I am Not a Screenwriter

Uh oh! I'm almost a screenwriter!

2005-09-17T15:56:00.000-07:00

Through my girlfriend of 3 years I know a man in his mid-20s who is a successful full-time motivational speaker. To promote his messages, he and his wife have begun a production company to create short films dealing with teen issues, their first of which is currently in post-production. They're now looking for a screenplay that deals with a specific issue for their next project. This next project will have a considerable budget and would be a great start for any aspiring writer.

Enter: yours truly. Knowing all of the above, I submitted a quick one-page treatment for an idea I had as soon as they mentioned their theme. Without giving out too much, I'll say that the script would cover a single day, moving through the thoughts and actions of 6-8 "main" characters. It would be semi-comedy but with a serious theme and tone by the end. I haven't seen the movie "Crash" but I've been told my idea is similar to that.

So I hand it off to them, nervous and a little giddy despite the relative smallness of the whole thing. He's a cool guy and responds the next day. Apparently he likes it. Likes it a lot. He and his wife have been talking about how it could work, and camera shots, and locations, and so on. This, of course, is quite thrilling for myself, who has never in his life seen a sound boom in person. But Science has proven that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; in screenwriting, I've come to understand, the reactive Bad can be far worse than the original Good.

And here's the Bad: dogs. Dogs. Think for a second what that might mean in terms of this screenplay, what dogs might have to do with it, what's the worst thing that "dogs" could mean. Thought about it? Well you're right! They want to do the movie. But instead of people, because human actors are all dirty hacks, they want to use dogs! Dogs that talk! And not trained dogs, because that's a scam right? But dogs that they know! Their dog, and the dogs of friends! Why, it's perfect! What else could be so right?

If you know anything at all about writing and/or filmmaking, I don't have to describe in how many ways this is a bad idea. I think we can all agree that this is a bonafide Bad Idea™. And since it's their project, their company, their money, their everything, I'm sort of sitting with my hands tied, too nice to tell them how unwaveringly bad this is until they actually hire me to write the thing. Of course, if I understand The Law correctly, they can't directly lift my idea without my permission. But they might well decide to just do it slightly different. And with dogs.

You guys, if you're reading this, don't use dogs. It's a Bad Idea. I can give you a hundred bad ideas that are better than this. Please, come to your senses before it's too late! You can make the right decision and avoid monstrous disaster.

The Disaster of Dogs.

We all gotta have a day job right?

2005-09-16T01:50:00.000-07:00

Well by the end of tomorrow, I might just have mine. Interviewing for an office position at $13/hr. Not too bad I think for a greenhorn fresh out of undergrad. The job is actually quite unique; I would be working under a real estate appraiser. I guess this guy gets hired by banks or loan companies that take real estate as collateral. He goes out with a notepad and audio recorder and observes everything about the land, then estimates its value. This probably sounds dull to most, but I can only imagine how many places he must get to visit and how many badass houses and properties he must see here in SoCal.

And all I have to do is take his notes and assemble them into professional-looking reports. Better yet, the place actually discourages putting in extra hours, so I don't have to worry about 80-hour work weeks, which gives me plenty of time to invest in screenwriting. If that's what I wanted to do. Which I don't. Because that's lame. Regardless, it sounds like a really interesting line of work that I know nothing about, so I look forward to learning about it and then boring to death anyone unlucky enough to wander into my neck of the Interwoods.

A taste of Hollywood

2005-09-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

So my first order of business upon arriving in SoCal was, of course, to attend the live-audience taping of a major sitcom. My roommate got tickets to King of Queens, so we headed to the Sony studios in Culver City. We then proceeded to stand in line...for about two hours. A very friendly page told the crowd everyone probably wouldn't get in, and he really hated that, and the tech guys were taking up extra space and he wanted to kick them in the back of the collective head and hey, here's an idea, if we wanted we could instead attend the taping of Living with Fran, starring Fran Drescher, isn't that exciting folks?

Umm. No. So we stayed, and finally got in. We were in the absolute back corner of the studio, but it was cool. It was an Actual Sitcom Set and us Michigan boys were pumped for this hootin-nanny!

For anyone who hasn't been to a taping, the audience is basically herded in, encouraged to scream their heads off between taping, and laugh their best at all the right moments. This is done by a hectic and often annoying comedian-wannabe. The highlight of the evening came when we discovered that Adam West was making a cameo and also that the guy who owns and voices Movie Fone was in the audience; yes, Mr. Movie Fone himself was in attendance! This is in addition to watching Kevin James and Patton Oswalt, both of whose stand-up work I absolutely love.

So after the show I was able to have some brief words with Patton as he signed a script for me. I told him I was a writer from Michigan and you could literally see the pity radiate from him onto me. But I got to meet a Famous Person, so in the end it was a pretty cool experience. The finisher, I suppose, is that on the drive back my roommate's car died coming off the freeway. Shifter cable broke and we had to drive about two miles of stop-and-go traffic in 4th gear. Entertaing for me at least, and that's all that matters.

I am not a screenwriter

2005-09-15T01:56:00.000-07:00

Anyone with an interest in Hollywood and the craft of screenwriting knows painfully well just how many screenwriting blogs exist today. So I just want to make sure everyone knows that I am not a screenwriter and this is not a blog about the humorous, embarrassing, sometimes enviable adventures of Hollywood screenwriters.

By now you must be thinking, "Wow, this guy isn't a screenwriter, so that puts him one step above all of those jerks." Well, now, hold on a minute. Here comes the bad news. Might wanna stand up and then sit down for this. You ready? I'm an aspiring screenwriter. I just moved to Southern California from a small town in Michigan. I have no industry ties, no friends-of-friends-of-agents, no contacts whatosever. I don't have even an entry-level job in the industry, and don't have a clue how to get one. I just graduated college with a bachelor's in English/Japanese. I've been studying screenwriting since high school, and yet I don't have a single screenplay in any shape to send to anyone. Everything I know about screenwriting is self-taught and can't go on any sort of worthwhile resume. But wait, it gets worse!

I'm hopelessly optimistic. I honestly believe that I have everything it takes to be successful; a slew of movie ideas that are fresh, unique, hip, and commercial; a finely-tuned sense of storytelling and structure; impeccible grammar (notice my perfect (or maybe totally wrong (normally I don't use this many parentheses(then again, who does?(lost yet?)))) use of semi-colons); and the youthful vigor to subject myself to great physical and mental torture in order to succeed. These perceived qualities thus place me in an elite group of mere thousands that call themselves "aspiring screenwriters". I have chosen to pursue a profession in which my odds of success are on par with hitting several dozen consecutive blackjacks while every professional Detroit sports team wins its respective championship during a lunar eclipse.

But I think I deserve some credit--at least this isn't another lame screenwriting blog.