Fare thee well, LoKor

As you can tell from both what we've said and the aesthetic and content-based changes we've made to the site recently, The League is undergoing a period of great change. Most of that change is good, for the best. However, some of it was also unwanted and sad, albeit predictable.

LoKor, after being there in the beginning and helping to create The League, has left the group. While I won't go into much detail on why here, as I'm sure if he wants to, he will do so, I will say that he has gone on to pursue something else, career-wise, which he is much more invested in at the moment. Though those of us still in the League do not want to give up trying to write professionally, we understand that one's heart must be in it 100% to do that. LoKor's just wasn't anymore, and we, as his friends and fellow Leaguers, understood that.

LoKor, we'll avenge you if it's the last thing we do. Writers Block will pay for this!

What the Hell?!?

A little back story: not only do I write screenplays, but I also dabble in stage plays every now and then. My leaning is, on the whole, toward the screen. But every now and then I have an idea for the theater, and write that. A while ago, I submitted to a play development festival, which would have brought me cross country to spend a week in a cabin working on a play I wrote. My kind of thing.

Today, I found out I didn't get in. That's not a huge disappointment. We in the League all know that rejection and thick skins are essential to this business. What got me, though, was the reason for the rejection. Essentially, I received a mass email indicating that the company, which shall remain nameless, received more submissions than expected (OK, that happen). However, the staff was unable to read all of the material (...OK). As a result, the facilitators of the festival calculated the number of plays they could read in two months, which wound up being half of the submissions.

They had a lottery for which plays were going to be read, and cast the other half aside without a second glance.

OK, so, I like to think I'm level headed. And, like I said, it's not the rejection that bugs me, but the reason for it. I work with over 300 non-profit theatre companies in NYC, many of which are a two or three person staff. Yet, these companies hold festivals and read through everything that is submitted. To me, there is no justification for an arts organization, be it for the stage or the screen, to claim to promote new writers and develop new work, and not even read the work submitted! As unknown writers, we rely upon opportunities such as this festival to help us further our careers, and when the companies sponsoring them are overwhelmed and therefore neglect to read 50% of the material submitted to them, no kind words ease the burn felt by those left in the dark.

I fully understand the feeling of being overwhelmed by a project like this festival I submitted to, but I believe that a company's ability to simply back out of their commitment to artists is a frightful thing. Most of us in the League have work out to other competitions. Granted, those are national, well publicized, well managed screenplay competitions. Still, if all of a sudden we received an email telling us that such and such festival received too many screenplays and will only read titles that start with letters A-M, we would feel incredibly gypped (if we fell after N).

My anger comes from this feeling that it's hard enough to make it as a writer. We don't need companies that work for writers making it more difficult. In future years, I hope that this festival I was inappropriately dropped from will figure out how it can manage, and make its new policies very clear to all those submitting work. I hope that this is a one time thing, and not something indicative of a larger issue.

It's great that so many people are writing that writing competitions feel burdened. It's terrible, though, that a writer cannot even be guaranteed that someone will read his or her work when submitting to a competition.

Is this a common occurrence?

The Writing Week part 17

So, I “finished” the first draft of Screenplay X today. (Don’t worry, my children, soon enough I’ll reveal the title and a brief synopsis to you.) I say “finished,” because I know that there are a handful of scenes—really, the progression in the relationship between two characters—that I need to fix before I even think of the draft as being done. Perhaps the scenes aren’t as bad as I think they are, but my gut is telling me that they don’t build enough. Rather than being rungs on a ladder that keep going up and up, they’re sort of a Stairmaster right now; they hit the high note early on and then don’t go past that again. I need to let them build more.

Something struck me as I walked to work today: I can’t write something that is not as fun as the project before it. Maybe that’s a bit unclear. The last project I wrote, my post-apocalyptic spec, was a lot of fun to work on. I really dug it, and still do. And while I loved the script I worked on before it, I had more fun with the second project. Yet, despite how much I enjoyed working on the post-apocalyptic script (my first foray into that genre!), Screenplay X, a psychological thriller, might have been the most fun I’ve had on a project yet. I don’t quite know why that is, other than to guess that I love writing more and more each time I do it. I enjoy all the projects I work on—obviously, otherwise, I wouldn’t spend my time on them—and that enjoyment increases each time I start and complete something else.

