Posts Tagged ‘Movies’

So much to gab about, so little time tonight to gab about it. So, without further ado, let’s hit it:

-I’m hesitant to say anything about the Cardinals at the moment. (Did you see tonight’s box score, Dad? Not bad. Not bad at all.) Let’s just simply say: YAY! And leave it at that.

- Mouth? Still sore. But, starting to settle in. Body? Still discombobulated. Though I think that’s more from the 48 hour write-a-thon I found myself in, before the final 434 on Thursday. BTW, that script is looking quite sharp. It was a rewrite of one of Jason’s – a spare, dark psychological thriller. Near my sweet spot, so to speak. He did a pass, after I wrapped up on Thursday and the script sparkles in my opinion. Truly sparkles. I want to see this movie. See what a director could do with it.

- The delightful Ms. Antone is in town for the weekend from Prescott, AZ. Always a major league treat! We hustled out to see a play at the Pasadena Playhouse. It’s called boom by Furious Theater Company. It was not the best thing we’ve seen. A little annoying. Tough to say if it was the direction, though, or just the play itself. Overall, I’d say the production was quite well done – acting and set design. But the story turned on a rather trivial and tired joke at the end, with far too much wackiness before that to really hinge on something so – plain. One notable to the evening is that this production featured Julia Duffy, mostly known for her work as a series regular on the funny and endearing sitcom, Newhart .

-Tonight, my niece, Ellen, had her high school graduation party. I wish I could’ve been there, or, more importantly, there on Sunday when she graduates. She’ll be off to Saint Mary’s of Notre Dame, in South Bend, next fall. Congrats, Ellen!

- I’m just glad Ellen made it home, safe and sound from her senior trip – a mission trip to Guatemala that some students do as their senior project. All the students do some sort of aid work as their senior project. This particular trip took place this past week. Which meant that they were trapped in Guatemala after the volcanic eruption and then tropical storm. You can read about it here.

-Always makes me a little melancholy when someone I love, who’s heart is still full of wonder and isn’t hardened to the roughness and inexplicably tragic in the world quite only to get a random glimpse of it before they should. I made choices that I’m not so proud of when I was quite young, lead an extremely reckless and self-destructive life when I was in high school, college, and my 20s. This life brought me out into that rough and inexplicably tragic world far sooner than I should’ve been. When I look back on some of those things, string them together in their proper context, and look at them again in clear eyes, I wouldn’t wish that for anyone’s teenage years. Not what I saw. Not what I did. Not what I learned – about myself, about others, and about the world.

-I have three days to rewrite the play. Should actually be a mellow experience. A nice victory lap on my MFA career.

-I’ve made the decision to search for a 2bd/2ba apartment with my buddy Jacob Bursten-Stern, a fine playwright, former HS basketball star, and good guy. I’ve known Jacob for the full three years of school. We both worked together, as well, at the UCLA Film Archive during our first year. We go to lunch every few weeks, talk shop, etc.. He’s also a very good friend of Tiffany’s, a playwrights who plays poker, has good taste in TV shows and – with Tiffany – kept me in it to win it with playwriting this year. We’ve been discussing this, after Tiffany suggested it, for a couple of weeks. Kind of amiably considering it. Bottom line came down for both of us, at different times, this week and the fact of the matter is that we can find a place in Culver City that’s big and will go for $1300 to $1500. Split that in two, plus split the bills and all of a sudden, I cut my monthly by a third, which is nothing to sneeze at. So, for July 1st as the target date. I hate to give up living alone. But, I’ll have plenty of time for that later. Need to stay in the hunt and this will help that – tremendously.

-Been a frustrating week on the business side of things. That’s all I’ll say for now. It is what it is. Suffice to say, this business is not a very above board, say what you mean style of business. Deciphering the different layers of “I said this, but really meant this.” Or, “I agree to this, but what I really wanted was this.” Is a major pain, most all the time. But, it’s also par for the course, unfortunately, and you just have to grin and bear it. Best advice? Keep writing.

- YAY REDBIRDS!

-Coach John Wooden, The Wizard Of Westwood, passed today. He was considered not only one of, if not the, greatest basketball coach/es. More than that, though, he was a teacher, a mentor, a molder of men. As Vin Scully said: “He is a genius in his ability to inspire There are a few giants who walk among us. He was truly one of them.” Coach Wooden’s spirit pervades all of Westwood. Not just in a basketball sense, but in an inspirational success. One of my favorite Wooden quotes:

“Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”

Below is an brief video from UCLA’s tribute page for Coach Wooden. In it he talks further about failure:

“In life there will be peaks and valleys. The strength of a person’s character depends on their ability to accept both success and failure. Gonna have both.”

That is a lesson former Sony Pictures Head and famed Producer, Peter Guber, who will speak at graduation on Friday, taught quite eloquently in his opening lecture for his class ‘Navigating A Narrative World.” I believe he mentioned that he had learned it from Coach Wooden, but I’m not sure. It is, I feel, the core lesson that UCLA teaches and a resounding truth to life that is all too often overlooked. In all things and in all lives there will be peaks and valleys, you must reconcile that in your heart, have faith and learn to grow from both.

