New Blogroll Addition, and A Word About Wes Anderson

I think it's pretty apparent that I'm very particular about what goes on my blogroll, considering up to this point there are only three links on there (so, particular or just ignorant of all the blog-like resources out there to script writers... I'll go with particular). But today I am going to induct a fourth. ScriptShadow is brilliant. Thank you to my Manager for sharing. Just as my life was spiralling downward under the weight of increasing expectations of keeping up with all that is screenwritery, here is a website that will make available to me the newest scripts, ready to read, along with insight into who is playing what part and who is making it. Brilliant! I love it. Thank you Carson Reeves, whoever you are. And the very first screenplay I read off this blog was Leap Year, a romantic comedy written by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (I know, I never heard of them either). Seek it out. It's wonderful, and I mean that exactly as it sounds, very light and pleasant and feel-good. Wonderful. As Carson says, the first act tries too hard, but push past the first fifteen pages and I promise you will not be able to walk away. You are going to have actual and for real emotional responses to this (dare I say it?) gem. But more important than the short-term good feeling this movie evokes is the long-term benefits of reading such a well presented story. I learned some things, some things I didn't know how to do before. Looks I didn't know how to write into a movie before, gestures, little tricks for your action lines that make them less perfunctory but at the same time not stepping on any other creative toes. I'm going to admit something that I may wish I hadn't later on, but I can probably count the number of screenplays I have ever read on one hand and one finger. Quite literally. Including Leap Year. And then I wonder, "why can't I write good?" I realize more now than ever the importance of reading what you wish to write. And not just things that represent how you want to write, but if you want to write romantic comedies, you may want to bend your focus that-a-way. Some might read Leap Year and think it formulaic, and it is. That's why it works. Formulas work. Patterns work. You don't criticize a seamstress because they followed a pattern, you rather expect them to. You want your shirt to look like a shirt, not a pair of house slippers. The brilliance comes when you can take that same old shirt pattern, add a few buttons here, ruffles there, maybe a lighter fabric (this is obviously a lady's blouse), and there you go. Something old, but new. Something familiar, but different. It's a shirt, but it's... okay, you get it, you get it. It's metaphor. Check.

And now for something completely different...

Wes Anderson. This guy I don't get. I watched The Darjeeling Limited last night (yesterday was a very good day for me, cinematically speaking), and for the first twenty minutes I thought, "here we go again. This guy is just being an 'artist.' He's trying to be 'different,'" and I'm not too big on different where my movies are concerned. I like the shirt pattern (oh yeah, I'm gonna drive that shirt pattern thing into the ground). And then, somewhere in like the tenth slow motion sequence, I realized what was going on here. This guy is just on another level. Maybe it's not a higher level, maybe there's no hierarchy to be had here, but somehow he's a little further down the road than I am. And it's captivating in a way, after you accept the fact that maybe the turning point and the "raising the stakes" moment aren't going to be that easy to see. But they're there, in some form, or maybe I just imagine them to help me relate. But it's taken me years of Wes Anderson to realize how good he is. He really is good. I don't know him personally, I don't know what he's really like, whether or not he has a good reputation with the Who's Who of the Where It's At, but he does something that makes me watch what would otherwise be gibberish in the hands of anyone else. I may be a bit tardy with this epiphany, but there it is. Now I've admitted two embarrassing things in one blog: the fact that I haven't read that many screenplays, and that it's taken me until now to appreciate Wes Anderson. I am quite ashamed at myself. Horribly, horribly ashamed.

The Whole Screenwriting Process and Its Relevance to Baking Banana Bread at 11:08pm

I got home from Harpo's (more on that in a moment), and realized that the bananas I had been waiting to turn had in fact been excreting some kind of juice in the bottom of the Ziploc bag, so regardless of the hour, banana bread had to be made. I might have made it this afternoon, but I was lazy taking a nap. Most people say busy taking a nap, but I prefer lazy taking a nap, because that's pretty much what it boils down to. That's what I do when I'm overwhelmed, I take a nap, and this afternoon I was overwhelmed, I am overwhelmed. There's just so much to do. You're supposed to write as much as you can, but also keep up on what others are writing, so that means reading screenplays to get the feel for new things, but also be sure you keep an eye on what is coming out so that you understand the market, but don't just watch trailers, see the movies, since that's what you're writing anyway. Then you need to make sure you've got time to read real books, because that's important too, but also make time to get involved in the writing community, in person and on the web. That's what I was doing at Harpo's. It's where The Kansas City Screenwriters meet, and that's the kind of thing aspiring screenwriters should be doing, meeting up with other aspiring screenwriters to exchange ideas and whatnots. It's all good stuff, just taking it in all at once can seem daunting. How am I supposed to accomplish all these things on a consistent basis while maintaining a job and eventually school, taking care of the husband, and finding time to bake banana bread at a reasonable hour? Blake Snyder says I should be spitting out four scripts a year. I can't imagine! It's not possible in my current state. I would have to change my surroundings, my circumstances, altogether to make that feasible. Am I willing to do that? Probably not. I want it my way. I want to get my school done, live a happy non-neurotic life, maintain a healthy love life, and produce good, quality scripts at a rate of about one per year. If I can't make it doing that, then right now I'm just not going to make it. I'll have to wait. And some day, I'll get tired of not making it and things will change. But I'm not there yet. I want to make it my way. So I'm making banana bread at 11:08pm. That's fine. I'm hungry anyway.

It's Time To Edit, and I'm In the Best Shape of My Life!

