The Collaboration: Mexican Writing Standoff

A little while back Cake Man, Zombie, and I decided that we wanted to come together and collaborate on an idea. There are a lot of successful writing partnerships out there, and for me personally, the ability to work well with other writers is something I very much want to develop. You have to start somewhere, so what better place than a bar?

Sixty beers later I think we were all agreeing for the tenth time that we’d like to write something together. Eventually we decided to start a collaboration thread on gmail. I found this very helpful and if our collaboration trio continues down the road, I imagine that the gmail thread will be a mainstay. It’s just good to be able to click over to a record of all your ideas and see some of their little evolutions or de-evolutions, see what’s hitting chords and what isn’t. The thread also keeps things organized and it’s easily accessible for everyone involved. Flash forward another sixty beers.

We’re in a bar again, sober. We’re all supposed to have brought a page with a logline for each of our 14 possible collaboration ideas. Zombie didn’t bring his, I left mine on my printer, but thankfully Cake Man remembered. Good thing too, because that was a great meeting that probably wouldn’t have happened without the sheet. Anyway, with the ideas in front of us we talked it through, basically testing their potential as movie ideas as well as collaborative pieces. We narrowed the 14 ideas down to 3. It just so happened that we were left with an idea from each of us: my Historical Dark Comedy, Zombie’s Historical Horror/Suspense, and Cake Man’s Comedy. Thus began the Mexican writing standoff. Cue Ennio Morricone music.

We finally had our nominees. Two had to die (for now); only one would prevail. We were all open to each, but I was definitely standing by mine, and Cake Man was standing by his. I had thought that Zombie would be standing by his, making the elimination as interesting as the finale in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. But it turns out that Zombie was leaning towards Cake Man’s. If you’ll allow me to further characterize our script ideas as gunmen, the shootout played out something like this in my head.

High noon. We’re in the middle of the hottest fuckin desert, in the middle of the ghostiest fuckin town. Tumbleweed rolls by, gets snagged on a steer skull. Cake Man, Zombie, and me, triangle formation, hands inching to our peacemakers. No peace here. I’m looking to arrange a meeting with Cake Man and his maker, and he’s looking to send me to hell. Zombie is already buddy buddy with Cake Man, so I reckon he’s got his eyes set on me. I’m going to have to be faster than a whore’s prayer. That’s when the vulture flying over our heads lets out its call and we draw. Goddamn…that was quick. Cake Man has shot me the through the heart. I fall into my own grave. Zombie’s still trying to shoot at my corpse, but he discovers that his iron was never loaded. He looks to Cake Man, but finds a smoking barrel instead. Zombie gets his face shot in. Cake Man wins, walks off into the sunset.

But it’s nobody’s loss when you think about it. We’re all excited to be working together and with a good idea. But nobody really knows what to expect aside from more beer. This is our first collaboration, and we’ll keep you posted regardless of whether we’re cruising or sinking. Anybody have some advice for the collaboration rookies? DOA?

23 and Counting

Here we go, my first post as a 23 year old. Not a bad number 23, although some would say it was a bad movie. (Ba Da Chh!) I’ve actually never seen The Number 23, but I should have gone to support Jim Carey. I always liked him, especially when he dabbled with more dramatic, less zany rolls. Some of my fellow league members may disagree with me here, to the point where I have a knife in my back, but I think that if Jim Carey was never in Batman Forever and decided to show his darker more dramatic side in a role, the new Joker could have been a good fit. (Ducking as Cake Man’s empty whiskey bottle flies over my head)

Anyway, this post was never supposed to be about Jim Carey really. It’s supposed to be about my goals for another year on the planet. Shortly after I turned 22 I posted that I wanted to move back to the artistic hotbed that is New York, get a job, and place in a screenplay competition. Most people tell me I did all three. It depends on what your definition of “place” is. I was envisioning top three scripts. I made top sixteen. Some days I say I accomplished all the goals, other days I don’t, but they’re old goals. Time for new ones. My Grandma always says write down your goals. I think this counts.

Goal #1- Place in a screenplay competition. By that I mean...I’ll just say better than top 16.

Goal #2- Have six screenplays polished to the point where I wouldn’t mind dropping any of them on a producer’s table. Right now I have one in such condition, and a few others that aren’t too far away.

Goal #3- Have conversations with three people I’ve never met before who are currently working in relevant corners of the entertainment industry.

