It's Thursday.
I started my "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story" promotions Monday.
I go away for half the day to spend time with an old friend, and I take a casual moment to look at Mania today to see if it's been updated since 6:30 this morning.
And what do I find? Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" is being adapted for television.
Hell, I just don't know anymore.
PS - I was asked why does this bother me so?
It's simple: I've always tried to do what no one else was doing and had some good fortune at finding things no one else was touching -- and the instant I'd send mine out, from right out of nowhere would come an announcement that someone else in the biz was fast tracking their project.
So I'd simply abandon mine. I've no interest in being a copycat.
It's just annoying and has been for the last six years.
The biggest problem with Hollywood has been "everything has to be like everything else," which is what throttled the Abrams reboot of "Star Trek."
I follow my own guiding star(s), not what everyone else does.
Showing posts with label sweet dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sweet dreams. Show all posts
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Told Ya So
So I open this morning's newspaper, head straight for the comics, and after turning one page I read "Pickles."
The first two panels confirm what I've been saying since late August of 2007 -- the Sandman is an entity we've left untapped for a long time, which is part of the reason I wrote "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story."
A pile of envelopes went out yesterday for "Summertime Blues." Another will be leaving for "Sweet Dreams" in the near future.
Take notice -- just like with my Igor\Frankenstein\B-movie monster parody series "Life and Times of Igor," I again stumbled upon something modern day America is just waking up to.
And, again, it's always someone else with connections that gets noticed first.
2004 for Igor's antics, 2007 for the Sandman.
I'm not saying I'm psychic, I just happen to have fallen into the right place ahead of time, and was completely trampled on in the rush by everyone else catching up.
The first two panels confirm what I've been saying since late August of 2007 -- the Sandman is an entity we've left untapped for a long time, which is part of the reason I wrote "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story."
A pile of envelopes went out yesterday for "Summertime Blues." Another will be leaving for "Sweet Dreams" in the near future.
Take notice -- just like with my Igor\Frankenstein\B-movie monster parody series "Life and Times of Igor," I again stumbled upon something modern day America is just waking up to.
And, again, it's always someone else with connections that gets noticed first.
2004 for Igor's antics, 2007 for the Sandman.
I'm not saying I'm psychic, I just happen to have fallen into the right place ahead of time, and was completely trampled on in the rush by everyone else catching up.
Game Over -- Continue?
It's 2010.
In the fall of 1999 I started this game. Fall of last year I reached a major burnout point and shut the game off.
I went back to work in the factory where I spent a few summers and, two nights in, was injured. It's the first time I ever had to quit a job. That was December, and I'm still dealing with the after effects.
So after a lot of rest, some medication, and a general reassessment of how I handle my life I've decided to return to the game.
As usual, I don't expect to win, but as long as you keep playing you'll find you get better and, one day, you too can save the princess. Or the blue eyed boy. Whichever you prefer.
So this is the reason for my absence, and why my MySpace and this particular blog site needs a facelift, both visually and in output. I even had to slow down at Mania, but I stay in touch with my fellow Maniacs. My Facebook site stays active, though I won't let the general public in for that.
So promotions will begin again for "Summertime Blues," "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story," and others as they are completed.
The pace here will be a slower one than in the past. But, in the meantime, here's a few things I've recently come across you could potentially enjoy:
Maburaho - The Magic Collection (anime)
Newcastle (indie flick)
You've Got Geek On You (podcast featuring friend and fellow Maniac Bob "The Movie Lord" Trate)
And, since they're a lot of fun, I'll supply links to my "Twilight" parody blog entries from Mania. I'll even include Maelstrom's, since he's hilarious as well.
A final note -- as Mania now features a profanity filter, whenever any entry is naughty by nature it will appear here, and a link to said entry will be provided at Mania. Said filter was instituted not to keep us from using bad words, it was designed to keep the porn spammers out.
The Maniacs have found creative ways around this by swearing in new and interesting ways.
--Starlight out.
New Moon Parody: Little Red Riding Bella Meets The Big Bad Wolf (links included for "Jacob Unleashed" and Maelstrom's "Midsummer Twilight Sex Scene")
Twilight Parody
In the fall of 1999 I started this game. Fall of last year I reached a major burnout point and shut the game off.
