Park City Bound

Okay, it's actually LA bound. Turns out the Sundance submission offices are in Los Angeles.

So much for independence in the mountains.

Anyway, we finished the rough mix today and they're laying back tonight.

Tomorrow we run dubs and send it off to beat the September 25 deadline.

Very cool.

It's just a rough cut, though -- still needs some picture changes, only has temp music, sound, etc. -- so we still have lots to do before the next round of festivals.

But anyway, it's nice to have met our first goal.

That is, if the dubs work out, and if we make the FedEx deadline, and if the container doesn't get pulled off the plane, and if...

Did Anyone Get The Mailing Address For Sundance?

Early last week, we finally got the approved rough cut of Dismal locked. Or, I think we got the approved cut locked – after the last set of notes I didn’t get a chance to watch again since it had to ship out. But hopefully all the changes are made. Makes me nervous, not seeing that last cut, but I trust our editor, so I know it’s okay.

Please. Tell me it’s okay.

The movie’s hovering at about 94 minutes, which I think is perfect, and now it’s off to the composer, color timing and the sound editors.

Or it was supposed to be.

Somehow, the sound guys never got the stuff they needed.

Arrrrgh!

These are some crack sound editors, so I know they’ll catch up, but it’s one of those little details that can really make a project stumble. They were supposed to have it a few days ago, and the deadline for Sundance is fast approaching.

After almost 10 years in the business, it still amazes me how complex it is, and how so much can ride on small things not being done – or being done wrong.

There was this show we did once. A crime show about a biker gang. The main enforcer of the gang was a giant martial arts master who, when he was arrested, sent a couple FBI agents to the hospital and shattered a door frame in the police station when a roundhouse kick he intended for a cop’s head missed by a hair. The guy was a monster, and I tried to relay this to casting very clearly: I need a bad ass motherfucker in the true sense of the word, someone large, with an intimidating physical presence, someone with a mean look who is very comfortable on a big Harley. A bad ass motherfucker.

What casting apparently heard was: he’s part Asian.

What they cast was a tiny little Chinese man who couldn’t have weighed more than a buck twenty, who had never been on a motorcycle, and who was frightened by the sound of grips yelling “Hot points!”

And I find this out when the crew and cast show up on location in Ohio, ready to shoot. Director calls me: "Uh. David? You know that bad ass motherfucker we talked about?"

Somehow we pulled off the show, but we obviously had to lose the idea of this character as an enforcer. Of library protocol, maybe, but certainly not of a biker gang.

Anyway, it’s the little details. You try not to obsess over them. You try not to micromanage. And you don’t want to be an ass about it, but damn if that doesn’t come back to haunt you sometimes…

Enough bitching. Gotta make sure we have that address down right.

Children's Books

Today is my son's birthday. The awesome little fella is one. His favorite book is, "What Does Baby Say?" Nice big, simple pictures of cute little kids saying things to fit their mood: "What does the hungry baby say? Ba-ba." I love reading this book -- and others like it -- to him. I love watching my wife read these books to him. Sometimes he's just not in the mood and instead wants to point at the ceiling fan or crawl after the dog. But most times he's looking intently at the illustrations, his big beautiful curious eyes moving all over the page, looking at all the little details, pointing, always pointing, at the stuff that he thinks is cool. "Duck! Duck!"

In a couple weeks it will be my daughter's birthday. The incredible young woman will be 18. She's at college now. She recently started a conversation with, "Dad, I think I'm an existentialist" and wants me to send her the collection of Hemingway short stories she accidentally left behind. She's jonesing for Hemingway and the existentialism she finds there. Cracks me up. I love talking books with her -- listening to her get excited about what she's read and what she thought about while reading it, sharing stuff I've read with her and the thoughts I had reading.

Every night of my daughter's life, until she learned to read herself, I read her a book. Now, that's what my wife and I are doing with our son.

Cheers, kids, to your books. Trust them: they won't let you down.

Whose Hat Has Your Head Been Under?

It hit me last night -- or, this morning, really -- as I drove home from an edit session at 3:45am.

