My Query Method

When I'm bored I like to take on a research project and pursue it all over the Internet. Sometimes I'll say I want a rose bush. So I spend all day looking at rose bushes, figuring out what is the best kind for my yard, learning all about them and how to prune them and whatnot. So in one day's time I suddenly went from knowing nothing about roses to knowing all kinds of great things and sounding like someone who knows things. Then the next day I'm on to something else. Lock picking or thai chi or dog training. I like learning, but I have a short attention span.

This is why my students think I know everything, because it's really easy to trick kids into thinking you're an expert on something you read two articles about.

Except calculus. They're well aware of my calculus deficiencies.

Anyhow, I took this energy for short-term research projects and put it toward querying. I go to IMDB pro and look up each company that interests me, scroll through each rep's client list, looking for writers who make material similar to mine. Then I go to Tracking Board and look up those reps, searching for what kind of deals they've made lately. Any who look like they might take a shine to my material I put on my list. I go to Done Deal and search for them to see what kind of reputation they have among other writers. If they pass inspection, I query.

I think it's important not to query the entire town, because why query people you wouldn't want to work with? Having the right manager is more important than having any manager at all, and having the wrong one can actually hurt you. I only query those I'd be happy to work with if they liked my material.

So once I have a rep in mind, I find their email, shoot them the query, and mark the date in my Word file. If they respond positively I highlight their entry in yellow and list the date I sent the script. If they respond negatively I highlight it in red and add a note about exactly why they weren't interested. Most places, of course, don't respond, so I just leave them as they are.

After a few weeks, I follow the process all over again with a new group.

I also add to this list people who've requested my script because they know me through this blog or some other place, along with a note about how they know me and why they were interested.

So far including both groups I have 28 entries on my list, with five yellow entries and two red.

This is the first time I've been so methodical about it. In the past I was sort of random, taking the approach that anybody with an office is good enough, and not really keeping an organized record.

This way I feel a little more proactive. I also feel a lot more confident about my script this week than I did before, and I think one of these people will like what I have to offer. Nice Girls Don't Kill is my point of view, my story the way I want to tell it. It's the perfect showcase of my work, and the draft I have now is as good as I can make it. Of that I'm sure.

So now I wait. And in a few weeks, see who else I can find.

Stupid proofreading

The Nicholl reader line of the day is this:

"This writer opens with . . . character and plot intrigue that hooked me, then followed it up with a different character/plot one two punch that hooked me even more, then put those two characters on a collision course impossible to ignore. This script works on so many levels because this writer understands that no plot works well without characters who clash and learn from each other."

I'm a pretty optimistic person, so I thought hey, that could be my script. It's possible they're already reading mine because I was number 900-something.

I open with my antagonist in a pretty cool scene. Then I go to my protagonist, and then I lead them to each other until they crash. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this, but still... could be me. I decided to look back over my script to see if they learn from each other at all, and as I read I discovered a bunch of tiny mistakes I didn't notice last time I did my check for errors. That time I was looking specifically for spelling and grammar, but this time I wasn't looking for anything, just reading. Maybe next time I should just do one last minute read of the script for shits and giggles with no agenda and I'll see things I wouldn't otherwise.

I noticed places where I had changed things and forgot to adjust a line of dialogue. Like originally an old lady died in an apartment so a character says "Who's the old lady?" except later I decided to let her live and took her out of the apartment. Now that character's line makes no sense. There are half a dozen little lines like this all over the script.

These aren't things that will get my script thrown out, and none of my readers have mentioned them so they must not be a huge deal, but I'm still kicking myself. One thing I learned as a copy editor back in college, it doesn't matter how many times you read something, you'll never catch every single mistake. Still, you want to catch as many as possible before someone else does.

Rap

In case you missed it, this is a great moment for rap and comedy in our society. Jon Stewart rips Fox News a new one again for being hypocrites, but this time he does it in the form of Spoken Word.



I don't post this so much because of the politics, but because this whole issue is about words. Rappers used to push boundaries and force us to think about the nature of our society, and even though we've gotten away from it with modern rap, there is still a culture in hip hop of challenging the status quo, and there is still a gaggle of people who like to take lyrics out of context and use them to support silly agendas.

Common's great, and Public Enemy, but here's my favorite: KRS-One.

Nice Girls Don't Kill Queries - round 2

I made a few changes to my script after the mini melt down I had yesterday. Not a major rewrite, but a line of dialogue here and an action there - enough to add a whole page to the script. I hope that settles the issue, but I don't know. I'm getting another opinion.

I also discovered I forgot to change my title page back after the Nicholl submission, so everyone I've sent the script to has a version with no name on it. Hope they remember who I am.

That also burned through all my connections. Every person I know who could have put this script in good hands has passed on it mostly because of the issue I described yesterday.

And unfortunately I did all my changes after I sent it away to everyone who requested it, so I hope they don't have the same problem, and I hope to get more requests.

Speaking of requests, I clearly have a decent query letter. All in all I sent out 22 queries, and I got four requests - all managers so far. So despite my angst of yesterday, the concept is NOT fundamentally flawed. My logline works. Two of the requests were sent half an hour after I emailed the query.

I'll share the query after I no longer need it, but I play up my voice because I know that's my strength.

I will most likely figure out what kind of changes I want to make, then wait a couple of weeks, then ask somebody else. And we persevere.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

I have a dilemma.

I finished Nice Girls Don't Kill and started the whole sending it around town and querying process, but something keeps getting to me. Three of the people who've read the script I considered finished have come back with notes. Moreover, it's been the same note.

Early in the script my protagonist makes an unusual choice. I completely understand her choice, and it's important to me that it is, in fact, a choice and not a necessity. But three people have all said they don't understand why she makes that choice, and suggest she instead end up on the run from people chasing her, so she HAS to do what she does.

Two things. That would involve ANOTHER page one rewrite (#4 if you're counting) of the script. And it would fundamentally change the story itself into something I don't want it to be. I feel like it would make my script into a generic action film, because I feel like the fact that my protagonist makes this choice is one of the things that separates it from other stories.

I even have dialogue that specifically says why my character makes her choice, but obviously the dialogue is not enough.

If three people give you the same note, you have to acknowledge that it's not something you can ignore.

I have a choice. Do nothing and hope the right person reads it - seems unlikely.  I could do another page one rewrite and turn it into the script everyone else wants to see. I could try to find the note behind the note and make her motivations clearer.

I have a feeling that no matter what I do I'll still get the same note, because I already thought I addressed it with each other previous rewrites to no avail.

It may be that I have a fundamentally flawed concept.

It's frustrating as hell. I worked my ass off on this script and I am completely happy with how it turned out, but even though everybody loves my voice and my pacing and the fun action scenes - they all say the same thing about my character's motivations. And it's something I do not want to change.

