I couldn't get a job as a waiter so I became an actor!
Seriously, in December, when I found out that I wasn't getting any teaching work this semester, I went crazy, scrambling for any job that I could reasonably apply for. In one week, maybe even the same day, I applied for a job at a restaurant around the corner from me (owned and operated by U2's former personal chef but that's another story) and I responded to an ad placed by Philly/NYC theater company.
I never heard back from the restaurant but the theater company responded quickly. We had a series of e-mails, a couple of phone calls and, a few weeks ago, a face-to-face.
They are very much about blurring the lines between theater and real life in very high tech ways -- last year hiring actors to "play" people in facebook-oriented production online, in a theater and, to some degree on facebook and recently staging a similar production in NYC.
Their newest "production" is going to be the new website for the company where subscribers, fans and the culturally aware and excited 18-30 crowd will form a community, a back and forth with the members of the company --- who are all going to be fictional characters "created" and "played" by "actors" who will blog about the progress of work on various production but also art and cool culture in general --- and interact online with their fans, supporters, benefactors etc.
So, I have been “cast” and I am now "playing" a character online, on their blog, on facebook and, who knows where else? I have created a persona and I continue to cultivate the character, interacting with the other characters, posting links to sites, articles etc. of interest or concern to who we are and what we are doing. So, is this “Second Life: The Musical” or “Catfish: The Play”? I don’t know, I am just going with it and, why not, “All the world is just a stage” and so on. We all have our online persona anyway, I might as well have another one. By the time I post this blog, the gig could be over or it could just be heating up. And, yes, I am getting paid.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The Ups & Downs of David Greenberg: Confessions of a Minimum Wage Screenwriter Pt. 1
In early December, 2010, I walked into the Kimmel Center with a video camera. I got into a glass elevator, turned the camera on, pointed out the window and shot myself going up and going down. I came home, put the footage into my computer, edited it, added tons of effects, music etc. and posted the resulting minute long short film “The Ups & Downs of David Greenberg” on Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook pages.
At the time, I had no idea of how accurately “ups and downs” would wind up becoming so accurate. I just thought I was being witty because I was riding in an elevator.
It was right around this time that I found out that I was likely to be unemployed, without a teaching job this semester. My one class at University of the Arts was canceled due to low enrollment and I was not offered any classes at Drexel University.
Unemployment = DOWN.
I scrambled for work.
I responded to a post from a producer who was looking for someone to write a documentary about Bonnie and Clyde. I had two phone interviews, wrote a sample treatment, outlining the approach to the script that I would take.
I beat out 150 other writers and got the job = UP.
Next came a whirlwind of research/writing and I delivered the first draft of the the script, on time, three weeks later. I turned in a third draft earlier this week.
It paid what I would make in about 6 weeks of teaching.
However, six weeks of work was not going to cut it = DOWN
In one week, maybe even the same day, I applied for a job at a restaurant around the corner from me (owned and operated by U2's former personal chef but that's another story) and I responded to an ad placed by Philly/NYC theater company.
I had not worked in a restaurant since my early 20’s --- and, even, then, it was at my father’s place whenever he was short-handed.
As mentioned in my last blog post, I had given up on acting long ago. I think I last auditioned for something in 1985.
I never heard from the restaurant but the theater company contacted me quickly. We spoke on the phone, had a face to face and, as of this week, it looks like I will be earning a little bit of money as an actor -- sort of. Much more on on that, later.
I like to think that, when I couldn’t make it as waiter, I took a job as an actor to get me through.
Getting a chance to “perform,” to be involved with my first love: theater = UP
I banged out a good, ultra-low budget screenplay for a director friend, he liked it, didn’t love it, but planned to make anyway.
Ultimately he decided that, even with 6 characters, a handful of locations and no major special effects or set pieces, it was too big for him to mount at this time.
He still wants to make it, but he wants me to write something even smaller = UP/DOWN
A short film that I wrote, “The Audition”, played at a film festival in California = UP
But the big news was that, after two years in development at an L.A. production company, the option on my screenplay “Aftermath” expired in December.
I have retained the rights to it = UP/DOWN
The Philly production company that optioned it in 2006 has expressed an interest in it and I feel morally obligated to give them a shot if they want it because I broke my agreement with them in order to send it to L.A.
An L.A./Philly based producer who has long been familiar with it seems awfully interested in acquiring the project.
One or maybe even both of these companies could produce “Aftermath” this year = UP
Both could decide to pass on it = DOWN
The “Aftermath” story has been and continues to be an epic saga, something likely to dominate my blog posts for the indefinite future.
I am working all the time and I am still looking for a job.
These are the Confessions of a Minimum Wage Screenwriter.
To be continued...
At the time, I had no idea of how accurately “ups and downs” would wind up becoming so accurate. I just thought I was being witty because I was riding in an elevator.
It was right around this time that I found out that I was likely to be unemployed, without a teaching job this semester. My one class at University of the Arts was canceled due to low enrollment and I was not offered any classes at Drexel University.
Unemployment = DOWN.
I scrambled for work.
I responded to a post from a producer who was looking for someone to write a documentary about Bonnie and Clyde. I had two phone interviews, wrote a sample treatment, outlining the approach to the script that I would take.
I beat out 150 other writers and got the job = UP.
Next came a whirlwind of research/writing and I delivered the first draft of the the script, on time, three weeks later. I turned in a third draft earlier this week.
It paid what I would make in about 6 weeks of teaching.
However, six weeks of work was not going to cut it = DOWN
In one week, maybe even the same day, I applied for a job at a restaurant around the corner from me (owned and operated by U2's former personal chef but that's another story) and I responded to an ad placed by Philly/NYC theater company.
I had not worked in a restaurant since my early 20’s --- and, even, then, it was at my father’s place whenever he was short-handed.
As mentioned in my last blog post, I had given up on acting long ago. I think I last auditioned for something in 1985.
I never heard from the restaurant but the theater company contacted me quickly. We spoke on the phone, had a face to face and, as of this week, it looks like I will be earning a little bit of money as an actor -- sort of. Much more on on that, later.
I like to think that, when I couldn’t make it as waiter, I took a job as an actor to get me through.
Getting a chance to “perform,” to be involved with my first love: theater = UP
I banged out a good, ultra-low budget screenplay for a director friend, he liked it, didn’t love it, but planned to make anyway.
Ultimately he decided that, even with 6 characters, a handful of locations and no major special effects or set pieces, it was too big for him to mount at this time.
