Beware the business card scam

It's surprising how hard it is to find a good, inexpensive place to get business cards printed in this town. I thought for sure in a city where every third person needs headshots, I'd be able to find a good printer. Not so, it would seem. That shit is expensive. Actors, you have my sympathies.

Lead Actor and I worked together - okay he did most of the work - on a lovely design for a front and back card. The back part is posted above, but not the front part because I'd be nutty to give you crazy stalkers my phone number. Anyway, Lead Actor did it because his day job is as a graphic designer. He designed my website and the current version of the blog.

Anyway, since I had a design and everything I did a mad search for the past couple of days to find a place to get them printed. Staples was reasonable for one side, but doesn't really print on both sides and since my card is very black I didn't want one side black and one side blindingly white and blank. Blech.

I looked at a lot of places in town but they either had no idea how to give me an estimate without making me drive over there or looked particularly incompetent. One place had typos on their home page. I'm not using a printer who doesn't proofread.

That left me with the major online places. I didn't want to use them but I have financial constraints so I sucked it up.

That's when I came across a scam I wanted to point out. There is a company called VistaPrint that offers to print 1,000 cards for like $30. Since most places wouldn't do it for less than $70 that set off some alarm bells so I did a little research.

Every positive reference to this company was a press release. Similar press releases referred to four other companies that are part of the same "network" of printers. I can't remember all their names, but check them against Vista. If they're cheap as hell they probably look exactly like the Vista website because they're all part of the same scam. One of them I remember was U Print.

Here's the scam: You pay your $30 for your $1,000 cards and think you got some kind of major deal. But you didn't read the terms and conditions when you agreed to them. The policy you just signed allows Vista Print to give any third party your contact info AND CREDIT CARD INFORMATION in the interests of "better serving the customer". So you think you bought some cards at a bargain price when what you really did was sign up for a monthly program that charges your card directly without your even being aware of it.

I went to Overnight Printing instead because even though I was paying a little more I know I didn't get scammed and they have some pretty good reviews. I'll be better able to judge when they arrive.

So that just reminds us all - remember to read everything you sign and if it sounds too cheap to be true, it probably is.

Writing Partner broke up with me

There's something I've been meaning to talk about for some time but didn't want hurt someone's feelings. As of this afternoon that's no longer an issue so I'm finally free to discuss it without repercussions.

This will be long.

When I met Writing Partner I was in turmoil. I was right in the middle of my chaotic period, when I felt like I couldn't get a grip on who I was or what I was supposed to do or how to handle my relationships with men.

Then I met WP and he said he was completely happy with himself. He said he'd figured out how to love himself and he could teach me. He had all the answers to life.

So I started letting him tell me how to live my life. And when I forgot to pay a bill he nagged me over and over and made me feel like a loser. So when I accidentally forgot to pay a bill I didn't tell him about it because I didn't want to get yelled at. When he found out he called me a liar and told me he couldn't trust me anymore. I told him it wasn't his business. He reminded me that he was just trying to help me be a better person and I was ungrateful.

Things like that were supposed to make me a happier person.

And sometimes I enjoyed spending time with him. Sometimes he was nice to me. He'd say these amazingly sweet things right after he made me feel like a worm. I already felt bad about myself so it was easy for me to believe that he was right, that I was a loser and a liar and a weak person. He even used that word.

"I'm a strong person," he told me once. "You're not. You're weak. I'm sorry, but you are."

He stayed with me a while, then moved away. We still talked on the phone. Then we started writing.

Writing sessions were shouting matches first. He would tell me I did something wrong and I would get defensive and finally after half an hour of psychologically damaging each other we'd finally put down some really good pages.

I was a wreck every time I talked to him because I was waiting for him to tell me what horrible thing I'd done now. He'd tell me my writing style was just no good and any producer would never hire me, then just when I was getting pissed off he'd apologize and tell me how good the story turned out in the end.

Then when I decided to film Game Night I turned to him for advice. He constantly talked about what he learned in film school. He constantly reminded me that I did not go to film school. I took a few of his suggestions, I decided against a few others. Any time I decided not to take his advice he told me he didn't understand why I disrespected him so much.

He asked me to play Eric. He told me all the time what a great actor he is. On his last film the producer and director constantly turned to him for advice. He was the only thing that saved the project. They were lucky to have him.

So I told him he could play Eric.

