Writing this way forced me to focus on subtext in dialogue and scenes, allowed me to focus on character relationships. It worked. It’s a story that I care about, with characters that I love and something that I know that I will be prepared to follow into the depths of the rewrite labyrinth. It could take another five drafts, another twenty drafts before this script is anywhere near decent enough to send out, but after completing this first draft, I know that it is something that I am prepared to follow until to the end.

Anyway that was just a little tidbit into my screenwriting life. Probably nothing you haven’t heard before.

Back to movies reviews then…

Hello Everyone! Its another Wednesday morning, so that means another episode of LIFE WORK BALANCES is here for your enjoyment!

Today I had the chance to sit down with Viktor Kerney, Assistant Director for Student Leadership and Development at The University of Southern California. Viktor was originally scheduled to be Episode 2 of LIFE WORK BALANCES, but due to technical difficulties we had to scrap that conversation, and it took us a bit of time to align our schedules again. It was really great to get to chat with Viktor, and we had a great time talking about his experience growing up and getting into comic books as a child, how he is still involved in comics today, his blog Maybe Its Just Me, his work with Bent Con, and many other really fun stories that are all a part of what makes Viktor so great!

As always, if you are interested in being interviewed for an episode of LIFE WORK BALANCES, send an email to lifeworkbalances [at] gmail [dot] com.

Enjoy!

EPISODE ARCHIVED

LISTEN // DOWNLOAD

FACEBOOK // ITUNES

I like the way Gold Valley is going,  finally. With the last two rewrites it kind of just felt like I was running in place, and the story was always good but not great, long but not long enough, well written but not written well enough. At this point, I’m copying and pasting small chunks and editing piece by piece, rather than going through the whole book. This is allowing me to add scenes I decided to add after some reader notes and also to change the character dynamics just a bit to suit the story better. I’ve never done a rewrite this way before, and I feel like it’s extremely beneficial.

So there you are – that’s what I’ve been up to. Hopefully there will be more flash fiction soon. I’m realizing that those seem to be my more popular posts, and I understand why. I love writing flash fiction and I hope it shows!  At the very least, there sh0uld be more posts from me, regardless.

Have a lovely Wednesday!

Stargate Atlantis script, won at contest. Русский: Сценарий эпизода сериала “Звёздные врата: Атлантида”, победивший на конкурсе. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Listen up my little wanna be aspiring filmmakers I found a contest you will want to participate in. It’s called the annual Big Break Contest. It’s a screenwriting contest that is determined to launch the career of writers and filmmakers. This is such a great opportunity! The participant needs to be 18 years old or older. Submissions must be full length screenplays in standard industry format. Check out what you can possibly win.

• 1st place winner – $15,000 cash, airfare to LA, 3 night hotel stay, Apple iPad equipped with Final Draft app., breakfast with screenwriter Pen Densham, admission into Script Pipeline Secret Door Pitchfest and Robert McKee Story Seminar in 2013, customized email query critique and signed copy of The Screenwriter’s Bible, a trailer of your script produced by New York Film academy and tuition for the 4 week filmmaking class.
• 2nd place – $4,000 in cash, airfare to LA, 3 night hotel stay, breakfast w/Pen Densham, lunch with Marvin Acuna, admission to Script Pipeline Secret Door Pitchfest and Robert McKee story in 2013, email query critique and signed copy of The Screenwriter’s Bible
• 3rd place – $2,000 in cash, airfare to LA, 3 night hotel stay, breakfast with screenwriter, lunch with producer, admission to Script Pipeline and Story Seminar in 2013, email query critique, and signed Screenwriter’s Bible

The standard deadline ends June 1st with a $50 submitting fee and the extended deadline is June 15th. Enter at finaldraft.com/bigbreak. Good luck and let me know how you did.

Peace and luv!

An ”Oooh, shiny!” movie is a movie with an inherent conflict between it’s genre and it’s theme. It thinks it’s making a particular moral statement – indeed, it makes it explicitly in dialogue – but the action and the iconography of the movie contradicts the theme so severely that the audience is effectively seeing a totally different movie.

