Ha ha!

I'm writing this post just to prove Professor Kaufhold wrong on point one of his recent discussion about the end of the first term. I've been quite proud of the fact that I've been posting semi-regularly this term, because for my workshop I hardly posted at all.

As Murphy's Law would have it my laptop contracted a virus exactly when I needed it most to finish the first half of my script. Fortunately I'm at home visiting my family so I was able to download a five-day trial of MMSW on this desktop while my computer is debugged.

I'm within a few pages of my mid-point right now (I'm planning on it running about 90 minutes, so I'm aiming for 45 pages as a number-marker). It's been a very different process writing this as opposed to my last full-length: I'm not wracking my brain trying to come up with clever action sequences, I can just focus on the people and their eccentricities. But I don't want to make up wackadoo situations just for the sake of being weird (ie anything Wes Anderson does), I want my characters to be odd, but believable. Because as a rule, real people are so much weirder than movie characters. I want the amusement and interest on the audience's part to come from a kinship and familiarity as opposed to laughing at the absurdity of a man who breeds dalmatian mice.

Royal Tenenbaums is one of my favorite movies, coincidentally... but that doesn't mean I think it is well-written.

Helen Keller

I do think these blogs are very useful for our professor to keep track of our progress, but I feel weird writing about writing. I find its better for me to just dig into it and then talk about my results rather than rant about my many excuses for not finishing the work when I wanted to.

I also get anxious and want to write immediately after I make one of these posts. But it's Thursday, so I'm at the film office, and I'm answering phones, which makes me break into a cold sweat. Ask me to march into a room full of people and do a 15 minute presentation and I'm there, but Helen Keller could handle a telephone call better than me.


Ah, Helen Keller jokes...

Morton Smiley

The first time I am hit on in public and it's by an octogenarian. His name was Morton Smiley (I know it sounds fake, but he gave me a business card with his name on it and everything). He runs an embroidery company that is about to launch a website, and he has a granddaughter that apparently teaches at Drexel, but he doesn't remember her name.

Nonetheless I got an unopened bag of dove chocolate (Peanut Butter Toffee Flavor) out of it, and the best name ever to use for future writing.


P.S. Even though I know nobody reads this I want to say it anyway; the next time you're in a comic book store check the back of Amazing Spider-Man issue #639, I'm listed in the credits as one of the interns. An awesome moment for me, to say the least, I'm very grateful.


EDIT: Aaand as far as my screenplay goes, it's time to start fucking with my characters' senses of well-being.

He's alive!

I saw the old man yesterday, he is not dead as I had previously suspected. I had pegged him as Northern European but upon closer inspection his skin has a swarthiness that may indicate some Italian or even Middle-eastern ethnicity. The years have just drained all the color out of him.



Banged out my first act, which feels slightly like a group of scenes slung together rather than a unified whole, but hey, it's a work in progress. I also think I'm going to scrap Burt's suicidal tendencies. It was a plot point that served as a catalyst for a while, but now it does not fit. Plus one of my best friend's brothers tried to kill himself today, so attempts to end one's life just don't seem that funny anymore. Phoo, things just got serious.

I possess nature-killing faculties

I don't know if faculties is the correct word for it but I like the way it sounds. The point is a tree killed itself today so that I could finish my first act.


A tree fell on the tracks and suspended the Septa line to Trenton, making it virtually impossible for me to get to New York for my co-op. As much as I bitterly resent the fact that I can't gallivant around today as a pseudo-professional like I usually do, it is fantastic that I suddenly have a full day to get most of my writing done for this week. I've been fiddling around and managed to progress a few pages but I knew I'd have to do a lot of my work in the evenings, which is when I am the most creatively limber but also exhausted.

Started watching "Pillars of the Earth" today. I'm halfway through the book but I'm disappointed with the show so far. It makes me feel better though, that even an epic, highly-anticipated adaptation of a medieval story can fail. That means that I'm not a complete asshat for falling short on my own previous attempts at writing around the same time. I think medieval is the second hardest time period to write in, after the Stone Age. Only the Flintstones did that right.

Winners can lick their own genitalia.

Okay, one last amendment, and this one fits my original plotline the best. Arnie has made a deal to breed Minestrone, a pedigreed but under-appreciated bitch, with Puck. THATS why Burt visits the Barnes. He's still going to have his suicidal inclinations, because Puck made more money in one show than he made in a month as a train-ticketer. But this feels like a more natural route to take.

Your previous comment about turned on the lightbulb, Professor. I think I am going to use that gag, I'd be a fool not to.



On another note, I haven't seen the old man on the train for a while. He may be dead.

New angle

I was searching for a viable reason for Burt to visit the Barnes. I think I have it: Burt lent Arnie some money a while back so that he could get his dog surgically enhanced eyelashes and a hair transplant from his flank to his gristle (beard). Now Burt's calling in the favor after he comes up short in a show that he thought he was going to win. Arnie doesn't have the money when Burt gets there, but he promises it shortly. Olivia is irritated and repulsed by Burt's demands, but Burt becomes infatuated with her. Inevitably he becomes envious of the Barnes' marriage, so in a bid to belittle Arnie in front of his wife Burt decides to enter into the local competition that Arnie has been prepping for, as the money prize is small-town but respectable. Arnie is heartbroken, and Olivia is infuriated. The day of the show she feeds Puck something that will make him sick (ideally something that Burt made for her, but I'd have to make sure that was set up to seem plausible, as he's not really a chef), but she overdoes it and the dog ends up dead. Its still keeping with the basic line of the story and I think it's still true to the characters, though Burt's a little less pitiful and a little more sinister in this one. Huzzah..maybe