He still wants to make it, but he wants me to write something even smaller = UP/DOWN
A short film that I wrote, “The Audition”, played at a film festival in California = UP
But the big news was that, after two years in development at an L.A. production company, the option on my screenplay “Aftermath” expired in December.
I have retained the rights to it = UP/DOWN
The Philly production company that optioned it in 2006 has expressed an interest in it and I feel morally obligated to give them a shot if they want it because I broke my agreement with them in order to send it to L.A.
An L.A./Philly based producer who has long been familiar with it seems awfully interested in acquiring the project.
One or maybe even both of these companies could produce “Aftermath” this year = UP
Both could decide to pass on it = DOWN
The “Aftermath” story has been and continues to be an epic saga, something likely to dominate my blog posts for the indefinite future.
I am working all the time and I am still looking for a job.
These are the Confessions of a Minimum Wage Screenwriter.
To be continued...
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
The Gray Swan
This is not a review of “Black Swan”, it is a response to it. It’s been awhile since a film affected me so strongly. Sure, on one level, the film is about ballet but that is just on the surface, what drives the plot.
The film is about so much more.
The film is about film, painting, writing, acting, singing, music and on and on. Anyone who wants to create, to engage in art, doesn’t do it passively, they give of themselves, they throw themselves into the creative process.
“Black Swan” really struck a chord with me because, even though it is about ballet on the surface, it is really about all art and anyone who struggles to create something. At one point the creative director of the ballet criticizes his star dancer for being too perfect, too precise, mechanical, cold and distant and, to me, it came off as Darren Aronofsky, the director of the movie, making a statement about big-budget Hollywood movies --- this film is relatively low-budget, shot with really grainy film and herky-jerky hand-held camera movement.
I remember watching “It’s Complicated” not long ago and being so distracted by how obsessively good the lighting was in one particular scene. It was ridiculous, I could tell that, in this kitchen location, a light or lights had been set up “just so” in order to make a bowl of fruit stand out, not even a bowl of fruit that was an important prop, a plot device. It was like this throughout the whole movie and not just this one film, most “big” films. It didn’t have anything to do with art per se -- all due respect to the DP and the gaffer who are obviously master craftsmen -- it was about technical precision.
Artists don’t just wake up one day and suddenly decide that they want to be artists, it is not intellectual at first, it is instinctual, we are drawn to create, to perform. I teach screenwriting at an art school. My students want to be filmmakers. I don’t think that any one of them had a meeting with their high school guidance counselor, had to come up with something to say and spat out “I want to go to film school.” Okay, maybe one or two of them once said “Well, um, I like movies, can I go to college for that?” No, I like to think that, like me, they had a long-standing burning desire to create, to express themselves, their worldview, to tell stories and to connect with others, to make work that resonates.
Still, even if we are “good at art”, it is often not enough, we want to be great at it, we want to be perfect.
While I was into acting, theater and film from a very early age, by the time I became a teenager, I think I wanted to become a stand-up comedian, I wanted to be on Saturday Night Live. I inhaled comedy, studied it, practiced it, listened to Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor and Steve Martin over and over again.
I saw Cosby at the York Pennsylvania State Fair when I was 15 and it was breath-taking, life-changing. I am pretty sure that I had never experienced that level of stage craft before but I know that I have never witnessed anything quite like it since. The show was so coherent and cohesive, like an intricate puzzle with many, many pieces that all fit together. Cosby came out on-stage, did one joke that served as something like a thesis statement from which every other joke evolved, even developed into a seemingly unrelated tangent but always came back, always had something to do with the original joke, which he would touch on for a bit and then go off in another direction and so on.
I think I knew, at that moment, deep down, that I could probably never attain that level of perfection, the thing that Nina, Natalie Portman’s character in “Black Swan” is obsessively after.
Also, in a really lucky moment of self-realization, while I was slitting the throat of my comedy career, I admitted to myself that I probably didn’t have what it takes to become an actor. Sure, I had talent but I didn’t have the looks, the body and, most importantly, the drive or the thick skin to make it in the world of making it as an actor.
A friend of mine who was a year ahead of me in high school was nearing graduation and, when I asked her what she was doing about college, she said that she was going to film school and, of course, my reaction was “Well, um, I like movies, can I go to college for that?”
Who knows? Maybe we seek attention and crave adulation. I always tell my students about the role of art in society, that artists are vessels for the human experience, that they cannot help it but take in the world at large, the things around us and then re-present or represent everything from their perspective, hopefully in a way that resonate with those who look at whatever it is that we do. Whatever the reason, we can’t do anything else, our art consumes us.
I can even see the beginnings of it, to a degree in my kids. Three weeks ago, my 16 year old daughter got up on a stage and with grace, poise and passion performed a long, intricate, complicated Beethoven piece in a recital. That one performance was the result of hours and hours of practice during which I can tell you, she sometimes resembled not Vladimir Horowitz but Keith Moon. Sure, practice makes perfect but if can drive you mad sometimes.
My 13 year old daughter has had a number of poems, short stories, book reviews and articles published in very high end literary magazines for young writers. Last year she entered two novel excerpts into a competition for homeschoolers. Both of her entries were among the five finalists and, in the end, she wound up in first and second place. Still, there is little that I can do when I see her in the agony of writer’s block or suffering the self-doubt and second-guesses about our talent that all artists go through.
Choosing an artistic path can be a painful, scary thing. Art succeeds when others respond to it. In order to get a response from an audience we have to put it, ourselves out there, be it as a ballerina, a singer-songwriter, a poet, a painter. Somewhere down the line, we say to ourselves “I think I am pretty good at this” and, in a best case scenario, we work up the confidence to create something, to show something, to play something and people agree with us and encourage us --- often to pursue often at the expense of learning how to do anything practical or developing marketable skills.
I wanted to be a perfect stand-up comedian and I could have driven myself crazy in pursuit of this goal. There is a scene in the wonderful Jerry Seinfeld documentary “Comedian” where, in an effort to rebuild and reinvent his comedy career from the ground up, he pays a visit to Bill Cosby who comes off as uncharacteristically laid back and humble, almost like a holy man of comedy. Seinfeld leaves the meeting speechless, his breath taken away. He is inspired. Maybe if I could have met Cosby when I was 15...
I don’t strive for perfection. I feel like I can never be perfect, that maybe, if I am lucky, I will be good enough. I am not perfect and I never will be. Most of the time, I think I am a pretty good screenwriter. Sometimes I wonder if I am fooling myself or anyone else when I say that this is what I “do.” I learn something new every time that I sit down to write and I know that I can never learn it all, that there isn’t even an “all” to learn, that it is infinite, that it keeps going, that I will never be the black swan or the white swan but somewhere in between, the gray swan.