Another thing that hit me was how my approach and my superstitions while writing change from project to project. Usually, I outline. This time, I didn’t. I used to only write to music. I spent the post-apocalyptic project writing in silence, yet made sure to have tunes going for Screenplay X. (What’s most odd for X is that I didn’t always opt to listen to music that set the mood. In fact, the first few days of writing, I chose music that was the antithesis to the tone I was setting in the pages, because it was so dark, I felt this compulsion to make sure I didn’t lose myself in the darkness. Having upbeat music playing neutralized my emotions, which might sound very odd for a writer. I was still so deeply engrossed in the feel of the pages, but the music allowed me the door through which I could pull out when things got too heavy.)

The biggest difference, though, is that I haven’t told anyone in the group about this. I’m excited to get the pages out to them, but want to hold off until I tweak the scenes I mentioned above.

The biggest similarity? The schedule. Though I took to writing in the morning, rather than waiting until I got home from work each night (which has been a HUGE help), I still put in my hour a day. That precious hour is one thing I do not plan to change from project to project.

Pollen: A Vision Lover's Enemy

When you're hot, you're hot, and lately I've been on fire. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm just in the kind of groove where there's always a great scene waiting to be written. Beyond the scenes there's another script, itching to be realized. Since moving offices a few months ago (I do my work at work...after work), I have been enjoying the healthiest writing lifestyle of my life. I often wondered as to what might derail me. Would I wake up one day and find that all of the fingers on each hand had been fused into two annoyingly large fingers? Would the world come to an end? Would it be the ninjas? (Cake Man knows) No, none of the above. Instead, I'm brought to my knees by pollen, nature's sperm.

Oh how I hate allergy season, nature's coordinated ejaculation onto mankind. There's no escaping it. It's the one discharge that gets a little bit on everyone.... Anyway, my eyes have been bested by this foul substance. Even as I sit here, typing this post, it would be virtually impossible to stare at the computer screen if it were not for a double dose of benadryl. Oh benadryl, my pill shaped savior, but I will sing your praise later because you make me sleepy. And so I am either sleepy and mildly productive, or in agonizing discomfort and mildly productive. In a job where I can easily spend six hours a day staring into a computer, my eyes just don't have it in them to press on for an additional two hours. Everyone keeps telling me to rest. I say, spoken like true commoners. A writing groove must not end by choice! It must continue on, the writer taking advantage of every glorious page before his well runs dry. And so I sally forth and write on, riding a hybird steed of benadryl, claritin, mucin eye drops for tired eyes, and bausch and lomb allergy eye drops. It all makes me look and feel like a crackhead, but at least the pages will keep coming.

Blair Witch revisited

On Wednesday our Cake-loving member received Cloverfield from Netflix, which we came home and watched after a League business meeting/pizza outing. It was a lot better than I'd thought it would be going in, as I hadn't heard anyone say a nice thing about it besides fellow Leaguer Onyx. In the end, there were too many points where the characters grated on me or their actions didn't follow any sort of logic to keep me from really loving it, but I can't say I wasn't entertained for 80 minutes.

The movie really made me think of a Blair Witch Project with a much bigger budget. I'll come clean: I'm a big Blair Witch Project fan, and still feel the movie doesn't receive the credit it deserves. Even taking the low-budget blockbuster and insane grassroots marketing phenomena away, it succeeds as a creepy, disturbing horror film.

In high school (back when I was younger and a bit more naive) I shot a Blair Witch parody with some friends. We edited straight on VHS and filmed it all in one weekend in the woods behind my house. My memory is a bit foggy, but I believe we were searching for Joan of Arc, rather than a witch. We ended up handing it in, in lieu of a paper for history class. I got a B, which was nice enough.

Coincidentally, a lengthy, insightful look back at The Blair Witch Project from The Onion AV Club's Scott Tobias was just posted here this morning. It's a great read, even if you're not a fan of the movie - it expresses a lot of the same feelings I have about it, nearly ten years later.

Ten years? I'm feeling old.

Welcome, Me.

Hello blogger world, it's me AxelA.

I'm the newest member of the League of Screenwriters + 1 TV writer, and so I just wanted to say, "What are you eating for lunch today?" (I had matzah, fucking passover)

My current status is at work, wavering between eating that piece of cake or chewing a piece of gum. My advice to anyone who is about to graduate -- get a job where you have the freedom to write at it.

I spend 8 our of my 9 hours a day entertaining myself with my own words. Does that make me selfish? Probably. But otherwise I could collect dust, and my coworkers' allergies would act up when they walked by me.