At the end of the tribute, Coach Wooden intones a beautiful poem on letting go of the fear of dying.

God Bless and Good Night.

It’s the last week of the quarter. Well, the last week of the last quarter. So, I’ve been crazy busy, trying to bring the projects home on time. Had an immense weight lifted today. I finished my last 434 script and handed it in to my awesome professor, John Sweet (The Affair of the Necklace.) I haven’t slept much in the past two days, but I got it done and in. So, now all I have left is the rewrite of my play for next Tuesday. Then school will be done.

Regular posting should resume tomorrow. I’m taking a long night on the couch to regroup, before the final push. Plus, Jason and I have a few things we have to get cracking on. On top of all that, I had my dental appointment on Tuesday. What was supposed to be a 3-4 appointment turned into an 8 and 1/2 hour marathon. 8 of those hours were solid work. The 1/2 hour was interspersed throughout the day in ten minute increments for breaks. It was unexpected and wiped me out. I still haven’t completely recouped my forward momentum. I lost an entire day to it. I came home and tried to work and couldn’t. It was a rough one. Roughest I’ve ever had – terrible back pain in the chair in the morning, countless shots throughout the day  to numb the area consistently that they were working on, six teeth in total were addressed, an allergic reaction to the slow-setting material they used for my first round of impressions. It was grueling. I’m thrilled it’s over and I don’t know how else it could’ve been done, but I never want to endure that again.

So tonight, some TV, some pasta, some Ice Cream, and some sleep. Tomorrow’s another day.

So, one of the great television shows ended last Sunday night. Yes, it’s time we tackled the  LOST finale here at Guided By Wire. I do promise this – if you’re not a fan and don’t plan on watching it, that’s fine. I understand. I may think you’re really cheating yourself out of some prime entertainment, but I promise not to make fun of you. Well, not too much at least.

The finale last Sunday was some serious event television. With a recap, two hour special before the two and a half hour final episode, it was an epic evening of television. The likes of which we don’t really see much of anymore. The last time I recall such a big deal being made out of the end of a television show was SEINFELD. I know several iconic shows have ended since then, but they didn’t seem to rise about the usual chatter and galvanize fans and non-fans alike to watch. That’s what makes it an event. For LOST, they were not on their normal night and commanded the whole primetime block for the evening and late night as well (Jimmy Kimmel special after.). That screams event to me.

Why all the hullabaloo? Well, LOST was the last of a dying breed of shows. Sure, it had its hard core fans (LOSTIES) and it had been at for six years, featured a talented cast and had plenty of mystery going on week to week (some would say too much, but I would say to them never!) What’s this business about last of a dying breed? Well, LOST was epic. Unrepentantly epic, actually, with its sprawling cast and story lines, it’s Feature like attention to set design and cinematography, the pathological willingness of the writers to constantly push and play with the world they built from the pilot form, until it didn’t resemble itself (An island that travels through time?!?!) The production shot in Hawaii and didn’t shy away from featuring the undeveloped vistas play a role. Also, the score. The amazing, Feature like score that was crafted for different episodes and for the show as a whole. In fact, you could say when LOST was firing on all cylinders, we were getting a movie a week on Television and it was a gripping movie that get us on the edge of our seat. We probably won’t ever see that type of show – the epic, almost movie-like, sprawling, multi-threaded (different ongoing storylines instead of self-contained) one-hour drama – on television again. A show of that nature is a trying undertaking and in today’s humbled economy, as well as broadcasting’s splintered, specialized market, a show of LOST’S scope and cost doesn’t make much sense. You never know, but I would be surprised.

Many, many different threads were begun by the writers through the six seasons. A lot of the build-up through this season was, of course, all about the “answers.” How many would we get? We couldn’t possibly get them all, could we? What was important? What wasn’t? And on and on. This season, admittedly, buckled under all that build-up. It was unwieldy at first as a whole new thread, important to the Finale (which we didn’t understand at the time), was developed and the answers were given sporadically and not in the most dramatic fashion, more as an afterthought at times. That’s okay. It happens. They had a heck of a job to do, overall, and I think they did the best they could, in the end.  There’s been plenty of debate among LOSTIES and even NON-LOSTIES this week over the Finale, the choices made, the narrative path taken, and all that was left unanswered. Part of the struggle in this debate has stemmed, in my opinion, from making sense of the Finale in the context of all that came before it, essentially fitting it in as the last piece of a puzzle, and making sense of the new world threaded in this season and played out in the Finale. There’s been many theories trying to explain what happened and why. The best, or at least most concise and fun one that I’ve seen so far, is embedded below:

BE FOREWARNED: MAJOR SPOILERS!

Yes, LOST explained with post-it notes in about three minutes. And, he’s right, basically. He nails the core story and lays it out with great clarity. What I love though, is what he says at the very end.

“For me LOST isn’t a show that’s about the story, but a show about how the story is told.”