The film is about so much more.
The film is about film, painting, writing, acting, singing, music and on and on. Anyone who wants to create, to engage in art, doesn’t do it passively, they give of themselves, they throw themselves into the creative process.
“Black Swan” really struck a chord with me because, even though it is about ballet on the surface, it is really about all art and anyone who struggles to create something. At one point the creative director of the ballet criticizes his star dancer for being too perfect, too precise, mechanical, cold and distant and, to me, it came off as Darren Aronofsky, the director of the movie, making a statement about big-budget Hollywood movies --- this film is relatively low-budget, shot with really grainy film and herky-jerky hand-held camera movement.
I remember watching “It’s Complicated” not long ago and being so distracted by how obsessively good the lighting was in one particular scene. It was ridiculous, I could tell that, in this kitchen location, a light or lights had been set up “just so” in order to make a bowl of fruit stand out, not even a bowl of fruit that was an important prop, a plot device. It was like this throughout the whole movie and not just this one film, most “big” films. It didn’t have anything to do with art per se -- all due respect to the DP and the gaffer who are obviously master craftsmen -- it was about technical precision.
Artists don’t just wake up one day and suddenly decide that they want to be artists, it is not intellectual at first, it is instinctual, we are drawn to create, to perform. I teach screenwriting at an art school. My students want to be filmmakers. I don’t think that any one of them had a meeting with their high school guidance counselor, had to come up with something to say and spat out “I want to go to film school.” Okay, maybe one or two of them once said “Well, um, I like movies, can I go to college for that?” No, I like to think that, like me, they had a long-standing burning desire to create, to express themselves, their worldview, to tell stories and to connect with others, to make work that resonates.
Still, even if we are “good at art”, it is often not enough, we want to be great at it, we want to be perfect.
While I was into acting, theater and film from a very early age, by the time I became a teenager, I think I wanted to become a stand-up comedian, I wanted to be on Saturday Night Live. I inhaled comedy, studied it, practiced it, listened to Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor and Steve Martin over and over again.
I saw Cosby at the York Pennsylvania State Fair when I was 15 and it was breath-taking, life-changing. I am pretty sure that I had never experienced that level of stage craft before but I know that I have never witnessed anything quite like it since. The show was so coherent and cohesive, like an intricate puzzle with many, many pieces that all fit together. Cosby came out on-stage, did one joke that served as something like a thesis statement from which every other joke evolved, even developed into a seemingly unrelated tangent but always came back, always had something to do with the original joke, which he would touch on for a bit and then go off in another direction and so on.
I think I knew, at that moment, deep down, that I could probably never attain that level of perfection, the thing that Nina, Natalie Portman’s character in “Black Swan” is obsessively after.
Also, in a really lucky moment of self-realization, while I was slitting the throat of my comedy career, I admitted to myself that I probably didn’t have what it takes to become an actor. Sure, I had talent but I didn’t have the looks, the body and, most importantly, the drive or the thick skin to make it in the world of making it as an actor.
A friend of mine who was a year ahead of me in high school was nearing graduation and, when I asked her what she was doing about college, she said that she was going to film school and, of course, my reaction was “Well, um, I like movies, can I go to college for that?”
Who knows? Maybe we seek attention and crave adulation. I always tell my students about the role of art in society, that artists are vessels for the human experience, that they cannot help it but take in the world at large, the things around us and then re-present or represent everything from their perspective, hopefully in a way that resonate with those who look at whatever it is that we do. Whatever the reason, we can’t do anything else, our art consumes us.
I can even see the beginnings of it, to a degree in my kids. Three weeks ago, my 16 year old daughter got up on a stage and with grace, poise and passion performed a long, intricate, complicated Beethoven piece in a recital. That one performance was the result of hours and hours of practice during which I can tell you, she sometimes resembled not Vladimir Horowitz but Keith Moon. Sure, practice makes perfect but if can drive you mad sometimes.
My 13 year old daughter has had a number of poems, short stories, book reviews and articles published in very high end literary magazines for young writers. Last year she entered two novel excerpts into a competition for homeschoolers. Both of her entries were among the five finalists and, in the end, she wound up in first and second place. Still, there is little that I can do when I see her in the agony of writer’s block or suffering the self-doubt and second-guesses about our talent that all artists go through.
Choosing an artistic path can be a painful, scary thing. Art succeeds when others respond to it. In order to get a response from an audience we have to put it, ourselves out there, be it as a ballerina, a singer-songwriter, a poet, a painter. Somewhere down the line, we say to ourselves “I think I am pretty good at this” and, in a best case scenario, we work up the confidence to create something, to show something, to play something and people agree with us and encourage us --- often to pursue often at the expense of learning how to do anything practical or developing marketable skills.
I wanted to be a perfect stand-up comedian and I could have driven myself crazy in pursuit of this goal. There is a scene in the wonderful Jerry Seinfeld documentary “Comedian” where, in an effort to rebuild and reinvent his comedy career from the ground up, he pays a visit to Bill Cosby who comes off as uncharacteristically laid back and humble, almost like a holy man of comedy. Seinfeld leaves the meeting speechless, his breath taken away. He is inspired. Maybe if I could have met Cosby when I was 15...
I don’t strive for perfection. I feel like I can never be perfect, that maybe, if I am lucky, I will be good enough. I am not perfect and I never will be. Most of the time, I think I am a pretty good screenwriter. Sometimes I wonder if I am fooling myself or anyone else when I say that this is what I “do.” I learn something new every time that I sit down to write and I know that I can never learn it all, that there isn’t even an “all” to learn, that it is infinite, that it keeps going, that I will never be the black swan or the white swan but somewhere in between, the gray swan.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The horror, the horror?
There is very little new under the sun, it is often what you do with familiar elements, how you employ them in unconventional ways that is most impressive. Often, for many writers, the first instinct is to go with the obvious plot element, the idea that pops into your mind first, which is usually something that you have seen in another movie, probably more than once. So, it can be a really good discipline to recognize that first instinct and then look for something else.
A few nights ago, I delivered the screenplay for what I call a non-scary horror movie. I like horror movies and I like slasher films but I feel that it has all been done before, we all know what is going to happen: much of the time, a group of kids is going to find themselves in a situation where they are getting killed off one by one, end of story.
For me, the "horror" elements, the stalking and killing scenes have been so over-done that it's become monotonous, not very scary and, too much of the time, just an excuse for the f//x guys to go wild with gore -- who cares about the killing anymore?