I gave him one request about being on set - please don't call me out in front of the cast and crew. If he didn't like something I was doing, he could pull me aside and tell me privately and I'd heed his advice or not, but I didn't want him questioning my authority in front of everyone else since this was my first time directing. I knew how much he liked to give me advice, whether I'd asked for it or not.

The first thing he did on set? He started questioning my decisions out loud, in front of everyone. I tried to ignore it, although I'm sure my irritation showed. It made me defensive, as usual when dealing with WP. I'm sure I started disagreeing with him to intentionally show everyone I was still in command.

He said I picked on him. At lunch I asked him to talk to the PA, who was already at Subway, and tell her what he wanted. He grabbed my wrist.

"No," he said. "Not until you tell me why you're being so hard on me."

"I'm not being hard on you. Please just tell her what you want for lunch."

He was pulling my wrist tight. It hurt. I tried to push the phone into his hand instead. "No," he said. "You're being mean to me. Why?"

"Just tell her what you want for lunch."

"Not until you tell me why you're picking on me!"

I started yelling. "I'm not picking on you, goddammit, I'm directing! Now tell her what the fuck you want on your sandwich and shut the fuck up!"

He came back later and apologized.

Then he went back home to a land far away. We kept working on Bamboo Killers. He decided to change one of his chapters - called "Seed of Power" - and emailed the new version to me and asked me to read it. At the moment there's not much we can do with the script and it's close to finished so I've been in no massive hurry to make the last few changes anyway.

So I admit, I didn't do it right away. If something is on a deadline I do it on time. If there's a place I'm supposed to be at a certain time, I'm there. But if there's no time limit - well I'm not quite as reliable because I usually have a dozen things going at once. Most people who know me know this about me. You just have to remind me like three times and I'll eventually get around to it. Just nudge me. Say, "Hey, Emily, did you do the thing? Do the thing."

And I'll go "OH! I forgot to do the thing. I'm sorry. I'll do the thing."

But when I didn't read WP's short right away he sent me an email asking me why I wasn't his friend anymore. He'd always thought I was such a good person, but now he was disappointed in how I'd put everything else before this script.

I ignored the passive aggression and told him I'm sorry I'm really busy, I'll get around to it when I can.

Then I got so busy I could barely breathe and I forgot completely about my promise to read his script. I read a draft a few months ago, so I honestly forgot he'd sent me a new one. I could have read it right away when I was distracted, but I wanted to wait until I had time to dedicate to paying careful attention to it, and by that time I'd forgotten all about it. That was my fault and I'm sorry for it. But it's not the end of the world.

So yesterday he sent me this:

I am a little surprised you haven't read my final draft of Seed after taking your notes after all of this time. Kind of upsetting considering every time you sent me something to read, I read right away and gave you extensive feedback and read all of your drafts asap. I noticed on your blog you took off Bamboo Killers as one of your projects. Should I assume you lost interest in BK...? I've had some writers read my final Seed of Power and really loved it. These people are very harsh so I am happy with the work I put into it. You have told me the last few times I ask that you don't have time, but that is not true because you work on your blog everyday, and you work on you Zombies script. And it takes about 10 minutes to read. It's pretty much a slap in my face for the help I immediately and have always given you.

So I told him if he emailed me again without the passive aggression I'd get right to it. But as long as he continued to make it our friendship every single time I did something he didn't like I wasn't really up for responding to that kind of manipulation. If he'd said, "Hey Emily why haven't you read 'Seed of Power' yet?" I'd have apologized and done it immediately.

Instead he responded in an email so scathing and nasty it's obvious he was trying to think of the most painful thing he could say to me. It might have worked when he first met me, but I'm no longer the confused, insecure girl I was then. WP then told me never to contact him ever again.

So I will not be dealing with him anymore. And I'm glad.

Evil panda!

I have a website for my production company so this blog will be moving soon. There's nothing on the website right now except the logo so I won't direct you there until there's something substantial to look at.

But here is my logo, designed by a student of mine named Ricardo. I changed it because my designer added color:



*This is my corporate logo. You may not use it for your own purposes.

Evil pandas are a go

The students are all silently reading their magazines. They are adorable.

Ha! I tricked them into silent reading.

I got a couple of kids who were at a loss as to how to turn an article into a story so I gave them Harold and Kumar. Two stoners go out for burgers. Once you hear that, no idea sounds stupid.