That is it. Right to the heart of it. With LOST and its Finale, as well as many other shows, what we love is how the story is told; or what we should love and become fans of is how the story is told. If your a LAW & ORDER fan, which ended its run this past week after twenty-one seasons on the air, you know what I mean. That’s another great example. They say in all storytelling there’s only six stories and what captivates us as audiences, what has captivated us from the fire light on the cave wall to the plasma glowing in the dark, is how those six stories are told. The LOST writers made a definite choice in the Finale to focus on how they would tell that last episode’s story, and subsequently through that choice, how they would tell the story of the series. Upon reflection, through this prism, it was a master class on storytelling. The Finale was completely satisfying in an emotional context, which is the choice that the writers made – emotion was the frame chosen to display their work over the past six seasons and it was an excellent choice because it made everything feel complete, it made us feel connected one last time to this strange world and these characters on their mind-bending journey. That’s no small feat – to make us care all the way to the final shots in over a hundred hours of storytelling. And that’s exactly what they did – by focusing on how to tell the story and not worrying about the story so much. Bravo and thank you, to the writers of LOST and this gentleman with his post-its and YouTube video, opening my eyes to the power of this principle.

Didn’t get over here to Guided By Wire,  last night. As the world is aware, it was the LOST finale. Which clocked in at a whopping, and captivating 4 and a half hours. Right after, I sat down for what I thought would be a quick turn on the boards with the climatic scene for my play, KEPT. Alas, it was not a quick turn at all. Which meant another late, late night as I hammered and chiseled my way through the eleven page scene.

I will make this observation regarding writing for the screen versus writing for the stage, or at least how I write for them. When it’s for the screen, the drafting is primarily about execution. You are constructing something. It has a plan, intrinsic principles, mitigated by the intended medium, that must for all intents and purposes be adhered to, in some degree. You can subvert them, but you can’t completely ignore them. So, the oft used analogy of building a house becomes quite appropriate. You are constructing and at every turn is the question as to how you execute the plan and how you alter it to better construct, always working towards the intended final piece.

In playwriting, at least for me – playwrights if you’re out there, pipe up and join the discussion, or if you have a thought, one and all, please speak your mind – I find the its much more of a discovery. So, when writing for the stage, I find I am on a excavation. An archaeology dig of character, plot, theme and its understanding. I know what I hope will be there, or, let me amend that, what should be there; then I dig – slowly, methodically, always parsing the same patch. Eventually, I reveal and remove, then clean up, polish and present to the world what I’ve been fortunate through my diligence to recover. Where am I excavating? In my experience, not necessarily always my life, but rather my experience of the world and what I come into contact with. Does that make sense? I can extend beyond my immediate place, if I’m willing to do the brain work and legwork (even) to travel there. I don’t mean just to go there, but, rather, to inhabit it – to know it as if it were my own immediate place right now. This can be done for either stage or screen. It’s what “write what you know” means to me. You can know anything, if your willing and driven and daring enough to learn.

So, I was excavating last night. Moving back and forth of the lines. Teasing out points of view and reactions, truths and lies, in the space of a dinner. There’s a different magnetic pull to that kind of work. It’s much more sneaky and circular to me, than drafting on a screenplay or TV pilot, which always feels like forward momentum. Building it up, harnessing it, then driving on the power of it to FADE OUT.

Wow. This isn’t so much a brief update is it?! Ha! (Welcome to what I spend far too many of my days contemplating!)

What I had intended was to let you know, with thanks to quotes that Jason pulled  and posted on his blog, that the junior producer that we did the desert feature screenplay with/for read the first draft and responded in a series of texts:

“Holy f@ck the first 35 pages rock! Gallo is very very cool and shady.”

“You guys did a phenomenal job.”

“You boys write fantastically.  The language is loaded with image and expression yet its lean and my eyes blow down the page with ease. You guys did a beautiful job so far and I really believe this could play.”

“F%cking brilliant. Mother f%cking brilliant. Bravo. I loved it.”

Not bad, huh? Means, in the first of three steps, we’re doing pretty good. Always a huge relief to connect that first time up to the plate, makes the rest of the game seem so much smoother. We’ll meet with this producer Wednesday night. Those comments are over several reads that he did, not just one. So, that’s good as well. We’ll get his notes. Hopefully they won’t be involved. Then, we’ll go to his boss, the director of development who worked on the developing the story with us. If he’s on board, then we go up the ladder to the head of the company to see if it’s a go or no go. It’d be great if we sell the script at that juncture, but most likely it won’t quite go that way. At some point though, I’d say we have a decent shot at getting this one across, at least in terms of a sale. Well, actually, I always think that at this stage. We’ll see where it heads from here, after Wednesday.

Have A Beautiful Day….

Kind of a lost day, today, but I mean that in a good way. I told myself I was going to tackle some basic chores around the house – cleaning and laundry chief among them, some grocery shopping would’ve been good. But, I arose a little later than I thought I would and was slow out of the gate, got wrapped up in email correspondence and just, kind of, let the day go. These days happen. Usually after power sessions like the one earlier in the week. So, I’m not too concerned. All right, enough rambling about the non-state of my day, let’s get down to it!

