I guess I should begin by saying this:  I don't know anything of this blog, though I am apparently the author.  This is news to me.  A lot of things are news to me...since I've returned.

I'm getting ahead of myself...

Or behind my myself...it's tough to suss out what's happening.  I've been m.i.a. for quite awhile.  The planet wasn't what it is now...or it was, then died?  After 2012 I remember nothing.  But there is indeed a "me" who continued operating here as there are bills and an address in my name.

So, I'm back.  Not sure for what.  But I do want to meet this "me" if that is possible.  There are certain protocols to follow of course.

Side note-I do see a post from me in 2021, but I don't think that's me ME.  Not that I recall anyway.

Recall.  Funny word.

Hi

 Yeah, umm.  So how've you been? 

Once Upon a Time in Jersey

Been shooting a documentary on New Jersey. Will update with more pics and video...

Scre4m (2011)

Is it possible for a film to be post postmodern and so self aware of the fact that its earlier installments are so self aware, it becomes a new creation?

Read more at Suite101: Scre4m (2011) http://www.suite101.com/content/scre4m-2011-a366305#ixzz1JiWKYLwg

Write Club Part II

This weekend is a big one in terms of my screenwriting progress.  I have gained some interest in a script I wrote a few months ago and have been asked to send my next draft to him/them.  I went over it last week, changing some scenes around and cutting out some exposition to slim down the entire screenplay from 103 pages to 99 pages.  This weekend, in extreme isolation, I will work on a full draft revision with major overhauls in hopes of having my next draft ready in about 7-10 days from now.

And of course, this is the part of screenwriting I hate..which kind of means I'm not really a screenwriter, right?  I don't do well with analyzing...anything.  I'm too scatterbrained and dare I say, creative minded for that.  Ah, but one can learn to be analytical to some extent, so I won't use that entire left vs right brain argument. Time to exorcise all inborn excuses and get to work.

Time to shit or get off the pot, really.

Insidious (2011) A Review

Insidious is a BANG! film that BOOM! does a decent SCREAM! job unnerving SLAM! you through constant SCREECH! use of loud ROAR! jump scares.... END CREDITS!

Read more at Suite101: Insidious (2011) http://www.suite101.com/content/insidious-2011-a364081#ixzz1IhU35mGS

Devil (2010) -Review

Here's a twist- a M. Night Shyamalan movie that doesn't feel like it's 3 hours long!

Read more at Suite101: Devil (2010) http://www.suite101.com/content/devil-2010-a360094#ixzz1H4vA2j4T

My Soul to Take (2010)- Review

A serial killer, the “the Riverton ripper”, swore to return and slay the seven children born on the night he died. Now 16 years later, someone is chasing down those children, but is it the ripper? The seven, as their known, will find out, even if they appear as disinterested as the audience.

Read more at Suite101: My Soul to Take (2010) http://www.suite101.com/content/my-soul-to-take-2010-a358031#ixzz1GaXH7g2t

Shock Waves (1977)

There are plenty of films that have grand ideas which aren't fully formulated, and for that reason, they result in disappointment. Rarely has there been a better example of this in the horror genre than with Shock Waves.

Read more at Suite101: Shock Waves (1977) http://www.suite101.com/content/shock-waves-1977-a356557#ixzz1GEkXORhP

Waiting for the Sun is Done!

And thankfully, it seems to retain the humor I originally intended it to.  The problem is sometimes I begin a screenplay with this busting at the seams burst of idea energies, only to use my analytical skills to dampen it down.  This time, I went wild with my imagination, sketching out the possible path of scenes in outline form. I chose the best one and placed it into the script.  This worked for a few reasons, one being the outline helps me from aimlessly wandering around for 5 or 10 pages, and two, by doing this, it's almost like doing a partial rewrite on the fly.  And third, this allowed me to focus in on the humor of the situations within each scene, instead of the overall screenplay.

By doing this, I feel it's consistently funnier than anything I've written.  Sure, I had screenplays that were hysterical in spots, those spots I deemed needed to be so.  There were too many peaks and valleys. But with this one, I have definite peaks of humor, and the dips never bog down so far as to be unfunny.

Now to sit back and let it stew for a couple of weeks...then tear it up again.

All Your Links Belong To...You

Since I was gone so long I knew many of the links I posted to other blogs, those which i considered cool reads, would probably be outdated upon my return.  Sure enough, the first five links I clicked were dead, so I just decided to delete them and start over.  If you're still out there, and would like to trade links, throw me a line.

Chances are I'll probably end up adding you back anyway...my tastes haven't changed all that much.

Isolation, and its intense relation to creativity

It's funny, blogging would be one of the first hobbies I would cut off if I truly wanted to be a pro screenwriter. (In fact, I did cut it out, judging by my last post date) It's usually a meandering exercise, done so that I don't have to dive into my real work, aka my screenplay. However, I've come to find that there are many other practices that cut into my creative juices.

1) The stinking' internet. I find myself searching under the guise of researching, hours at a time. Now, it's necessary to cut myself off from the internet in order to concentrate on the task at hand. Seriously, the internet is a true time sucking vampire which wraps you in like a casino. You never know what time it is, or just how much time you've been in here, and the time flies accordingly.