For now I've taken the note-behind-the-note approach and added a few bits here and there to make her decision a little clearer, and I'm still thinking of possible tweaks her actions that will give her more tangible reasoning, but I'm still afraid it won't work any better than what I've already done.

Frustration.

The Great Eleventh Grade Zombie Project moves along

My eleventh graders are having a blast learning about the movie industry. They're in groups, writing scripts for a zombie film. I used a few scenes from existing films they like to teach them script format, but there are a few things they're still having difficulty with.

They all keep writing themselves into the script, for one thing. So a kid named Mario will write a character named Mario. And when character Mario gets raped by a zombie he gets all mad at the other members of his group for making him the victim of zombie rape. I keep telling them not to make themselves the characters and just focus on writing a script, but they're having trouble getting the idea. So now Mario thinks he's going to get Zombie AIDS.

The other big problem they've been having is putting the screen on the page. They keep writing scenes like "Joe and Fidel are brothers. They talk shit while they walk up to the crack house."

They don't realize that they have to describe everything that goes on screen. So I handed them a script to a short film and then showed them the film so they could follow along reading as they watched. After that they said they understood, but we'll see.

If one of the scripts turns out to be super cheap and easy to shoot, I may act as producer and let the kids make the movie. In the mean time, I'm having a couple of guest speakers come in and talk to them about the film industry. So this is turning into a mini film school, all on the suggestion of one kid who wanted me to talk about zombies so he didn't have to do any work on Monday.

Things to do in LA

Last night The Beefcake and I went to see a taping of Web Soup, so if you watch tonight you can catch a brief glimpse of us in the audience. Chris Hardwick is adorable and always excited and I want to put him in my pocket and carry him around.

This is one of the major benefits of living in LA. You deal with the traffic and the violence and the smog and the loud noise and the tourists and the movies that close down busy streets and the high cost of everything, and as a reward you get to do cool stuff. I can go to a drive-in movie or a movie in the Hollywood Cemetery. I can go see a taping of some show or a preview screening of the pilots we'll be seeing on TV a couple of weeks later.

I've been an audience member at tapings of the following shows:
Web Soup - my favorite! Who doesn't love nutshots? Besides my mom, I mean.
The pilot taping of a sitcom starring Fred Savage called Single White Millionaire. It did not get picked up.
A sketch show by some dude that was briefly popular and has since disappeared and I can't remember his name.
The AMAs. I got a free sweatshirt.
An episode of Crumbs, also a brief Fred Savage vehicle. I love Fred Savage. On both shows, he made sure to entertain the audience between takes, often by mocking his own career. He's great, and I would work with him in a heartbeat.

And I've been lucky enough to see a few movies at cast and crew screenings or at Creative Screenwriting screenings. I stopped going to those, though, after the third time I waited an hour and a half to be the second person in line when they cut it off and stopped letting people in.

Every couple of months I realize I haven't done anything cool in a while, so I'll check Twitter or Film Radar and find something in town to do. I've yet to look and not see something I wanted on my activities list.

And that's one reason I love LA.

So to sum up, watch Web Soup tonight on G4.

Tomorrow I will tell you guys about the awesomeness that in one week has become the Great Eleventh Grade Zombie Project.

Today in school we learned about zombies

Last week the eleventh grade English students all finished the same novel, and I was in charge of organizing the whole thing, including a culminating event where we screened the movie in the theater and ate Chinese food and whatnot, so I am tired.

I was so busy working on this that I failed to plan for the future, so Friday I told my kids "Now that we're done with this, I have no idea what we're doing on Monday."

And one of my kids says "Talk about zombies."

They know how much I love zombies. That class has thoroughly discussed our plan of action should the school be swarmed with zombies at any moment. We know where all the weapons and exits are.

So the kid says "Talk about zombies," and I say sure. Why not?

I brought in all my zombie books and asked the class why zombies are so popular. We discussed how they are empty vessels for metaphor, and how they represent so easily who we could be if we made poor decisions. Then I showed parts of Bella Lugosi's White Zombie, the first zombie film, and parts of Night of the Living Dead to show the evolution of zombies as a film creature. They're all mad today because they want to keep watching Night of the Living Dead. We talked about Fido and 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland and Zombie Strippers and Dead Snow. I told them about Maggie and Zombie Baby. I showed them World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide and Zombie Haiku.

So now their assignment is to get into groups and write a script for a zombie short film. Today they're just brainstorming, but tomorrow I'm going to show them how to write a script. One group doesn't like zombies, so I'm allowing them to write about werewolves. One group immediately wanted to write about Jacob from Twilight but I nixed that because then they're not inventing anything. Then they wanted to write about Zombie Osama bin Laden but I nixed that too because it would just be a series of Osama jokes. Now they're getting more creative.

In addition to being a story that includes a protagonist and antagonist and rising action and all that, they must have some kind of metaphor. The zombies must symbolize some issue in our world. One kid came up with the idea of using them to symbolize our obsession with texting. One group wants to use them to represent what it's like to go to high school.

They are all over this thing. I've never seen kids so stoked about a project before. Clearly this was an excellent idea. Right now I'm just getting them to write the script, but if they're up to it I might get them to make the movies. Some days my job is really fun.

Don't take our soap

A brief political interlude as I link you to a well-said rant about school budgets.

The legislature in this state has a choice to make about how much we want to invest in our education. Right now they are dead set on the wrong path.

The future of television

There's a new show on Spike TV called Repo Games. Your car is about to be repossessed, so the repo guy shows up and asks you a bunch of trivia questions, and if you get them right you get to keep your car. If you get them wrong you lose your car. It turns out, a lot of people who get to this point in their lives don't know a lot of trivia.

This is the first stage of events that will lead to The Running Man. I mean, how big a step is it from making people answer questions about literature to keep their cars from making people run as a guy covered in Christmas tree lights tries to cut them in half with a chain saw?

Then there's the duo of Tosh.0 and Web Soup, shows that play ridiculous web videos. Web Soup especially is one nut shot video from being Ow My Balls!

If you don't know what The Running Man is, watch more '80s movies starring Arnold. If you don't know what Ow My Balls! is, watch Idiocracy. Because every time I think about the friends I have who don't want to have kids and people like Octomom I get scared.

But then I watch Ow My Balls! and The Repo Man and I feel better. Sometimes you just have to wait for the future to get here.

Top Shot and the evolution of George

You guys watch Top Shot? Beefcake's big into guns so we've been watching that for the past two seasons. It's this show on History where military guys, rednecks and the occasional golf pro compete to see who's the best marksman.

I don't really care about the guns - I'm more interested in the political dynamics between the competitors. This season there was this golf pro who had the stupidest stance every single time he went up to shoot something, but won over and over again, much to the chagrin of every other shooter in the competition. He was really annoying but damn if he wasn't a fucking savant with a weapon.