-Went to see a fellow Bruin Scribe’s latest short film tonight – Lily, whom I have lunch or breakfast with every now again, commiserate with and tweet (on twitter for the non-tweeters reading) back and forth with a little. It was screening at The Bridges Theater on campus, along with a directing student’s thesis film, both Produced by Producing student Justin Begnaud, who is producing the serial killer script that Jason and I will draft over the summer. Lily’s film was awesome. I think I mentioned her other short won the audience award at the Milan International Film Festival recently. She’s a hard worker who goes out and makes it happen. She’ll be shooting a feature soon and i can’t wait to see it.

-Alan read the first 35 pages of the script we just handed in and loved them. Really, really loved them. I think he was a little blown away. That always feels good.

-What is up with the Cardinals? They won tonight, but not before starting pitcher, Brad Penny, after hitting a grand slam (yes, that’s right a grand slam) left the game in the fourth with a tweaked back muscle. Which Brad had admitted he tweaked a week ago, while pitching against Cincinnati. The teams been winning sporadically, the situational hitting has been atrocious, the pitching brilliant and the bullpen an adventure. But now, players are hiding injuries! (Mr. Penny was the second pitcher in the course of the past couple of days to go down with a more severe injury b/c he neglected to say anything the first time he was hurt. It boggles the mind! This is a multi-million dollar enterprise. You’d think they’d get a handle on something like this! Quite hiding injuries guys! This has been going on for years. Time to stop. It’s killing the team. Just killing it.

-A 13 year old boy become the youngest person ever to top Mt. Everest. I guess he climbed Kilimanjaro at 10! Man, talk about the best “what did you do last summer” essay when he hits school next fall. Seriously, though, if you can dream it, you can do it.

You. Just. Have. To. Try.

-Has anyone been watching Friday Night Lights, the television show (which is back on NBC now, from DirectTV) ?   It’s on tonight actually and is in its fourth season. If you haven’t been – and I wouldn’t be surprised if  you hadn’t – FNL is one of the most unsung shows in Television history – do yourself a big, big favor, listen to me, and go watch the first season on DVD. You will be hooked. Such a fantastic, heartfelt, stirring show, all about Texas small town High school football and the people of Dillon, Texas. It’s downright criminal that this show wasn’t a huge, smash success. It’s really struggled to find it’s audience, despite being possibly the greatest primetime soap ever. And easily tied for first or just barely a step behind The Wire as greatest television show ever.

-Facebook is about to log its 500 millionth active citizen, worldwide, in the next few weeks. Chew on that number for a minute – 500 millionth! The social media site has only been in existence for six years and was started in a Harvard dorm room (or stolen in one, depending on who you talk to about it.) If it were a country, it would be the world’s third largest – 2/3rd’s bigger than the U.S. That’s a lot of power (personal info on each user) that just a handful of people control. Staggering to think about, isn’t it? With all the privacy debates raging about Facebook, I wonder if they’ve grown too large for the U.S. government to sanctioned or demand changes from. I mean that in more of a philosophical way. Sure, you could pass laws and they’d have to be followed, but is the genie out of the box already?

-Real quick, on Facebook, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, a studio film about the founder of Facebook and the story behind its creation. Well, one of the stories. It’s a major Hollywood production – directed by David Fincher, screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and stars many young, up and coming or just breaking talent. Should be an interesting film. It was very hot screenplay a few months ago. They’ve been shooting some at UCLA.

-LOST ends, of course, this Sunday night with a huge, four hour event. I know of several parties with invitations out that are going on. It’s been awhile since I can recall a show ending that has generated this much attention and outpouring. Sure, this season, compared to last, has been a little off. Maybe it’ll play better, years down the road when all the hubbub and expectations have faded.

With that, I will bid you all, farewell for now.

Normal posting will return tomorrow.

How’s your week going?

Mine’s rumbling along, thanks for asking. Been a little busy, though. Well, a little busier than usual. The deadlines, self-imposed or teacher-imposed (there is no deadline discrimination at Guided By Wire!), are coming due.

Best way to picture it is a fighter squadron, in this case four fancy jets, way out in the ocean. They’re coming in for a landing and  running out of gas at various tight intervals. And I’m air traffic control and a co-pilot all at once.  So, they’re lining up in a certain order and coming in hot – they’ll be no sending them back out for another pass. Those wheels have to touch down. And it’s at night (I kid!I kid!)

Jason and I just wrapped up the initial draft on the Chinatown in the desert script. I was slugging it out the past day and a half. Having turned away from it last week, to do some necessary work on the second act of the play, I was holding us up. Jason wrapped up his pass through the weekend, so it was time for me to roll up the sleeves and get messy.

I have to say it felt really good. Quite a relief, actually. This being an outside project. The most outside of the parameters of school or a workshop assignment I’ve ever partaken in. I just realized that right about now. Huh. That’s why it felt so satisfying midway through my big, last crunch, despite being pretty sleep deprived and exhausted with a healthy chunk of work still to do.  I did an immersion stint in the chair. That wasn’t the plan, but when the work needs to be done, it needs to be done. You suit up and you make it happen. That’s the name of the game. We’re both pretty darn good at that. That’s one of the things that I think makes us a strong team in tackling projects – we work separately and we practice a divide and conqueror approach that’s really served us well so far. I did twenty hours in about twenty-five hours in two chunks of time. That included about an hour and a half scattered, in various increments, over that time frame. Exactly four hours went to sleep.