I went back to work in the factory where I spent a few summers and, two nights in, was injured. It's the first time I ever had to quit a job. That was December, and I'm still dealing with the after effects.
So after a lot of rest, some medication, and a general reassessment of how I handle my life I've decided to return to the game.
As usual, I don't expect to win, but as long as you keep playing you'll find you get better and, one day, you too can save the princess. Or the blue eyed boy. Whichever you prefer.
So this is the reason for my absence, and why my MySpace and this particular blog site needs a facelift, both visually and in output. I even had to slow down at Mania, but I stay in touch with my fellow Maniacs. My Facebook site stays active, though I won't let the general public in for that.
So promotions will begin again for "Summertime Blues," "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story," and others as they are completed.
The pace here will be a slower one than in the past. But, in the meantime, here's a few things I've recently come across you could potentially enjoy:
Maburaho - The Magic Collection (anime)
Newcastle (indie flick)
You've Got Geek On You (podcast featuring friend and fellow Maniac Bob "The Movie Lord" Trate)
And, since they're a lot of fun, I'll supply links to my "Twilight" parody blog entries from Mania. I'll even include Maelstrom's, since he's hilarious as well.
A final note -- as Mania now features a profanity filter, whenever any entry is naughty by nature it will appear here, and a link to said entry will be provided at Mania. Said filter was instituted not to keep us from using bad words, it was designed to keep the porn spammers out.
The Maniacs have found creative ways around this by swearing in new and interesting ways.
--Starlight out.
New Moon Parody: Little Red Riding Bella Meets The Big Bad Wolf (links included for "Jacob Unleashed" and Maelstrom's "Midsummer Twilight Sex Scene")
Twilight Parody
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Not Fade Away...
Well it seems I'm reaching a moment in life where I must step away from the computer for awhile, as I'm rejoining those who have "real jobs" in the next week or two.
If you followed me here from Mania, then you've already seen the heads up I left over there.
After another full year of promoting (again) I seem to have ran dry of contacts. I placed the calls, I sent out the letters\emails, and even sacrificed a sheep or two to the Screenwriting Gods.
They insisted, for my next sacrifice, I give them Jessica Simpson. Frankly, I think they're toying with me.
Oh yes, I must remember to thank Hanso for pointing me in the direction of the Script Shadow contest. He may not like "Twilight," but he's still a good man. The contest ends on November 9'th.
This morning I placed the logline, etc., for "Sweet Dreams" in the running. We'll see where that goes.
In the meantime, I continue to slowly work on the novel adaptation of "The Life and Times of Igor," which everyone already has heard about for the last four years or so. The link to the Mania blog entry above contains a first draft excerpt from Chapter 4 of this version.
And if anyone new believes I ripped off the idea, well just search about on here for Igor's history, and go digging into the Mania blogs from the last year or so to see the proof positive I was promoting mine long before the CGI movie came out a while back, which just proves it isn't what you know or what you can do, it's who you know and who you're sleeping with.
Not sure how often I'll be posting in the coming days\weeks, either here or at Mania, but don't sell me short as I will return. I've got blogs here, at Mania, my old Myspace account, and lots of comments in the "Twilight" and "Igor" articles over at Mania, not to mention practically everywhere else. Explore at your own pace...
Until the sun rises again kiddies...
Starlight
If you followed me here from Mania, then you've already seen the heads up I left over there.
After another full year of promoting (again) I seem to have ran dry of contacts. I placed the calls, I sent out the letters\emails, and even sacrificed a sheep or two to the Screenwriting Gods.
They insisted, for my next sacrifice, I give them Jessica Simpson. Frankly, I think they're toying with me.
Oh yes, I must remember to thank Hanso for pointing me in the direction of the Script Shadow contest. He may not like "Twilight," but he's still a good man. The contest ends on November 9'th.
This morning I placed the logline, etc., for "Sweet Dreams" in the running. We'll see where that goes.
In the meantime, I continue to slowly work on the novel adaptation of "The Life and Times of Igor," which everyone already has heard about for the last four years or so. The link to the Mania blog entry above contains a first draft excerpt from Chapter 4 of this version.
And if anyone new believes I ripped off the idea, well just search about on here for Igor's history, and go digging into the Mania blogs from the last year or so to see the proof positive I was promoting mine long before the CGI movie came out a while back, which just proves it isn't what you know or what you can do, it's who you know and who you're sleeping with.