An example. Eastern Promises, written by Steven Knight, is the story of an idealistic nurse in London trying to protect a baby born to a young Russian prostitute. But I bet the first thing that popped into your head when you saw the title was Viggo Mortensen covered in gang tattoos, menacing our heroine and fighting bad guys.

The movie really wants to be earnest, moral and serious. Often, it is. It has important things to say about international crime, people smuggling and the human cost of the sex trade. But every few scenes, the narrative is pulled off course by the glamour and danger of the Russian Mafia into whose world the heroine is drawn. They’re unusual, visually compelling, carry the promise of  action, conflict and danger. They feel much more like the heroes of an underworld thriller than a nice nurse ever will.

Like a magpie who can’t ignore that shiny object just off it’s path, the narrative of Eastern Promises is constantly being distracted from it’s stated theme and purpose. ”Right, we must talk about the evils of people trafficking… But look, there are gangsters over there! With guns! And they’re all exotic and inscrutable! Ooh, shiny!”

Iron Man has exactly the same flaw – it’s action and it’s iconography are at odds with its stated message. The first act is quite an audacious story for a superhero movie: an arrogant billionaire who made his money from armaments is captured by the enemy and forced to create a super-weapon for them. A fellow prisoner teaches him about the human cost of conflict, and he learns for himself what it’s like to be a prisoner of war. Secretly turning his super-weapon into a means of escape, he returns home to shut down his company’s weapons division and devote his talents, and his newly invented power source, to technology that will benefit humankind.

Splendid. Hand that man a Nobel Peace Prize, right? Well, actually, no. Because while he does a lot of clean energy research, etc, the film is actually about him inventing, refining, and using a battle-suit with tremendous offensive capacity. Not a defensive weapon, mark you, but a means of attack. Not only that, but he doesn’t wait to be threatened: he actively goes looking for trouble in it. With the suit on, he’s powerful, glamorous, and he looks damn cool. He’s a hero. Say it with me: ”Oooh, shiny!”

And Tony Stark does much the same things in The Avengers, of course. But you know what? I have no problem with his behaviour there. Because, unlike the first act of Iron Man, The Avengers isn’t pretending to be a serious exploration of the traumas of war. It’s a straightforward tale of traditional heroism and derring-do, where might and right are intrinsically linked, and while heroes don’t start fights, they always finish them. The vigilante code – ”My courage, physical strength, and personal suffering place me above the law, the only one who can save you” – belongs in a story like The Avengers. It doesn’t belong shoulder to shoulder with an apparently serious attempt to say that war is hell.

So, if you have a strongly stated theme, especially one that equates to a particular social or political standpoint, take a good look at how you’re presenting it, and how you’re presenting its opposite.

Of course you shouldn’t be presenting the other viewpoint as a straw man, only there to be knocked down and ridiculed. But it’s worth asking yourself: when the characters representing the two sides of my thematic argument are on screen, is the audience’s eye drawn to the right one? Is your hero embodying your theme in a dynamic, compelling, and convincing way – or are you secretly feeling drawn to the shiny temptations of the Dark Side…?

Image courtesy Thomas Hawk

1.         Learn your craft by reading, writing and watching.

2.         Observe the world around you. Listen to the way people actually speak.

3.         Write, write, write, write.

4.         Take a course or read a book. And then another one. And then another one.

5.         Above all, have fun.

The next Allaboutwriting Essential Scriptwriting: The Scene workshop will be held in Johannesburg on Saturday 9 June 2012.

Today, jmmcdowell at:  http://jmmcdowell.com/ presented me with the “Tell Me About Yourself Award.  Jmmcdowell  is an archaeologist who also writes novels.  I encourage you all to visit her blog.

This award appeals to me because it is a wonderful way to discover new blogs and to gain new readers.  It also gives me the opportunity to share a few things about myself that my readers and readers-to-be may not know.

There are only a few simple rules:

1.  Thank the person that nominated you (hello) and provide a link back to their blog.

2.  Tell the world 7 things about yourself that you have not yet shared.

3.  Nominate 7 fellow bloggers and let them know.

Seven things about me…

1.  My primary goal is to become a successful screenwriter.

2. I have a Music Myspace Page at www.myspace.com/maryannblinkhorn where you can listen to some original songs that I wrote a few years ago.  I am not singing.  I wrote the music and lyrics and hired the singers.