The host is annoying as fuck. He never shuts up and his teeth are like creepy white goblins that threaten to leap out between his tiny lips and chomp their way across my living room. But anyway.

What really interested me this season was George. George is a sniper instructor and a douche. He uses words like "failboat" with wild abandon and constantly talks about how awesome he is at everything. Beefcake and I regularly groaned at the television when he went on one of his bragging tirades. He was a great villain after the golf guy started proving that he knew how to shoot and everybody started picking on him. George is a great shooter and he knows it. You'll rarely find a better reality competition show villain than a guy who's really good at the talent at hand and knows it and won't shut up about it. You really want that guy to get his comeuppance.

SPOILERS FOR THE FINALE

Then in the final episode, we learned what everybody wanted to do with the money. One guy wanted to pay for his kid's final year in private school and the other guy wanted to send his kids to college. George wanted to buy $100,000 worth of guns. What a douche.

The guys started shooting. They got to pick the weapon and the target and the distance, and the guy who wanted to send his kids to college missed every shot. So up goes George. If George hits this shot, he goes to the final round and knocks the other guy out of competition. If George misses this shot, the other guy gets another chance at that $100 grand.

So George chooses a gun he knows the other guy can shoot, a HUGE target, and a short distance. And he misses.

George threw the competition.

And I thought, holy shit. I hated this guy. He was a selfish, egotistical prick. All he cared about was winning, and then suddenly after weeks of living with these honorable guys and becoming their friends, George learned that his ego could take a back seat to someone who needed the money more. George easily could have won the competition had he not thrown himself on the grenade.

It's one of the things I tell kids all the time when we talk about character development. Contrasts. All people have surprising elements about themselves that nobody would expect. Everyone is the opposite of himself, even if it's only in this one little area. Life proves that to be true all the time. Here's surprisingly honorable George.

It's like they wrote it that way. It's reality TV, so there's always the chance that they did, but I don't think so.  I think George grew a little bit that day. Sometimes reality shows try to force a story arc with music and editing. This story just unfolded all by itself. I thought that was cool.

Thoughts on the film: Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Saturday afternoon the Beefcake and I headed off to the Arclight Hollywood, one of the few theaters in the country that screened Morgan Spurlock's new Film, Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

We got swag. As we handed the guy our tickets and he handed us two coupons ("The Greatest Coupon Ever Printed"), a sample packet of Seventh Generation laundry detergent and a full stick of Ban deodorant. Sweet. Now we don't have to go to the drug store after the movie.

I do love the Arclight when it's not packed, because you don't have to do the mad rush to get a good seat and you don't have to watch commercials, which is a bit ironic given the nature of the film we are about to watch.

If you haven't heard about this film yet, it's about Spurlock trying to get product placement in his movie about product placement. There are scenes in the movie where he talks about how those scenes will be in the movie.

The film itself is pretty funny. Morgan Spurlock's greatest gift is turning the camera on absurdity and laughing at it. The man had more fun with the idea of Main and Tail shampoo than I've ever seen anyone have with hair care products, and it made what could have been really dry material a blast to watch.

We all knew McDonald's wasn't healthy, but when we saw just how much damage an all-McDonald's diet did to Spurlock's body, I think we were all kind of amazed. That's a bit of what's missing here. We all know product placement exists, and we all know advertising is all around us. I didn't come out of this film feeling blown away by a new experience.

That's not to say there was nothing to learn here. Spurlock goes through the process from beginning to end - how you get those products in your film, the kind of sacrifices you have to make, the kind of ridiculous requests corporations make of the filmmakers. And it was horrifying to hear the story of the guy who bullied a director into product placement by threatening to cripple his production. There was a lot of really good stuff here, and again, it was fun to watch. Spurlock is nothing if not fun.

In the end, I'm not sure what we were supposed to learn, and maybe that's the point. Some documentaries are more about asking questions than drawing conclusions. This could be one of them. Beefcake and I came out debating what the point was. Everyone's a sell-out? Product placement is just a part of life that we should get used to? Horse shampoo is hilarious?

I don't know. Maybe I'm not supposed to.

So if Spurlock's goal was to make me have fun, laugh, and ponder product placement in the films I see, he has succeeded.

Writing in front of the TV

I have this friend - yeah you know who you are, buddy - who writes with the TV on. I thought that was pretty crazy - how can you not be completely distracted? But the last two days I've felt too sick to sit at a desk so I lounged on the sofa with the TV on and the computer in my lap.

Like a lot of writers, I like to watch films similar in tone to get in the right frame of mine, and sometimes I get inspired by a scene and stop what I'm doing to go write. This time I didn't stop watching, I just started writing.

First I watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which was a big mistake because I got all serious and angsty in what was supposed to be a romantic action comedy.

Then I watched Romancing the Stone, and suddenly in the middle of it I got inspired to work on my opening scene some more, and right about the time Michael Douglas jumped into the water after the crocodile I cranked out my fifth page, this time in the correct tone.

Today I tried it again. I watched True Lies while I typed out six pages this time. It helps that I knew my opening shots really well, but it was interesting to try a new method of setup for my writing experience. I'm not saying I'll do it all the time, because I still like to focus and use music to inspire and I'd worry about being a little too inspired by whatever I'm watching, but every now and then it's good to make sure I can still write in the middle of - or in spite of - a big distraction.

My trip to the ER

I put my hand through a window last night. Stupid old 1947 windows - did you know that if you smash on them with your hand they break? Who designed this weak shit?

So I smash my hand through the glass and I yell "Oh my god!" and then I think maybe it's okay. I mean it really feels like I didn't hurt myself. Then I pull my hand back into the house and see the enormous gash on the inside of my wrist.

My neighbor yells out "Are you okay?"

And I reply with "No!" even though at first I wanted to say I was fine but realized that a normal person would not think this was fine. I grab a paper towel because those commercials always tell me paper towels are really strong and would probably soak up lots of blood.

My neighbor shows up and thank god she did because otherwise I would have been found a day later being eaten by my dogs after I passed out from blood loss over my computer as I googled emergency rooms. A year and a half I've been living here and I still have no idea where the hospitals are.

So my neighbor tries to call 911 and I'm like "Hell no. That's expensive!"

So she grabs her sweater, hands me a dish towel my future in-laws gave me as part of their big Christmas package - sorry, Rita - and we drive to the emergency room. I haven't been to an emergency room since my first year in college when I rode in the ambulance while my best friend struggled against alcohol poisoning in the back. That was the night I discovered ham and pineapple pizza, so maybe tonight will also have some kind of positive outcome.