Let me digress and talk about sex for awhile. Sex, yes, that got your attention. I usually fast forward through sex scenes. Why? Because I know what happens when people have sex. No matter how many variations we can come up with, it usually comes down to some version of Insert “Flap A into Slot B.” Yes, characters having sex is often an important plot element but actually seeing them have sex is usually superfluous and, when you get right down to it, gratuitous. Put it this way, I haven’t seen many sex scenes that further my understanding of the characters. They had sex, fine. They did it this way and that way --- probably unimportant.
I do not watch porn. I really have no need to watch people doing it. Bill Cosby once said “When I am hungry, I don’t watch a film of two people eating.” However, when I worked in a video store, one of my responsibilities was fixing broken VHS tapes. I would cut out the damaged section of the movie, splice the tape back together and test it out to see if it would play.
Sometimes I had to work on porn tapes and I would have to watch them in order to gauge the success of my repair work. So, here I was, for the first time, with a pile of porn tapes that I had to look at and what did I do? I fast-forwarded through the sex scenes and watched the “dramatic” material in between the sex, looking for acting and good dialogue. Needless to say, I found very little of either -- acting or good dialogue.
So, it is sort of the same thing with me and horror films. What I like to see in horror films are the non-horror moments, character development, who these people are and how they are dealing with the situation ---- something that I rarely see. So that is sort of what I set out to do in this horror screenplay.
Bear with me: It is about a group of bitchy, popular high school girls who bully an outcast, a lonely, awkward, artsy "weird" girl and who commits suicide.
The story zips ahead four or five years and the girls are now "adults", not really friends with each other anymore, largely out of touch until one of them dies mysteriously. They all reunite at the funeral and hang out for awhile afterward.
Old feelings are stirred when they discover that there might be a connection to the their friends murder and the suicide of the girl in high school or that it could just be a coincidence. They all start becoming acutely aware of this event from their past --- stories about teen suicide, internet bullying etc. everywhere they go. One of them even stumbles upon a tribute video to the girl on You Tube.
Then another girl dies. Then another. One girl really believes that there is a connection and that, if they go to the police they might be able to figure out who the killer is and get protection but the other girl(s) don't want anyone to know their story etc., etc.
Eventually, it comes down to the "good" girl, the one who wants to come clean about their involvement in the girl's suicide, and the "bad" girl, who is now an up-and-coming actress who doesn't want to jeopardize her career. They argue, the bad girl is really mean to the good girl, who storms off, distraught.
SPOILER ALERT -- If you really think that you might actually watch this film and you do not want the end to be ruined, skip the next paragraph.
The killer shows up, the bad girl runs to get the good girl only to find that she has committed suicide just like the first girl. The killer gets the bad girl, The End.
I left out big chunks and important details of the story but my point is that this is almost an anti-horror horror film, there are some scary moments but, mostly, it is about the girls sitting around, talking about feeling guilty or denying their guilt about what they did. Definitely not been-there-done-that --- whether or not it will translate into a successful film is another question.
Years ago, when I was writing film reviews for a national magazine, I got a “fan” letter from the director of a horror film that I liked and wrote a good review of. The director thanked me profusely and expressed appreciation for me because I really “got” what he was trying to do with the film. We stayed in touch, became really friendly, when this project emerged, he asked me to take a crack at the screenplay and I jumped at the chance. He is under no obligation to me to use my screenplay, he just asked if I wanted to do something with his premise and I took the challenge. With great trepidation, I sent the screenplay to the director, knowing that he wanted to make a horror film but that, what I wrote was more of a talky, indie art film with sporadic horror elements. He wrote to me halfway through reading the screenplay and told me that he plans to shoot it. I believe “shadow.man” will be produced in Houston early next year. Be afraid? Be very afraid?
A few nights ago, I delivered the screenplay for what I call a non-scary horror movie. I like horror movies and I like slasher films but I feel that it has all been done before, we all know what is going to happen: much of the time, a group of kids is going to find themselves in a situation where they are getting killed off one by one, end of story.
For me, the "horror" elements, the stalking and killing scenes have been so over-done that it's become monotonous, not very scary and, too much of the time, just an excuse for the f//x guys to go wild with gore -- who cares about the killing anymore?
Let me digress and talk about sex for awhile. Sex, yes, that got your attention. I usually fast forward through sex scenes. Why? Because I know what happens when people have sex. No matter how many variations we can come up with, it usually comes down to some version of Insert “Flap A into Slot B.” Yes, characters having sex is often an important plot element but actually seeing them have sex is usually superfluous and, when you get right down to it, gratuitous. Put it this way, I haven’t seen many sex scenes that further my understanding of the characters. They had sex, fine. They did it this way and that way --- probably unimportant.
I do not watch porn. I really have no need to watch people doing it. Bill Cosby once said “When I am hungry, I don’t watch a film of two people eating.” However, when I worked in a video store, one of my responsibilities was fixing broken VHS tapes. I would cut out the damaged section of the movie, splice the tape back together and test it out to see if it would play.
Sometimes I had to work on porn tapes and I would have to watch them in order to gauge the success of my repair work. So, here I was, for the first time, with a pile of porn tapes that I had to look at and what did I do? I fast-forwarded through the sex scenes and watched the “dramatic” material in between the sex, looking for acting and good dialogue. Needless to say, I found very little of either -- acting or good dialogue.
So, it is sort of the same thing with me and horror films. What I like to see in horror films are the non-horror moments, character development, who these people are and how they are dealing with the situation ---- something that I rarely see. So that is sort of what I set out to do in this horror screenplay.
Bear with me: It is about a group of bitchy, popular high school girls who bully an outcast, a lonely, awkward, artsy "weird" girl and who commits suicide.
The story zips ahead four or five years and the girls are now "adults", not really friends with each other anymore, largely out of touch until one of them dies mysteriously. They all reunite at the funeral and hang out for awhile afterward.
Old feelings are stirred when they discover that there might be a connection to the their friends murder and the suicide of the girl in high school or that it could just be a coincidence. They all start becoming acutely aware of this event from their past --- stories about teen suicide, internet bullying etc. everywhere they go. One of them even stumbles upon a tribute video to the girl on You Tube.
Then another girl dies. Then another. One girl really believes that there is a connection and that, if they go to the police they might be able to figure out who the killer is and get protection but the other girl(s) don't want anyone to know their story etc., etc.
Eventually, it comes down to the "good" girl, the one who wants to come clean about their involvement in the girl's suicide, and the "bad" girl, who is now an up-and-coming actress who doesn't want to jeopardize her career. They argue, the bad girl is really mean to the good girl, who storms off, distraught.