Not sure how often I'll be posting in the coming days\weeks, either here or at Mania, but don't sell me short as I will return. I've got blogs here, at Mania, my old Myspace account, and lots of comments in the "Twilight" and "Igor" articles over at Mania, not to mention practically everywhere else. Explore at your own pace...
Until the sun rises again kiddies...
Starlight
Friday, October 9, 2009
Reminders
Every so often I post this message because, for some, the usage and means of this blog is a bit confusing -- it is an exploration of ideas and opinions, a means for my friends receive an answer to their often stated questions of "what the hell is it you do?," and so on.
For those who represent literary agencies and said friends from Myspace, Facebook, Mania, and "real life," there are shortcut keywords in the right side of the frame. Just scroll down and pick the topic link and receive either descriptions of one project or another, some rambling thoughts on certain Hollywood trends, love (or hatred) for other instances.
As "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story" is constantly being promoted on both American coasts (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco) then it's only fair to provide a shortcut link here.
This site is kept to a minimum to make it easier for all involved, especially me as I have dial- up (as some of you already know) .
It's raining today -- and has been all night. Flood watches and warnings are everywhere, but I'm in no danger. Can't speak for the River Valley, though.
Ah yes, another lazy, rainy day -- and a chance to make a little more progress on adapting "Life and Times of Igor" to novel form.
For those who represent literary agencies and said friends from Myspace, Facebook, Mania, and "real life," there are shortcut keywords in the right side of the frame. Just scroll down and pick the topic link and receive either descriptions of one project or another, some rambling thoughts on certain Hollywood trends, love (or hatred) for other instances.
As "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story" is constantly being promoted on both American coasts (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco) then it's only fair to provide a shortcut link here.
This site is kept to a minimum to make it easier for all involved, especially me as I have dial- up (as some of you already know) .
It's raining today -- and has been all night. Flood watches and warnings are everywhere, but I'm in no danger. Can't speak for the River Valley, though.
Ah yes, another lazy, rainy day -- and a chance to make a little more progress on adapting "Life and Times of Igor" to novel form.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Three Acts of Pure Magic
It's always a good thing to be looking where no one else is...no matter how many times the story has been told, it always manages to disappear, while it waits for the day when someone will take the myth and make it anew.
The big to do now is vampires, and there's a lot of ticked off fanboys yelling and screaming about "Twilight," which I defend as heartily as I would my own work. But we're not getting into that subject.
But, another entity has existed throughout the ages and has been cast in both good and malevolent fashions: the sandman.
Since I am promoting my own "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story," I might as well give the past references to what this mythical person has been about. Here's the link to Wikipedia.
The idea of the sandman is constant...and right now he sleeps like those he grants nightly rest to.
But I (and a co-storyteller) resurrected this protector of the night by means of mixing various myths, namely the images from Native American mythology (dream catchers) while also going towards the old idea of demons that come to your bedside in an effort to do you harm...or worse.
Add in a new spin on the lunar cycle and how it invokes monsters, plus some New Age beliefs about the mystical power of crystals, and a healthy fondness for 50's doo wop music and a love for all things celestial, you've got a compelling dramatic fantasy about one young man who lost the one he loved, and another who is in great danger of losing the one he doesn't realize who loves him while he faces a life filled with monsters and moonlight.
There are only so many ways a man or woman can actively promote whatever it is that he or she has created. And this is possibly the most informative that I can be about the subject and the story that was completed back in 2007.
Enjoy.
Sincerely,
The Founding Member Of The Starlight Guard
-A.B.M.
PS - It should be stated that, no, I didn't use Wikipedia as my primary sources of inspiration or information. I simply supplied those links because it's far more effective than listing my books and their respective page numbers.
The big to do now is vampires, and there's a lot of ticked off fanboys yelling and screaming about "Twilight," which I defend as heartily as I would my own work. But we're not getting into that subject.
But, another entity has existed throughout the ages and has been cast in both good and malevolent fashions: the sandman.
Since I am promoting my own "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story," I might as well give the past references to what this mythical person has been about. Here's the link to Wikipedia.
The idea of the sandman is constant...and right now he sleeps like those he grants nightly rest to.