3.  I love writing free-style poetry.  I do it for self-expression, and I do it for the love of it.

4.  The blogs on WordPress that interest me the most, are centered around the following topics:  screenwriting tips, writing tips, writing and poetry, photography–industrial, nature, black and white,  art, quotes, films and filmmaking, recipes, music and haikus.

5.  Rather than having favorite colors, I have favorite color combinations–purple and green, yellow and gray, and so on…

6. I hate wearing hats in the wintertime.

7.  My morning coffee is a must.

Here are the seven blogs that I am nominating.  Please stop by and visit them.

Ferdinand Morvay’s blog at:  http://padroitly.wordpress.com/

Rich’s bog at:  http://brainsnorts.wordpress.com/

Dean J. Baker’s Blog at:  http://deanjbaker.wordpress.com/

free penny press at:  http://freepennypress.wordpress.com/

Eat My Haiku at:  http://eatmyhaiku.wordpress.com/

Julie Catherine’s blog at:  http://juliecatherinevigna.wordpress.com/

Meeka’s Mind at: http://acflory.wordpress.com/

If you seven nominees choose to accept this award…please copy and paste the award icon to your blogs and follow through with the rest of the instructions above.

There are many more that I would like to add to the above list, for I visit many wonderful blogs, often.  For links to some of my favorite writing and screenwriting-related sites and blogs, please visit my Blogroll.

Well, I guess that’s it for now.

Best regards,

Mary Ann Blinkhorn  (Mypenandme)

This week, for 1, 2, 7, 14, I plan on reading my own script. Yes, I said it. I’ve been avoiding it like the plague. I’m hyper-critical of my own work as I don’t like anything I’ve ever done. And the two movies I plan to watch are On The Ice (a movie I funded through Kickstarter) and the documentary Gasland. One of these days, I’d like to make a documentary, but I want the passion to be so great that I HAVE to make it. I’ve yet to get that feeling.

One of my friends knows of my secret passion. She surprises me with an Easter basket that, for the first time in my life, contains no candy. Instead, it is filled with books. The most prized of these books are still in my permanent collection. They are Screenplay and The Screenwriter‘s Workbook written by Syd Field.

Before this, I had never even considered writing screenplays, but reading Field’s no nonsense approach to creating them intrigued me. So I sat down and typed out a flawless Academy Award-winning script that sold for millions. Okay, not really. But reading his books made me feel like I could. I love his straightforward teaching style. I fantasized about flying to Los Angeles and enrolling in one of his courses. But it never happened. Let’s just say I have taken the long, scenic route to becoming a writer.

Now I’m more than twice as old as I was when I first received Field’s books as gifts. Since then, the Internet has become the go-to for just about everything. There is no limit to the amount of information a person can find on the web. And unlike 1989 when a discussion with a person required a hardline phone or travel, I can communicate with people all over the world with ease.

A few days ago, I realized that a screenplay idea I’d had for years had finally caught up to my knowledge of science. Or maybe it’s the other way around. But I finally have enough information to write this story. I sought out advice on Twitter and got a very generous response from people.

Then, today, the gold standard of screenplay writing instruction TWEETED ME! You know those videos of the girls meeting the Beatles for the first time? Yeah, amateurs. They were subtle compared to the happy dance I did in my bedroom. (thankfully, my kids weren’t home & all my neighbors are at work) Syd Field tweeted me twice. He corrected some confusion I had about technical information and offered a tip. And I’ll be high from the excitement for a week.

Of course, now I have to go back to my regular suburban reality. I’ve finished the laundry and dishes and now I’m starting dinner. But…today…I had a brush with greatness. The real Syd Field tweeted me. And for me, it doesn’t get much better than that.