Not a deer crossing I-64 in a frantic flight from Hampton Roads sprawl. No, what hit me was a thought that eased my recent bout of self-disappointment. Not that that’s a word, even hyphenated, but you get the idea and I’m too tired to whip out the thesaurus.

I’d just spent seven hours with the editor and one of the other producers, whittling down the Dismal cut so that we’re pretty close to where we want to be by the next screening with all the producers.

We needed to cut about half an hour, maybe a touch more, and so the bulk of the revision was hacking stuff out. It was a weird, splintering experience.

As a writer, I really wanted to hold on to a lot of the moments and lines and story developments in there. I mean, I spent a lot of time coming up with them, and frankly I think most of them worked pretty well -- developing character, building tension, adding depth to the story.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some places I thought, “What the hell was I thinking when I wrote that,” but overall, I thought the story worked nicely.

But we had to lose half an hour. Shit had to go.

So I reminded myself what hat was currently topping my slam-bald head. Right now, I’m a producer. I happen to be the producer who wrote the script, but still, I’m a producer. Producers have to keep the full scope of things, the Big Picture if you will, in mind always, and not get too bogged down in the art if the thing.

I mean, the thing needs some art of course, but it has to keep asses in seats, too.

So anyway, as producer, I worked with the team to get the cuts made –- sacrificing some of the subtle moments that intellectually I enjoy, but don’t get us where we need to get. My wife calls it “being willing to kill your babies.”

And they were good cuts.

(Poor little babies.)

And then, as I was weaving down the highway with fatigue, I realized I don’t need to get down on myself for not writing a lot right now. Because right now, I’m not a writer. Not primarily anyway. I’m a producer. And having the skills of a producer, well honed and exercised regularly, can only help me in the long run. The Big Picture if you will.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just exhausted. I mean, damn. A Shania Twain reference for a title?

So Why Don't You Kill Me

Whoa.

That was a long break.

I'm a loser.

But you knew that.

So here's a quick update -- not that anyone's reading this anymore...

On Dismal: The rough assembly came out last week at 2 1/2 hours. It was just an assembly -- but you could see the movie within, so it was very exciting. Peed my pants. Really.

We sat and reviewed and gave notes to the editor who is busily chipping away. Sound editors and composer are all waiting with bated breath for the locked rough cut so they can work their temp magic in time to make the September 25th Sundance deadline. Which we're still on schedule to make.

After that, we all get back to work to make the fine cut, to send out to other festivals and distributors.

The editor's also hoping to have a trailer by the end of September.

So we have ins at Lions Gate and Sony, and I'm trying to get in touch with a friend of a friend with contacts at The Weinstein Company. Other suggestions? Rogue? Focus?

As for festivals, we're gonna try Austin, SXSW, Tribeca and Toronto. Suggestions?

Oh yeah. And we're shooting a day and a half of pick-ups/inserts this weekend.

And on the Harlem movie: Not a damn thing in months.

Here's the conundrum I face. I have SO MUCH SHIT TO DO just with family and my regular job. Add to that all the work left to do on Dismal and my time runs slam out. But then there's the Harlem movie that my heart is really telling me to get done now, plus there's the three other scripts I want to outline for 1944 Films, so that when someone sees and likes Dismal and asks what's next, we can tell them.

Man.

Everybody says this, but... there's just not enough time.

Wow. Not only am I a loser, but I'm a cliched one.

Family Business

We’ve begun our third and final week of shooting on Dismal. I really should have been better about documenting every day of it here, but with the shoot, plus the regular job, plus the move into the new house, well, I just didn’t.

Anyway, let me tell you a story that explains how it’s been going.

There’s a scene where Croaker knocks Bill out by the water, and Bill falls in. Now, this water is nasty, dirty, spooky swamp water, full of bugs and snakes and critters and That Which Shan’t Be Named.

Because of that, the grips had rigged a platform for Greg Lee (playing Bill) to fall onto. Easy. He falls out of frame, we foley a splash and cut to a shot of Croaker dragging a wet Bill onto the bank -– and it would have been good.

But no, Greg wants more than that. Greg wants to be real. Greg wants to take the dive.