I've been trying for months now to get a student to design a logo for my production company. I'm calling it Bamboo Killers, partly because that's the first script I've been a part of that really has the potential to be something and it was fun to write, but also because I just like the concept and the way it sounds.

I've asked like three boys who were amazing artists if they'd draw me an evil panda destroying a stalk of bamboo. I offered them money and the ability to see their logo on a film, and they were all really enthusiastic and first and never finished.

Well, that's not true. One kid finished the sketch but the panda had one eye bigger than the other so he looked more like whacked out developmentally disabled panda.

Yesterday I noticed one of my kids had spent class drawing the entire Aztec calendar on his hand with an ink pen and still managed to contribute to class discussion, so I asked him to give the old evil panda a whirl. Today he came in with a sketch of an angry muscular panda bear just owning a piece of bamboo. He's really excited about the idea of his logo appearing in film.

He's going to ink it in, then I'm going to ask a friend of mine to photoshop it with lettering so I'll have my logo.

Then I start a website for the production company and I'll eventually move the blog over there. That's all you need right? A logo, and address and a blog? And maybe one day an actual movie? Yep. I'm a producer.

Keep on fighting the power, everybody

There's a new petition to sign stating that you won't download anything off the network websites. Please sign it, and then don't download anything off the network websites. If you download anything off those websites you're helping the studios and hurting the writers.

If you have a Myspace, there is a virtual picket line going around. Replace your default photo with a picture in support of the strike.

Anyone who wants to join a picket line can find the schedule here.

I will be out of work tomorrow because of Veteran's Day so to honor the men and women who fought for our rights I'm going to go practice my First Amendment right to assemble and bitch. I'm making black bean spirals today to take out and share with the group. I figure if I've only got one day on the picket line I'll make the most of it. If you're up at Warner on Monday I'll be in my red UTLA shirt handing out appetizers. Union solidarity!

Isn't this nice? One silver lining to this whole strike issue is that it seems to be bringing all kinds of people together. I'm not in the Guild but I kind of feel like I am these days. On a normal day you have to either screw somebody or kill somebody to next to an A-list writer, but during the strike all you have to do is show up at the studio gate with cookies. It sort of melts away that barrier between the successful and the aspiring. How American of us.

On an unrelated note, I finally got around to writing a logline for Bamboo Killers:
Four people - one emotional couple with sexual disfunction and one sexual couple with emotional disfunction - face their insecurities as they spiral toward each other until they end up on opposite sides of a dangerous plot that appears to be an innocent night of board games.


[EDIT] I realize by the comments that I need to explain a bit what the script is. It's a series of chapters - one on each of the four people in this story - that all have different plots. Each chapter builds up to the final chapter, which is the only full story where the four people are in the same room at the same time. One is a boxing story, one is a story about shoe shopping and lesbians, one is a story about attending an office seminar, and one is about being mugged at Venice Beach. In the fifth story all the characters are together in a room presumably playing a board game, but you learn toward the end that there's a lot more going on than the game. All of the previous stories have been leading up to this final chapter.

I'm trying to convey all this in the logline and I'm having difficulty. Suggestions?

And now, a word from my writing partner

I am stepping aside today to allow Writing Partner to speak his piece. I figure he's due, since I'm constantly going on about him on here with questionable accuracy. He's always emailing me going, hey! I never said that! And I'm like whatever dude. My blog. You said it if I say you said it.

So today he gets to have the floor. Please hold your applause until the end. Thank you.

Writing with Emily

She works her ass off. Do YOU know how rare that is? Do you? DO YOU?

Well, in less than a year a pilot, short, feature, and completely finished, in the can, final scene of the feature is finished…shot, made, crafts services, everything, DONE…well-done. Like a burger. Or steak.

That is why I work with Emily. She does shit. Shit gets does’d, I mean done. Is she easy to work with? Not really, but did you hear me earlier…SHIT GETS DONE! How many of you are actually getting it done? That’s what I thought.

But I digress, because sometimes it IS easy to work with her. It all melts together like a grilled ham and swiss in the toaster sandwich maker that cost $9.99 at Target. And that is a beautiful thing. On the set of Game Night when I saw all of what came out of our brains being brought to life like Frankenstein’s Monster it was exhilarating. And that is because Emily gets shit done. She helped me to curse more. Yep, she did that. I curse like I did when I was 13. But only in the right company of people. You people. The viewers in Blogdom. Readers, whateva’.