Now, that’s not how I prefer to do it, but the situation called for it and I’m thankful we took that route. It being an outside project and not all the way official yet, we could’ve pushed it, gotten lazy, taken forever to do the work., etc… Not the most effective way to tackle your first out of school assignment, even if it is for a buddy and no one would really, probably get upset.

It’s been five years since I’ve worked outside the confines (good and bad) of the UCLA ten week quarter system when pitching, developing, and writing new material. That’s two years Professional Program and three years in the MFA program. Five years is a long time to generate new material every ten weeks, just about. Quite a training cycle, in retrospect. But, and this was always a fear in the back of my head – whether realistic or not – that once the veil on that omnipresent institutional deadline – tenth week = script, without fail or you will fail – I would slack off, get lazy, turn into a couch potato, lose my hunger or edge, show signs of burnout. Who knows? None of them = working screenwriter!

So, we put that script to bed. And I’d have to say, a) I’m pretty darn proud of us for the quality of the script, and 2) yes, I feel pretty professional and that’s always nice.

More after I get some ZZZZZ’s

We are closing in on finishing the script we’ve been working so hard on. Well, let me amend that, we’re basically done with the first draft. Finishing is not a fair word in screenwriting. Their really is no finishing that happens. I tend to see it as completing a phase. This next phase involves polishing. I need to do a polish – Jason’s already done a polishing pass. Then we’ll both read it and if it feels good enough to send along, we will send it. Then the first draft phase would be complete (We hope!) So far I’d say chances are quite high we’re sending it by Wednesday. From there, it all depends, but hopefully in a month or two at the most, we’ll get an answer.

The first big hurdle is to insure Alan and Seth are on board with the draft. I’d say (and I’m sure Jason would say) “this draft is fantastic. I can’t see why they wouldn’t be.” But, in this business, never take anything for granted. I think we’ll be just fine, but I’ll feel best when we know we’re fine. (One thing I’ve seen is that everyone’s fine and then when you take it up a level and that guy isn’t fine, all of a sudden your people aren’t fine either. It can be a trial!)  Then it goes up the ladder to the head of the company. Who gives it a read and makes the big decision – yea or nay. If “nay” we are free to take it out to the rest of the biz. At least that’s what we were promised. If “yea” supposedly he may write a check for it, right on the spot. Though I think that’s a bit of hype. Just a little. I would never expect that kind of treatment.

That’s one of the good things about the smaller size of the company. We can see all the way to the top of the ladder. The amount of people between us and a decision is at an extremely rare and unusually low number of people. Two of which (out of the three) are already involved in the project! So, I think we’re in good shape going in.

Still feeling a bit sore from yesterday, which was a big ol’ jam session to crank out the rest of act two, so Jason could get down to the first round of mixing all the pieces into one package and we can start tossing the script back and forth as we rewrite. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m staring down the short barrel of Act Three and just need to get in there and put a fork in it, more than anything else. We’ve got one heckuva a script, I think. It’s a little on the raw side and might be about five pages too long right now, but it’s there and we’re feeling rather good. Just gotta keep working it into shape. It’s there, but it’s never quite ALL there and  that’s what you stay after – getting it all there, which ends being as close as we can get all there right now.

All right. Here we are. Saturday night. Clock ticking down to midnight. Here they are twenty-four hours, or so, past their sell by date:

-Saw Iron Man II today with my good friend, Laura. It was okay. Entertaining even, but in reality I left the theater and felt like “Meh, the suit’s neat and I love RDJ – of course, plus Scarlett Johansson is without a doubt, easy on the eyes; but it was all a little thin. I kind of felt a strange disappointment. Everything just wasn’t developed enough – the story, the pacing, the villain, the climax – you name it, it felt rushed. Which is happening more and more now. Such a talented cast, good director. Just needed some time and more thought. It’s not like the world wouldn’t go if they waited another six months to a year.

-Also, while we’re talking movies in theaters, there is NOTHING out right now. Nothing. I don’t understand. There isn’t one savy marketing visionary who looked at this barren stretch in the  release schedule a few months ago and thought: “It’s wide open. Let’s drop this film in there and clean up!”

-I’ll be honest – and I know the answer to this already, but it’s been tough – I want a dog. I’ve wanted one for awhile. I was fortunate to have many friends with dogs in Chicago and I did a fair amount of dog sitting when they traveled; plus I had a good number of roommates when I lived with roommates, who had dogs. Plus, their were always the bar dogs in Chicago, older dogs that were so well behaved (Tuscy the lab, Remus the rottweiler, and Milo the mutt to name a few) who could accompany their owners into any bar and not freak out. I had Tuscy behind the bar with me at Pontiac often. We had a special relationship. So, I’m just saying – I’m ready for Fellini and Ford (or Harold and Maude. Or Butch and  Sundance. Or Indy and Short Round. Or Han and Chewie.) I know. I know. I don’t have the space and I’m not settled enough. Believe me. I’m well aware of that. So don’t worry, I’m not leaping into anything, I’m just saying when it’s time, get ready. It’s happening.