So here’s this handsome young actor from Hollywood, who just finished up work on a nice drama in plush Hawaii, taking a faceplant into who knows what, without being asked to do so, all in the hopes of making this film as good as it can be. (Minutes later, by the way, we found a water moccasin a few feet from where he splashed in…)

This is exactly the attitude of every single person working on this thing. Make-up and wardrobe scramble to make changes from one look to another to accommodate a wish to juggle the schedule. Grips lug tons of equipment through the forest in intense heat all day long. Actors bust their ass in the heat and muck for far less money than they’re worth. PAs do every single thing asked, and a lot that’s not asked, to help out. The art department somehow creates an amazing world in the middle of nowhere with just about no money and far too few helpers. One guy, Wes, who’s not even on the show, comes in to grip for free on his day off from another project and builds a bridge through a particularly muddy area on his own time and with his own materials. The investors, who have already so graciously trusted us with their money, are sad that they weren’t able to do more to pitch in. All the other departments, including post, are doing similar stuff.

A visitor to the set said to me, after watching the cast and crew work, “That’s some family you got there.”

Indeed.

Thanks fam.

Yin For Your Yang

So we’re on day three of Dismal’s principal photography. Couldn’t be more excited.

We’ve got a great crew who all are committed to making this a hell of a movie. No one’s getting paid much money, either, and they’re working outside, in intense heat, with ticks and biting flies and all sorts of things. But man are those locations beautiful.

The three lead actors have really impressed me. When we were casting we relied heavily on the feelings we got from these guys. We didn’t have the time or resources to do a lot of reads with them so we had to trust our guts.

The guts have paid off.

William Gregory Lee is nailing the arrogant ignorance of Bill. Scott Miles has the everyman integrity of Matt locked up. And Richard Riehle is definitely bringing the creep with Croaker. (Go ahead, IMDB or Google them –- you know you want to. By the way, on IMDB, Scott is listed as Scott Miles (II).)

Goddamn it’s exciting to see these guys bring the script to life.

We are of course dealing with all the production headaches that come with any shoot. We had to cut some scenes that I loved because shooting them became unfeasible. I’ve had to adjust a lot of action to fit the locations and context.

And I’ve been having to be at work fulltime, so I haven’t been able to be on set much yet. This is killing me. Yes, I’m the screenwriter –- but I’m also a producer. And since I’m a producer with a ton of experience in fixing things on the fly, who happened to write the script… I really need to be there when adjustment decisions have to be made on set.

I have a few days of vacation coming to me, so I’m gonna pick the five weekdays that I think shooting is most important and be on set for them. Those, plus the three weekend days, plus stuff before and after work is going to have to be it.

Makes me understand what Greg’s going through over at the Web of Lies and Deceit, as he hears of discussions going on about his script, without him involved as a producer.

Frustrating.

To go along with the exciting.

But everyone needs a little yin for their yang.

Crawling Through The Words

I don’t know what made me smile more: when my son crawled for the first time last Saturday, or when my wife started bawling when he did.

It was one of those perfect, real, beautiful moments that can knock you on your emotional ass. So simple, so normal –- and yet powerful beyond description.

The kind of thing that makes you glad to be alive, no matter how fucked up the Bush administration is making the world. (Oops, politics crawled in there…)

(Crawled. Get it?)

Anyway, it's the kind of thing that, if it were a scene in a movie, could either be remarkably cheesy or the moment that makes you finally believe those actors up there are real people. And once you believe that, the movie can take you anywhere (even to a hotel being blown apart by FBI SWAT and North Korean gangsters [Right Greg?]).

This is where the director and actors are much more important than the writer. The writer needs to know when, where and even if to put in that scene. But then the director and actors are in charge of making it work. Or making it fail miserably.

I think this is why I tend to over-write in my early drafts. I know I need to keep everything lean. But there’s something inside me that thinks at first that this…

INT. LIVINGROOM – DAY

DECLAN spies a toy just out of reach, plops onto his stomach and crawls to it. AMY turns to DAVID and breaks down in tears.