SPOILER ALERT -- If you really think that you might actually watch this film and you do not want the end to be ruined, skip the next paragraph.
The killer shows up, the bad girl runs to get the good girl only to find that she has committed suicide just like the first girl. The killer gets the bad girl, The End.
I left out big chunks and important details of the story but my point is that this is almost an anti-horror horror film, there are some scary moments but, mostly, it is about the girls sitting around, talking about feeling guilty or denying their guilt about what they did. Definitely not been-there-done-that --- whether or not it will translate into a successful film is another question.
Years ago, when I was writing film reviews for a national magazine, I got a “fan” letter from the director of a horror film that I liked and wrote a good review of. The director thanked me profusely and expressed appreciation for me because I really “got” what he was trying to do with the film. We stayed in touch, became really friendly, when this project emerged, he asked me to take a crack at the screenplay and I jumped at the chance. He is under no obligation to me to use my screenplay, he just asked if I wanted to do something with his premise and I took the challenge. With great trepidation, I sent the screenplay to the director, knowing that he wanted to make a horror film but that, what I wrote was more of a talky, indie art film with sporadic horror elements. He wrote to me halfway through reading the screenplay and told me that he plans to shoot it. I believe “shadow.man” will be produced in Houston early next year. Be afraid? Be very afraid?
Friday, November 12, 2010
Not Waiting To Exhale
I should be grading my students screenplays but I am not. I should be grading the revisions of the screenplays that I graded last week but I am not. I should be working on at least one of the three feature screenplays that I have committed to write but I am not. I should be working on the revisions of the feature that I doctored over the summer but I am not. I should be working on one short screenplay and revising another but I am not.
I should not be holding my breath, thinking anxiously about what is going on in L.A. but I am. I should know better, I have been down this road before. People have expressed interest in producing my work in the past. One-time Indie hot-shot production company InDigEnt was interested in my favorite screenplay, Incorporated, years ago and I even had informal commitments from name talent but it never happened. Aftermath was optioned last year, the option expires in almost two months, the producer told me that they were hoping to shoot it this fall, which, last time I checked, is sort of around now. No word on any Aftermath production. Come January I could be faced with an offer to re-option it and send it back into development oblivion for who-knows-how-long or I could regain the rights and try to make it happen on my own, once again. No, I have learned to not hold my breath.
And yet, here I sit, grasping for air as my mind runs wild. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. I do have work to do, stuff to keep me busy and, if I ever feel idle time creeping in, there is always Facebook.
I had a speaking engagement last Thursday night. I’d compiled a bunch of clips from movies depicting inter-faith relationships between Jews and others. First I gave a little speech about movies, the film industry, relationships and cultural identity, next I presented the clips and then I moderated a discussion between an audience of nearly 300 people and a panel of rabbis and people in “mixed” relationships. Good times. It went well, I was “on”, knew my stuff, engaged, entertained and even got quite a few laughs.
I got home later that night, checked e-mail and found one from a former student who works in development for a fairly prominent producer-director, a guy who has had his fair share of hit films, worked with big stars and so on. The last time that I spoke with this student, he asked if I would be interested in adapting a beloved children’s classic for this director -as if it has not been made a number of times already. No, I would not be interested in adapting this book for the screen. “Yes”, I enthusiastically replied, “I could really get into doing that.” It never happened. Good thing I wasn’t holding my breath.
The e-mail last week was not about adapting a beloved children’s classic:
From: R**** T**** <****@gmail.com>
To: David Greenberg
Sent: Thu, November 4, 2010 10:08:23 PM
Subject: low budget noir
Hey David:
Thanks for the birthday wishes.
I was wondering if you had any unproduced low-budget noir scripts? W***** is looking for something low-budget while he's in L.A.
--
R**** T*****
S******** Studios
(323) ***-****
If I did not have a low-budget noir screenplay sitting around, I would not be writing this post. A few years ago, an author hired me to adapt his steamy, sleazy novel about a beautiful young gold-digger, her much older billionaire husband and the guys who kidnap her into a screenplay. Even he acknowledged that my version of the story was much better than the book that got published.
I know in my heart that I have done all I can do: I have written a really good, deliriously nasty low-budget neo-noir that can be easily adapted to their specifications, I have sent it in -- heck, I even cut this student a little break a few years ago when he needed a decent grade from me in order to graduate. So, no, I am not holding my breath, not letting my mind run wild with fantasies of this being “the one” that finally makes it happen. No, I am not doing any of those things but I am not doing much else. Maybe it’s time to get back to those other student screenplays because you never know...
I should not be holding my breath, thinking anxiously about what is going on in L.A. but I am. I should know better, I have been down this road before. People have expressed interest in producing my work in the past. One-time Indie hot-shot production company InDigEnt was interested in my favorite screenplay, Incorporated, years ago and I even had informal commitments from name talent but it never happened. Aftermath was optioned last year, the option expires in almost two months, the producer told me that they were hoping to shoot it this fall, which, last time I checked, is sort of around now. No word on any Aftermath production. Come January I could be faced with an offer to re-option it and send it back into development oblivion for who-knows-how-long or I could regain the rights and try to make it happen on my own, once again. No, I have learned to not hold my breath.
And yet, here I sit, grasping for air as my mind runs wild. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. I do have work to do, stuff to keep me busy and, if I ever feel idle time creeping in, there is always Facebook.
I had a speaking engagement last Thursday night. I’d compiled a bunch of clips from movies depicting inter-faith relationships between Jews and others. First I gave a little speech about movies, the film industry, relationships and cultural identity, next I presented the clips and then I moderated a discussion between an audience of nearly 300 people and a panel of rabbis and people in “mixed” relationships. Good times. It went well, I was “on”, knew my stuff, engaged, entertained and even got quite a few laughs.
I got home later that night, checked e-mail and found one from a former student who works in development for a fairly prominent producer-director, a guy who has had his fair share of hit films, worked with big stars and so on. The last time that I spoke with this student, he asked if I would be interested in adapting a beloved children’s classic for this director -as if it has not been made a number of times already. No, I would not be interested in adapting this book for the screen. “Yes”, I enthusiastically replied, “I could really get into doing that.” It never happened. Good thing I wasn’t holding my breath.
The e-mail last week was not about adapting a beloved children’s classic:
From: R**** T**** <****@gmail.com>
To: David Greenberg
Sent: Thu, November 4, 2010 10:08:23 PM
Subject: low budget noir
Hey David:
Thanks for the birthday wishes.
