November 15, 2007 – 9:11 am
Writers are trying to position themselves to gain proper compensation for new media and to keep producers from taking back what writers deserve. The negotiatons didn’t go well. Now we’re on strike. Simple. But actually, it’s not so simple. First, read this, written by my buddy Ryan, one of the hardest working guys in show […]
November 15, 2007 – 8:21 am
This has been making the rounds. It’s nicely assembled and pulls the words straight from the mouths of executives and turns them back on them, not unlike the Donald Rumsfeld stuff we saw a few years ago (“I never said there were weapons of mass destruction” “Oh really? Let’s watch the tape.” “That was out […]
October 11, 2007 – 9:08 am
The last time there was a full-fledged Writer’s Guild strike, I wasn’t in the Writer’s Guild. That was many many years ago. I remember hearing about the strike and then all of a sudden, Dark Shadows with Ben Cross was on TV. And while I’m in the Guild now, I haven’t actually been an active […]
October 10, 2007 – 8:15 am
The monster is the novel. It’s time I stopped planning to write it. It’s time I stopped talking about writing it. It’s time I stopped pondering what to write about. I have options. There are so many things I could write. So many stories to put down into prose. It’s time to get going. But […]
September 1, 2007 – 7:26 am
From this morning’s dream log: “His combination of social humor, gallows humor and towering, lizard-man humor seemed inappropriate at the hospital bedside. Especially this morning.” I can’t help but wonder what it is about that morning that makes towering lizard-man humor less acceptable than others.
January 2, 2007 – 10:01 am
As the end of the year approaches, so does Six In 2006, my big plan to complete six screenplays in one year. Here’s a quick recap. January & February: rewrite STRANGE ANGELS. Done. Though, it needs yet another pass. Can’t quite seem to crack that one. It’s difficult and rather large in scope. March & […]
December 4, 2006 – 12:04 pm
The aimlessness of the blog continues for now. Want proof? Here’s a list of actual subtitles taken from martial arts movies. Enjoy them for now. I’ll tell some amusing tales about Hollywood later. When I shake this malaise. Dunno where these come from, but they’re presumably “authentic” inasmuch as a certain translation of martial arts […]
October 8, 2006 – 9:19 am
Haven’t been posting as often lately. People are tired of seeing the same post for three and four day stretches. There’s a reason for that. Three reasons, actually. The first has to do with that flowchart of the previous post. I’m racing at light speed through the new script. I’ll be wrapping it up this […]
October 7, 2006 – 9:55 am
I’m working on the finale of BLOOD & GLASS. In fact, it’s the finale of the whole trilogy. The epic, final battle scene unfolds in a downtown Los Angeles high-rise. It’s gonna be huge, like DIE HARD in a … well, in a building. But wait,we have to break it down. What’s really going on? […]
October 4, 2006 – 8:00 am
Bookmark this link on your Blackberry. Okay, now if you’re ever swept out of an explosively decompressing airliner at 35,000 feet, you’ll have plenty of time to research how to survive the fall. … You know it occurs to me now that we’re always talking about “surviving the fall” when we talk about those times […]
September 8, 2006 – 3:17 pm
So I get a little item in the mail yesterday. It’s from the Austin Film Festival. Remember this? I sent them ELEMENT because I could really use the prize money and it’s the world’s greatest unproduced script. I won’t provide you with the entire text of the letter, just the part that counts: To summarize, […]
August 30, 2006 – 9:36 am
Website traffic is through the roof all of a sudden. It’s the ol’ Black Dahlia again. Do an image search for “Black Dahlia” and you get this. The very first picture on the page is on my own site. Click on that and you’re pulled into my page about the delicate skin. I wrote the […]
I guarantee you my script is better. From Variety: ROME — The world preem of Brian De Palma’s James Ellroy adaptation “The Black Dahlia” will open the 63rd Venice Film Festival in competition on Aug. 30. Based on the 1947 L.A. murder of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short and focusing on the investigation by two former […]
I’m at home. It’s past midnight. I’ve had a few glasses of Dry Creek Zin. It’s been a long day. Today, I work on Blood & Mist, I nap, I stop by the store for some fresh tomatoes, some basil and some garlic, I work on a client’s website, I walk around Hollywood with my […]
I’m always going on about how glad I am that I learned English from the ground up. I can’t fathom the difficulty one must face trying to learn our sloppy, fickle, inconsistent tongue when one comes from, say, Poland or Mexico or Saturn. To that end, I’m adding a new category to Hollywoodland. WORDZ will […]