There's a lady passed out over a couple of chairs and when they call her name she doesn't budge. At this point my hand finally starts to hurt. My neighbor fills out my forms and I try to sign them. The intake nurse vaguely glances at my wound - a giant gash right next to my vein and going in the correct direction for suicide, but she just tells me it will be a few hours. I wonder if I pass out will I be seen sooner? Everybody else in the ER is there for a stomach ache except the passed-out lady. I wonder if any of them have a surprise pregnancy and are in labor.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution is on the TV. Why am I not recording this on the DVR?

A security guard comes out and wakes up the passed-out lady. Her face is soaking wet and she can't walk. She barely knows her own name. Somebody had apparently dropped her off along with an empty pill bottle and then left.

The bleeding has stopped as long as I don't move my hand. The wound is really gross. I think I see nerves. I know what those look like because I saw 127 Hours in the theater.

A woman comes out of the ER shaking, miserable, like death. Everybody feels bad for her and my hand doesn't hurt so much. While her husband runs and gets the car we wonder what she must have been like before, because they're releasing her but she looks awful. Her husband picks her up and carries her to the car because she can't walk.

After about two and a half hours I finally see the doctor. The nurse asks me how I am and I say "I'm an idiot."

"How many times have you been in for stitches?"

"This is the first."

"I've had them twelve times. I'm an idiot."

Some nurse in the hallway is on the phone. "His mom dropped him off. She says he's hearing voices. I believe he is a danger to himself and others."

Then I start feeling pukey. I've been looking at this nasty gash for a while so I think it's the hospital smells that are getting to me. But I don't puke. I pull out my Nook and read Roots, which gives me the opportunity to tell the nurse how much I love my Nook.

I know it's one of the most basic things they do, but I am always impressed with doctors' ability to stitch with pliers. I can't even sew buttons with my hands.

My hand's all wrapped up and I go home and decide not to worry about all the blood or the busted window and just watch Tron Legacy. It's better than I expected it to be.

I also have a cold.

EDITED TO ADD: My neighbor just sent me the picture she took with her phone. Yes, I am in my pajamas.

John and the Terminator with Arnold's head

HBO is some shiesty little tricksters. They gave me HBO for free long enough to watch the pilot for Game of Thrones, which was really good, and reminded me that they also have True Blood and Entourage. So now I have HBO.

So I'm waiting until it's time to take my new puppy to meet the doctor for the first time and I turn on HBO, and they're showing Terminator Salvation. Now I posted about this movie when I saw it in the theater, but I neglected to mention one scene that to me epitomizes the flaws in this film.

At the end of the movie, when they're running around in the Terminator factory, John Connor gets knocked back by a door flying open, and behind that door stands Arnold (or a facsimile thereof), the original Terminator, the machine who once tried to kill John's mom. But all John ever knew of him was as a friend. The Arnold Terminator saved his life countless times and sacrificed himself for the greater good. If you pretend number 3 didn't exist, which is my preferred way of thinking, then the last time John saw his buddy he was giving the thumbs up on the way to his death. All for John.

So it's years later and John's in the middle of this big battle and he's very stressed out trying to find his dad who's not his dad yet, and suddenly there he is, the only father figure John ever knew. Hey, there would have been a cool theme to pursue given the whole John's about to be a dad and he's looking for his dad and then his dad is kind of fostering a little girl, but somehow that didn't seem like a theme.

Anyway, so John sees, for the first time in a decade or more, his best childhood friend. And John doesn't even take a fucking second to react. He just starts fighting.

What an opportunity that was. You've got this Terminator who hasn't even experienced all these things that John has, he doesn't know his fate, doesn't know this man he will save in the past, and here's someone who does know all the good and bad things he will do, all this history and yet not history between them, and not even a tiny fraction of it is explored.

Why'd they go through the trouble and expense of putting Arnold on that dude's body? Because it was cool. Because in his big moment, audiences would go Ooooooh cool! Not because it matter to the story AT ALL.

It could have mattered to the story. John would have known it wasn't his friend of course, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't need a second to process it, or have doubts, or think he should run instead of fight, because what if he kills the Terminator? The past will never happen. He will never be born, or maybe they'll send a different one that succeed in killing his mother. Maybe some part of this Terminator IS the hero he knew. After all, he never met the bad guy version. Maybe he thinks he can talk the Terminator into doing the right thing. Maybe....

But nope. All they do is fight. Then we move on.

Squandered potential.

Clockbusters movie game

Play this game. You look at three pictures and figure out what movie they remind you of.

I got 45 out of 50 and could not for the life of me figure out the other five movies.

Nice Girls Don't Kill Queries - round 1

Spring Break starts in a few hours and I am already there. I told the kids not to ask me any questions today because I'm too tired to answer.

While I wait for Nice Girls Don't Kill to work its way slowly up the small chain of connected people I know, I'm querying. I'm very picky with my queries and am thoroughly researching each name on my list. I'm only sending the script to people I'd like to work with, people who have both a positive personal reputation and a track record of producing results.

The fact that I was once repped is irrelevant.

Over the past two weeks I have emailed 19 reps. I don't like this number because I hate prime numbers, but I can't find a 20th person I like. I queried both the big guys and a few boutiques. Not WME though because that's just pointless.

So far I have been rejected flat out at Paradigm because they don't even read unsolicited material so don't waste your time.

About 15 minutes after I sent the email, I got a request from someone who recognized my name from brief and distant online encounters. That name recognition thing really matters. He didn't read my script, though. He sent it to an assistant, so we'll see if assistant sends it up the line.

Nothing yet from anybody else, but I didn't expect to hear back so soon anyway.

I will update my progress as results come in.

Turn in your best work

I keep seeing this same terrible advice pop up in various forms on the old web: You don't have to make your screenplay that great because producers and reps and actors will just change everything anyway.

That has got to be one of the dumbest attitudes you can have, yet plenty of people have it.

Let's say you're an agent at one of the big three. You're in your office, about to leave for the weekend and you're checking your email.

Come to think of it, agents don't really check their own email, do they?

Let's say you're an assistant to an agent at one of the big three. You're in your cubicle, about to leave for the weekend and you're checking your boss' email. There's like eight hundred thousand queries in there.

You see about a dozen that sound promising, so you say what the hell, let's read these little fuckers. Some of those will be high concept, but some will just have a neat voice or a clean writing style. You send away for the scripts. You read them over the weekend, praying to find one you want to send to your boss. Your boss' day is insanely busy and you know that if you send him a piece of crap he'll smash your head in with a hammer.

I've seen Swimming With Sharks so I feel like I'm an expert on how all this works.

Anyhow, you read a dozen scripts. You choose ONE to take to your boss, one writer you think will score jobs or spec sales for the company. Which one is it? The high concept script with poor execution? Maybe, if the idea is amazing and the writing is at least competent. The generic idea executed to perfection? Or the generic idea that's practically a first draft, thrown together in a few weeks and barely proofread?

Which writer would you want to work with? The one with the good ideas? The one who busts their ass to perfect every draft? Or the one who pumps out a shoddy draft and figures it's somebody else's job to make it good?