All right League members, Happy Friday! And remember to stay smart, or else you're likely to get hit by a taxi cab.

Signing off,

AxelA

Brain Cell Rubbing

I like seeing my friends ponder, so occasionally I throw questions that require some deep thoughts at them. Such as near graduation, I asked several close friends if they can choose for one to be true, which would it be: to be guaranteed a job right then and there, or for Batman to be real. The follow up question to that is, if your girlfriend/boyfriend cheated on you with Batman, could you, with a clear conscious, be mad at them? (You can replace Batman with Superman.)

The most recent question is who would you rather be: Neil Gaiman or Hugh Laurie.

The race is pretty close, but so far Neil Gaiman is winning. My favorite reason for this “because Hugh Laurie has to live in LA”.

"When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things." Finish the quote

I must begin by saying that Forbidden Kingdom’s success depresses me. Especially because when I first heard of the movie, there was a part of me that wanted to go see it.

A friend is moving to Prince Edward Island Canada, where there are two lobsters and two oysters seasons a year. I agreed to booksit while she leaves the good ol’ New York City to go on a year of cold, writing, home-wrecking spree. Among the books she's leaving behind, she specifically pointed one out to me, saying I would enjoy it.

The book’s name is Midnight Blue. It’s thick, especially for a paperback. However, neither the New Yorker nor my next next library book arrived yet, and if I don’t have something to read on the bus in the morning, I go stir crazy. So, you know, whatever, let’s see what this book is about.

It’s about vampires. Light on the plot. Heavy on the violence. And oh God is the violence wonderful. It’s brutal, gritty, vicious, ugly, and it doesn’t skimp on the details. I can’t even bring myself to think about the rom. com. anymore, and there’s a part of me that wonders why on earth did I want to write something funny and romantic and, most of all, happy in the first place?

When I’m writing something that’s...not very nice, I always think how nice would it be to write a script like 50 First Dates, or, I don’t know, Finding Nemo. Then I actually try to write a story in which no one dies and I start watching Law and Order: SVU like it’s crack on screen. (Actually, that’s basically what Law and Order is.)

The truth is, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t even like Midnight Blue so much. But I deprived myself of gore almost the entire time of writing the rom. com., and finally I lost it. I know I’ll get through this phase, but right now all I want to do is write about people bleeding. I can’t even come up with plot to go with that.

The Writing Week part 16

This week's been a big one for the League. But, since most of what’s noteworthy happened well outside the confines of my pages, not much of it will be related now.

I guess it’s worth mentioning that I got to page sixty, which is 2/3 of what I’m targeting. I’ve thought of this current script, the mysterious Screenplay X as a 90 pager from day one. I still really like the idea, but I don’t think it’s one that needs to hit that less and less common two hour mark. So, I’m two thirds of the way done, and I still haven’t outlined at all, save for maybe a few notes here and there, which I type directly onto the page and then delete as they become obsolete.

I haven’t worked this way in a long time, and while I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing, there are certain drawbacks to it. Mostly, I’m writing much slower. I can typically bang out about five pages an hour, if I know what I’m writing. Nowadays, with this script being done this way, I’m getting maybe three. That’s not a bad thing, and it keeps me thinking much more about what I’m putting on the page, about every single line. I’ve never thought quite as hard about each word of dialogue as I am doing now, so that’s been a learning experience.

And, that brings me to the second drawback, of sorts. The dialogue. I’m pretty sure that, structurally, the script is about where it would be if I was outlining. This scene set in X location at this point in the script, followed by these other characters in Y location. I’m doing that. But it’s the content of the scenes that’s not as firm as perhaps it would be if I had outlined. Partly, that’s because I still don’t know where Act 2 ends. (Page-wise, it’ll be about 75. But I mean plot-wise. I don’t know what the tent-pole scene is that supports the script at the end of Act 2.) I don’t fully know what ought to be happening in some scenes, which is making future scenes weaker or repetitive. I could be wrong, but I’ll probably have to read through it and do some re-writes before the League sees it. Eitehr way, I guess I’ll find out soon enough. Going at this rate, and with any luck, I’ll FADE OUT in ten days.

I do still like where the script is going, and it actually developed into something more recently. I found a newer, deeper meaning, and a tangible connection I can make within it to a pre-existing work; a poem, actually. I’m not sure how much I’ll use it—I actually think I might have allowed it to feel too much about the poem right now—but it was a discovery I had no intention of making. Like penicillin.