To get to the nitty gritty of it all, working with someone who equals or surpasses your passion is the steam that vomits creativity from the barf train. I am telling you these seeds get watered after you get a one sentence plotline racing through your head. You bounce ideas off your partner, she says, “No” and in your mind silently you say “Fuck You” but then by the end of the conversation 100 or more better ideas were not only conceived but slid out the slippery tube of the land of Fallopia. It is that madness, that inner anger, that turmoil of the insecurity of wanting to be an artist, of being a wannabe because you can’t call yourself an artist until you make art, James Joyce, all of those ego bruising phone calls at ALL hours of the day in different time zones, different countries, different universes, those phone calls made some damn good art.

Subject your opinions on our beloved short, object your opinions, I don’t care, because all effort ends in something good, something learned, and if the writing isn’t good enough for some egghead BS quarterfinal of some crap ass writing competition. WHO CARES….cuz I guarantee you most of those 25 cent-finalists will never have any part of their feature made into a beautifully crafted short, nevermind the feature it was intended to be. Okay?

Me and Emily-----We get shit done!

Getting ready

I've been meeting a lot of new people lately. They keep asking what brought me to LA so I tell them, then they always ask, "Any luck?"

And I have to launch into my explanation.

I've been here two years. I have connections. When I'm ready I have a way to get my material to more than one established literary agent. I have connections to producers and TV writers and directors and film executives.

But I'm not ready.

I've written four teleplays, two pilots, six feature length scripts and five shorts but I'm still not ready.

Bamboo Killers is good. It's a strong script, although we need another pass at it for it to be a superior script. But the problem with Bamboo Killers is that I wrote it with a partner and it's also more of an indie film. It's not exactly a blockbuster.

It's also the only feature script I feel comfortable showing anyone. My House episode was good, but it's now way outdated by the recent changes on the show, and I've rewritten my Supernatural episode like fifty times and still can't get it right. So I don't have any good TV to put out there.

One of my problems is that I've tried to hard to write things I know nothing about. I like action, but I've never shot a gun and I've never really been in a situation where I've had to take on the mob. I wouldn't even recognize a mobster if one was eating pizza right in front of me.

As a result, my action scripts have come out a little ludicrous because I don't know what I'm talking about.

So that's what I've been working on. Not the mobster thing - the violence awareness thing. I've been taking the kickboxing partly because it's fun, but also because this way I can learn how to choreograph fight scenes. And it's paid off because an experienced fighter read my boxing story and was surprised by how accurate it was.

And as for guns, I have a close friend who's an expert on the subject so when I need a scene with weapons I call him and ask. Problem solved.

The new script is about zombies. I watched all the major zombie films, all the George Romero movies and Shaun of the Dead and the Dawn remake and 28 Days Later and now I know how most zombie movies work.

I still haven't experienced a real zombie attack, but I know enough about fighting and the locations I'm using that I finally feel like I know what I'm talking about. It's made a huge difference.

I used to skip over the research a bit. I used to make up some interesting characters and hope nobody noticed I was completely faking any knowledge of the subject matter.

Here's what I learned. When you fake it, people can tell.

So no more faking. I have been researching and asking questions and only writing things I know. Originally I had half my script set in Santa Barbara, a place I've never been. Then I went to Monterey on vacation and decided to reset it there. It's a place I've been so I know how to describe it accurately.

The script has been much easier to write this time around. It probably helps that zombies don't actually exist so I can make stuff up.

Hopefully by Christmas I'll finally have that perfect script that will make all these connections jump at the chance to hire me. Then I can start working on my TV specs.

Because I don't want to get out there until I'm truly ready, but I really would like to be ready now.

My Partner and Me

So the quarterfinal results of the Expo screenplay contest were announced today and Bamboo Killers is nowhere to be seen.

My very first screenplay did better than that four years ago. Then again, there were twice as many entries this time around and Writing Partner and I both agree we need another pass at the script.

What annoys the crap out of me is why the hell I didn't enter my favorite short. I have no idea, but it would have kicked the shit out of the competition. This isn't the one I shot, this is the one I want to shoot next. It's about boxing and everybody who reads it loves it. I love it too. But somehow I forgot to submit it to the Expo.

Alas. Onward and upward.

