I’m still trying to sort out what I’m going to do after the blockbuster screening last weekend. My instinct is to forego any other screenings and sprint headlong into the trenches of getting this fucker into video stores across the country. There are some wholesale distributors waiting for the Movie and then they will head off and, hopefully, sell the fucking thing. It’s just a matter of me deciding that it is the best thing to do and doing it.
In the meantime, I’ve found myself ass deep in re-writing a couple of scripts. As I’ve mentioned before, I have three projects that I want to do next. Which one I end up doing will depend entirely on how much money I can raise.
The first one is a horror movie. By the way, since I’m talking about it, I haven’t been able to figure out a decent enough title for this script. It’s one of those stories that doesn’t lend itself to an obvious title. Thus far, there are three choices: UNCLEAN SPIRITS, THE INHUMAN CONDITION, and HUMAN REMAINS. Let’s have an informal poll here and see which one goes over best with you five readers. Later, I’ll tell which one I’m leaning towards. My guess, of course, is that my favorite will finish last in this poll. Anyhow, this is the movie that I really want to do next. It’s 180 degrees different in content and style than the last movie. And there’s another thing, and I’m not going to bullshit about it or beat around the fucking bush: It’s an unadulterated, pure horror movie. It’s a genre flick. And, by the way, it’s a genre that has always had a clearly defined marketplace that has NEVER decreased since F.W. Murnau was fucking around with Dracula back in the early 1920s. One of the problems with the last movie was that there was never a clearly defined audience for it. It’s sort of a drama, and sort of a mystery, and sort of a mocumentary [a term I fucking loath], but it was really a little too different [and I don’t mean that in a back handed compliment look-I’m-so-fucking-avant-garde-and-cool kind of way] and as a consequence has had a difficult time finding people [read: distributors, acquisition people, those with money to buy the fucking thing] who believe in the movie, and it’s own audience. This is an attempt to unapologetically delve into a genre where the final product will have a built in audience base who the movie can be sold to. This is not to say that this movie will be a sure fire money maker. While it is a genre movie and follows a lot of the conventions that one finds in this genre, it is wholly my own, which means there’s a lot of shit in the script that has the potential of pissing off and alienating an audience. As the two people out there that have actually read an older version of the script can attest to, this will be the kind of movie that once it’s over the audience might say, “What the fuck did I just watch?” I’m toying with the idea of providing the finished draft of the script here for everyone to take a look at. We’ll have to see on that one. As I’ve written before, the Story starts off in a rather clichéd fashion: a group of six people (two women and four men) head up north for a hunting trip. Obviously, what happens next is the requisite chaos and scary shit. What I think [read: hope and pray] sets this story apart from the countless other movies that have followed the same path is that it doesn’t exactly play out in the manner one might think it would. The conventional roads are not traveled. I hate this and am going to stop. I hate it because I’m slipping into pretentiousness and my ego is showing a bit too much here. Simply put, I’ve written a story for what I hope will be a pretty fucking good horror movie that has my imprint all over it. It’s the most expensive of the three I want to make, which means I’m going to have to raise some funds privately. I can only hope that I have enough of the shit the money people will like (blood, gore, scares, shit you can put on a poster and in a trailer to make it look scary) so that they will make the movie I want to make.
The second story, which may or may not be titled THE BROTHER’S BACA [is that too fucking pompous, or am I just way to sensitive about that?], is sort of a Cain and Abel story. Actually, this too is a kind of horror story, although not in the conventional sense. This script was written with the idea that I would literally have no money in which to make the flick. It only has three characters, and like the horror script above, it takes place up north on a fishing trip [just to mix it up a little]. This movie is also stylistically the complete and total opposite of the last movie, but it has a problem of being intrinsically a bit “arty”, which might hurts it’s marketability. It’s the kind of thing that would play at a film festival and might get picked up for distribution. But, like I said, it was written with the idea that I’ll have no money to make it, so this might not in and of itself be that bad of a thing. Instead of writing a script and then figuring out how the fuck I’m going to produce it, I started with resources I know I have and built a story around that. This is quite similar to what I did with SHORT SIDE.
