Thanks Mom

After I read the script for My Mother's Curse I immediately sent it to my mother. She thought it was terrific and immediately got why I wanted her to read it. It's one of my favorite scripts of the year and I took a few notes from it because Salvage is about a mother/daughter relationship. One of the things My Mother's Curse does so well is pick up on the things all mothers do that drive us crazy; my favorite scene is when the protagonist's mother tells him over and over that he should put on his windshield wipers and he keeps telling her it won't work, then finally he does it and she's right.

That is the worst, when your naggy mom is completely right. Everybody can relate to that - I don't care who you are.

So as soon as I put that script down I started thinking about things my mom does that are so very MOMlike, and I started working them into the script. I found myself writing conversations we've had in the past and smiling. Yes, Mom, I am aware that I'm going five miles over the speed limit. No we will not crash and die.

After I finished Salvage I sent it to the Manager, then I sent it to my mom.

Now my mom is different from other moms in that she does not think everything I touch turns to gold. She thinks I'm awesome, but she also thinks my last screenplay had too much sex in it, and she never read my zombie script at all because she just doesn't see the appeal. Explosions really do it for me, but Mom thinks they're unnecessarily destructive.

A compliment in this house must be earned, and that's how you know it means something.

Which is why, when my mom said my comedy is good and that I wrote a cute story, I beamed. Yay! My mom thinks I'm funny.

This happens every time

I finished the script today! Yay! Glass of wine and Top Chef to celebrate. The last thing I did was one final read through to check for errors and unnecessary words, and I realize that I have a character named Old Bored Security Guard and a character named Security Guard, and that Old Bored Security Guard ends up having so many lines that he really should have a name.

I wish I'd made this decision before I typed out Old Bored Security Guard a bunch of times.

Anyway, I draw a name out of a hat - Johan - and do the old name switch.

I have been through this before, so the next step is to go through all of his scenes making sure his name got switched in every instance. Check.

Everything looks good, it's funny, it's fun, it's clean. Wrote an email to my manager and sent that puppy right over.

Naturally, that's when I realized two things: 1) I now have a character named Johan and a character named Joe. I'm sure THAT'S not confusing at all.

And 2) I forgot to introduce Johan. When you have a character named Old Bored Security Guard, you don't have to bother with description because his name is his description. So where my script used to say "It's a typical lobby, complete with OLD BORED SECURITY GUARD," it now says "It's a typical lobby, complete with JOHAN."

What the fuck is a Johan?

After kicking myself, I changed his name to Reginald and sent the Manager a new version where I introduced the guy.

Thanks, Google Maps

I don't like writing about places I've never been, and that's where this all started.

I decided to set my current script, Salvage, in my hometown area. I was going along, following my treatment pretty carefully, having a grand old time putting forth pages on a regular basis, until I realized something I had not noticed when I wrote the treatment.

My characters end up ambushed at a meeting and make a run for it. In the treatment they race to the car and speed away to the next scene. But as I was writing the scene I realized that the place my people just came from was in walking distance of the place where they had their ill-fated meeting. So they don't need a car.

Foot chase.

I hadn't planned on a foot chase, so I had to stop for a minute and think. I could have tried some kind of parkoury type shit but that doesn't make any sense for my characters. My characters wouldn't want to drag this out. They'd want to get somewhere public and safe as soon as possible to escape the dudes chasing them.

I went to Google Maps. The location for my meeting is a pretty famous pub in my hometown, so I looked at it on the map and then I took a gander at the surrounding area and examined every possible place they could run to.

A supermarket, City Hall, a middle school, some shops. I considered each of these as a place to hide. We've seen chases end in supermarkets a zillion times. I briefly considered the middle school, but then I saw a museum that sort of glowed, the kind of museum that begs to be used as exactly this kind of location.

But I'd never been to this museum, so I had to Google it, and I saw pictures so I could figure out what kind of antics my characters could get up to during their stay. I have to rewrite some of the pages to make it funnier, but I got a really cool sequence out of it with almost endless potential.

I was supposed to make my characters run to the car and drive off, and instead I made them run to a museum and do stuff. It was a reminder that sometimes you have to stretch yourself a little to make things better.

Staying on schedule

This new screenplay I'm working on - Salvage - is pretty goddamn awesome. It's that perfect blend of stuff we've seen before with stuff we haven't seen before, and more than anything else I've ever written, I can see this selling. If I do it right.

Manager really wants to see it - I think I jazzed her with the logline unless she's just saying that to make me stop emailing so much - so my objective now is to crank out a quality draft in one month. With that in mind, I set a goal for myself of 5 pages a day. Five pages a day for five days a week plus a few extra here and there means a solid first draft in four weeks.

So far I've stuck to that plan. No matter what I do in the morning, at 3 pm I sit at my computer and write. I turn on my special ITunes writing mix and start typing. The first day, five pages. The second day, four pages.

No worries. If I have a short day, it means I have to spend the next day making up the difference. So on day three, six pages. Monday and Tuesday is my weekend for reasons that will remain a mystery to you.

Anyway, today I didn't think I was going to do it. A lot of today's material was still set-up and exposition and build up to a car chase. I knew once I got to the chase I'd write like gangbusters because action sequences flow from my fingertips without me actually having to think about it, but in the meantime I was having trouble forcing my way through heavy dialogue and character setup which always causes me trouble.

I got to page 18 and thought about stopping for the day, but then I remembered my vow. If I stop at page 18 today, that means two extra pages tomorrow. So I kept going.

And then before I knew it, there I was at the car chase. I decided that there's no way I can come up with some crazy amazing car chase violence that hasn't already been done, so I concentrated on what was going on inside the car our protagonist is driving. And suddenly I looked up and I was on page 22.

These aren't bad pages either. On the rewrite I'm sure I'll change a lot of the dialogue, but all in all I'm pretty proud of what I've cranked out.

Now I only have to write 3 pages tomorrow, but fuck that. If I write 8 pages I can be a day ahead. I wish someone would pay me to do this because I am having a blast.