The Writing Week part 15

It’s been an interesting week, I’ll say that for sure. I finished act one and, upon rereading it, discovered that I was mostly pleased with it. There was a beat that was missing at one point, and a little bit of dialogue that wasn’t working for me. But as a whole, I was happy with the product. Sure, it’ll probably get changed once I shine the light of the League’s opinions on it, but for now, it works. There’s not really anything I have to change before moving forward with act two. It reads quickly yet effectively, I think. And, perhaps most importantly right now, it’s still fun to write. So that’s good.

But not everything this week was good. I managed to let one person put a huge damper on a fun night I was having Saturday. We were hosting a party, and someone I’d hoped would come cancelled last minute. I don’t know why exactly, but I used that as an excuse to disappear for the rest of the night and check out early. When I woke up on Sunday, I was back in that mindset where I seek shelter in my scripts and those worlds. I wanted to escape there again, and felt another brick added to the wall I’m building between myself and the real world.

And the real world has started seeping into the League more and more recently. We’ve been going through some changes, which I’m sure will be discussed later. But they involve bringing new people in, and old people possibly leaving. Careers and paths are changing, apartments are being found and lost, and romantic relationships are either progressing or regressing. There is a lot going on now; we all feel a strong wind of change blowing through the League watchtower right now, and while there’s little more we can do than ride it out, it is at times unsettling. Not so much because we will be unable to cope with the changes—no mater what, we’ll remain “the League” in spirit if nothing else—but because we’re reminded of how quickly and how dramatically things can and do change.

The important thing, I guess, for me to do is keep writing. In fact, I’m sure writing will become a refuge for me. When everything is changing and people are coming and going, the writing will be constant, unwavering, safe.

You have no idea how much I hope that’s true…

Just a Name

In Chinese, naming people are fairly easy. If it’s a girl’s name, chances are there’ll be a character that means quiet/ pleasing/ pretty/ some-sort-of-“famine”- animal. If it’s a boy’s name, then patriotic/ fierce/ smart/ successful/ rich/ bright/ some-sort-of-“masculine”-animal. Sexist, I know, but hell, at least it’s usually easy to differentiate between male and female names, and what the parents wished for the kid (unless they’re named after a scenic view or vegetation). When in doubt, name your boy “Love (your) Country” and your girl “Pleasing (to) Husband” or “Call (forth a younger) Brother”. (I’m not making this shit up. Those were pretty popular names.)

Names written in English, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily mean it's an American/English name. It can be Italian, it can be Polish, it can be Spanish. It drives me nuts.

Usually I get away with just throwing my characters New Testament names, but when I stray from the Bible, things start to make less sense. I don’t know why three of the archangels’ names--Michael, Gabriel, and Rachael--are pretty popular, but hardly anyone is named after Uriel. Although, when I name someone Raphael, people usually respond “oh, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle!”

I’ve given male names to my female characters, female names to my male characters (still can’t believe Brooke is a girl’s name). More than often I just grab the nearest book or magazine that has multiple contributors and pick something that I can pronounce. I’ve used up my old high school contact list by now. The one time I named two of my characters Luc and Nicolai after old work interns Lucas and Nicolas, Cake Man pointed out I turn them Russian. How??

I also just realized that the girl in my new script probably can’t be called Christina since she lives in an alternate/ fantasy universe where there’re multiple deities.

And last names? Bane of my existence.

Happy ESL Time

It's almost 6 am and I have a fever so I decided to start a new section, called "Happy ESL Time". It doesn't have to do with writing as much as my relationship with the English language. This will be the eleventh year I've spent in America (3rd+4th grade, then high school onward). The only time someone sat me down to teach me English was in 3rd and 4th grades. When I came back to America the second time, I had to jump into Shakespeare and learn a foreign language like everyone else (I took Spanish. My teacher told me I don't conjugate as much as I mutilate. He was one of my favorite teachers.)

Most things you simple pick up when you've lived in another country for this long and 90% of your friends don't speak your native language. But after a certain point you start hitting words that people just don't use enough for you to pick up naturally. I distinctly remember learning "asphalt" in 2004 because it was in Gwen Stefani's song "Long Way to Go", and the word "silhouette" in 2003, first semester of college, because it was in Cake Man's script, three times, and I couldn't pronounce it (Damn you Cake Man. The fuck did you pick the Asian girl to read stage directions for??). And some things you just don't pick up unless you grew up here.
Such as the term "Rub-a-dub-dub". Is that trying to say "rub-a-duck" i.e. rub the famous yellow duckie? Or does it actually mean "rub-a-tub", i.e. spray the tub down with some Lysol and start scrubbing. I still don't know.