The third story is about a group of three friends [all in they’re late twenties/early thirties] who gather after a friend of theirs has died of an apparent heart attack. While the script represents some of the best writing I think I’ve ever done, and even though I really, really want to make this movie, I don’t really want it to be the next movie I make. It would stylistically be too similar to the last movie. That’s the only reason. I’d like to do something a little different before I tackle this one. Like the second story, it was written with the idea that I wouldn’t have much money to make it.
Of course what will probably happen is something completely different than any plan I might try to follow. Such is life.
All of this was a prelude to consider the idea of re-writing. I fucking hate, hate, hate to re-write anything. This blog is a perfect example. Most of the time, I’m sitting at the computer just vomiting this stream of consciousness onto the keyboard. I don’t go back and re-read what I’ve written. I don’t fix any of the errors, grammatical, my fucked up use of the language, or what have you, which are a large part of every post. I don’t take that much more care with a screenplay I’m writing. Since I’m not writing these scripts in order to sell for someone else to make [although I would do that in a heartbeat] I don’t have to worry about all of the other writer shit that most are going through. My scripts are generally fairly spare and only give the bare bones information needed. Since I’m the director, I don’t need to fill in the blanks that most writers have to worry about. I look at a screenplay in a different manner than most do. I consider it to be a vague outline of what we would like to have happen under the best of circumstances. There is a world of difference between the story you write and the story you end up shooting. The script is the foundation. It’s incredibly important, but only a piece of the overall puzzle. I do, however, have to get the foundation to its best possible condition. What re-writing means to me is that somewhere along the line, which invariably happens, I fucked up on this foundation and now I have to go back and fix it. Re-writing is where the real work begins. It doesn’t take much to sit down and pound out something, but to go back and objectively [which is a near fucking impossibility] figure out what right and wrong with your script, and then go about fixing it and making it right is what separates the hacks from the monkeys. Re-writing is a painful experience. It hurts. It’s frustrating. It’s real fucking hard work, and I haven’t become the lazy fat ass that I am by tackling the hard work.
So, I’m flipping between the three scripts and trying to get them into the best shape I can. It’s slow going but I’m insistent on chipping away a little every day, which I suppose is the best I can hope to do. The good thing is that when you’re finished and you have a screenplay that is no longer broken, that works on every level you wanted it to [until, of course, the development executive, agent, manager, or other fucktard gets a hold of it and force you back to the drawing board], when the puzzle fits together and actually resembles what you intended, it’s one of the greatest feelings in the world. You’ve accomplished something.
Now the real work begins.
In the meantime, I’ve found myself ass deep in re-writing a couple of scripts. As I’ve mentioned before, I have three projects that I want to do next. Which one I end up doing will depend entirely on how much money I can raise.
The first one is a horror movie. By the way, since I’m talking about it, I haven’t been able to figure out a decent enough title for this script. It’s one of those stories that doesn’t lend itself to an obvious title. Thus far, there are three choices: UNCLEAN SPIRITS, THE INHUMAN CONDITION, and HUMAN REMAINS. Let’s have an informal poll here and see which one goes over best with you five readers. Later, I’ll tell which one I’m leaning towards. My guess, of course, is that my favorite will finish last in this poll. Anyhow, this is the movie that I really want to do next. It’s 180 degrees different in content and style than the last movie. And there’s another thing, and I’m not going to bullshit about it or beat around the fucking bush: It’s an unadulterated, pure horror movie. It’s a genre flick. And, by the way, it’s a genre that has always had a clearly defined marketplace that has NEVER decreased since F.W. Murnau was fucking around with Dracula back in the early 1920s. One of the problems with the last movie was that there was never a clearly defined audience for it. It’s sort of a drama, and sort of a mystery, and sort of a mocumentary [a term I fucking loath], but it was really a little too different [and I don’t mean that in a back handed compliment look-I’m-so-fucking-avant-garde-and-cool kind of way] and as a consequence has had a difficult time finding people [read: distributors, acquisition people, those with money to buy the fucking thing] who believe in the movie, and it’s own audience. This is an attempt to unapologetically delve into a genre where the final product will have a built in audience base who the movie can be sold to. This is not to say that this movie will be a sure fire money maker. While it is a genre movie and follows a lot of the conventions that one finds in this genre, it is wholly my own, which means there’s a lot of shit in the script that has the potential of pissing off and alienating an audience. As the two people out there that have actually read an older version of the script can attest to, this will be the kind of movie that once it’s over the audience might say, “What the fuck did I just watch?” I’m toying with the idea of providing the finished draft of the script here for everyone to take a look at. We’ll have to see on that one. As I’ve written before, the Story starts off in a rather clichéd fashion: a group of six people (two women and four men) head up north for a hunting trip. Obviously, what happens next is the requisite chaos and scary shit. What I think [read: hope and pray] sets this story apart from the countless other movies that have followed the same path is that it doesn’t exactly play out in the manner one might think it would. The conventional roads are not traveled. I hate this and am going to stop. I hate it because I’m slipping into pretentiousness and my ego is showing a bit too much here. Simply put, I’ve written a story for what I hope will be a pretty fucking good horror movie that has my imprint all over it. It’s the most expensive of the three I want to make, which means I’m going to have to raise some funds privately. I can only hope that I have enough of the shit the money people will like (blood, gore, scares, shit you can put on a poster and in a trailer to make it look scary) so that they will make the movie I want to make.