But I (and a co-storyteller) resurrected this protector of the night by means of mixing various myths, namely the images from Native American mythology (dream catchers) while also going towards the old idea of demons that come to your bedside in an effort to do you harm...or worse.
Add in a new spin on the lunar cycle and how it invokes monsters, plus some New Age beliefs about the mystical power of crystals, and a healthy fondness for 50's doo wop music and a love for all things celestial, you've got a compelling dramatic fantasy about one young man who lost the one he loved, and another who is in great danger of losing the one he doesn't realize who loves him while he faces a life filled with monsters and moonlight.
There are only so many ways a man or woman can actively promote whatever it is that he or she has created. And this is possibly the most informative that I can be about the subject and the story that was completed back in 2007.
Enjoy.
Sincerely,
The Founding Member Of The Starlight Guard
-A.B.M.
PS - It should be stated that, no, I didn't use Wikipedia as my primary sources of inspiration or information. I simply supplied those links because it's far more effective than listing my books and their respective page numbers.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Clearing Up The Confusion
I just realized that, inadvertently, I may have muddied the waters concerning "Life and Times of Igor."
In earlier blog posts, I openly state my distaste for reboots, re-envisionings, and remakes. But then I state "Igor" is a takeoff of the Frankenstein story, plus all the other classic literary figures and such.
So am I saying one thing and doing the other? No -- at least not in my opinion.
Think of it in terms of its original intention -- parody. Think "Weird Al" Yankovic parodies, not "Scary Movie, Disaster Movie, Date Movie, etc" parodies.
There IS a distinction: "Airplane," "Hot Shots," and "Naked Gun" are the golden age of these kinds of movies, then it all went to hell with "Scary Movie 2" and fell fast. Then it was absolutely casual brilliance with its own definitive stories, now it's just Take This, Add That, Mix In Some Of This, and voila: we have a piece of fluff that desperately attempts to make you laugh, but fails completely.
Yeah it's all my opinion, but someone needs to make these distinctions. There used to be real inspiration in these movies...and now its as if we're just picking apart movie trailers and piecing them together to just get a new product out there.
But "Igor" doesn't follow even the old ideals of Zucker\Abrams\Zucker. That style of humor died a long time ago, and even the Zucker's can't get it right these days, I'm sad to say.
Parody, just genuine parody. These distinctions are easily understood at Mania, but it's more of a gray area outside of the well versed mind.
I hope this cleans up those muddy waters.
Also, as I've used up every agent in California for "Sweet Dreams," I've decided to send it North as well.
In earlier blog posts, I openly state my distaste for reboots, re-envisionings, and remakes. But then I state "Igor" is a takeoff of the Frankenstein story, plus all the other classic literary figures and such.
So am I saying one thing and doing the other? No -- at least not in my opinion.
Think of it in terms of its original intention -- parody. Think "Weird Al" Yankovic parodies, not "Scary Movie, Disaster Movie, Date Movie, etc" parodies.
There IS a distinction: "Airplane," "Hot Shots," and "Naked Gun" are the golden age of these kinds of movies, then it all went to hell with "Scary Movie 2" and fell fast. Then it was absolutely casual brilliance with its own definitive stories, now it's just Take This, Add That, Mix In Some Of This, and voila: we have a piece of fluff that desperately attempts to make you laugh, but fails completely.
Yeah it's all my opinion, but someone needs to make these distinctions. There used to be real inspiration in these movies...and now its as if we're just picking apart movie trailers and piecing them together to just get a new product out there.
But "Igor" doesn't follow even the old ideals of Zucker\Abrams\Zucker. That style of humor died a long time ago, and even the Zucker's can't get it right these days, I'm sad to say.
Parody, just genuine parody. These distinctions are easily understood at Mania, but it's more of a gray area outside of the well versed mind.
I hope this cleans up those muddy waters.
Also, as I've used up every agent in California for "Sweet Dreams," I've decided to send it North as well.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery (I Hope)
Imitation, it's said, is the sincerest form of flattery.
But, sometimes, it's just a copy cat that's interested in latching themselves to you (or emulating you) in some fashion.
Those aware of "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story" by means of promotion or other means, would be aware of the Starlight Guard. In fact "StarlightGuard" is my handle at Mania, even though most have shortened it to just "Starlight."