Use your brain.

So if you like, you can crank out shitty draft after shitty draft and keep throwing them at the wall, but you'll be competing with my best work. Good luck.

Query time

When I was first looking for a rep I was just excited when anybody wanted to read my material. I didn't care who they were - I'd have run after whatever rep came along. And lo and behold, the rep who came along was actually pretty well established.

But now I'm a little pickier. I ask more questions, do more research. I'm not blanketing the town with queries. I'm picking the dozen or so agents and managers I'd most like to work with, both in the majors and in boutiques.

Being with the majors would be great, but you end up a little forgotten. When your rep only has a handful of steadily working clients you're way more important than you are if your rep works for huge stars. So at this stage, I'm less about a flashy name and more about a track record of getting clients work.

Fortunately this time around I have friends who can pass my work on, but that still takes time, so in the meantime I'm sending out those good old fashioned queries. We'll see how it goes.

Checkpoint

Okay I'm back. I had to finish the yearbook. We were a week and a half late, and we misspelled a shitload of names, but we turned the damn pages in. They look pretty good if you don't know how to spell.

Now I have to get caught up on the 30,000 papers that found their way into my grading pile while I put all my attention on the book, but then I can get back to writing. Spring Break is coming up and I plan to write during the day and grade at night. And some day, some distant magical day, I will take an actual break.

So my writing goal for the next week is to iron out all the kinks in my treatment until I know every major beat of the story. Then I can jump in and hopefully have a first draft ready to go by the time Summer vacation gets here, so I can spend the summer rewriting.

That's the plan.

Your own favorite lines

I'm on the hunt for a new rep, so to build my confidence today I'm thinking about awesome things I've written, things that made me giggle as soon as they came out of my brain, because even though I'm terribly insecure about my writing at times, I crack myself up during the first draft.

These are my two favorite lines of dialogue I've ever written:

1) "Nobody's leaving until we get what we came for, so take off your pants and fuck your girlfriend. Or fuck my girlfriend. Either way, somebody's getting fucked and you're going to fuck 'em."

2) "Hey I met like four new people yesterday and only killed one of them.  Percentagewise I'm in the black."

What's your favorite line you've ever written? Share time.

How not to write a query letter

As almost a part two of yesterday's post, I bring you a query letter so horrible I did not believe it was real even though the poster of said letter swears it is.

Gaze upon its glory and be amazed. I bring you the query letter for Violet Thunder.

How to make yourself look like an ass on the Internet

Yearbook is slowly making me insane. Our deadline was Monday, then Wednesday, now it will be a miracle if we finish it this week. The kids are busting their little butts, but there's only so much time. Personally I'm really working on an ulcer. On the upside, I figured out how to do something new in Photoshop today. I cheered so much, you'd think I won the Nicholl.

So I will share with you this while I still have my higher brain functions intact.

You may have already seen it because it's gone viral, but in case you haven't, here's a perfect example of how not to take criticism. Read the comments on this woman's book review:

Big Al's review of The Greek Seaman

And if that's not enough schadenfreude for you, check out her Amazon page.

On the one hand, she's gotten a lot of publicity about this, which has probably translated into sales to the curious. On the other hand, damn lady.

Something about music and opposites and Kurosawa

When I was in high school I sang in a band. We were pretty awesome with our ukulele solos, but this one time we played a show with a band called Roshomon. Now I'm not sure how a bunch of high school students knew that word, but it was the only way I knew that word until I was in my late twenties when I kept hearing about this movie that apparently took its title from that band those kids played in at my high school.

So I finally saw the film, and it was pretty cool, but then I saw Seven Samurai, and that was some good shit. Then I saw Ikiru and I was done. DONE, I say. Who knew a movie with no gun or sword battles at all would be the one to win me over?

Anyway, I love Kurosawa. LOVE. I inhaled his autbiography. My favorite part was the beginning, where he talked about how his teachers thought he was so dumb he was nigh unteachable, and lo, he turned out to be Kurosawa. I got a lot of cool things out of that book because he is, in the end, a great writer before he is anything else, but I'm going to talk about one thing in particular that I liked.

He said he realized one day that he needed musical queues as opposites. That if a character has a fight scene, you play music that is really serious and sad. I don't know - I'm paraphrasing and there's a dog in my lap so I'm not getting up to get the book to quote from it, but I liked that bit about opposites in music.

That doesn't mean you always have to have opposites, but I like when that happens. I always wanted to have a kickass action scene play over some ABBA. That's why I was so thrilled when Community did it. Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this but fuck it.

I love Kurosawa, is my point.

This week

Wednesday the school yearbook is due, so I'm hellabusy. I'm neglecting all my other classes - we're just watching whatever movie I can loosely attach to the curriculum or reading silently, and I haven't graded papers in weeks.

Fortunately my script is done for now, so I don't have any pages to work on this weekend, but I do want to complete the treatment for the new project. As is the case with so many scripts, I have no idea what to do with Act 2, but it will come to me.

In the meantime, I'm probably going to just post links to things I think are cool for the next few days.

I'm going to start with this: Shit My Students Write, where a teacher posts shit her students write. It's pretty awesome.

Nice Girls is on its way

After rewrite after rewrite, it was good to finally get a handful of micro notes last night.

A friend who helped brainstorm my latest script in its original form read the best version yesterday, then we hopped on chat so he could give me notes. I love doing notes via chat. He can ask questions, I can ask questions, and I can have the script open at the same time and fix the issues as he tells me about them. It's my favorite way to do notes. It only works if you're on minor fixes, though. Not so much when there's major story problems.

But I finished it, submitted to Nicholl and sent it to a couple of people who know people.

So now it's out in the world, making a name for itself. And I get to start thinking about the next thing.

Annie and Sally - Being Human's two different ghosts

I've been watching both versions of Being Human - the BBC version and the Syfy version - and I enjoy them both. What I especially appreciate is the way the American version has taken the story in a new direction instead of cloning the original. In some ways, I like the choices the American version has made better.

I do love Nina, though. Spunky little Nina.

Anyway, all that said, I have an issue with the ghost.

In the British version, Annie the ghost was murdered by her fiance. He was an abusive asshole who pushed her down the stairs, where she cracked her head open on the landing. Annie is the kind of woman who has deep insecurities, the kind of woman who is so afraid of being alone that she'll allow a man to treat her like crap because she thinks she's lucky to have him around. She demonstrates this in everything she does. Before she realized he killed her, she tried to follow her fiance around, thinking it was now her job to protect him. She takes care of everybody even in death, and in the current plotline she dotes on Mitchell - a vampire with a nasty past - because he saved her from a terrible fate.