-Yesterday I clocked twenty or twenty-five pages. I haven’t done that in awhile and am definitely out of shape for the one ultra-marathon writing sessions. I’m still sore today and a little scattered.

-I’m cold brewing some coffee by a new method. This is my latest craze – iced coffee. Since I canned (pun intended) the Diet Coke (if you are drinking soda of any kind, or do drink lots of soda, please consider phasing it out. That stuff is a scourge. Almost as insidious as cigarettes,) I’ve been settling into a water and…? I’m not a tea kind. I enjoy a good fruit smoothie. Straight fruit and water with some protein powder, maybe a little yogurt or greek yogurt (I’m trying to adapt. It’s been a slow road.) So, I’ve taken to the coffee. I’ve gone in and out on the coffee in my life. I didn’t really start drinking it until later in life – mid 20s or so. I used to hate it. But, then, I kind of am not the biggest fan of hot beverages. I prefer ice cold liquids. Thus, the iced coffee. You see the drinking and all that? It kind of ruined me in this arena. I have come to love water. I used to not be the biggest fan of it, either. Ice cold water is awesome. I’ll take that. But, and I know all about the lemon thing, it just doesn’t taste like anything. After awhile, that drives me a bit batty. I want something to balance it that has a flavor I can get behind. Just one thing. As those that have known me for a long time, I have no problem eating one thing or drinking one thing over and over. Cheese sandwiches? Check. Pancakes (and now oatmeal?) Check and check. So, I’m cold brewing in a pitcher, which is different than the french press method I was doing for awhile. I’ll keep you posted. I just looked at the pitcher and it’s actually looking good. We’ll know more by 1:00 tomorrow afternoon. It takes a long time to cold brew. Patience is key, here.

-Just realized we are past the halfway point on the month as of tomorrow. Yikes. A lot has to happen between now and June 11th, which is graduation. Almost too much to think about. Moving on…

- A tip of the cap to my dear friend, fellow Bruin Scribe, talented writer-director, and breakfast buddy, Ana Lily Amirpour. She just returned from Milan where her short film, True Love, won the audience award at the Milan International Film Festival. We are all rather excited for her. She’s been on somewhat of a hot streak this past year. She’s got talent and moxie. The two things a writer-director needs most.

-Would love to take a trip up the coast this summer. Ride the PCH all the way up to the Oregon border. Stop off in Alameda and see The Humes, rumble on further north to Point Reyes Station and check out the bluffs. Basically, get a little lost on the road, stay at motels and see what there is to see up there. Don’t know if I’d be able to. Money’s a factor. Time. We’ll see. Wouldn’t mind heading over to the Grand Canyon either.

That’s about all for tonight. More tomorrow. Be good to yourself.

If your in Scottsdale, or Phoenix, and you see Big Daddy, give him a big hug for me – it’s his birthday! I was supposed to shoot over for a visit and got a little too busy. So, I’m bummed I could make it. But, I’m there in spirit. Just as I was for my Dad on his birthday, this past Thursday. Two great men. Gotta love them!

Welcome to the back half of the week.

A shout out, first of all, to my dear friend Monique, wife of my other dear friend Mike. Both hail back to the Marquette days and are two of my most favorite people on the planet. That have a beautiful family on the east coast. Monique was also in graduate school as well. We were mirrors of each other. That is until monday, when Monique graduated! So congrats, Mo!! And to all the Howley’s! I know we don’t quite celebrate like we used to at the Love Apt’s or Roseneath, but I’m sure you guys acknowledged the momentous occasion in fine style.

I’m do back, pounding away on the script Jason and I are working hard to finish as soon as possible. Initially, I thought I wouldn’t post, but then figured the warm-up would do me well before I dove back in for the final lap of the evening. It’s been a long forty-eight hours, with the brunt of the work coming today. Much as I mentioned last night, I faired the same today – no so hot. It was a game of inches when I was looking for a blow out. What can you do? Keep going, that’s what. It eventually turns around. Late tonight I started to feel it rumbling towards take-off, thus this last lap. Usually if I’m struggling and I put in the hours I did today, I’d drop it for the night, come back in the morning, attack it again. What I feel like the writer is always trying to conjure, induce, cultivate, amplify, stoke, cook, construct is a certain magnetism to the project at hand. A kind of low humming, constant gravitational pull. The bits, voices and scenes are flashing through your head, story knots are being unwound by the diligent, tireless fingers in your subconscious, and your mumbling under your breath – chasing the rhythm and cadence of your characters’ voices, trying them on, tailoring them as you go and then loading them into your hands and your mind’s eye.