It’s been a few days since my last post, but a lot has been going on. Too much. So let’s riff on that. I want to talk about my slate for a minute. A slate is a real or imaginary board in which all your projects are listed and the state of development they are in. Very few companies publish their slate. Some want to keep ideas secret. It’s probably a good idea to not show people how many pies you’ve stuck your fingers into. What ever the reasons, I’ve decided to organize a virtual slate right here on this blog. That’s right, you can see how incredibly ambitious I am. I bet ambitious also looks a lot like overwhelmed and spread too thin. Remember my earlier post about trying not to make Napoleon’s mistake? You can’t fight England and also take Russia. To quote Eddie Izzard, “Hitler obviously never played Risk as a child.” I did. And I got burned. You also can’t hold Afghanistan…

I believe a lot of the projects that I’ll list aren’t actually draining my mental and physical resources presently. Back burners is an overused metaphor. I like to think of my mind more like an art gallery as you might recall from a previous post as well. So let’s take a tour, shall we?

I’m going to try and list them in order of resources committed and/or most recently addressed. Ah, the excitement of trying to organize the mind! I’m sure by the end I will feel bad.

“Secondary.” A play.
This is the script I’m work shopping in the fall for a commercial run in New York. It’s currently being proofed. There will be a table read in a few weeks and then I’ll have the summer to do a rewrite.
Goal: Off-Broadway or Broadway production.

Backers Audition of a musical revival with actor/choreographer Josh Walden.
This is a directing project. It’s being planned for a late autumn presentation for producers for a commercial New York production. Very excited about this. More on it later. I should say again it’s not a piece I’ve written so it is a little out of bounds for this blog, but if you don’t rat on me I’ll talk about it more.
Goal: Off-Broadway or Broadway production.

My first novel. Contemporary fiction.
Still not ready to reveal title or any plot points, but I write a few pages a few times a week and it is about 25% done.
Goal: published.

“Lights Out.” A screenplay.
A film about teens sharing stories during a black out at a boarding school in Northern California. The title isn’t set in stone, but I haven’t come up with anything better. Maybe I will open it up for suggestions later. This script is 50% done and I’ve taken a break from it. Not because of being stuck, but because its structure is clear and I can pick it up again anytime. I was inspired to give low budget horror a shot after hanging with guys on “Sinister.”
Goal: to finance and make the film in about two years. (There’s a role for Victoria)

Novel adaptation for television mini-series.
A ten part series based on a book. 2 of the ten parts are finished. Took a break to brush up on my television scripting skills.
Goal: sale to major network, or cable network.

Untitled paranormal WWII screenplay.
A script I’ve been structuring and writing very recently. I had the idea and it was clear so I sat down one weekend and hammered out about 50 pages of it. Put lower on the list to let it simmer some more.
Goal: sale.

“The Jahi”. A screenplay.
I’ve written three drafts of this action film and will probably do another. It’s a I’d really like to it direct myself. Maybe if above projects find some success, I can leverage this the way I want. I liked an early draft that an agent told me to overhaul, but the new structure while clever lacks the power of the first. Somewhere between the Jekyll and the Hyde is maybe the one that works best.
Goal: production or sale.

“Plight of the Platypus”. A screenplay.
A romantic comedy that needs a rewrite. I’ve recently considered turning it into a novel. Wouldn’t be out of the question though to produce and make this film here in NYC with limited resources. Possibly enough for a television series. What I know is that I like the story, but not sure what medium.
Goal: unclear.

New musical. Already produced.
A piece I wrote and produced in the Bay Area with great success that is only missing one collaborator to present to backers here in NY. Just need some start up cash to get this one going, but was motivated to push Secondary first. Script is complete. New Arrangements needed. I’d like to submit it to NYMF next year, or something along those lines.
Goal: Off-Broadway or Broadway production.

New Musical.
Okay this one is my Russia. I’ve an idea for a musical. And that’s all it is right now. A really good fucking idea. And it’s not something based on a movie.
Goal: to complete a working draft but

Damn. That’s a lot of pieces. I left off a couple more that are only in idea phase. Okay, I left out a lot more. But I started feeling embarrassed listing them all. I guess it’s safe to say those other ideas are really not ready to be put on the slate if I didn’t feel they had enough committed to them already.

So here’s the problem that I think some of you can relate too – there’s not enough time! If I gave every one of these projects four hours a week that would be forty hours a week, but I’d only be giving each project four hours, so it would take years to finish anything.