Yesterday David posed a question about writing with a partner so I will now address what I know about the issue. It was only about a year ago I was asking the question. What a difference a year makes.

First of all, I know so very little compared to Terry and Ted of Pirates of the Caribbean fame. Read this article about how they work together first. That will probably answer all your questions because they've actually made money doing this and I haven't made the quarter finals.

But in case you still want my humble experience I'll give that too. If anybody's still listening.

I've got a bunch of posts that have dealt with specific issues that have come up between me and Partner that you can peruse here. I also may have posted on this topic before, but not in as much detail as I will here.

Partner was actually a friend staying at my apartment for a month when he had some domestic troubles last year. He went to film school and directed a few shorts, but most of his direct film experience was in acting. I don't believe he'd ever written a feature length script, which of course I had.

Partner, although I give him much grief, is actually a fabulous person. He drives me bat-shit crazy, but he's also one of my best friends.

I digress.

So we were sitting around one night and I started talking about this idea I had for a TV show about events that follow a school shooting. It was a little bit like The Wire meets Boston Public. Partner loved the concept so we started working out the story beats. Then he moved away to a cold land in the north and we wrote the script over email. It was a giant pain in the ass because I was using Movie Magic and Partner had to use Word. Thank God he now has Movie Magic as well so that nightmare is over.

Anyway, once we had a loose outline of how the story would go one of us - me, I think - started the first few pages. I got about 10 pages in then ran out of steam, so I sent what I had to him. He took a look at what I had, called me, we discussed the next move, then he added some more pages then sent it back to me. Then I called him, we discussed, I added pages and it kept on like that until we had a first draft.

Then that guy shot all those people at Virginia Tech. Thanks, ass face.

So we dropped that script for a while and mulled over where to go next. Then one day we were joking about a night when he was staying with me when we played a game of Taboo with a couple of friends. Then we started building a story out of the events. And using the same back and forth method as before we pumped out 12 pages pretty quickly. Like over a weekend.

It was okay. The characters were fantastic but the story was boring. Then we brainstormed until we came up with the idea that ended up driving this whole thing and making our story go from mediocre to freaking awesome. After that we discussed what else needed to be fixed. We divvied up the tasks. I would take one character and give her a stronger arc and he would take another. Then we were done with the short and I commenced plans to film it.

But we kept talking about these characters and where they could go. And we kept talking about what we would do next. And one morning I woke up with an idea about how to combine both and write a Pulp Fictionlike film we could shoot one story at a time.

Then it was easy. I took two characters and Partner took two characters and we each wrote a short to reveal an interesting look into their character that pushed the larger story at the same time. We tied it all together with a short I'd written a few weeks before that we realized we could revise to serve our new feature.

At first each short was way too much in our individual styles. He's more comedy, I'm more drama. So I did a pass where I changed anything that sounded 100% him and he did the same on my material until it all sounded more even.

We still have a little work to do on our feature since it didn't clear the quarter finals and all, mostly on one of the chapters that's a tad too slapstick comedy to match the rest, but all in all I feel prouder of this script than anything that came before it.

I don't know if we'll write together again; this may be the only thing we complete together. Everything I've started since has been my own personal project and he's gotten pretty heavily back into acting, but I learned a great deal from the experience. I can now show that I work well with others, but I also have scripts of my own that prove he wasn't the one with all the talent.

I guess if you want me to sum up what I learned I'd say two things.

1) Communication. Partner and I were on the phone for as much as six hours a day, sometimes all at once, sometimes in increments. On occasion I would not like something but I wouldn't say anything because I thought Partner loved it. And every single time this happened it turned out that he hated it too but thought I loved it. So you have to be honest and open and communicate.

2) Be open minded. We fought constantly during the writing process. Then again, we'd fight even if we lived in the land of milk and honey and everything was perfect because that's just how we are. So when we disagreed and I'd hang up on him - which I did, frequently - we'd both go to neutral corners and ponder. Then he'd come up with an idea and I'd come up with an idea and we'd meet somewhere in the middle. But if one of us couldn't convince the other it was a good idea to leave in the part in contention, it was out. I believe I got that from Ted and Terry.

Tomorrow: Writing Partner finally tells his side of the story.