I was wondering if you had any unproduced low-budget noir scripts? W***** is looking for something low-budget while he's in L.A.
--
R**** T*****
S******** Studios
(323) ***-****
If I did not have a low-budget noir screenplay sitting around, I would not be writing this post. A few years ago, an author hired me to adapt his steamy, sleazy novel about a beautiful young gold-digger, her much older billionaire husband and the guys who kidnap her into a screenplay. Even he acknowledged that my version of the story was much better than the book that got published.
I know in my heart that I have done all I can do: I have written a really good, deliriously nasty low-budget neo-noir that can be easily adapted to their specifications, I have sent it in -- heck, I even cut this student a little break a few years ago when he needed a decent grade from me in order to graduate. So, no, I am not holding my breath, not letting my mind run wild with fantasies of this being “the one” that finally makes it happen. No, I am not doing any of those things but I am not doing much else. Maybe it’s time to get back to those other student screenplays because you never know...
Thursday, September 9, 2010
"Spring Break" Summer Vacation
In 2010, I have doctored no less than four feature length screenplays, written two features from scratch and written a short history of photography as part of The Daily Book Of Photography” that will be published in hardback on October 1rst.
___________________________________________________________________
August 2010
I woke up in the dumps on a Sunday a few weeks ago, depressed, defeated and demoralized for some reason. Not for some reason, some random reason. I decided to give up, to finally close the book on this stupid, pointless dream of being a writer or a filmmaker or, dare I even mention that I had considered doing both --- writing and making movies?
Everywhere I turn, it seems like someone I know is making a film or knows someone who is making a film and that’s what I want to do, what I have wanted to do for so long and I am not now, nor have I ever really been doing it.
Keep in mind that I was in a really bad mood, just feeling bad. I know that it is all crap. With all due respect, many of the films that have been made by some of the people I know, are quite unlikely to go anywhere -- maybe a festival screening here or there, but, more likely, straight to dvd oblivion if they go anywhere at all.
Of course, that is the dream, or at least part of it, anyway: make a film and have people see it. Sure, making a film, having millions of people pay millions of dollars to see it, would be pretty nice too but is, at this point, maybe unrealistic for me (and others) anyway. Don’t get me started on the topic of the movies that millions of people are paying millions of dollars to see.
Anyway, I’d had enough. I had spent the past few months struggling through a re-write or re-conceiving of a screenplay by someone else who feels that he has a good chance of getting it made. Why was it such a struggle? It was a half-decent screenplay to begin with and, after months and months of working on it, I am not sure that I can say that it is notably better, different or even good. I did not feel especially creative or inspired while working on it.
So, I simply don’t even know if I can write anymore, if I ever could write, if I should even bother trying. I submitted query after query, responded to ad after ad, really worked the system as best as I could but never got any bites, not even any responses. I decided to call it quits.
Okay, you know that this is just me whining, is not the complete truth. By my estimate, since 2003 or so, I have probably sent out 8000 e-mails to producers, directors, production companies -- some of who were actually soliciting writers. Of the 8000 e-mails, I have probably had 200 responses, of the 200 responses, I have gotten about 20 jobs, of the 20 jobs, fewer than 10 paid anything and, in the end, 1 feature film that I was hired to write was produced, albeit with a screenplay dramatically altered by the director and 1 original screenplay has been optioned.
Okay, so maybe I have nothing to be embarrassed about, I have beaten some considerable odds but I do feel that I have earned the right to be demoralized.
Later that Sunday night, not exactly out of the blue, I was asked to write a draft of “Spring Break Massacre 2” and, believe it or not, getting the gig really changed everything --- well, if not everything, a lot of things, primarily my attitude.
No, “Spring Break Massacre 2” is unlikely to make anyone forget “Citizen Kane” but I was really psyched to be writing it and enthusiastically threw myself into the project. I was not going to be much money from it but it was better than no money. A family film that I wrote -unwisely, for deferred pay- was supposed to shoot this summer and, had the investor not backed out in pre-production, it would have paid me almost ten times as much as “Spring Break Massacre 2.”
However, at this point, it was not about the money, it is really about the work and, oddly, I felt invigorated, like I had gotten a second chance, like I might be able to put off quitting for awhile.
So, I got a treatment from the director of “SBM2” and got down to business, felt “it” while writing and banged out half of the screenplay in a matter of days. Now, if anyone actually reads this blog, I am going to guess that this reader has not seen the original “Spring Break Massacre.” Shot in just a few days, for a few thousand dollars and then mired in a prolonged legal battle, it was finally released to DVD this year and, apparently, is doing killer business, especially overseas and nothing inspires sequels like a solid return on investment from the original.
As I was turning in my pages in ten page blocks, I was getting regular updates from the director as he was meeting with producers and investors. Time was getting tight and, fast as I was writing, they needed a script a.s.a.p. but, it seems, more than my script, he really wanted creative input and feedback, to be sure he was doing the right thing. Midway through writing my screenplay, I heard that they had made changes to the original treatment and commissioned another draft of the screenplay by another writer but, the director told me, I was to keep writing my version.
The second treatment was written, approved and then a third treatment was written, this time by the producers and investors who had decided to shoot for a comedy with slasher film elements rather than the slasher film with comedic elements that I was initially asked to write. A new screenplay was written, sent to me for my opinion and I really liked it.
There are now one and a half lines of my dialogue and a scene that was adapted from one of mine by in the new version and I am cool with it all. This is the way the business works and, in the end, I predict that “Spring Break Massacre 2” will do even better than the first one. My credit went from “co-writer” to “additional dialogue by” to, finally, in part at my suggestion, “special thanks to...” Shooting starts November 15th.
So, it was back to the dumps for me. No fat credit on a likely dvd “hit”, no paycheck, no new prospects on the horizon -- though the SBM/SBM2 director has “Bait & Tackle”, a screenplay that he asked me to write last year.
September 2010
I am currently writing a short film for another director. The guy who gave me my first screenwriting jobs back in 1996 just asked me if I am interested in collaborating on a feature idea that he has. I am open to anything, expecting nothing but hoping for something.
At one point last week, I found myself chatting with three people at the same time on facebook. One guy was a twenty-something 2010 film school grad who is finding life in the “real world” to be a bit of a wake-up call. Another guy was a thirty-something guy with one feature under his belt and a new short film that he was expressing anxiety about. The third guy was a forty-something successful commercial director who is eager to do more, to make features and has a lot to offer but is frustrated by his experiences with “the industry.”
