Doin' It To You In Your Earhole

On Sunday morning we did a table read of Dismal with seven young actors from Old Dominion University. Props to Steve at ODU for putting this together. And props plus to the actors who came out to help.

I tell you what... if I can make a humble suggestion:

GET SOMEONE TO READ YOUR SCRIPT ALOUD.

It's invaluable.

At least to me, it's so goddamn helpful to get the goddamn dialogue out of your goddamn head.

I mean, writers all know this: there's the story you have in your head; then there's the story you actually manage to get down on paper; and then there's the story the consumer consumes.

It's hard enough to formulate a worthwhile story in your head. Shit, I've written more bad stories in my head than all the debt dollars rung up by George Bush. Or, better said, if the bad stories in my head were tax breaks for the rich, George Bush would somehow get re-elected to a third term.

And then. And then it's even harder to get a good story down on paper. You know the drill: the long lonely nights, the self-loathing, the pained and blurry eyes, the vague taste of puke in the back of your throat. And in the end, after all that, let's all be honest: it's never as good as the one in your head -- and that either speaks to our lack of talent or our delusion regarding how good the one in our head is.

So then --- THEN there's the one that the viewer views.

Who the hell knows what that one's gonna be.

I really respect my friend Andrew. He loved Ang Lee's Hulk. I couldn't stand it.

I think my friend Mike is really smart. He thought Kingpin was brilliantly funny. I didn't even chuckle once.

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is one of my favorite movies.

'Nuff said.

Who knows?

Well, you can inch one step closer if you try to bridge the gap between the story you wrangle onto the page and the one the viewer comes away with. And a good way to do that -- on the cheap -- is to try to fake yourself out and try to act like a viewer... by having people (actors, if you can swing it, just a group of friends if you can't) read your script aloud.

The funny thing is, of course, that real filmmakers don’t need to do these silly exercises. They don't need to bribe college kids with a promise of free coffee and a free lunch. They can hire focus groups. Or run it through a complex development system.

But those of us in the real world, us peons who are shuckin’ and jivin’ trying to get movies made – we, we can use a little help.

Now I’m no one to give advice; I’m a nobody with a bunch of TV but ZERO FILMS to my credit. But from where I stand, I suggest this: once you write it with your fingers, get it in your earhole.