If you do, answers would be appreciated.

The Writing Week part 14

If I continue writing these weekly updates for a year, which I fully intend to do, then last week marked the quarter-way point. In between then and now, I started a new script. I got more jazzed up about writing it than I have been about a new script for a while. Mind you, I always have a fire lit under me for the first ten or even thirty pages, but this was the hottest I've felt the flames in a long time. Then something happened.

Without getting into the gory details, because I'm attempting to write this project without even discussing it with the League, I'll tell you that the script involves a number of deaths. I wrote a scene that involved a death similar to one a classmate of mine experienced. I wasn't great friends with her, but the school was small, so everyone knew everyone. And I got stopped cold when the scene began. Not only was it difficult to recreate something that someone I knew experienced, even though I personally know very little about what actually happened. But I felt like I didn't have a right to the experience. Who am I to write about this? How dare I write a scene about that?

I felt as if I was somehow violating her honor by doing this. My moral alarm was deafening. I felt dirty and dishonest for what I was writing. That was the first time that has ever happened to me, and though I had an idea of why, I couldn't put my finger on anything specific. Today, I think I figured it out. By writing a scene about a murder, I run the risk of glorifying the murderer. If I did that, if people sympathized with him, I would be guilty of harming her. I can't do that.

The feeling passed, at least enough for me to keep on writing. I'm nearing the end of the first act, and, barring any major roadblocks, brain farts, or walls, I should close it tomorrow. I just hope I'm doing the right thing in writing this. It's a story I felt compelled to tell for some reason, only now that I'm doing so, I feel almost ashamed. Once the League sees it, I hope they'll be able to guide me on whether or not to pursue a second draft and possible production. I have a personal rule of never writing something that I'm not interested in. Though I am interested in this, I don't know that it's something anyone would pursue making, and I certainly didn't expect it to be as emotionally difficult and painful to write.

Sun's out!

As soon as I get writing again, the weather takes a turn for the wonderful. There's nothing quite as distracting as SUNLIGHT.

I've managed to get just over an hour of writing, but looking back I noticed I misspelled "waitress" as "weaters" in three different paragraphs. It just goes to show that my mind is somewhere else.

Silence broken

After a little over two grueling weeks of keeping tight-lipped, my characters have to decided to start speaking again. Tonight has been the first time I've been able to sit down in front of Final Draft and actually feel like I'm getting anywhere. It's not to say that I haven't been writing, but my various side projects just haven't had that exhilarating feeling my main script does.

This is the first major roadblock I've hit with this one, and I guess it was about time. Once I hit pages in the 50s, I just lost the ability to write dialogue that had been coming naturally up to that point. Now I'm walking away from a session and I feel like I may've gotten the ball rolling again. (About time, heh.)

Writing done for the evening, file saved. Time to crack a beer.

Whole New Worlds

Maybe it’s just Spring. April showers, May flowers, and burgeoning… feelings. But I feel as though there are a number of worlds, a number of things, deeper understandings and worlds, opening up to me at the moment.

Ok, I’ll start with the most clichéd. It’s disgustingly sappy, so you’ll have to forgive me. I’m talking about love. I’m not saying I’ve fallen in love. Rather, I think, for the first time really, I’ve begun to understand it. I haven’t really bought into it before; that’s not to say that I don’t believe it exists or is felt every day. I do. Just not by me. But I recently returned home for a weekend and saw a friend of mine—she was always the last one we’d expect to be in a relationship, and even the relationships she was in were defined by her wild independence and seeming reluctance to let anyone in—clinging off of a guy she recently started dating again. I’ve never seen her act the way she did, walking over to a guy in the middle of a party just to give him a peck on the cheek and walk away. I’ve seen other people do similar things, but seeing her do it really jolted me. It got me thinking; if this is what that looks like, if she can do it (and I had always felt a kindred spirit in her because I have acted the same way in past “relationships”), then maybe there’s hope for me yet. World 1.

Next is the world created of starting a new script. Jumping ahead a bit to what would be in the next Writing Week. I began a new script last night, one that I didn’t outline or anything (more thoughts on that later). But I’m so excited about it. I feel like I’m in elementary school again and counting down the hours until school ends so that I can run home and play with my new toy. I just want to dive back into the script as soon as possible. I hope this feeling doesn’t die down (the first act is often the most invigorating for me) any time soon.