So, there I was, licking my wounds, just about at rock bottom with nothing to lose, not much to look forward to and what did I find myself doing? I listened to people, I was there for them, present, supportive and encouraging when they needed someone to talk to and, while I am not going to support my family or realize my dreams by doing this kind of thing, I felt good.
___________________________________________________________________
August 2010
I woke up in the dumps on a Sunday a few weeks ago, depressed, defeated and demoralized for some reason. Not for some reason, some random reason. I decided to give up, to finally close the book on this stupid, pointless dream of being a writer or a filmmaker or, dare I even mention that I had considered doing both --- writing and making movies?
Everywhere I turn, it seems like someone I know is making a film or knows someone who is making a film and that’s what I want to do, what I have wanted to do for so long and I am not now, nor have I ever really been doing it.
Keep in mind that I was in a really bad mood, just feeling bad. I know that it is all crap. With all due respect, many of the films that have been made by some of the people I know, are quite unlikely to go anywhere -- maybe a festival screening here or there, but, more likely, straight to dvd oblivion if they go anywhere at all.
Of course, that is the dream, or at least part of it, anyway: make a film and have people see it. Sure, making a film, having millions of people pay millions of dollars to see it, would be pretty nice too but is, at this point, maybe unrealistic for me (and others) anyway. Don’t get me started on the topic of the movies that millions of people are paying millions of dollars to see.
Anyway, I’d had enough. I had spent the past few months struggling through a re-write or re-conceiving of a screenplay by someone else who feels that he has a good chance of getting it made. Why was it such a struggle? It was a half-decent screenplay to begin with and, after months and months of working on it, I am not sure that I can say that it is notably better, different or even good. I did not feel especially creative or inspired while working on it.
So, I simply don’t even know if I can write anymore, if I ever could write, if I should even bother trying. I submitted query after query, responded to ad after ad, really worked the system as best as I could but never got any bites, not even any responses. I decided to call it quits.
Okay, you know that this is just me whining, is not the complete truth. By my estimate, since 2003 or so, I have probably sent out 8000 e-mails to producers, directors, production companies -- some of who were actually soliciting writers. Of the 8000 e-mails, I have probably had 200 responses, of the 200 responses, I have gotten about 20 jobs, of the 20 jobs, fewer than 10 paid anything and, in the end, 1 feature film that I was hired to write was produced, albeit with a screenplay dramatically altered by the director and 1 original screenplay has been optioned.
Okay, so maybe I have nothing to be embarrassed about, I have beaten some considerable odds but I do feel that I have earned the right to be demoralized.
Later that Sunday night, not exactly out of the blue, I was asked to write a draft of “Spring Break Massacre 2” and, believe it or not, getting the gig really changed everything --- well, if not everything, a lot of things, primarily my attitude.
No, “Spring Break Massacre 2” is unlikely to make anyone forget “Citizen Kane” but I was really psyched to be writing it and enthusiastically threw myself into the project. I was not going to be much money from it but it was better than no money. A family film that I wrote -unwisely, for deferred pay- was supposed to shoot this summer and, had the investor not backed out in pre-production, it would have paid me almost ten times as much as “Spring Break Massacre 2.”
However, at this point, it was not about the money, it is really about the work and, oddly, I felt invigorated, like I had gotten a second chance, like I might be able to put off quitting for awhile.
So, I got a treatment from the director of “SBM2” and got down to business, felt “it” while writing and banged out half of the screenplay in a matter of days. Now, if anyone actually reads this blog, I am going to guess that this reader has not seen the original “Spring Break Massacre.” Shot in just a few days, for a few thousand dollars and then mired in a prolonged legal battle, it was finally released to DVD this year and, apparently, is doing killer business, especially overseas and nothing inspires sequels like a solid return on investment from the original.
As I was turning in my pages in ten page blocks, I was getting regular updates from the director as he was meeting with producers and investors. Time was getting tight and, fast as I was writing, they needed a script a.s.a.p. but, it seems, more than my script, he really wanted creative input and feedback, to be sure he was doing the right thing. Midway through writing my screenplay, I heard that they had made changes to the original treatment and commissioned another draft of the screenplay by another writer but, the director told me, I was to keep writing my version.
The second treatment was written, approved and then a third treatment was written, this time by the producers and investors who had decided to shoot for a comedy with slasher film elements rather than the slasher film with comedic elements that I was initially asked to write. A new screenplay was written, sent to me for my opinion and I really liked it.
There are now one and a half lines of my dialogue and a scene that was adapted from one of mine by in the new version and I am cool with it all. This is the way the business works and, in the end, I predict that “Spring Break Massacre 2” will do even better than the first one. My credit went from “co-writer” to “additional dialogue by” to, finally, in part at my suggestion, “special thanks to...” Shooting starts November 15th.
So, it was back to the dumps for me. No fat credit on a likely dvd “hit”, no paycheck, no new prospects on the horizon -- though the SBM/SBM2 director has “Bait & Tackle”, a screenplay that he asked me to write last year.
September 2010
I am currently writing a short film for another director. The guy who gave me my first screenwriting jobs back in 1996 just asked me if I am interested in collaborating on a feature idea that he has. I am open to anything, expecting nothing but hoping for something.
At one point last week, I found myself chatting with three people at the same time on facebook. One guy was a twenty-something 2010 film school grad who is finding life in the “real world” to be a bit of a wake-up call. Another guy was a thirty-something guy with one feature under his belt and a new short film that he was expressing anxiety about. The third guy was a forty-something successful commercial director who is eager to do more, to make features and has a lot to offer but is frustrated by his experiences with “the industry.”
So, there I was, licking my wounds, just about at rock bottom with nothing to lose, not much to look forward to and what did I find myself doing? I listened to people, I was there for them, present, supportive and encouraging when they needed someone to talk to and, while I am not going to support my family or realize my dreams by doing this kind of thing, I felt good.
Monday, July 12, 2010
1 in 4000
Why bother anymore? What’s the point of trying to make art, to be creative, to even dream about being successful, let alone earning a living doing something I love? These are questions that I feel that I should be asking myself regularly, if not every day but I am not. For some reason I am still trying to do it.
I once heard Barbra Streisand relay an anecdote about a young, aspiring actor asking her “Should I be an an actor?” to which she replied, “If you have to ask, the answer is ‘no’.”
As I have probably written before, I always just assumed that filmmaking and screenwriting were youthful pursuits that I would eventually grow out of when it came time to become and adult and make a living. But it hasn’t happened, I haven’t grown out of those dreams and I am not exactly making a living as an adjunct professor. I am basically getting by, still scrambling for work semester-to-semester, getting a screenwriting gig here, a book gig there (the photography book that I contributed to comes out in the fall) and I even have a speaking engagement coming up, moderating a discussion on depictions of inter-faith relationships in the movies.