In the American version, Sally the ghost was murdered by her fiance. He was an abusive asshole who pushed her down the stairs, where she cracked her head open on the landing. Sally is the kind of woman who always dreamed of traveling, regularly gave rants in her college classes about the stupidity of the state of marriage, takes no time at all to fall for a new ghost she ran into, and immediately gets angry and revengy when she finds out how she died. She's about as insecure as a bear.

I understand the desire to make an American woman strong and independent, but the kind of woman she is in this story is not the kind of woman who lets a man abuse her for very long. The British version is about a woman learning to balance her own independence with her desire to feel needed and desired. The American version is about a girl who is actually pretty together except for the whole dead thing, and she's just pissed off at the guy who killed her, but seems to be almost over it already.

I'm all for strong women, but not when they make no sense.

A Q&A with Michael Mann, or, what not to ask at a Q&A

Saturday night the Beefcake and I headed down to the Egyptian to watch a 25th anniversary screening of Manhunter, followed by a Q&A with Michael Mann.

So first, interesting things he said:

-He worked on the script for Heat for quite a while before he realized the final image of a dying man holding the hand of the man who shot him. Then he reverse engineered the script to make that happen.

-If there was one world he'd go back to, it would be Last of the Mohicans. He would never go back to something as dark as Manhunter if he can help it.

-During the final shootout in Manhunter, they had no money and no time, so Michael Mann held the camera himself, shot a sequence of the gunfight, then cut, burned a hole into Tom Noonan's shirt, then called action again. And that's how he shot it - like a low budget indie with himself as camera operator.

-Tom Noonan is a weird dude. Michael Mann said this: "Well, you know, he's from North Carolina, so...." What the fuck, Michael Mann?

So now, the real point to this post.

I have been to a lot of Q&As in my time since moving to Los Angeles, and I have heard some stupid fucking questions, but I have never heard questions as idiotic as the ones I heard at this screening. They were so bad, the entire audience was groaning, and we even joked with some guys on the way down Hollywood Boulevard as we made up additional stupid questions people could have asked.

And yet, for every stupid question, Mann answered with class and honesty. Often he just answered whatever good question he could create out of the stupid shit he was asked.

So now I present to you, my paraphrase of stupid questions asked of Michael Mann at the screening:

-You worked with Gong Li on a movie. How come people don't work with her more often? She's great. Also, I heard lots of the actors were afraid of shooting in real locations on that movie. Why?

The movie she's talking about is Miami Vice, but she didn't seem to know that. Michael Mann said Gong Li speaks no English, and the actors weren't afraid of the location shooting.

-I didn't understand that whole part of the movie when he figures out the label on the film canister and matched it with the label on the other canister. Can you explain that, because I didn't understand it. How did he make that conclusion?

The interviewer explained the scene to the guy. You had one opportunity to ask Michael Mann a question, and you ask him a clarifying question about a scene that made perfect sense to every other person in the room? Really, old man?

-The ending of this movie I've always found to be so cheesy. And the freeze frame - ugh. It's just so cheesy and bad. Have you ever thought that?

Michael Mann responded that he's frequently retooled his films and rereleased them in different versions because he's never satisfied.

-Yesterday I overheard you talking once to Madeleine Stowe about a project. Was that a real conversation?

Yes it was a real conversation.

-Are you bitter about the success of Silence of the Lambs?

No.


So here's what we can learn from this. When you go to a Q&A and you have a question, think about the following things: Are you the only person in the room who would have this question? Are you only talking so that you can let everybody in the room know something about you? Are you about to insult the person you're asking? Do you just have a bunch of statements that you are going to somehow remix into a question after you give a fucking speech about some bullshit? If you answered yes to any of the questions, shut the fuck up and let the grown ups talk.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

You should watch this trailer.

Possibly the most meta film ever, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, is coming soon. Morgan Spurlock is one cheeky bastard.

A scene from class about Anne d'Autriche

Every month I go to this workshop and we write stuff. Plus they give us breakfast.

Today the assignment was to become a character from history or literature who you know a lot about and do a bunch of assignments with that character. There were some pretty cool assignments, but the culminating task was to write either a eulogy or a scene from your character's life. Most people in the group write in prose, but since I do scripts I wrote mine as a script.

You may remember last month's bizarre scene. This one is taken from the life of one Anne of Austria, queen of France, on the night she and her husband finally knocked boots after years of awkwardly staring at each other from a distance.

Yes, my hero is Anne of Austria. Bet you didn't see that coming.

Anyway, here's the scene I wrote today:

INT. THE ~LOUVRE - NIGHT

In its most elegant hey day, filled with busy servants and elegant tapestries.

INT. ANNE'S BEDCHAMBER - NIGHT

ANNE OF AUSTRIA, teenage queen of France, all blonde curls and smiles, laughs with her chief lady in waiting, MARIE DE ROHAN, in their bed clothes. Anne speaks her French with a thick Spanish accent, often forgetting words. Marie supplies those that are missing.

INT. LOUIS' BEDCHAMBER - NIGHT

LOUIS XIII, teenage King of France, timid and pale, tries to read while his best friend and chief advisor, DUC DE LUYNES, paces back and forth through the room.

DUC DE LUYNES

For God's sake, man, if she could climb into your lap and still maintain her considerable dignity she would. Her only job in this world is to make you a baby. Would you please go to the woman?

Louis throws down his book.

LOUIS

What do you have against literacy?

DUC DE LUYNES

The woman is your wife. She beautiful, demure-

LOUIS

Spanish.

DUC DE LUYNES

You don't need words to fuck the woman.

LOUIS

I don't... I can't...

DUC DE LUYNES

Oh for God's sake.

He grabs Louis by the arm, yanks him out of his chair.

Duc De Luynes throws open the door, pulling Louis into the

HALLWAY

Where servants start, not sure what they ought to offer the king in his bed clothes.

Luynes drags Louis down the hall.

LOUIS

I beg your pardon, sir! I am the king and I shan't-

DUC DE LUYNES

Hush!

A bodyguard moves to intervene. Duc De Luynes puts up a hand to stop him.

DUC DE LUYNES

The king of France is off to make a baby! Do not stand in his way!

The guard backs off, amused.

INT. ANNE'S BEDCHAMBER - NIGHT

Anne stares at herself in the mirror, pushing her breasts together.

ANNE

Better?

MARIE

Have you considered getting him drunk?

ANNE

Is it my nose? Perhaps my nose is too round.

MARIE

Your nose is beautiful. The man is an imbecile. My husband says-

The door flies open. Duc De Luynes SHOVES Louis into his wife's room.

DUC DE LUYNES

Your Majesty, your husband the king would like to fuck you now. Ah, my dear wife, shall we?

ANNE

What is "fuck"?

MARIE

You'll find out, my lady.

She touches Anne on the cheek, then grabs Duc De Luyne's hand, bows and they exit together. He grabs her ass on the way out.

Louis and Anne stare at one another. Or rather, Louis stares at her breasts.