…as a scene might be misinterpreted as a throwaway, hackneyed nothingscene, and people reading the script might think I’m a throwaway, hackneyed nothingwriter.

So in early drafts I tend to write it out much more descriptively so anyone reading could see what I was intending.

And then Greg yells at me for being too wordy. “It’s not a novel, you fucking hack!” he screams, throwing Jell-o at me (which, sent flying by his mighty hands, nails itself to the wall).

So I trim it back.

It’s a good lesson to learn: trust the reader.

But don’t trust the North Korean gangsters.

And crawl before you walk, I guess is another good lesson.

Thanks Decs. Thanks Ames.

And thanks Greg. Though you don't have to be so cruel.

And Ryan, more Dismal news soon...

Dismal. The Story Of Dismal. How Dismal Got Started.

I realize I’ve never really told the Story if Dismal here.

I might have to do it in a few installments – but I promise to keep it lean and not go into all the gory (boring?) details.

For years now I’ve been working with Ray and Jeff at a small but successful television production studio. I was producing and writing, Ray was working production in various roles, Jeff seemed to have a dozen roles in pre-production and production.

We made a lot of shows that were well received, and that was cool, but after a while you tend to feel a little bit in a rut.

One day in January 2005, Jeff and I were talking.

Jeff: How’s it going?
Me: All right. You?
Jeff: All right.

Long silence.

Jeff: I’m bored.
Me: Me too.
Jeff: Let’s make a movie. A short. You write the script, I’ll raise a few grand, we’ll make a movie, send it to Sundance. You know, make a movie.

(Jeff has a tendency to say things three times…)

Me: Good idea. Cool locations, but only a few, simple story, small cast.
Jeff: Let’s do it.
Me: Done.

The next day, Jeff called me into his office.

Jeff: Talked to Ray. He’s been thinking the same thing. He’ll direct, but he wants to do a full-length feature.
Me: Even better.
Jeff: He’s been thinking of a story for a while. He’ll have an outline Monday. Ready Monday. Man's gonna have it Monday.

On Monday, there was Ray’s outline on my desk with a note: “David, can you make this into a script?”

And so I got to work.

Right away we knew we had a good team put together. It’s a good dynamic, each of us bringing something different in terms of skill set and mind set (and complimentary yet non-overlapping psychiatric disorders), and no one bringing too much ego that THIS THING IS MINE. Hate to sound like one of those inspirational posters that feature soft-focus photos of a group of ants lifting a loaf of bread together, but we know we need each other to get this done, and we know the project is more than any one of us.

Once we had a good draft in place, we started sending it out to people in the industry we know and have worked with. Some folks with good, hands-on, real-world (if anything in Hollywood can be considered real) experience.

Scary, really.

But the response was overwhelmingly good. We got some notes, some of which were very, very helpful, some not so much. Because I’m so smart it was the helpful notes I worked into the next revision. Clever, huh?

Then there was getting the money. Jeff’s job.

First we planned to do it on weekends for $14,000. Open Water-style.

But our contacts said to go larger –- no need to kill yourself trying to make it for 14K.

So then we upped it to come in under the SAG ultra-low budget deal. $200K to get it in the can, up to $500K more deferred.

And so Jeff made a list of ten potential investors. Not long thereafter, Jeff called me.

Me: Hello?
Jeff: Didn’t get past the first one. First one gave us almost all of it. First one.

At that point we thought we should bump it up to $2 million –- it had been so easy to raise money so far (sorry, I know other independent moviemakers will hate me for saying that, but it was). Went back and forth on this a lot and finally settled on the ultra-low budget budget. For that we could make a really strong movie that could hopefully lead to bigger ones later.

The crew was fairly easy to get. A lot of talented people around here, all of them itching to do something new that’s put together well.

Casting was a little tougher, but we soon met a fantastic actor for the lead. Went to LA to meet him, knew right away he was the one. Then one by one we cast the rest. The three main dudes are from LA and North Carolina-via-LA, the rest are regional. (I think I’ll be able to name names soon, once the paperwork’s signed.)