It's not really about bamboo

I watched Galaxy Quest again last night. I've been thinking a lot lately about ensemble films and what makes them work because recently Fun Joel had a conversation on his blog about that and Bamboo Killers is an ensemble film. The zombie picture I'm working on is also an ensemble film. Come to think of it, I haven't written very many hero-centric scripts in my history as a writer.

What I've noticed is something many smarter people have noticed before, and that's that ensemble films have to stick very closely to the theme. It's easy to give each character an arc that fits only them, but for an ensemble film to be truly good each character must have an arc that echoes the larger arc of the piece.

In Reservoir Dogs every character is dealing with a betrayal. In Galaxy Quest every character must accept who they are and live up to their potential despite their own doubts. And the film at large is about making something fake into something real.

I looked at Bamboo Killers. Although each character has his or her own arc, they don't necessarily reflect the larger theme of the piece, which is fear of being yourself.

I looked at Game Night as a short. Although each character has an arc, they aren't necessarily related to each other. But they're close. So I realized that all the characters are wrestling with societal expectations of themselves as women or men. That's like a subset of the major theme for the feature.

Then I looked at all the other chapters and tried to figure out what the theme of each is as it relates to identity. It's not difficult, really. It's a few lines here and there to reinforce what we already have.

I did a pass on Game Night already and sent it to Partner with an explanation of the new mission. I sure hope he agrees with me because I already did it.

In the meantime I'm casting for Game Night, which we'll hopefully film the third weekend in September. So things are progressing one way or another.

Writing Partner is starting to scare me with his obsession. He keeps emailing me in the middle of the day to tell me we need to fix a scene in Game Night or add new details to Bamboo Killers.
So today I told him to stop it.

Take two weeks. Don't read it, don't think about it, don't breathe near it.

Then read it again and call me. Then we'll talk. But in the meantime I just want to chill out and celebrate and enjoy this picture which has nothing to do with anything.

Then I have to start working on my Heroes spec.

All these things that I've done

So clearly my pictures are getting less and less relevant and more involved in cats. Just pretend you don't notice and enjoy them. Maybe that should be my gimmick from now on. Lolcats on every post. I'm getting there.

Bamboo Killers is all done. If only Writing Partner didn't live like ninety states away, we could go out for a beer and celebrate.

This is the first time in a while I've finished something. I've got a bunch of projects almost done in need of a thorough going over, but this I feel is completely ready to go.

Until something else comes up, anyway. Because nothing's ever really finished, is it?

But right now if I had to present a script to anybody, anywhere, I'd be proud to bust this out and drop it on the desk with a big smile on my face.

Yesterday I went through the script and changed anything in Partner's lines that bothered me. Then last night he did the same for my lines. So now everything is streamlined, cleaner, more solid.

Partner and I like to text each other about what geniuses we are. So we'll do that for the next two days and then get back to earth where we are deeply flawed individuals with many emotional problems.

But for today I feel pretty damn good.

Even though I was up late last night talking to Partner about what geniuses we are.

Don't be an idiot

It was another day in the teaching seminar, this time to learn how to do a unit I've been doing on my own for years. There was no internet connection so I spent the whole day doing a revision on Bamboo Killers. Tax dollars well spent.

Last night I went to Lead Actor's acting class again. Learned some new things about directing. I'm really focused on blocking, I realized. I was constantly paying attention to the distance the actors kept between them. I guess that's my thing. Proximity.

Lead Actor had one reservation about the script that I've been putting off from day one. In order for our basic premise to work his character must be phenomenally stupid. He's not stupid the whole script, just a little crazy and coked out. Then he does this one thing that no intelligent person on earth would do. Nobody's really made a big deal about it because we were concerned with other things and suspension of disbelief and all that, but Lead Actor has been seeing everything from this one guy's perspective and just can't get a handle on him being this big of an idiot.

Which brings me to a point others have made and I would like to reiterate now.

Making a character a complete moron is, for the most part, the weakest choice you can make. It weakens not only the stupid character, but it makes things too easy for the other characters. By making Lead Actor's character stupid, we also made everybody else have to be a little dumb too to not see through his stupidity sooner. And when a character has a moral victory over him, it seems kind of empty because, well, he was too dumb to realize what you were up to anyway.

So mission number one on the rewrite was to remove the stupidity. With a few choice lines and some added tension, the character got a little bit smarter. It was a challenge and it's still got a few kinks, but all in all it's a much stronger story.

Because everybody has a brain they enjoy using. Even cokeheads.