Finally, is a world of revelation. I tend to do these things, which I kick myself constantly for. Who doesn’t do things they get pissed about, I know. But I linger on the small things like nothing else, and often let big issues just get swept under the rug. At any rate, I find myself in situations where I say or do something stupid or inadvertently act inappropriately—completely accidentally mind you—and then spend the next week berating myself. Well, that sort of happened again two nights ago. Now, nothing bad really came out of it (that I know of), but I found that once again, I turned inward to the worlds that I create for my scripts. I am safe in those worlds. I am in control of them. My characters might not be, but there, I cannot be harmed. Perhaps that’s why I’ve taken so much to writing; it’s my safe haven. No matter the body count or the number of broken hearts in my scripts and plays, I am unaffected. The world could (and nearly has) come to an end in something I write, yet I manage to always make it out unscathed. More than that, everyone in those pages is my friend, no matter how diabolical. Because they’re all of me, of somewhere inside my mind. It might not be the healthiest of mindsets, in fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not, but it’s something I’ve realized.

Why, you ask, am I revealing this here? It’s been on my mind and, well, maybe it doesn’t matter outside of the type on the page, at least for as long as it takes me to write this.

The Writing Week part 13

Another week, more... progress? Change, for sure.

I feel like I'm echoing LoKor's recent post about departures. I was out of the City over the weekend to attend a going away party for a friend, whom I won't see for 27 months. Then, I came back to the city, only to attend another going-away party tonight. Change seems to be in the air.

I also feel it in my bones. I'm not sure whether I'm deluding myself or not, but I feel like something should and very well might happen soon. I have a number of projects to work on, all in varying degree of completion. I have another that I really feel compelled to start working on soon. I'm not sure whether it's a play or a screenplay, to be honest. It feels like a play, but there's a moment at the end, the moment that the entire project revolves around, that screams film. I don't know how it would be done and truly felt if it was done on stage. It would lose what I feel to be the most important, most meaningful moment of the entire piece.

So, I think I'll try it as a script. Just for a change, though, I won't show it to or discuss it with the rest of The League until it's done. I'm not sure that's wisest, but even I don't really know what it is now, so how can I ask them to? I need to figure it out. I can't be told. But I am intimidate by it. Like many of my ideas, this one is about a character's inner struggle and personality changes. I tend not to me the most successful with drawn out reveals and character arcs. Yet, that's often what I write. Maybe I've been doing big action scripts recently, because I can hide in the explosions. If the character work isn't happening, I can just blow something up. But not in this project. Not at all. I'm scared, but if it works, I'll have reached another peak in my climb to the peak of my writing ability.

As far as the re-write is coming along, well... it is. Things really aren't changing that much. Well, let me rephrase that: they are and they aren't. The changes themselves seem small to me, but their impact rings much louder. It's amazing how a little tweak here and a little thing there can really add meaning - or change it completely. Perhaps the differences really aren't as big as I'm imagining. I'll have to re-read the script to see. But at the moment, I feel as though I can make the much needed corrections and improvements without seriously altering the structure of the script at all. I could be wrong, but if I'm not, I'll have produced a much stronger second draft with nearly 90% of the first draft intact.

Maybe that's impossible.

If I'm wrong, I'll just have to change it again.

Back From Paradise

I've actually been back from my visit to the Bahamas for a while, but this would be my first post since soaking up some rays. I was a little concerned for a moment that all the great food and chill island vibes would melt away the crusty shell of New York determination that I've been building over the past few months. I was wrong. Still writing, and with tan lines to boot. I expect to finish the script for my first ever feel good sports movie this week. One small step forward in my quest to delve into every genre. I don't write off of an outline often, but so far I'm finding that it's probably worthwhile with this script. The sports movie genre always strikes me as one of the simplest, formulaic genres out there, but it's actually been kind of difficult to nail. I'd much rather be writing about ninjas in the Iga province of 14th century Japan, but there's something refreshing about having a fun script that could be made for 100k at it's cheapest. I just threw that number out there. I'm not sure what industry professionals would suggest, but I could probably make the movie for $1000 and a 20 lb bag of rice. Who needs lighting? The techs just make things complicated with all their funny terms. Sound? I just need a kick ass rock soundtrack over all the game action. Actors? I'll just find people who like rice. I got a good feeling about this one.