George Carlin RIP

George Carlin passed away yesterday. Listening to his old routines reminds me of long road trips with his books-on-cassettes playing through the car stereo.



His infamous "seven words" routine.

Naughty joke at expense of Will Smiths's new movie...

Signmakers having fun at the London premiere of Hancock. Via The Beat.

The Writing Week part 24

All in all, a pretty good week. I got another draft of my post-Apocalyptic spec out. It's tough for me to gauge how it went. On the one hand, I think that the few, yet important changes I made have strengthened the script a lot. Act Two flows much better, the scenes are connected much more, and the characters' desires, especially the protagonist's, are much clearer. On the other hand, though I cut one scene here and reordered a few there, I really changed very little structurally. The vast majority of the scenes are still in this draft, and other than how they're linked and what's said within them, they are not incredibly different.

I don't know if this new draft works on a different level. If this was my first draft, I believe I would have received different notes than I got the first go around, but the League might have told me I had a more solid first draft. Having given up the impact of the first completely new draft already, I know that any future notes I get from people who have already read the script will be in light of what they know. It's inevitable, but the notes will be a comparison to what they've read before, and not a fresh take on a new project. Some larger problems that I'm not seeing might go under their radar, too. This is not to criticize the feedback we Leaguers give one another; I think we offer great insight and incredibly helpful suggestions. But a first draft will always, I think, have an inevitable air of "newness" to it that subsequent drafts, no matter how different, will lack. (Granted, I've written scripts that, by the fifth draft, are virtually unrecognizable as a descendant of the first draft. The people who read the pages since step one, though, still sometimes offer feedback that draws upon that first, wretched draft.)

This current project has gotten me thinking about something, which is probably deserving of its own post, but I'll throw it in here anyway. I've been thinking a lot about perfection versus production. By that, I mean: if an agent or a producer read my comic book script and asked for something else, I would be inclined to give him/her the post-Apocalyptic spec. But what if that script wasn't ready? Not quite. Do I go for production - I'm a young writer; if someone wants to give my $500K (I'm also optimistic) for a script that might not be as good as it could be - who am I to say no? Or, do I go for perfection - I'd be thrilled to have that opportunity present itself, yet I know, deep down, that my script doesn't quite do the justice to my idea that it could, and that if I had more time, not only could I write a movie, but I could write a great movie?

Perfection. Or Production. As a young writer, it seems ridiculous to think of turning down any opportunity. But where should I place the value of my work? I don't want to turn around one day and know I could have written a better movie, but I don't want to risk not having one produced.

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

It's here!!!

For all you who lives in New York, or near New York, it's almost time for

The 7th New York Asian Film Festival!!!

June 20-July 6
Presented by Subway Cinema
http://www.subwaycinema.com/

I'm not hired by these guys. I've actually been waiting for this for months, and am very excited.

A good amount of them are big-budget hit movies in Asia, rather than the usual art house movies played in festivals. And probably because they are big-budget, star-casted movies, I will admit that I've been disappointed before, the same way Hollywood movies can disappoint. I've also walked away from films thinking 'wow, they've poured more money than God in this movie, and it's worth every fucking cent.' Some of these movies really left me in a floaty daze, and wonder why I left Asia in the first place.

Another reason to see these movies is that if you decided in the last minute, 'meh, I'll just stay at home, it's not a movie kind of night', you probably won't be able to find a lot of them on DVD in the states. So unless you own a region 2 or 3 or 6 DVD player (or just have the player "fixed"), you won't be able to actually watch a lot of them if you miss it. And even then some don't have english subtitles.

Also, pre-order tickets. I've been turned away from sold-out shows with tears too many times.

You know you're a film nerd when...

... you're playing Grand Theft Auto IV and you spend a good chunk of time re-enacting scenes from There Will Be Blood in Liberty City's bowling alley...

Actually, that probably says more about me than "film nerd"...

Sigh.

The Writing Week part 23

It feels so damn good to be writing again. Amazingly good.

I finally decided to really, actually, honestly start re-writing my post-Apocalyptic script. Like I anticipated, bringing my computer on vacation with me (sadly, the vacation ends tomorrow night), has almost forced me to be productive. I've nearly finished my re-write this week (and should do so completely by Wednesday, at the latest). Now, I've said it before and I'll do so again: I detest rewrites.I fully acknowledge that everything I write needs them. But they are just very much not mu cup of tea.

This week, though, I've been making some good headway. I've been making decisions that I tried my darnedest to avoid in the past, because I've come to realize something; writing on a computer allows us the luxury of never really committing to anything put down on the page. Like Zombie was saying with his Frankenstein script folder, we can patch things together from previous files, create new documents, and store everything we write. No change is permanent.

And that's the philosophy I've embraced this go around. Admittedly, there are some things I've done with this re-write, which I'm not sure if they are improvements, so much as changes. On the other hand, there are other things I'm very happy with and glad that I finally had the balls to do. There still might not be enough distance between me and my first draft, but there's certainly enough for me to make some elementary, yet necessary improvements to the script.

Now to just distance myself enough from draft two to see the weak links in that one.