And maybe actors always say this, but everyone was saying how excited they were about being on the project – that it was a good, tight script, that we obviously had our shit together, that they knew it was gonna turn out well.

Know what? I think it will.

More later. Later. I’ll tell the rest later.

Nailing Jell-o To The Wall

As I keep trying to figure out the new angle for the Harlem movie, I start to get a little focus on the story arc or a character's back story -- and then I start plotting out a new script entirely.

Where's the focus, David?

Is this me telling me that I should just scrap Harlem and move on? Or is it just because I'm a scatterbrained knucklehead and I just need to force myself to focus more on the one project?

When I put it up to a vote with myself, the stick-with-Harlem side usually wins by a hanging chad.

Just feels like there’s something there. Or I’m too emotionally attached to it to just drop it. Either way, I think I should keep clawing at the thing until my nails finally sink in and take hold.

It would help, then, if I would stop biting my nails.

Getting a full grasp on the whole of the new project is (to borrow a phrase my wife used in a conversation a few days ago) like nailing Jell-o to the wall.

But it feels like I need to keep trying.

Of course, that also means devoting more time to actually TRYING. Jell-o doesn’t come already nailed to the wall, after all.

Honestly Offensive

Driving to work today I was listening to an interview with John Updike (thanks Joe), and he mentioned that being a good writer meant being courageous and ruthless enough to be honest.

True dat.

I find myself struggling with that a lot in my writing.

I don’t mean being truthful with real events. I’ve never been much of a liar -– what’s the use, really? And I’m certainly no Million Little Pieces fraud trying to impress the world with my memoirs.

What I mean is being honest with a character, a story.

Maybe it was my white-bread upbringing, but I think I subconsciously worry about hurting people all the time. I’ll be writing a scene, and highlight a character’s flaws, and my first instinct many times is to soften the flaw or resolve it right away.

But reality, and people, and relationships, and life, and love -– all the good stuff that’s interesting in the world and worth writing about –- it’s all dirty and messy and weird and flawed like a motherfucker.

So why hide it or sugarcoat? Am I such a dork that I worry about insulting a character? Or even a viewer/reader who might identify with the character?

Sometimes I find myself worrying that someone I love might think something is based on them and then take offense, so I pull it back. And often it is. Based on them, I mean, or on a situation we shared. But it’s just BASED on them -– the real person or event gave me the jumping-off point, and then I made it something else.

It’s like in Biloxi Blues when Eugene’s bunkmates find his journal and read it aloud. It mentions them, even by name, and he paints no one in a flattering light. He tells them it’s all bullshit, just stuff he makes up, fiction he weaves from reality threads, but they don’t believe him.

And so I tend to chicken out in first drafts. I worry my wife might think a certain character is her, or my daughter might read meaning into a situation that I don’t mean to be a reflection of or comment on our real life.

I’m getting better, though. I’m trying anyway. Often I can catch myself and stop being so damn polite. And that’s when things can get interesting.

Because good writing has to be honest, and honesty is ruthless, and life is ruthless, and good writing is life.

I mean, you've seen Six Feet Under, right? That's some unbelieveably good writing -- the best on TV in my opinion -- and fucked up as anything... like life.

By the way, sorry Mr. James Frey. Didn’t mean to offend.

Zen And The (Depressing) Art of (Not) Cycling

Went for a bike ride today.

Depressing.

Three things, specifically, were depressing.

1. I realized that my cycling computer's clock was the right time. This meant I did not have to change it back to adjust for the end of daylight savings time. Which means I haven't ridden between falling back and springing forward. Oh, Time, you relentless bitch with your nasty sorcery!

2. When I got home and undressed to take a shower (eww, I know -- bad image, sorry) I noticed that I no longer carried that clearly dorky (but, I’ll admit it, ego-boosting) mark of the cyclist: the cycling tan lines: sharp lines separating shocking white from not-so-white toward the bottom of the thigh and halfway up the biceps made from being out in the sun wearing those ridiculous tight poly-something shorts and jersey that mortify my daughter. I am all shocking white. Shocking, I’m not kidding.