That’s why it’s tough – this magnetism – to switch gears quickly from one project to another. That’s what I’ve been feeling a bit lately. Many writers will not switch gears between projects like that. It’s one at a time. Jason and I separately, and now together, have had a habit of juggling many projects at UCLA. But that’s more out of drive, wonder, and need, mostly. In time we became accustomed to it. I don’t know if I, or Jason for that matter, would prefer that the workload ease off a bit or calm down to a one project at a time kind of thing. I don’t think we could go back to that. I once said that without thinking to my Therapist – retiring to Italy and not writing. Her reaction? She laughed out loud. Like surprised laughter she found it so absurd. Not the Italy part. The not writing part.

Well I’ve gone off on a tangent and completely gotten away from my simple post. Oh, well. Suffice to say, the magnetism is hard to get going, but when it does, there’s nothing like it. If it’s not happening, all you can do it keep tending to the just planted crops, waiting for them to shoot up out of the ground. All work will be repaid, eventually!

So, here’s a few simple quotes I found on the internet. They’re for screenwriting, but I think they apply to any craftsman. Hope they’re at least enjoyable to mull over. They’re great reminders for me of some of the fundamentals.

“Writing really is a process of discovery. The biggest enemy is being satisfied. When I think, ‘Oh, this is so great. They can’t change a word. They’ve got to film it exactly like this,’ that’s when I know I’m not pushing hard enough. That’s when you have to be most suspicious.”

-William Broyles, Jr. (Apollo 13, Cast Away, The Polar Express)

“Guilt drives me. I know I have to write every day. During the story period, it’s so much harder, it’s much more fluid… When I start to write, I give myself a goal of five pages a day. I don’t stop until I get that done, whether it’s taken me two hours or twelve. Sometimes if I get rolling I can write more, I can write ten pages… It makes you push. Because otherwise, you’d come to the tough part two pages in and you’d go, I’m gonna give up. You have to push through. Because with every scene you come to, you know that the last scene was easy to write, but this scene is impossible. And you get through that, and you see the next scene, and you say, that last one was easy to write, but this one’s impossible. Every single scene is usually like that. Always, impossible. And then the characters start talking to you.”

Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby)

“One thing that has proven to be true for us [Kurtzman & Orci] over and over again is not to be married to our words, necessarily, but to be married to the spirit of the words. Because there’s a thousand ways you can express an idea.”

– Alex Kurtzman (Mission Impossible 3, Star Trek)

“The writing is the easiest part of it. The trying period is the period of conceptualization, followed by research. This prewriting time can take anywhere from six months to ten years. But once I know everything there is to know about my characters, the actual writing of the script switches to automatic pilot. It makes no difference whether the script is for TV or feature–the writing period is the same: five pages a day, seven days a week. That’s it. Nothing magical. You just sit there and keep typing.”

– Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night, Charly, The Poseidon Adventure)

“You must write everyday. Free yourself. Free association. An hour alone a day. Blind writing. Write in the dark. Don’t think about what it is you’re writing. Just put a piece of paper in the typewriter, take your clothes off and go! No destination… pay it no attention… it’s pure unconscious exercise. Pages of it. Keep it up until embarrassment disappears. Eliminate resistance. Look at it in the morning. Amazing sometimes. Most of it won’t make any sense. But there’ll always be a small kernel of truth that relates to what you’re working on at the time. You won’t even know you created it. It will appear, and it is yours. Pure gold, a product of that pure part of you that does not know how to resist.”

– Alvin Sargent (Paper Moon, Julia, Ordinary People)

“Forget every rule any screenwriting guru ever taught you. Except one: Never be boring.”

– David Mamet (The Verdict, The Untouchables, Hoffa)

Good Night. Good Day. God Speed. I hope you’re smiling wherever you are. I’ll be at the keyboard.

On time and even a little early this week! Let’s get right down to it. We had a sunny, upper seventies day today and hopefully it means summer is underway here in SoCal. Not that we have rough weather, but we’ve definitely had a funky run this winter. Lots of hot-cold, rapid switches. It would be nice to settle in. (I’m not complaining, just making conversation here, jeez! I’m thankful for what we’ve got!)

-Went to dinner tonight with my good friends, JJ and Cheyna, who are back from a Guatemala trip/adventure. They took me to a Santa Monica, low key trattoria called Fritto Misto. In a word? Fabulous. It’s a real simple, store front pasta joint. A good go to, italian dinner. Not too expensive, fresh food. So, along with the always good conversation and stories from their trip, they introduced me to a great new restaurant right down the road. And they brought back Guatemalan coffee for me, which I’m cold brewing as we speak.

-We went to dinner at six. When we walked up to the restaurant, which is on the corner of 6th and Colorado, near the Promenade, their were about ten or so simple plastic chairs – like lawn chairs – you’d find in a patio or around a dinner table in a frat house – on the sidewalk. In a perfect neat row, empty and waiting. We all cast a glance at them as we strolled into a mostly empty restaurant, grabbed a table, and commenced with dinner and catching up. When we left near 8:00 o’clock, the restaurant was full and had that storefront clatter to a busy night; but when we hit the sidewalk I did a double take – all the chairs were full up with people waiting and their were an additional ten or so in little clusters waiting as well. That’s usually the mark of a great restaurant. If nothing else, the manager or owner is smart and prepared.