Seriously, the best thing you can do for your body is enter into the editing process. That old gym membership will resurface from out of nowhere, and suddenly you can't edit your screenplay because you have to go workout. You can't work on your first 10, you have to do the dishes. Yeah, editing is good for basically every area of your life except the screenplay editing part. I am so well-groomed right now. I've been shaving my legs. I painted my toenails. I've been using that sunless tanner, consistently. I've been blogging! I'd be such an overwhelming success as a person right now if not for this darn screenplay I wrote and now have to fix up. I liken it to the birthing process (yes, eye rolling and sarcastic blurps akin to "how original" would be appropriate now). You birth this screenplay in all the pomp and furry of the delivery process, fast and painful, but mostly fast (this is like my third child, not that 29-hour-labor first child), and when it comes out it has all the regular baby parts, it's just looks hideous all covered in goo and what not. And I feel great because I can actually see what I've created, but then they place that thing in your arms and you get your first really good look at it and realize it'll be weeks before this baby doesn't look like some kind of alien freak. My screenplay is a little beyond alien freak. It was actually born kind of pretty, like those newborns with full heads of hair. But there's still a lot of work to do, and I want to get it done before school starts.

Oh yeah, I'm going to nursing school in the Fall. Let's not talk about that again, okay?

So as a motivational tactic, and because I've been making a habit of stealing whatever widget Sarah has, I've put in a little progress bar over to the right there. You see it now. I will update it to show my progress, if editing can be measured in terms of progress, so that you, but mostly me, can keep track of where I'm at. Hopefully, the shame of not finishing what I have already proclaimed as a certain fact, that I will finish this before that unmentionable August happening, will be sufficient enough to carry me all the way to the end of that bar. And now I must go. I have food blogs to catch up on (I started baking!).

48 Hour Film Project: meeting the first

Tonight I and my writing buddy/pitch partner/manager Elizabeth (who's excellent blog you can find at the bottom right of this page) attended our first ever meet&greet for the 48 hour film project. It's pretty much how it sounds: you get a team together and write, shoot and edit a film in 48 hours. According to the guy running this one, we'll all get together on the first night and pick out of a hat the genre of our film, then everyone is given the same prop, a character, and a line of dialogue, all which must be present in each 5-7 minute film. I am excited. As a writer, this is what you do. You find people in your area who like doing the same thing as you, you join these people in whatever capacity you can, and you all do what you like to do together. And granted, given only 48 hours, this thing might be terrible, but even so the experience must be worth something. Not just one something - a lot of somethings, at the very least. I'll say it again: I am excited!

Internet Up In Here!

Let's get right into it, shall we? I've been gone for a while, for a really long while. For a year while. Well, I'm back. Sorry for the delay, but moving on to bigger news: I've got internet up in my house! Most of you may miss the incredible feat this really represents, but this is the very first time I've ever in my whole adult life had internet in my very home. Can I tell you how weird it is to be posting this sitting on my couch and not drinking a $4 coffee drink? It's fantastic. I can't imagine letting my blog go for as long as I did this time around, what with the internet at my fingertips above and beyond regular midwest business hours. Crazy. All you who have had this luxury for so long, revisit the magic, the wonder of the world wide web, if only to remind yourselves of how excellent it is, because excellent it truly is. I try not to ascribe the word "love" to inanimate objects, but I love this internet!

Interest!

Yes, that's correct - an agent (or rather, a reader for, and representing an agent) is interested in viewing the first 50 pages of my manuscript. As Mrs. Bennett would say, I am extremely diverted! Actually, I am very excited, hopeful, leery, optimistic, doubtful, and hungry at the same time. Still, the fact that the very idea of my manuscript has generated even the slightest of interest (and an email form letter could very well be described as the slightest of interest) is exactly what I would have wished (again, a Jane Austen-ism). So off it goes, my manila envelope containing pages and pages of hard work and lofty dreams (okay, without Lady Jane, I might as well stop).

I'm excited!

3 Things That Really Chap My Hide

1. Salesmen who inform you of hidden costs only after you have picked out a cool new cell phone to replace your old ugly one. Last weekend at the Legends, I was informed by a slightly too-elderly-to-be-selling-cell-phones gentleman that in addition to paying for the phone I had just picked out, I would also need to pay an $18 processing fee to update my account. $18 dollars to spend $124 dollars on a phone that was advertised as $49.99. So, in essence, I am expected to pay $18 so that I can then spend $124 dollars on a phone that is apparently only worth about $50. Is that so?

2. It doesn't matter what #2 is, I'm talking about an establishment that expects customers to pay in order to pay, to spend money in order to spend money. What business can possibly stay afloat with tactics like these? I mean, what is a processing fee supposed to cover? The old man behind the counter punches a few keys and for that I'm supposed to pay $18? Or is there some kind of Cingular/AT&T monkey that must be fed a constant stream of organic bananas to keep him pushing the "processing button?" Is there a trainer involved? Am I buying his lunch too? Androids? Small children? Who is doing this "processing," if not the computer itself which, I'm sorry, but does not deserve a tip for doing its job. It's a computer! There is no such thing as "processing expenses," therefore there is no such thing as a processing fee, and therefore I refuse to pay it.

3. Did this guy really expect me to spend $124 on a $50 phone, after paying him an $18 processing fee for an account that costs me nearly $100 dollars a month to maintain? The sense of self-importance that I was counting on with the purchase of a brand new sleek and silver LG Shine can wait! I will not be taken advantage of by these thieving wireless companies with their Kung Fu grip on the ego of society. I don't care. Though I must use it in secret, or hide it behind a cardboard cut-out of a Blackberry, I will continue to use my old, ugly, hideously uncool black flip phone until the insanity has ceased. I will not monetarily contribute to the idea that this is okay. I am not spending more than a phone is worth, I am not mailing in a rebate, and I am not - I repeat, am not paying a processing fee! Until we all say it, I won't get a cool new phone. Back me up America! I need an LG Shine! Make it happen.