Who's in charge, here?

First of all, thanks to Mystery Man's glowing recommendation I started reading Jennifer Van Sijill's Cinematic Storytelling yesterday. I already feel smarter.

Lead Actor liked Game Night in the beginning when it was just a little character sketch. He thought the character I asked him to play was great fun. Then we upped the stakes and gave it an actual plot and he flipped for the changes. Saturday he read the current version of its feature length incarnation, Bamboo Killers, and said it made Game Night even better. I'm pretty sure he's not blowing smoke up my ass. Then again, he is an actor. And he has always been a charming little bastard.

He's very excited about the whole project, probably because at every stage his role in it gets bigger and more developed. It has now gone from a cute little project he could stick on his reel to a meaty lead part in an indie feature. What actor is going to turn that down?

He has his problems. He's a little flakey, a little self-absorbed. He's stretched himself so thin with work and acting and music and socializing that he sometimes craps on the people he knows will forgive him, one of those being me. He's blown me off on three separate occasions when we were supposed to meet to discuss the script, and he never called and had miserable excuses each time. This concerns Writing Partner, who believes Lead Actor has charmed me like a cobra in a basket.

But I don't do anything I don't want to do. I'm the one putting words in his mouth, after all.

On the upside, Lead Actor is helping me a great deal with learning to direct actors. He's taking me to his class tomorrow night to scout for cast who can work the scene with him for the teacher, then I get to rehearse with the group and work on my direction, then I get to go back to the class and watch the group perform it in front of the audience. That will be a huge help. I can see what gets laughs and watch how the teacher directs them from his chair.

Lead Actor is not usually forthcoming with the notes. I have to drag suggestions out of him and he sounds almost apologetic when he gives them. So when he told me Saturday night he now thinks Game Night is a little anticlimactic I listened.

Yesterday as I shrank Game Night into a four-page play I had to make a lot of tough choices about the core of the story. And I realized what Lead Actor meant. Our climax was kind of wimpy. A character stands up to another character, which is good, but nobody really wins the argument. It gets deflected and there's no real outcome. So I changed it to make the standoff end in a clear victory. The story instantly got better.

So if Lead Actor is making me do his bidding, I say he can keep the charm coming. For now, it's only helping.

What do you want from me?

Sometimes the answer is staring you in the face all the time.

Writing Partner is diligent. I got in at 4 am this morning but that didn't stop him from buzzing me bright and early to discuss the notes from the writers group meeting.

I got in at 4 because I was out bringing the damn house down with my karaoke skills. Wanna wrap the whole room around your finger? Sing "I'm Not Okay" by My Chemical Romance and scream the bridge as you hit the stage floor on your knees in a simulated musical catharsis. Oh yes. I got that party started.

Which was my goal for the evening.

Anyway, Partner and I spent our morning going over script notes. The eternal question came up: goal. What do our characters want? They have a clear sense of wanting to be better people, but they don't really want anything tangible. When they wake up in the morning they go through their day and interesting things happen that they learn from but they don't push the story with their desires. We need some tangible desires.

What's interesting to me is how often I say that to other people. What is your character's goal? They must have a goal. And yet here I was, putting a script out there with great characters whose goals are complete mysteries.

Partner and I did that this morning. We have a character who's kind of boring and serves as kind of an emotional punching bag the entire script. I asked Partner what this character's goal is.

Our character, Eric, has a lot of sexual issues as a sort of side bit to his personality. So Partner looked at the script and realized that instead of just having his girlfriend joke about his minor sexual issues we could turn it into a real conflict. He needs to fix these issues or he'll lose his girl. And tadaa! We raised the stakes.

The story was there. The character was there. We just needed to make one tiny change and everything fell into place.

If we don't know what your character wants how can we root for him? We won't know what we're rooting for.

Think about it right now for your latest script. Do you know what your protagonist wants? If you don't, you need to find out.

Right now my goal is to eat a sandwich. I'm gonna go make that happen if it takes all of the next five minutes.

The morning after

Yesterday was a damn fine day. There were yearbooks. And there was lunch at King Taco with my kids.

Then there was a boy at the gym. Finally. This boy and I have been giving each other the sexy eye for months. Yesterday he spoke.

Then I went home and put out my wasabi peanuts and the writers group came over to dish on Bamboo Killers.