-Did anyone catch the Cardinals-Pirates game tonight? I didn’t either. But, true to form, I checked the Cardinals box score upon arriving home from dinner. (What? You didn’t? I know my Father did. Anyone else?) In the top of the ninth, with the score tied 3 a piece, Joe Mather (a.k.a. Joey Bombs), came in as a pinch runner at first with two out. Joey got the steal sign from TLR or The Secret Weapon (Jose Oquendo, Current Third Base Coach, Former Utility Player Extraordinaire) and took off from first. Risky call, but you gotta push it – even in May. What transpired next was a thing of absolute hardball beauty. You see, Joey Bombs was dead to rights, out by about two steps, but being the bench player he is (A young Tony LaRussa bench player) who doesn’t want to head back to Memphis if he can help it, dove for the bag. BUT, as the Shortstop swept his glove for the tag, Joey Bombs – in mid-leap, outstretched, all his kinetic energy committed forward to the bag, arms outstretched – raised his arm AND then tilted his body a half-turn UP, completely avoiding the tag in an improbable moment of gravity defying, split-second baseball physics. Joey Bombs barreled into the bag, slid over it, but had the presence of mind to clutch the bag with his right toes to kind of brake his runaway forward momentum. SAFE! Even on the replay, in slo-mo. Yadier Molina doubled Joey Bombs in for the winning run five minutes later. That’s how you play May baseball, people!

- I gotta finish my play this weekend. At least the first draft. Plays evolve. Kind of like novels. So, this is more a just do it thing. Though, I’ll have to do a quick burst of serious rewriting because it will be read by actors in a workshop table read the Tuesday before graduation.

-I think I mentioned that I went to a series (three) of the one-acts from my classmates in the playwriting class. They were all really well done. That’s not meant as a polite bit of propaganda. That’s an honest critical statement. You don’t always see that in your peers in grad school. I was completely enthralled with each piece. I did notice in the course of the night, that I have successfully immersed myself in the theater side this year. Even the professors I haven’t taken know me now and were saying hello and I was there with one of the playwrights. It made me think, this year has been – in terms of school – all about theater. Even though I’m in a Screenwriting 434, I don’t feel of the screenwriting side, like you normally do when that’s your main focus. Part of that’s because my 434 is on a Thursday, which is opposite most everyone elses (which are normally on Monday’s and Tuesday’s.) I’m pretty thrilled that I have had the experience I’ve had in my playwriting classes. It’s the one part of graduating that I’m sad to leave behind. I’d love to keep taking classes – some theater history, more playwriting. It has had a fantastic effect on me.

-Been knocked off the new sleep regimen lately. I have this current determination to see a movie or some TV and read before I turn out the lights. It’s one of those rituals to end the night. Three hours is the usual block, though sometimes it’s two. (I know. That’s a serious chunk of time.) It’s hard for me to give up or get around the drive for it in my head, even when it doesn’t make sense; which with the new sleep schedule is anytime (like last night) that I go out and I’m out past 11. I have the strangest time coming home and just going right to bed. For some reason, I can’t do just that. That’s gonna have to change.

-May go to AZ next weekend to see Big Daddy and Aunt Ginger. I’m planning on it. Hopefully nothing will crop up and disrupt my plans. I have a great time to go over. They’re the absolute best. I’m pretty fortunate to have them relatively close. Plus, I should be able to swing through Prescott and see Tiff, which is an extra added bonus!

-Figured out finances for June, which is good. We’re at the one month at a time point. It’s a tough spot – not the lack of cash flow or uncertainty, though. That I’m used to. I’ve been there plenty of times before and am decidedly non-phased about it right now. It’s more so the in-betweeness careerwise that the option puts us in. It’s not all that unlikely that we could make some money sooner rather than later. When that is (as JJ and I talked about tonight) is anybody’s guess? Is it next month? Is it in six months? Just saying six months is a fantastic thing. Heck, even saying we should make some money in the next year (which I would say, yes, we will almost certainly right now. Like ninety percent certain and rising fast to a hundred,) is a major accomplishment as far as I’m concerned. But, can I hang out for a year until that happens? That becomes the question. And a rather slippery one. Of course, at first blush, I can’t. But the financial space between no and yes for an answer to that question is shorter than one would think, so how do I traverse it, if I have to? Don’t know that yet. Not even close.

- Consider this a part two to the above. You see the trick is momentum and really that’s the core of the dilemma. Sure I could pick up a variety of jobs, patch together a means to make rent, and gut it out. BUT, I can’t stop writing. You have to keep that forward momentum. You have to keep taking meetings, keep pushing, be ready to redirect your efforts on a moments notice, all in, all the time. So, taking on that barista gig is dangerous, because it’s not as flexible as it appears. Momentum must be maintained, now more than ever. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, it has to be pushed harder to make the final summit to paid, working writer. It’s a hustle and if you’re not focused on the hustle, it can pass you right by and getting back becomes a difficult proposition.

-Still haven’t watched The Lovely Bones yet.

That’s all I’ve got tonight, folks. Be good to yourself and do something nice for your Mother or a Mother! Nine months is a long time!