3. Standing in the shower (I know, I know, I'm sorry -- but I'm almost finished) I had that fantastic muscles-so-drained-I-feel-so-goddamn-alive-I-could-kick-Churck-Norris’s-ass feeling. And then I couldn't remember when I last felt that.

So I need to ride more. Yes, for the health and all that, but also for my writing.

When I'm out there -- and I mean when I'm out there and get to the point that I'm no longer distracted by rednecks in pickups calling me Lance Queerstrong while they chuck half-empty cans of Bud Ice at me -- there's a meditative nature to the thing that really helps work through writing issues. Well, actually, it's not meditative like when I meditate (another thing I haven't done in embarrassingly long) because then the goal is to have no thought. But there’s something about the rhythm, the gliding, the physical exertion, the solitude that always encourages something to click in the imaginative leap department.

So I need to ride more. To write better.

Okay, set goals and then work to achieve them. Start easy, with saying once a week? Let’s see if I can pull it off.

Tubby Little Cubby

Our set producer's flying in tonight from LA, and we have a location scout tomorrow -- hopefully the close-to-final scout. We have the basic areas identified; need to specify now. Gotta get that schedule locked down. Just over a month away from principal photography on Dismal.

So we get to spend the day in the swamp. Did I tell you about the last day I spent in the swamp? Couple weekends ago my wife and I took our son for a bike ride there.

And had to stop for a bear.

Not a beer.

A BEAR.

Pretty good sized black bear, about four feet at the shoulder I'd guess, standing in the middle of the path we were on.

That's the kind of thing we need to get on film. (Jeff tells me there's talk of jaguars out there, too.)

When we're out with the full crew, of course, we'll be lucky to see a squirrel. All those people stomping around, the lights, the ATVs -- likely the only wildlife we'll see will be mosquitoes. And ticks. And chiggers. Leeches. But we have a few days of second unit stuff scheduled before principal, so hopefully we'll get out wildlife inserts then.

By the way, the preliminary website is up: www.dismalthemovie.com

It’s just the first of three stages the web people are doing. This one is just the basic placeholder. The next one will have more info, more links, etc. The final one will add the flash animation and sound and music. (We have the website content sketched out, but because it's still fluid, suggestions are welcome. For example, I'm still not a big fan of the main logo and have been talking to an artist about it...)

Little by little, it’s coming together.

Ready Piglet? Let’s go see Pooh.

Brokeback Rewrite

I thought I broke the story for the rewrite of the Harlem movie.

I thought I broke the story during our trip to Cedar Rapids. My brain had some downtime while we were there. No surprise really: the retirement home, while lovely, was not exactly a hotbed of buzzing energy, and Cedar Rapids itself -- well, it does have a Starbucks but not much else.

So what I'm trying to say is that I thought I broke the story.

I repeat: I THOUGHT I broke the story.

Now that I've had some time to think about it, back here in the madness of everyday life, I realize that story just doesn't hold up as is.

So I did not break the story, yet it is broken.

Maybe it means I can't think clearly when there's nothing else to think about.

Maybe now I'll go try to learn German in a weekend. Maybe then I'll figure this damn thing out.

El Bastardo, At Your Service

So the assisted living place we stayed in while visiting grandma in Cedar Rapids didn't have web access, so you all missed out on some especially witty posts I was planning.

Ah well. Your loss.

Interesting news on Dismal. A guy who's no huge movie star but is certainly well-known to most watchers of popular American TV -– especially the female version of said watchers -– got a hold of the script and wants to be in the movie. Cool, huh? Now, the dilemma.

We don’t have a place for him.

Well, that’s not entirely true. We do have a place for him. Thing is, that role has already been cast.

No contract or anything, but over the phone the other guy was basically told he’s in.

I imagine we wouldn’t be breaking any new ground if we recast, but it is an awkward position. But the guy we originally cast is an independent filmmaker himself. So he should understand. Hell, he should even applaud us.

Right? Hello?

The original guy has some obvious chops -– but this new guy has chops, too. Plus he’s a fairly big name. And he's hot. Girls like that kind of thing.