2) Video games. There's no getting around this, as much as I want to make excuses. I noticed I played Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas a total of 120 hours in about 2 years. I'm quite certain I could have been banging out drafts of many a screenplay in that time. And lets not forget, that's just two games out of about 30 that I own. Red Dead Redemption-25 hours, Mass Effect 2-15 hours ...as you see, this is a major time sucker.

3) Television. Although tv comes in third, it certainly creates enough attention deficit disorder to be on the list. I probably only watch 3 current shows on TV, however it's the reruns of favs, like Seinfeld, that really zone me out. They offer me cold comfort, and I ...you know...vegetate.

4) Android. My rooted Nexus One is my new laptop. I'm constantly manipulating its screen for quick bursts of entertainment. I'm usually on the go when this happens, so it probably doesn't cut into my writing too much. But the availability of internet through my phone is counter productive to my whacking out the internet with purposes of writing. So the phone (and rooted Nook Color) have to be put away under lock and key (like Dokken).

5) People. We all have responsibilities, and with those responsibilities come people. Family, friends, enemies-doesn't matter. They all cause our personality to shift, and any shift is one away from the creative process.

I recently went away for one day, to a house on the beach. Mid winter. No tv, no internet and almost no radio due to really bad reception. No people at the house, and the town was just about empty. I wrote 30 pages in about 6 hours on a script I was having major trouble with. I came home the next day feeling good about myself, renewed in a sense. In the 2 weeks since? 10 pages. Of shit.

So now, to the detriment of my mashed potato brain, I will schedule total media blackouts. I will utilize headphones with my ipod if there's any outside disturbances. Usually will listen to Brian Eno, or late 70's Bowie as I write. But that's it. The project begins today.

Of course, the mere fact that I'm blogging right now should tell you all you need to know about my state of mind.

Time to go!

D.I.Y. Boom Mic

What year is this?

Somehow I woke up in the new year writing and directing my own tv series (no not for NBC, for myself). After all that I laid out last year, all the goals, all the dreams and the line by line...outline, how did I end up here?

I don't know, but it just goes to show you have to keep your options open and only a fool like myself would try and create a year long schedule. Mostly what I realized is that I hate work. Like, real work. You know, like those jobs that are dropping like flies at the moment? So I'm happy to report the scripts I had set up on the right hand side of the page are all done. I wrote and rewrote them. That is all I accomplished from last years list. But really, that's all I truly cared about.

Oh, and if by chance you haven't seen The Nines ( written and directed by John August) you should go and buy the dvd. Really interesting movie, and Melissa McCarthy made me fall in love with her.

**Oh yes, my move to L.A. is on hold. However I did take a trip there in August and loved everything about it. I have no doubt that living there is the correct choice for me. But my wallet and I have some issues currently so maybe at a later date I'll be there.

This Just In:

If you're speaking to someone, anyone, and the word "faux" seeps from your lips at any point, you are a huge friggin' douchebag.

That is all.

A Pint Or Two

I have found a new haunt, and it's the same as the old hunt. I frequent a dive bar about a mile from my apartment. I have been going there for about 12 years with the mates, but it wasn't until recently I have discovered the cure for my block/procrastination. I get out of work at 2pm, so that leaves me plenty of time to get in an hour or two of writing. Unfortunately so deep is my procrastination, I find almost anything else to do once home. Internet, tv, games, reading...you name it. Well, I changed my routine. I stop at this little hole in the wall directly from work with my trusty laptop. I order a pitcher or two, or if my bank account is feeling rather endowed, I order up a Guinness and a shot of JD. And then...I type my screenplay. With no problems. If I hit a spot that derails me, I people watch. I listen to conversations. I order another shot. And it passes. Using this method, I have been rather prolific for the past nine days. I'm not ready to update the progress bars yet because it's kind of like chasing the dragon for me. But I have made significant progress with each project.

But yes, this has worked pretty well, and listening to people talk to each other in a pub does wonders. Try it sometime.

Your Film is Filthy...But May I Suggest A Porn?

I absolutely love when justice is served.

The operator of the Utah-based Flix Club, which, as part of the Clean Flix chain, drew fire from major studios for removing scenes depicting sex and violence from home videos, has been arrested in Orem, Utah on charges of having sex with underaged girls. According to Orem police, Daniel Thompson also told the girls that his business was actually a cover for a pornography studio and asked them to participate in making a porn movie. The police report also said that they uncovered a "large quantity" of pornography at Thompson's business. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Thompson told the arresting officers that he was unaware that the girls were not of legal age and that the porn movies were for his "personal use." Thompson previously operated the Clean Flix franchise in Orem but shut it down last month after giving away 400 sanitized versions of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. The studios, he said at the time, had told him that "if I don't shut down, they would break me."

It's A Weather Balloon

You know, sometimes I tire myself out with conspiracy theories. They're like an addiction. Sometimes I need to reign myself back in before I go all Martin Lawrence down Main street.