ANNE

I am glad you have come.

LOUIS

I didn't... Luyne made me....

ANNE

Oh.

LOUIS

No, I mean... I find you very pretty, I just, I don't know if...

Anne stands up, glides toward him. A soft kiss on the cheek. He stands, frozen.

ANNE

Come.

She pulls him to the bed. She puts her hand around his neck and pulls him in. A gentle kiss.

He backs up, stares at her. Eyes meeting for the first time since, maybe ever.

He grabs her, pulls her into him. He possesses her. Finally.

FADE OUT.

The opening scene to Nice Girls

Yesterday Jabberwocky, who is apparently not named for my favorite poem, requested that I post the opening pages to Nice Girls Don't Kill. Never one to deny such a request, I have posted them.

I DO NOT WANT NOTES. Like AT ALL. At this point the script is completed and being read around town, and I've already worked this scene a number of times. In fact, if you're on Done Deal you can find the thread where I workshopped this scene. Anyway, here's the final product:

FADE IN:

EXT. PUBLIC LIBRARY - RAINY DAY

It might as well be night, as evil as that sky is. The rain is POURING hard on the pavement in front of the library. Only one car in the parking lot.

A Jeep Cherokee pulls up.

INT. PUBLIC LIBRARY - RAINY DAY

Budget cuts have hit this place hard, but there's still a bank of five-year-old computers near the entrance.

YANCY, fifties, graying, well-worn bifocals, hums as he fiddles with a few cables at the back of one of the machines. Only one light is on in the empty room.

A fist BANGS on the door.

Yancy pops up. He can barely make out a small figure in the rain.

He motions to the sign posting the hours of operation.

The fist bangs again.

He stands up and walks to the door. He points to the sign.

The figure, now clearly identifiable as a GIRL wearing a backpack, makes a motion of pleading. She's drenched.

Yancy opens the door a crack.

YANCY

I'm sorry, the library is closed on Mondays.

GIRL

(Southern accent)

Please! Honey, can I just use the phone? Mine died, and my car...

He nods, waves her inside.

She shuffles inside where we get a good look at her.

LANA. A young 30 something, wet hair clinging to her face. Absurdly hot. You want to ask her out, but you're afraid she'll eat your head after she fucks you.

Yancy hands her his cell phone.

YANCY

Here. If you-

Her phone rings. Warrant's "Cherry Pie." She ignores it.

She shoves his phone in her pocket.

LANA

This place is so quiet. I like it. Y'all still got that Dewey system?

YANCY

Listen, miss, I don't have time to-

LANA

Oh I apologize, Yancy. How rude of me. I'm Lana.

She waves, bright smile.

He begins to hyperventillate.

LANA

You got that Child Called It? I heard that's a good book.

YANCY

I didn't do it. Whatever it is, I swear. I'm not the one.

LANA

Joe thinks you got his money.

YANCY

I don't! Oh God, that's not me! I told Carl!

He falls on the floor, grabs her leg and pleads. Lana tries to shake him off. This is uncomfortable.

YANCY

Call Carl! Why would I tell him about missing money if I'm the one who stole it?

LANA

Please get off me, honey.

He clings even tighter.

YANCY

Call Carl! Please!

She tries to shake him loose, to no avail.

LANA

GET OFF!

YANCY

PLEASE!

She sighs, pulls a gun out and shoots him in the foot. He screams and lets go to nurse his injury.

LANA

Listen, honey. I'm a nice girl. I don't do that whole bamboo under the fingernail shit, but if you paw at me again I will shoot off your shriveled old Willy, put a knife in your gut and leave you to bleed to death. Are we clear?

He nods, weeping over his foot.

YANCY

Ask Carl. I told Carl.

LANA

You tell anybody else?

YANCY

I don't know... um.... I don't know!

Lana shoots him in the shin. He shouts. Her phone starts to ring again. "Cherry Pie."

YANCY

NO! Only Carl! I don't have the money I swear!

LANA

I know, honey.

She shoots him in the head. Picks up the still ringing phone.

LANA

(into the phone)

Elliot how many fucking times have I told you not to call until the job's done?

She wipes Yancy's phone of fingerprints, tosses it on his body.

LANA

No, I didn't find the money. Idiot died first.

She searches his wallet. Pulls out a twenty.

LANA

I know. You think you know somebody, then they steal your shit. You gonna have my payday in the right box this time?

(beat)

Don't get all huffy, honey, it's not my fault you're such a goddamn fuck-up.

She hangs up.

She dials a saved number.

LANA

(into the phone)

He's dead. You're in the clear.

She throws the phone down.

She looks at the body.

LANA

Let's rock and roll, honey.

She reaches into her backpack and pulls out a bottle of bleach.

She starts pouring it over the body.

LANA

(to the tune of "Cherry Pie")

She's my Cherry Pie. Motherfucker's dying and he don't know why.

What happened to my rep?

So some time ago I got repped. It was a glorious day. A day of Validation.

I don't suck! Somebody in an influential position thinks I can write! Yaaaay! And then I waited for success to roll in.

Manager was successful. If you've seen the Black List, you've heard of her clients. She read my zombie action script, liked me, started listing people she could get me in a room with. I was so excited I thought I'd pee my pants.

When we finally met in person, she said "What I like about you is that you write commercial scripts." I write things she can sell! They like it when you write things they can sell.

At the time I had a lot of garbage on my computer and this one good script. But Zombieland was coming down the pike so my script wasn't really as original as it was when I started working on it. It's also got a huge budget, so it's great for showing what I can do but not likely to sell outright.

Now, at the time, I had this good script, but not the most original idea, and now it seems like everybody and their mom has a zombie script in their collection. So I decided to write something truly original. I wrote a martial arts script that takes place during the Civil War and features a female Confederate sympathizer as the lead and includes an interracial sex scene. I was working on this script when I hooked up with Manager. I raced to get it done so I'd have something to show her.

So basically, the same day she told me how much she liked that I wrote commercial projects, I handed her the most impossible to sell project she's ever seen. NOBODY will buy this. And on top of that, it had weaknesses. In my rush to get the script to her, I didn't take the time I needed to perfect what was a VERY difficult script to pull off. Maybe if it had been genius it wouldn't have mattered that it was so risky, but it wasn't genius.

She got me a meeting that went well and landed me an unpaid project. At the time I was just glad to be in with a legitimate production company, so I didn't mind not getting paid. But the project fizzled and died over time.

I wrote another script, this time trying to make up for the unsellable scripts I had given her. I wrote a chase movie that never really worked. I sent it to her even though it wasn't ready. I was just in such a hurry to get some attention before my opportunity passed.

Mind you, Manager is at this point working for one of the major management firms in the city, managing careers of writers who make her money. And here I am, floundering, trying to impress her with subpar work. Because no matter how low I am on the totem pole, had I given her a brilliant script, she would have dropped everything and thrown me in front of every producer in town.