I can handle that.
But now, it seems, I'm being imitated...
I'm not the first, as Hanso has had a few pick up on his persona by claiming to be the "son of hanso," and so on....
Well, now someone has turned their attention on me (again) and has formed their ID as DayLightMoon. They even have an image of the full moon lit up in their avatar.
Well, that's fine...I guess.
(This is where the fine print would be written.)
But I also just like to state that, you know, I don't know the person.
If they're copying me, or inspired by nomenclature, I've no idea.
Also, as it bears repeating, even though I am a "Twilight" fan, "Sweet Dreams" was written (and completed) in 2007, a good year before I actually knew of the novel. The fictional town "Twilight Place" is a sideways reference to the song "Twilight Time" by The Platters, as 50's doo wop and related musical styles are the prevalent themes and sources of inspiration for "Sweet Dreams."
Besides, I just like the word 'twilight' for some reason.
Also, incidentally, it's also at these particular times of day when the Sandmen (and the Starlight Guard) appear and disappear, depending on morning or evening hours.
But, sometimes, it's just a copy cat that's interested in latching themselves to you (or emulating you) in some fashion.
Those aware of "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story" by means of promotion or other means, would be aware of the Starlight Guard. In fact "StarlightGuard" is my handle at Mania, even though most have shortened it to just "Starlight."
I can handle that.
But now, it seems, I'm being imitated...
I'm not the first, as Hanso has had a few pick up on his persona by claiming to be the "son of hanso," and so on....
Well, now someone has turned their attention on me (again) and has formed their ID as DayLightMoon. They even have an image of the full moon lit up in their avatar.
Well, that's fine...I guess.
(This is where the fine print would be written.)
But I also just like to state that, you know, I don't know the person.
If they're copying me, or inspired by nomenclature, I've no idea.
Also, as it bears repeating, even though I am a "Twilight" fan, "Sweet Dreams" was written (and completed) in 2007, a good year before I actually knew of the novel. The fictional town "Twilight Place" is a sideways reference to the song "Twilight Time" by The Platters, as 50's doo wop and related musical styles are the prevalent themes and sources of inspiration for "Sweet Dreams."
Besides, I just like the word 'twilight' for some reason.
Also, incidentally, it's also at these particular times of day when the Sandmen (and the Starlight Guard) appear and disappear, depending on morning or evening hours.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
And Then There Was Silence...
Okay, so it's not actually silence that'll be appearing here in the coming days, but the comparison is fair.
I continue to promote both "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story" and "Summertime Blues." (If you're new to this blog, just scroll down and click the appropriate tabs on the right hand side to learn more about those stories, etc.)
Maintaining four distinct means of communication (i.e. this blog, Myspace, Facebook, and all the rants at Mania) seems to be cutting into my creative spark. Temporarily, this well is being declared dry until the next rains come.
Hey, it happens. It's happened before, it'll happen again. Just accept the dry spells because, when they end, the mind is fresh and fertile again. "Sweet Dreams" was written after one of those dry spells.
So I'm taking it upon myself to try different things. I'm picking up the novels I swore I'd read, and finishing the ones I bought a few years back but had to put them down for one reason or another.
Thank heaven for bookmarks.
I'll continue being an active commentator at Mania, but we'll just have to see how active I am.
So here's a backlog of (hopefully) interesting rambling thoughts on movies, writing, and Hollywood in general. There's also my Mania profile and 150 or so blog entries there to be examined.
I feel I should leave you with an interesting (and a bit graphic, but necessarily so) entry a fellow commentator over at Mania posted. He's a good friend of mine, and manages to cut through to the heart of the matters with naughty language and savvy observations whereas I try to use the more diplomatic and philosophical aspects of debating (read: arguing) over the state of our entertainment options in this day and age.
Please note that, as Mania is still recovering in some fashions, embedded images and other forms of coding aren't fully functional still. Our profiles aren't back to normal, and certainly the number of our profile views are wildly inaccurate. (I was nearing 14,000, Maelstrom had crossed the 19,000 mark.)
And so on...
See you in the nearest Malco Theater, kiddies. And please, don't spill your watered down drinks in my lap again.
I continue to promote both "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story" and "Summertime Blues." (If you're new to this blog, just scroll down and click the appropriate tabs on the right hand side to learn more about those stories, etc.)