There they are, my screenwriting related goals for 23. Come 24, if the world hasn’t ended yet, I’ll come back to this post and measure my progress. In any event, 23 will be a better year than 22. The other day I just realized I spent nine months of 22 with my brother’s old leather couch as my primary bed. Now I sleep on a queen size bed of my own and in my own apartment. In the end I think that might be the real progress.

Vote for Billy!

Let’s forget about Obama and McCain for a second and talk about a man that we need to rise in our government. Sonny Landham, better known to me as Billy from the 1987 action flick Predator, is making a bid for the Kentucky senate. You can read more about it at the CNN link below.

Tough guy actor eyes Senate seat

So why should anybody vote for Billy? And believe me, it is Billy you’re voting for. I’ll go ahead and give you four reasons.

Reason #1- Great laugh. If you haven’t seen Predator yet, check it out. He’s got (or at least had in 1987) a great booming chuckle that says “I’m a jovial giant, but if you cross me I’ll tear your heart out.”

Reason #2- Billy is the only known American commando to face a predator with a knife while having the option of a gun. The video would suggest that this decision didn’t go so well for him, but I’d like to think he made a scratch or two.

Reason #3- He’s Native American, and as we know from Hollywood, all Native Americans have a sixth sense when it comes to danger. The terrorists lose their element of surprise.

Reason #4- If Billy wins a seat in the senate that would mean that three members of the 1987 commando team will have gone on to notable political posts. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Dutch) is the governor of California, and Jessie Ventura (Blain) is a former governor of Minnesota. How awesome is that?

Come on people, we have to make this happen. So get a hold of all your Kentuckinite buddies and let them know about Billy if they don’t already. Joe! If you cast one vote this year, you know what to do with it.

Experience Points

We all know that part of the challenge of being a young writer (or any writer for that matter) is keeping motivated to write and finding the avenues to best develop what you produce. I’ve been thinking lately about how fortunate those in the league are to have a platform where at any given time we can bounce our material off of several trained writers. In some cases the fortune extends to the point where we can contact former professors, some of whom are continuing professional writers, for feedback on our work. Once you’ve maintained the will to write, the ability to get trustworthy feedback is the next goal in my opinion. But sometimes we in the league strongly question or flat out reject the notes we give one another, and we’ve done the same with notes a professor has given us at one time or another. As I await notes for a high concept script from a high concept screenwriter and former professor, it made me wonder; as a young writer how do you draw the balance between accepting script altering notes from a wiser more experienced writer, and maintaining your vision of the script?

I wish this was where I could make a respectful attempt at answering the question, but the truth is that I’m still trying to figure this one out for myself. Hopefully the league will chime in. This will be my first experience with receiving detailed notes from a professor beyond my time as a student. I’d like to think I’ve vastly improved my craft since those days, but to what degree does my experience allow me to challenge his notes in the event that he feels adamant about some major changes? I don’t know. For now I’m tempted to put his notes on a pedestal, although I may discover something new about myself within the next few weeks. In any event, there’s a lot to say about experience.

One of the most beautiful and creatively fatal mentalities that often accompany a young writer, is his/her belief that they can create whatever they want and have it be gold. I saw that all throughout my time in Tisch and I experienced it myself. There was a time when I learned what I needed and completed a new draft thinking that it was ready and I had left little room for improvement. Then came a brief sit down with chair of the dramatic writing department as I proudly handed him my perfection. He scanned the first act and before I could figure out what I wanted for lunch he’d drawn a line through a few pages here, rearranged a few pages there. He didn’t even read the rest of the script. I took a look at his notes, and whereas over hours upon hours of work I couldn’t find any major room for improvement in my work, in five minutes he vastly improved my first act. I was humbled, in awe of a vision for structure, story, and character that I can only hope to one day possess. He developed that vision with experience. I try to remind myself that at some point in the past he was probably similarly naïve and blind as I was.

More Giant Robots!

Looks like Transformers may be getting some competition in the awesome giant robot market. According to hollywoodreporter.com, Lawrence Kasdan is set to adapt Robotech, the epic sci-fi animated series from the 1980s.

For those of you not too familiar with the Robotech series, you and I are pretty much in the same boat. I got my giant robot fix from the Transformers. Although I’m not a Robotech historian, I do have some fond memories of the series over the course of a month back in 2007 when I was crashing on my brother’s couch.