I realized at this point that I had jumped into the fray before I was ready. I realized that I'd kind of blown it, because now she had no motivation for reading my next script. I decided it was best to back off and start over with one brilliant project.

So I did. I told Manager that I appreciated everything, which I did, but I needed to work on my scripts for a while and seek out new representation when I'm ready.

That's why I've spent the last six months writing and rewriting and rewriting the project I've almost finished. I will not quit working on it until it's absolutely perfect. In the meantime, I made new friends and found myself in a position to hand my script to plenty of successful agents and managers. So in a few weeks when I have a perfect draft of Nice Girls Don't Kill, I will proudly pass it around, knowing that I now have the patience and skill to do what it takes to build a career.

So this is what I learned from that experience:
1) Do not do projects for free. Ever.
2) Do not send out a script you know isn't as good as it could possibly be.
3) Just having a manager is not enough. You have to make sure the projects you hand them are projects they can sell.
4) If you have a manager who doesn't call you, you do not have a manager.

I finished my scene finally

I have written and rewritten this current project so many times I'm starting to question every decision I make. I am now rewriting individual scenes dozens of times, trying to make everything absolutely perfect. I've never been a perfectionist before.

I should probably put the script away for a week or so and remember that I have a life, but I can't. I just can't. I am tinkering obsessively.

I moved up a scene where my male and female lead meet, so now they're not meeting at a post office where they can move around and interact with things around them; they're essentially meeting in a car. So I have to figure out a way to reveal necessary exposition while doing that whole - I kind of hate you but am also kind of attracted to you - thing, while also having my characters react appropriately to some serious shit that just went down, while also being funny in an absurd kind of way. It's a lot to ask out what is almost all dialogue.

In the end I spent about three days one what turned out to be a three page scene. I tried every permutation. At one point I had a gun go off, which made the driver swerve and crash the car.  I did this just to inject something interesting into what was becoming a really boring conversation and I hated it. In the end, I had to ramp up their reactions. They were way too calm about the whole thing, when one of my strengths in comedy is giving characters absurd situations and letting them react. Once again, I needed to stop thinking so much and let my brain do its thing.

In working that thought, I also realized that this guy would be afraid of her and would have his gun on her, and she'd be afraid of him and would have her gun on him. Before, he had his gun out but she was oddly calm because somehow she knew he wouldn't shoot her. She knew because I knew. Didn't work.

I had a scene where two people explained their exposition to each other. Now I have two people in a car who try to get information while each thinks the other one is trying to kill him/her.

That took three days but it was worth it.

Here I go again on this draft

Annnnnnd it looks like I have to rethink the whole thing again.

Got new notes. Notes said the script isn't working. Characters are interesting, voice is ever present, motivation is off. Why do these characters do these things?

I keep getting this same note and I keep sitting down, addressing the note, handing it back in and getting that note again. So clearly I need more than just a simple fix. Something at the core of the script is not working.

In years past I would have abandoned the script and tried again, and there are still scripts - one as recent as last year - that I abandoned for that reason. But I love these characters and think this story has tons of potential, so I'm going to do another round of massive changes to the first half of the script. I think the second half is working for the most part, but because my first half isn't strong enough people aren't buying how things turn out.

Michael Arndt said he wrote Little Miss Sunshine in three days, and spent a year rewriting it. I remember when I first heard that thinking that sounded ridiculous. I couldn't imagine spending that much time reworking one script.

I can now. It's annoying.

Get busy rewriting or get busy dying

I haven't abandoned this blog, I've just been so insanely busy with my day job I haven't had time to post every day.

There's also not that much going on with my writing other than writing. I've been spending my time working this script and working it and working it and working it. I'm waiting for notes on draft five at the moment. Then I'll do another draft, get another set of notes from a group of brutal note givers, do one more draft and be done. So altogether that's 7 drafts before I even hand it to anyone who can do anything with it.

This may seem excessive, but I've learned over the years that I may only get one chance to impress somebody, so I'm going to write the best damn script I possibly can.

I keep imagining Jennifer Garner reading my script to see if she wants to play my villain, so I'm also writing to impress her.

Of course I'd love it to be done and out and getting passed around town, and I'm tired of rewriting, but I'm more tired of not having a screenwriting career. This script is miles above anything I've done and the difficulty level is high. I know a few people who've come up with an idea like mine and abandoned it because they couldn't make it work. If I can pull this off I'll be in like Flynn.

So here we go. Draft 6.

Please vote for kids when the time comes

I don't talk politics often, but I can't let this one go without a word.

This is for California residents, but anybody else is free to read as they desire.

In a few months you will be asked to vote on our tax rate. This vote is a simple choice. If we vote to keep up our taxes, our school system will only be half as in the red as we will be if we decide to lower our taxes we will cripple our school system. It is that simple.

We have had an outbreak lately of kids getting high and dealing drugs on campus because we had to layoff half our security guards. If a computer breaks, we don't have anyone to fix it. I paid $100 a couple of weeks ago to repair a school computer. Some of my friends are sending me boxes of Post-its because I ran out and the school has no more to give me.

Don't get me wrong, I like my job. I love these kids and I will teach them what they need to know if I have to paint on the white board in ink made from my own blood. But every year since these layoffs started it's gotten more and more difficult to get by.

This time our losses will come mostly from elementary schools. Thirty-one kids per teacher, is what we will have. In ELEMENTARY school. Imagine how much less education they're getting. I cringe to think of how far behind those kids will be by the time they get to us.

We're not allowed to order new textbooks. Summer school has been canceled for anyone but seniors and juniors. We may have to close down our school library for most of the week. I have no idea what will happen to our arts programs, because thus far we've been lucky enough to still have music and art and drama, but electives are no doubt on the chopping block. We already lost all of our health classes.

I'm going to post this again when the time comes to vote, but I just want to give you guys a heads up. I know we all want more money these days. We don't want to pay any more taxes. But the truth is, if we don't agree to this tax increase our kids WILL suffer.

This isn't about my salary or my job. I'm not going to be laid off and I'm not losing money no matter what happens. This isn't about unions or politicians or NCLB or whatever red herring people want to throw out there. This is about our kids. Please do not let them down for a few extra bucks.

GITS Interviews John Swetnam

GITS has a great interview with John Swetnam, writer of Evidence, today. It's good stuff. John is not lying about feedback - I have never known anybody who loved notes more than that dude, both giving and receiving. He works his ass off.

The part of the interview I think is most significant:

We think we're ready before we are. If you think you're ready to send out your script, you're not. If you think it's good enough, it's not. YOU ARE NOT READY. Spend less time worrying about agents, and gatekeepers, and all the other BS and just focus on the writing.

Check it out. It's good stuff.