And anyone working on an independent feature knows that, in terms of distribution, financial success and all that madness, the name on the box usually means more than any clever writing the screenwriter happens to do.

So should we recast? No hard feelings?

Are we bastards?

Musical Note

So, our movie is set, primarily, in a swamp.

Therefore an edict:

No banjos or fiddles are allowed anywhere near the score.

Period.

Road Work Ahead

Well, if you're reading this post, you've probably been reading Greg's posts (which are always more interesting anyway) so you know about the trip to Minneapolis. 'Twas a fun time, productive too, and a bit of a pain in the ass as well. But I enjoyed it, and I didn't get any raspberry iced tea in my lap or on my taquitos. Not everyone was so lucky.

As a TV development guy/producer, I don't get out on the road much, so it was good to see what it's like -- and what I've been inflicting on others for years. I am amazed at that which is called a "continental breakfast," I think I might have contracted something from the hotel room, and I'm fairly certain there is no non-chain restaurant in existence.

Oh, and the Chevy Aveo simply rocks.

But there was the exhilarating creative challenge of thinking on our feet and working together, and we ended up with good stuff. Let's just hope we sign a show from it.

Lots of work at, um, work as I continue developing a few ideas a few networks are interested in. A lot of that work is writing a treatment for a pilot -- so that's been taking a lot of my energy.

No real work on the Harlem rewrite, besides going through the script while flying to Minneapolis and striking through everything I hate. The good news: it wasn't that much. The bad news: it’s still a lot of goddamn work, because as soon as you take out one important nugget, everything changes.

Off for a long weekend to visit grandma with wife and son (daughter staying behind as friends trump family in the teenager’s game) and I’ll bring the laptop. I know I have to do some work for work. And I know I want to do some work for the script.

May I find the time and energy for both, and a good breakfast, in Cedar Rapids.

Your Script Doesn't Matter

So two good things happened with Dismal today.

One is directly script-related: we distributed the official locked white shooting script. Pretty important milestone for me. Celebrate baby steps, right? I mean, it’s no Oscar nomination, but let’s face it, that’s not a milestone I really need to occupy myself with. The locked shooting script, though? That’s all right. While by no means is the script finished, at least it’s in a good solid place. If we needed to, we could shoot tomorrow. I’d probably get queasy, cry out for my mommy and soil my underthings, but we could shoot.

There are, of course, a few bits I’m still thinking about (there always are, as every writer understands), but they’re the types of things that mean mostly dialogue changes here and there: a possible adjustment of a character’s tone in a few scenes, some professional jargon I’m unsure of, one instance of possibly shifting the placement of a scene. So blue pages – and pink, and yellow, and all the way to goldenrod (HELLO, BEAUTIFUL AND HORRIFYING GOLDENROD!) – are sure to follow, but the heavy lifting is done.

I think.

Who knows? Everything might fall apart, we might lose a couple locations or get that Movie Star the director wants to troll for. And then the heavy lifting will resume. These spaghetti biceps of mine might get more of a workout after all.

The other thing that happened is still script-related, but maybe not so apparently so: tonight we had a very productive, very eye-opening, and in some ways very terrifying post-production meeting.

We collected a pretty amazing team of experts and got them all together, with Ray (director), Jeff (executive producer) and me. Code names: Sound Guy, Editor, Engineer, DP, Visual Effects Guy and Post-house Owner. For a couple hours, we just hashed everything out, trying to solve problems before they have a chance to occur. These guys really know their shit, and they’re willing to pitch in with their knowledge and experience and artistry and skill and make this fucking movie sing.

Fantastic.

And terrifying. As you know, there’s far more that goes into a film than most of us realize. And the more that goes into a film, the more potential for things to go haywire. Hence the terror.

But mostly, it was a great meeting.

Those of us up front on these things (writers, I mean) often forget about these fellas. But we’d be lost without them. Sure, superstar, you can write a genius goddamn screenplay, but if no one is there to shoot and post it, how’s it gonna knock anybody’s socks off?

Since I’ve been a producer for years, I have the benefit of having worked with all of these departments, and more, and that experience is invaluable. Or, I should say, the experience of screwing things up and then having guys like this help me figure out a solution and how not to screw it up next time is invaluable.