Anyway, to “promote my name”, “get myself out ‘there’” (and see a lot of movies for free) I contribute reviews to IndieTalk.com. The last statistic that I saw on the matter, said that, at any given time, there are approximately 4000 indie films in production around the country.
When I read the trade magazines and check out IndieWire, MovieMaker and I look at the actors, directors and producers who I am friends with on facebook, all of whom have this thing and that going on and I imagine all of the actors, directors and producers I am not friends with, 4000 films seems an accurate number --- even if less than 400 will ever see the light of day, play a festival or two much less get some kind of distribution regardless of quality. Of the dozens, if not hundreds of titles that have passed through my dvd player over the past five years or so, I have seen some really good, worthy films wither away without ever finding distribution and I have seen barely competent productions secure solid deals.
So, last Saturday I received and watched a film by a young writer/director/cinematographer from South Jersey. “No Footing” is about a young woman who, eighteen months after graduating from college with a degree in fine art, finds herself working in a copy shop, designing business cards and flyers, stuck in a rut, watching helplessly as friends from high school get real jobs and start families. The film is by no means great but it is a decent little low-budget indie with nice production values, camerawork and acting, better than most of the films I have had to review and, more than anything, I really related to it on many levels.
Watching a film about a girl just out of college, full of hopes, dreams and ambitions, it was pretty hard to avoid looking inward and back at the twenty-three years since I graduated, wondering what I have done with my life, how much I have accomplished - or not.
Don’t think, for a moment, that I am complaining. I have a good life, a beautiful family, nice house in a great neighborhood and there is some money trickling in.
Back to hopes and dreams? Okay, I can’t exactly complain there either. In 1988, after working on two feature films, back to back with only one day off between them and, somewhere in there seeing Woody Allen’s “Crimes And Misdemeanors”, I decided that I wanted to be a screenwriter.
A lot of people want to be screenwriters and part of the way I earn a living is by teaching people how to be screenwriters. It’s a hard field to break into and, if I haven’t exactly broken into it, I have made a little dent in the door. If everyone who wanted to be a screenwriter, was actually working as a screenwriter, there might be a whole more than 4000 a year movies out there.
I had a volley of e-mails back and forth with the director of “No Footing” and tried to be encouraging as he told me that the film has been rejected from festival after festival.
I am re-writing a screenplay for someone who has a good chance of getting it made. When I finish that screenplay, I am writing a short comedy. A filmmaker whose films I have not liked in the past, who sent me a screenplay to read that I wound up trashing, has asked me how much I would charge to re-write a screenplay of his that is likely to find funding, I told him and he agreed to my rate. Who knows where any of this will go, if it will amount to anything? I do not know but, for some reason, that does not stop me from moving forward.
Does “No Footing” sound interesting? It might. Do you want to see it? You can’t, it has not yet gotten a distribution deal and there is no guarantee that it ever will but there is hope.
I once heard Barbra Streisand relay an anecdote about a young, aspiring actor asking her “Should I be an an actor?” to which she replied, “If you have to ask, the answer is ‘no’.”
As I have probably written before, I always just assumed that filmmaking and screenwriting were youthful pursuits that I would eventually grow out of when it came time to become and adult and make a living. But it hasn’t happened, I haven’t grown out of those dreams and I am not exactly making a living as an adjunct professor. I am basically getting by, still scrambling for work semester-to-semester, getting a screenwriting gig here, a book gig there (the photography book that I contributed to comes out in the fall) and I even have a speaking engagement coming up, moderating a discussion on depictions of inter-faith relationships in the movies.
Anyway, to “promote my name”, “get myself out ‘there’” (and see a lot of movies for free) I contribute reviews to IndieTalk.com. The last statistic that I saw on the matter, said that, at any given time, there are approximately 4000 indie films in production around the country.
When I read the trade magazines and check out IndieWire, MovieMaker and I look at the actors, directors and producers who I am friends with on facebook, all of whom have this thing and that going on and I imagine all of the actors, directors and producers I am not friends with, 4000 films seems an accurate number --- even if less than 400 will ever see the light of day, play a festival or two much less get some kind of distribution regardless of quality. Of the dozens, if not hundreds of titles that have passed through my dvd player over the past five years or so, I have seen some really good, worthy films wither away without ever finding distribution and I have seen barely competent productions secure solid deals.
So, last Saturday I received and watched a film by a young writer/director/cinematographer from South Jersey. “No Footing” is about a young woman who, eighteen months after graduating from college with a degree in fine art, finds herself working in a copy shop, designing business cards and flyers, stuck in a rut, watching helplessly as friends from high school get real jobs and start families. The film is by no means great but it is a decent little low-budget indie with nice production values, camerawork and acting, better than most of the films I have had to review and, more than anything, I really related to it on many levels.
Watching a film about a girl just out of college, full of hopes, dreams and ambitions, it was pretty hard to avoid looking inward and back at the twenty-three years since I graduated, wondering what I have done with my life, how much I have accomplished - or not.
Don’t think, for a moment, that I am complaining. I have a good life, a beautiful family, nice house in a great neighborhood and there is some money trickling in.
Back to hopes and dreams? Okay, I can’t exactly complain there either. In 1988, after working on two feature films, back to back with only one day off between them and, somewhere in there seeing Woody Allen’s “Crimes And Misdemeanors”, I decided that I wanted to be a screenwriter.
A lot of people want to be screenwriters and part of the way I earn a living is by teaching people how to be screenwriters. It’s a hard field to break into and, if I haven’t exactly broken into it, I have made a little dent in the door. If everyone who wanted to be a screenwriter, was actually working as a screenwriter, there might be a whole more than 4000 a year movies out there.
I had a volley of e-mails back and forth with the director of “No Footing” and tried to be encouraging as he told me that the film has been rejected from festival after festival.
I am re-writing a screenplay for someone who has a good chance of getting it made. When I finish that screenplay, I am writing a short comedy. A filmmaker whose films I have not liked in the past, who sent me a screenplay to read that I wound up trashing, has asked me how much I would charge to re-write a screenplay of his that is likely to find funding, I told him and he agreed to my rate. Who knows where any of this will go, if it will amount to anything? I do not know but, for some reason, that does not stop me from moving forward.
Does “No Footing” sound interesting? It might. Do you want to see it? You can’t, it has not yet gotten a distribution deal and there is no guarantee that it ever will but there is hope.
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