Now here’s my other struggle. I have a hard time prioritizing my time and energy. Every project I listed I spent some energy on in the last month. Some a lot more than others; regardless they all got some. I feel if I completely abandon any one of the above mentioned pieces though they will slip into darker corners of the gallery where plenty of ideas have been exiled, and they don’t seem to come back. I could have put four or five more up on this slate, but I’ve dedicated some kind of energy to the above in the past 6 to 8 weeks. If I calendar things I become frustrated because when the time comes I am not necessarily inspired to work on the piece I’ve appointed. I set time aside to write – which is vague, but it’s something and right now between my duties as domestic engineer at Casa Morales, part-time foodie dude in SoHo and manager for my children’s acting careers I’m only able to write for 18-24 hours a week. I suppose I should mention video games and sports take a chunk of time too. I guess there’s one good reason I should be glad the Lakers got knocked out. I could cut down those things, but that’s how I rejuvenate.

I see lots of ads for programs that organize and systems to employ, but my mind really doesn’t like focusing on one thing until it really dominates my landscape, like opening nights, approaching deadlines or productions. I’m not sure putting a deadline on my projects actually motivates me either. It might just create more pressure. Of course, if there was a monetary reward that was tangibly attached to anything it would take my full attention. It has been easier to give Secondary the time it needs, because I know it’s going somewhere.

I’ve rambled about this enough. I’m going to go back to looking for typos, and grammar errors in Secondary. I’ve got to print off a few to be bound for a couple folks who went above and beyond to help me get it on its feet. I don’t want to send them anything riddled with errors. One or two will slip through, but hey: nobody’s perfect.

Credit: Google Images

Whether it’s a short story, novel, memoir, or screenplay, each medium has its own specific format and general “rules” to follow when writing.  I have written many short stories, have started a few novels, and have a lifetime worth of journals stored up for a memoir, however have never attempted to write a screenplay.

Yes, I have thought about it, but writing a movie script has only been an idea stuck in my head.  The thought of writing one intrigues me and terrifies me at the same time.  How cool would it be to see my original story on the big screen!, I think to myself.  And yet the thought, But I don’t know anything about writing screenplays, instantly follows.

Recently, however, the appeal of the unknown has outweighed the intimidating reality, and I have decided to attempt writing my very first screenplay.  I began today researching the formatting and “rules” (I quote “rules” because I am a firm believer that rules, especially when it comes to writing, are meant to be broken) of a script, and have found that it is a very technical medium.  Screenplays must look a certain way (even the font is specific!), must be written to show, not tell, and ultimately must be adaptable.  While a novel, short story, etc., features every detail in order for the reader to fully comprehend and engage what the writer intended, it seems that a screenplay is more of an outline; an outline that later may be changed, or even completely rewritten by a director, producer, or another scriptwriter.  This scares me!

So, with that all said, and before I even start writing, I have a request.  I know that WordPress is a network of talented and experienced writers, some of who have been crafting the art of writing for years.  My request to all of you bloggers is to help me start my screenplay.  

Have any of you ever written, or attempted to write one?  What advice can you give me, and anyone else who wishes to jump into the creative outlet of screenwriting?  I would greatly appreciate any help, advice, or comments!

 Thanks in advance and happy writing all!

Those business skills, it turns out, are just as devious as Bernie Madoff’s. Jimmy creatively utilizes the people around him to meet his goals for him. He has all the appearances of delivering a huge payoff to those who help him, while dangling the precise carrot each of these people needs to be kept on the path. He has a long term plan, or at least an emergency contingency plan. How many of us have one of those? Something he’s thought about for a long time and had to keep himself from temptation to stray from it. Now he’s ready to impliment the plan.

But will this plan actually get him to his goal? This is where Jimmy started to become “real” to me. (No, I’m not hearing voices or now have an imaginary friend.) He went beyong being just a scumbag in need of redemption. He is a person on a journey seeking restoration. He acts out of desperation, mostly out of a basic human need to have the love that he once knew, but assumes he can never have back again. He has a plan to erase his mistakes and push away those who have control over him so he will have the freedom to start over. By starting over, maybe he can prove he is worthy of being loved again.

There are obstacles he has to face. All of these will challenge Jimmy to show himself how much he wants this goal. But the decisions he makes remind himself how unworthy he is of being granted his wish.

This is all inside of him. And yes, I beat it out of him. Like him, the ends justified the means.