And by guys, of course, I mean people. Girls are cool, too.

I think it’s made me a better writer to have, lurking always in the back of my mind, the sense of what good sound design can do to a scene, how important lighting and framing is, what music can carry, how FX can alter the landscape (literally and figuratively) of a visual story, how a line will work if you build the edit up to it properly.

Also, since I’m no big budget Hollywood power player, being a producer has trained me to think wardrobe, art direction, casting, locations, schedule – and maybe most importantly, cast and crew morale and collective team energy.

All this -- I hope -- on my best days -- informs my writing. Or at least is a factor in it, at some subconscious level. And with writing screenplays, all this matters. Because, as I just read in a book by Alan Bennett: There are no good scripts, only good films.

That’s right, friends and neighbors. When your movie’s a big hit, and you’re the darling of Sundance, and Simon & Schuster publishes your screenplay in a snappily-packaged paperback… it doesn’t matter. Not really.

What matters is the movie that the schlub just getting off work in Toledo takes his date to.

He might only have this one date to impress that cute girl from the neighborhood with, just ONE DATE… so think it through, all of it.

Your script doesn’t matter.

Okay. Your script matters. A lot.

But a lot of other stuff matters, too.

Because, in all fairness, the Toldeo schlub’s not taking his date to cuddle up at the film section of Barnes and Noble.

My Brother and I

Okay. So I feel like Blair, taking so long between posts. Sorry Blair, but you’re the cautionary tale I have to cite. I still love you, though.

Baby's been sick, got an offer on our house, put an offer on another house way out of our price range, traveled to DC for pitch meetings, work's in one of those ultra-busy phases, got sick myself, blah, blah, blah.

I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad, though. I'm fairly confident my legions of faithful readers were able to dig deep and find a way to occupy themselves during the last couple weeks without me.

But I really should post more regularly. It's healthy for me as a writer. That's right, O legions of faithful readers, I'm thinking I should be posting more for my sake than yours. Although you will benefit. Oh yes, you will.

When I was posting more regularly (in my short term as a blogger) I was writing more regularly. Like, the screenplay-type kind of writing. If not actually writing, at least working on the things –- planning structure, sketching out scenes, tweaking characters, spell-checking.

It's nothing new; everybody knows this: when you write regularly, you're more likely to find that one tiny gem among the vast expanse of crap that’s spread about your brain.

A couple years ago, my little brother talked me into doing Nanowrimo. Do you know this? If not, check out www.nanowrimo.org. The basic idea is that from November 1st through November 30th, you have to write a 50,000-word novel. Now, obviously, your novel’s gonna suck. Mine sure did. The point is not to try to write a clean, elegant 50,000-word novel -- it’s only a month, after all -- but simply to bang it out.

And bang it out we did, my brother and I. One great thing was forcing myself to write every day. Kind of like what Greg and Blair did with their five-page-a-day rule. Another great thing was having my brother there to bitch to and celebrate with. Kind of like this blogosphere thing.

What we both found, my brother and I, is that as we wrote regularly, at a disciplined pace, we loosened up, it got easier to write longer, we got less intimidated by temporary writer’s block, we found ourselves strategizing about the story more when we weren’t actually writing, we had that weird thing happen when the character starts to write itself (you’ve had this happen: when you write a line of dialogue and stop and think, “Where the hell did that come from? It certainly wasn’t me.”).

My brother, right now, is trying to take that novel he wrote that year for Nanowrimo, plus another one he wrote, and revise them into a combined, cohesive story by adding a third element that ties them together. Very ambitious. Very cool.

And so I have to get off my goddamn ass and post more on this blog, and hope that helps me dive into the next rewrite of my next script, which I'm just calling the Harlem script right now.

I have to get in there and get revision dirt under my fingernails -– or I’ll end up trying more to figure out the weird story about astral projection, a runaway tractor-trailer, infidelity and abduction that came out of a dream I had after taking my wife’s codeine-laced medicine a few nights ago.

And figuring that out will take some time.

For both my brother and I.

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.