The second story, which may or may not be titled THE BROTHER’S BACA [is that too fucking pompous, or am I just way to sensitive about that?], is sort of a Cain and Abel story. Actually, this too is a kind of horror story, although not in the conventional sense. This script was written with the idea that I would literally have no money in which to make the flick. It only has three characters, and like the horror script above, it takes place up north on a fishing trip [just to mix it up a little]. This movie is also stylistically the complete and total opposite of the last movie, but it has a problem of being intrinsically a bit “arty”, which might hurts it’s marketability. It’s the kind of thing that would play at a film festival and might get picked up for distribution. But, like I said, it was written with the idea that I’ll have no money to make it, so this might not in and of itself be that bad of a thing. Instead of writing a script and then figuring out how the fuck I’m going to produce it, I started with resources I know I have and built a story around that. This is quite similar to what I did with SHORT SIDE.
The third story is about a group of three friends [all in they’re late twenties/early thirties] who gather after a friend of theirs has died of an apparent heart attack. While the script represents some of the best writing I think I’ve ever done, and even though I really, really want to make this movie, I don’t really want it to be the next movie I make. It would stylistically be too similar to the last movie. That’s the only reason. I’d like to do something a little different before I tackle this one. Like the second story, it was written with the idea that I wouldn’t have much money to make it.
Of course what will probably happen is something completely different than any plan I might try to follow. Such is life.
All of this was a prelude to consider the idea of re-writing. I fucking hate, hate, hate to re-write anything. This blog is a perfect example. Most of the time, I’m sitting at the computer just vomiting this stream of consciousness onto the keyboard. I don’t go back and re-read what I’ve written. I don’t fix any of the errors, grammatical, my fucked up use of the language, or what have you, which are a large part of every post. I don’t take that much more care with a screenplay I’m writing. Since I’m not writing these scripts in order to sell for someone else to make [although I would do that in a heartbeat] I don’t have to worry about all of the other writer shit that most are going through. My scripts are generally fairly spare and only give the bare bones information needed. Since I’m the director, I don’t need to fill in the blanks that most writers have to worry about. I look at a screenplay in a different manner than most do. I consider it to be a vague outline of what we would like to have happen under the best of circumstances. There is a world of difference between the story you write and the story you end up shooting. The script is the foundation. It’s incredibly important, but only a piece of the overall puzzle. I do, however, have to get the foundation to its best possible condition. What re-writing means to me is that somewhere along the line, which invariably happens, I fucked up on this foundation and now I have to go back and fix it. Re-writing is where the real work begins. It doesn’t take much to sit down and pound out something, but to go back and objectively [which is a near fucking impossibility] figure out what right and wrong with your script, and then go about fixing it and making it right is what separates the hacks from the monkeys. Re-writing is a painful experience. It hurts. It’s frustrating. It’s real fucking hard work, and I haven’t become the lazy fat ass that I am by tackling the hard work.
So, I’m flipping between the three scripts and trying to get them into the best shape I can. It’s slow going but I’m insistent on chipping away a little every day, which I suppose is the best I can hope to do. The good thing is that when you’re finished and you have a screenplay that is no longer broken, that works on every level you wanted it to [until, of course, the development executive, agent, manager, or other fucktard gets a hold of it and force you back to the drawing board], when the puzzle fits together and actually resembles what you intended, it’s one of the greatest feelings in the world. You’ve accomplished something.
Now the real work begins.