I'm happy that some of our better comedy bits went over well. The stuff that really tickled us pink when we were writing tickled everybody else as well, except for that bit about the Vietnam vet disappearing into thin air. They didn't get that one so much.

The consensus appears to be great concept, good moments, good characters, but much confusion and a bit of a focus problem.

I wrote three of the chapters, Writing Partner wrote two, and we wrote one together. And everybody could tell. My style is so different from Partner's that there was a major tonal shift between the things that we wrote. So now we have to figure out how to smooth that out. I think I'll try just taking a pass at the script myself, then handing him the script and letting him take a pass and adding a bit of our own styles to each other's chapters. Or something.

Another problem is that we introduce a major character as an asshole and he kind of stays an asshole all the way through the film. So we need to do a better job of showing his softer side so he's not quite so predictable.

And I suffered once again from Emily's greatest writing weakness - over-subtlety. I inferred too much and people got lost. Some things do need to be spelled out a bit.

But the kicker was how I lost focus on the one thing I always get on everybody else about - goal. What is your character's goal? People didn't really see the throughline in our story because all our characters' goals were internal. They're all working on themselves in subtle ways and don't have a lot of tangible goals.

Fortunately all the things the group brought up were easy to fix. They'll take some time, but there's no major reworking of the plot necessary.

Probably the most interesting note was how one group member thought this would be a romantic comedy because of the way we set up two characters who never even meet as if they were destined to meet. Oops.

It is definitely NOT a romantic comedy.

So here we go. Time for the rewrite.

All play and no work makes Emily a dull girl

I'm a lost little puppy.

Writing Partner and I finished our first draft of Bamboo Killers last week and now we're just waiting for our people to read it and give us criticism.

Normally I have a project on the horizon that I throw myself into as soon as the previous one is finished, but I was so excited by this script and the accompanying short film that I dropped everything else I was working on to finish it. I've never felt that thrilled with a script before and it feels really good.

But now I'm twiddling my thumbs a bit. I have an idea for a Heroes spec floating around in my brain but I haven't fleshed it out and the two feature projects I've been pondering require a lot of expensive and time consuming research.

I have nothing to write.

It's like the universe is upside down.

I am a multitasker. I always have a zillion things going at one time and I'm never without a project to work on. I don't feel right without a project to work on.

Thursday I get feedback on the script and we can start with the rewrite, but in the meantime I feel a little lonely inside. Lost.

So I've been reading scripts - Pulp Fiction and Little Miss Sunshine - and watching movies - Brick and Mystic River - and flipping through the latest issue of Fade In.

You know, to stay plugged in. But it's not enough. It's never enough.

It's time to get to work on that Heroes spec before I go crazy.

Call me Panda

I got called up for jury duty yesterday but I got it postponed so I ended up home by 9:30 am. I had a sub for the day so Writing Partner and I spent the entire day working on the script. Like we were professionals or something.

At the rate Partner's going he might be unemployed soon. He's sort of started neglecting his paying job to work on the script more. But at least he'll have the awesome screenplay to keep him warm when he's homeless.

We probably spent a total of four hours on the phone but we got it done. We read through the entire script from beginning to end which is a hilarious event all by itself. Sometimes we ad lib. Sometimes our ad libs are so funny they make it into the script. I spent a good portion of my day doubled over in giggles.

After we finished our final draft of the script and the day was over and we were all prepared to go to sleep we realized we forgot the title.

Usually I'm good with titles. They just pop into my head when I first think of the script and that's that. But the nature of this story, with the chapters and all, has made it difficult to think of a clever way to sum up our story.

There's a Taoist quote about water Partner wrote into the script and we discussed at length how it sums up our primary theme. So I said, "Running Water"? And he said it sounds like a Hallmark Channel production. He said "Still Water"? And I said that sounds like a Tom Selleck Western on TNT.

We sat for a minute.

"Bamboo Killers," Partner said.

Duh.

A Friend and I had a conversation recently that involved the use of the phrase "bamboo killers". I thought the conversation was interesting so when I needed a character to say something random I yanked the discussion from my memory. When Partner and I read through the script yesterday I told him about the real life conversation and we realized how perfectly it summed up our primary theme.

Plus it sounds cool. Bamboo Killers.

I was so pleased with the title I kept repeating it as I fell asleep.

Bamboo killers. Bamboo killers. Bamboo killerssszzzzzzz.......