The Rollout

Invites are starting out. It's starting slow at first, so don't be alarmed. And feel free to let me know if you want to check it out. Google Docs is a first for me so we've got a learning curve to climb.

More as each day progresses.

Pre-Party

Updates for next time:
I kept a record of all the debit card transactions I went through from last Tuesday, October 23, until this Tuesday. One week. Prepare to poop your pants. Detailed reports will follow at my leisure.
Script is on schedule. Unveiling likely tomorrow night, although if you get an invite, you might not get it until Thursday. But November 1st is a promise I am keeping.

Meet the Robinsons will blow your mind. I'll explain in due time.

Oct. 23rd

Did you get the new Radiohead? You decide what you pay for the download. That's initiative.

I watched jets fly over the city today. They float and drift between buildings, looking for the strip of land large enough to hold their bulky frames.

What if you aren't good at what you love? Maybe the test of courage is answering the question. I'm trying to answer it. Not answering means not failing. I'm trying to keep that, but it creates such a weight upon my body. And that weight is the idea that I am losing my chances. That the world of possibilities, of success and failure and surprises and new directions is slipping silently through my outstretched fingers because I didn't bother to clench them and unrelentingly fight for what ever dreams I have. Because I am afraid.

And this couldn't be a movie or an entertaining story because the answer is so obvious: fight. Fight and fail, fight and win, just fight, so that a story could be told, the story of fighting. I'm held back by a fear of finding my own story.

I am the man from the Harry Potter books who died exactly the same way he lived, without a fight. So I am going to fight.

By November 1st, I will put my script up at Google Docs and send out invitations to those friends who want one, and then they can give me feedback and criticism and construction and that is a step out of the mire. This is a definitive date, so that I can be held to it.

This tastes like paint

There's something about Fall that's nice. The smell of the leaves, or the bite of the cold, or the taste of a hot chai while the wind chaps your face.

I don't update more because I don't have more to say. Work is the same. I will leave soon, I think. I don't know. If I leave this job, do I leave Chicago? Fly to somewhere that is different or new or without people I know or without a job? I did that here. It was a hard few months.

The truth is that I need to work more on the things I care about and let those grow so I can feel some sprinkling of the thing we called fruitfulness.
Bear fruit. Bears eat honey. Honey is not a fruit.

Move the earth.

Moving Through Uncertainty

Ok, I have to be brief because ideally I'll get my haircut today. I was going for Aveda but the opportunity passed so now I'm looking at you, Hair Cuttery. Would anyone ever want to go somewhere called the Cuttery? Apparently. I'll be sure to put up the sexy pictures if they happen.

Speaking of sexy pictures, no one comments about Will Smith? Come on! This is the Willenium!

I'm trying to write. Sort of? I'm looking at a finished script that isn't... formatted correctly? I'm trying to edit out some inconsistencies and maybe make it more script-standard, if that exists. But then there's always the possibility that I'll always be working on it so I never have to test its quality. Right. I think right now we're somewhere in the middle, which is ok, because it means I'm still legitimately working. I just need to be more consistent.
I also started working on an old script I wrote as a short film in college. I've always wanted to expand it into a feature length, but I don't know if there's a whole story there. Or if there is, it has nothing to do with what I already wrote, and I need to tear up the old stuff, which feels like throwing away the map when you're lost.

Ick. Haircut is tomorrow. I was reading through Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art yesterday. I mentioned it a long time ago on that blog I used to have that wasn't here. She makes me think that art can be good regardless of the artist. Kurt Vonnegut says something similar. But I think there's an idea that because we are flawed, or corrupt, or self-righteous, we can't create something beautiful, or worthy, or desirable. In reality, with L'Engle or Vonnegut, the art becomes great because of what it tries to be, rather than what it is, or the artist. And I like that idea, that art and creation and the ways that we express ourselves make us greater than we are, that we can then rise above our faults without excusing them.

Screenwriting Blogs

This blog needs some serious work. I've got a few friends who are not yet added to the links and I want to start adding some other cool links I've found. I'll start now. And by now I mean soon.

Thanks to a friend and an article in the New York Times, I've discovered two pretty cool screenwriting blogs. (An interesting aside: Screenwriting isn't a recognized word in the blogger spellcheck. Neither is spellcheck.) The first, from a smart lady who worked on Angel, and Firefly, among others, is currently Co-Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica. Her name is Jane Espenson, and other than the difficulty of getting her name right, she tells you what she had for lunch in each post.
The second is a guy named John August, who has to his name movies such as Go, Big Fish, Charlie's Angels, and an interesting upcoming movie called The Nines. They both seem very interesting and knowledgeable in screenwriting matters. Beyond that, they also take the time to offer helpful advice, which is perhaps the only way people who want to be screenwriters can learn how to be screenwriters without the difficulty of Hollywood reality first.

I've started showing my script to people. It feels pretty good actually. But I only have two (maybe three) copies, so sharing is difficult, especially when many of these people live outside of Chicago. I'm beginning to consider emailing PDF files to those who request it. The problem is both losing control of my work (in the sense that I can't get it back from them) and the difference of reading something on a screen, which in my opinion is without flavor. But economics might force my hand, because each copy runs about...$7? Enough that I don't want to make too many, especially when I'm still finding errors and changes will still be made.

I'm heading home tomorrow. It's been a nice trip but I'm sunburned and have go to back to work so that I can be my own special part of the economy.

Happy Birthday Katie

The Cavs (the Cleveland NBA team) just made it to the NBA finals for the first time in their history, which is really nice. It's like 15 years ago, only Michael Jordan isn't shutting us down every year.

I have a fear with my script. Not that it's badly written or uninteresting, because those are things that I can deal with as they come. My fear is discovering that someone has already written the same story, and even worse that they have done it better than I could. And the idea of someone reading my work and having those thoughts is worse than not liking it at all.

I always avoid volunteering information about myself unless people ask directly. Do you think that's residual shyness from 6th grade? Or is that the idea of being mysterious? All I know is that most people don't know I write or have a script. And these are three things I really really like without any idea as to why: Skyscraper architecture, ships, open spaces (water, fields). It's something I can't figure out but I'm hooked on them.

Reading The Historian might be more enjoyable for me (and you?) because I really enjoy history already, so hearing about real history in a fictional context is intriguing.

Marco DeMarco

I'm boring. I don't have much to say right now. I'd love to talk about how great Avatar or Battlestar Galactica is, but the dorks have probably seen more than I have and the non-dorks don't care.

Heroes! Did anyone watch the season finale? It was disappointing, but I still like the series. It was only disappointing because the series tends to hover on greatness. Like, oooh, people with abilities, only they don't really use them to do cool stuff very often. But with its popularity, Season Two might have better effects and thus, more action.

I finished my revision of my screenplay. Did I mention I was writing a screenplay? I think like a year ago I said it would be done in a month or two. Well eventually I actually finished it (around Christmas) and now I've finished revising it. I'm not yet comfortable enough to let anyone just read it or critique it, and I don't want to force it on people, but I am probably going to give it to a small number of friends and family in the hopes that they might give me good insights and feedback. I don't want to say that you are on this list, because there's the chance that you don't want to be on it. And there's the chance that I'm afraid of putting you on it. Do you know what I mean?

Tell you what: If you would like to be on that list, send me word. And then you are probably on it. But this is not an instant thing. We are looking at a few weeks from now at least.
And I'll give you this: The title is The Pirate Princess.

Thanks for keeping this between us.