My brother’s roommate recently got the complete Robotech series as a birthday gift. I use to believe there was nothing he could consistently watch more than The Simpsons, but I was wrong. From what I got from the few dozen or so episodes I watched is that humans have this beef with aliens involving a power source called protoculture. Hot shot pilot Rich Hunter is far better at blowing bad guys up than he is with recognizing and dealing with the affections of his commanding officer Lisa Hayes. Is that about it?

Like I said, I’m not the Robotech expert. I’ll let Zombie chime in to fairly represent the series. All I know is that sometime down the line we’ll be getting some super sleek, mach 10, giant robot action. I’ll watch it, not for the giant robots, but because it’s the only way I know how to thank Lawrence Kasdan for Wyatt Earp.

You can read the original Hollywood Reporter article at http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ia3b683089f36e7ebb3a620eb11dacda3

Trimming The Delicious Fat

I recently finished a draft of an action script, and after receiving notes I am seeing what should have been obvious at the time. My sidekick character has a habit of overshadowing my protagonist. It’s not the worse problem to have. At least I have a protagonist, and you better believe that there are scripts floating around good companies that barely have one. Anyway, I don’t think my problem is that my protagonist isn’t interesting. It’s just that my sidekick is a real bad ass, probably the first supporting character I’ve had that I might write an entirely new script around. But until that script comes, to the chopping block I go.

Take away from my sidekick, add to my protagonist. Add a little muscle, trim a little fat. But what if the fat is delicious and chewy and flavorful? We’ve all been there before, pondering the fate of a line that we cherish, considering where else we might put that half page of golden wit. Sometimes we ponder and consider so much that we make the wrong decision.

I confess that I have recognized in past and current scripts solidly written lines and pages that did not benefit my script, and rather than cutting these tumors I forced them into a draft. I even tweaked small scenes around them for the worse in the hopes that it made the fat seem more like muscle. This is always a terrible idea. It doesn’t matter if your buddy really digs your scene. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to be the line that makes the trailer. It’s hard enough in screenwriting to recognize what isn’t needed in our scripts. When you see something in your script and you know it shouldn’t be there, chop it off. You can put the trimmings in a separate file like Zombie does and eventually use all the scraps to create a screenwriting abomination.

Cigarettes: Cancer Sticks or Instant Cool

At this year’s Tisch graduation writer/director Amy Heckerling (Clueless, Fast Times at Ridgemont High) was invited to say a few words to the class of 2008. She cautioned the next generation of struggling screenwriters about smoking and the portrayal of smoking in their films, among other things. I didn’t attend the graduation, but from what I hear she touched on how quick many of us writers are to put a cigarette in a character’s mouth because it gives them something to do or it just provides instant cool. The tobacco execs aren’t complaining, and upon thinking back to some of my writing they’d probably give me a big pat on the back. The kind of pat fitting of a large, well fed Carolinian.

I recently finished the first draft of my action/horror western. I’ve got one character who might as well be the Marlboro Cowboy, except cooler and deadlier. After thinking about what Ms. Heckerling was saying I wanted to see if I could trim down on the smoking. I mean, we’re intelligent writers. We can make our characters do other things right? But after reading over the script I didn’t touch a single cigarette/cigar. For draft two I might have him aggressively smother a cigar under his boot, but that’s as far as I go for now. I don’t smoke, nobody in my family smokes, and I hate being around cigarettes, but I can’t seem to cut those pesky cancer sticks.

Let’s face it, cigarettes are kind of cool up until the lung cancer part. Google Clint Eastwood and you don’t have to look past the first page for the rogue gunman image with the poncho and the small cigar that lives in the corner of his mouth. Let’s go for a different kind of cool (googling as I write) and check out Humphrey Bogart. Man, he sure looks cool. And what do you know, he’s smoking in the first three pictures. Let’s try Frank Sinatra. Ha! Sure enough, ol’ blue eyes is lighting up. So it’s settled, the tobacco companies own cool, and probably google.

Back to our characters and smoking. Sometimes you can’t avoid it. Sometimes you have a character that just smokes. I don’t feel so bad because my script is set in the wild west, and as the film industry has shown me, everyone smoked in the wild west. Actual writing aside, what can we as writers do to provide new cool habits? I always thought the guy twirling the pen in Top Gun was pretty cool. Was that Slider or Hollywood? Anyway, any of you guys ever struggled with this sort of thing?