However, our government and military still have not figured out how to deal with these events. Case in point: On January 8th, Texas residents saw something flying at about 300 feet, and it was a mile long and half a mile wide, and made no noise. The lights changed formation. It was being chased by fighter jets. The first reaction from the military? no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of Jan. 8, when most people reported the sighting. Officials at the region's two Air Force bases — Dyess in Abilene and Sheppard in Wichita Falls — also said none of their aircraft were in the area.

Cut to today: Although officials at the Naval Air Station Reserve Base in Fort Worth initially said none of their planes were in the area of the UFO reports, they changed their story Wednesday, saying that 10 F-16 fighter jets built by Lockheed Martin Corp. were training near Stephenville, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southwest of Fort Worth, about the time of the sightings.

*Oh really now? Two weeks later you suddenly find this info?

Lol...

Look, I have no idea what it was that those Texans saw, but something tells me it was either a top secret military flying base, or it was something even they have no clue about. Either way, their excuse stinks.

How is it possible to be just as clueless as in the 1940's? What exactly do they think would happen if they said, "We have no clue what you saw"?

Just another aggravation of mine.

Bad Language To Bad Writing Spiral

As I type away, mashing the keys, misspelling words because my fat sausage fingers can't quite hit one key at a time, I tend to take a break when I feel I have accomplished enough in that one spurt. During these breaks, I sometimes check the cool little features tucked away in Final Draft, such as what percentage of the dialogue thus far belongs to which character? Another I check is the profanity list which keeps a running count of how many curses you have used so far, what they are, and where they occur. I never change any of it because of the list, mind you, but it does make me over analyze my writing. For instance, in one script, my characters uttered fuck 23 times, mother fucker 4 times and shit 40 times. So 67 curses there. And that's my Rom/Com! (it's also a fairly dark one, but that should go without saying) To be fair, the entire screenplay contains over fifteen thousand words, so that's not too bad, is it?

So question: Do you ever feel you're cursing too much in a screenplay? Or do you feel good writing is good writing no matter if it's full of swears, or clean as a whistle? I tend to follow the latter, but I'm just curious.

Knocked Up: The Most Evil Film Ever!

I just watched Knocked Up, the Judd Apatow film, a few weeks ago. I liked it. I wasn't blown away by it. If anything, I thought Apatow kind of wussed out by making the Seth Rogen character come to his senses and begin to try and be a father. But that was that, and I hadn't thought about it much since. Until I realized there are some people who are calling the film sexist. What?

I'll deal with this quote first, from Joe Queenan of The Guardian. "the latest in a new genre of romantic comedies in which an unappealing hero gets together with a gorgeous, successful woman."

Ok, first things first, who is he to judge what male is unappealing? Secondly, even if Rogen's character Ben is unappealing for the first hour of the film, it only shows that he changes for the woman during the second half of the film. Wouldn't that constitute a man righting himself for a woman? And finally, since when do gorgeous women not date what outsiders would consider below their class? It happens all the time. Hell, it's happened to me. And I always believed it was because men are so superficial, they go after beauty, or hotness first and foremost, while woman tend to put more (too much)of an emphasis on personality. Is Alison (Heigl) too good for Ben ( Rogen) in Knocked Up? In the beginning and on the surface, yes (and if using common sense, which often has little to do with who hooks up with who). However, let me point out a few factors here.


1) The initial bar scene where Ben and Alison meet is very realistic. Know why I know this? I've had it happen to me. I met a girl who was 24, model beautiful, and we got intoxicated. I woke up at her house. We dated for a few months, and that was that. Now, I'm certainly not the ugliest man alive, and could be counted as above average in certain circles. I'm in the 70 percentile. But this girl? She is a 99 percenter. Would this anger the film critics as well? Would this anger women too? I play video games, slum around in sweats during the weekend, and hate work with a passion. I have a crude sense of humor. Yet I date pretty woman all the time. What's the problem? So what I'm trying to show here is that while woman get aggravated by seemingly slobby men who shack up with the hottest of hot woman in film, it's actually holding a mirror to the real world. Do I need to direct women to "Hot chicks with douchebags"? For any woman who wonders why females are portrayed this way on film, take a gander at the human garbage the woman over at that site get hooked up with. Then explain it to me.

2) It is Ben who steps up to the plate when told about the pregnancy. Yes he acts like a huge ass when Alison first mentions this to him during a dinner. Which is realistic for the character up to that point. But he does step up and offer support, though he has no idea what kind of support he should lend. He is doing what a man should do-owning up to his responsibility.

3) Ben changes his entire persona to become a better partner for Alison. Why is that overlooked? And they seemingly live happily ever after.

How is this sexist? Ben and Alison made a mistake. They came together to deal with it. They found that they had more in common then they thought and stay together. To me, the formula for the movie goes like this: Boy meets girl/boy and girl make bad mistake/though seemingly from different sides of the track, they try to make it work/they find out more about themselves and end up loving each other. End of story.

Since I read the review in The Guardian, I've read many women upset over this and all I can say is, deal with it! When gorgeous women in the real world stop dating ugly guys with cash, or average looking guys who make them laugh, or when they stop slobbering over ratty dive bar cover band guitarists, or when they stop giving me play, then you may have beef. Until then, realize you're actually angry at yourself, for you are the template for these films.