Maintaining four distinct means of communication (i.e. this blog, Myspace, Facebook, and all the rants at Mania) seems to be cutting into my creative spark. Temporarily, this well is being declared dry until the next rains come.
Hey, it happens. It's happened before, it'll happen again. Just accept the dry spells because, when they end, the mind is fresh and fertile again. "Sweet Dreams" was written after one of those dry spells.
So I'm taking it upon myself to try different things. I'm picking up the novels I swore I'd read, and finishing the ones I bought a few years back but had to put them down for one reason or another.
Thank heaven for bookmarks.
I'll continue being an active commentator at Mania, but we'll just have to see how active I am.
So here's a backlog of (hopefully) interesting rambling thoughts on movies, writing, and Hollywood in general. There's also my Mania profile and 150 or so blog entries there to be examined.
I feel I should leave you with an interesting (and a bit graphic, but necessarily so) entry a fellow commentator over at Mania posted. He's a good friend of mine, and manages to cut through to the heart of the matters with naughty language and savvy observations whereas I try to use the more diplomatic and philosophical aspects of debating (read: arguing) over the state of our entertainment options in this day and age.
Please note that, as Mania is still recovering in some fashions, embedded images and other forms of coding aren't fully functional still. Our profiles aren't back to normal, and certainly the number of our profile views are wildly inaccurate. (I was nearing 14,000, Maelstrom had crossed the 19,000 mark.)
And so on...
See you in the nearest Malco Theater, kiddies. And please, don't spill your watered down drinks in my lap again.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Two Sides Of The Coin
I've come to realize I have two main patterns in my creative aspects. The first is to just have fun. The second is to do an interesting exploration of certain topics.
"Summertime Blues," "Passion of Chris," "Life and Times of Igor," plus a few others are all in the name of fun. "Chris" does bridge the gap between both aspects, as it also serves as an exploration between Hollywood and the adult film industry.
Then there's the exploration ideas, like "Unbitten," "Interesting Times," and "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story."
Now don't assume that these aren't fun, they just come from a difference place. "Sweet Dreams" is a light fantasy, "Interesting Times" is massive in itself, and "Unbitten" is a light exploration of the vampire culture, rooted in some history.
Then there's something new I came up with today completely by accident.
Since music is an important muse in my life, I often have something playing through my speakers. Today it was the old B-Side to an Elton John CD single from the early 90's entitled "Suit of Wolves."
It's a beautiful sweeping song that I have on the expanded and remastered edition of "The One."
And sometime, in the dark recesses of my mind, a legend I'm aware of and a song I'm hearing connected unconsciously and brought about a dark story I'm not certain I'd write or not.
I don't often deal with the darkness...simply because I don't like it. "Unbitten" had certain amounts of darkness in it, and this new story would have more than "Unbitten" would.
And yet I know, should I tell the guys over at Mania about it, they'd probably say WRITE IT!
I'll sketch out the basic idea for it, and see where it goes. Then I'll likely put it to the guys at Mania, because they can't seem to get enough werewolf and vampire movies, even though this isn't the standard werewolf movie project I've dreamed up, just like "Unbitten" is less about neck biting monsters and more about the tragedy within.
"Summertime Blues," "Passion of Chris," "Life and Times of Igor," plus a few others are all in the name of fun. "Chris" does bridge the gap between both aspects, as it also serves as an exploration between Hollywood and the adult film industry.
Then there's the exploration ideas, like "Unbitten," "Interesting Times," and "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story."
Now don't assume that these aren't fun, they just come from a difference place. "Sweet Dreams" is a light fantasy, "Interesting Times" is massive in itself, and "Unbitten" is a light exploration of the vampire culture, rooted in some history.
Then there's something new I came up with today completely by accident.
Since music is an important muse in my life, I often have something playing through my speakers. Today it was the old B-Side to an Elton John CD single from the early 90's entitled "Suit of Wolves."
It's a beautiful sweeping song that I have on the expanded and remastered edition of "The One."
And sometime, in the dark recesses of my mind, a legend I'm aware of and a song I'm hearing connected unconsciously and brought about a dark story I'm not certain I'd write or not.
I don't often deal with the darkness...simply because I don't like it. "Unbitten" had certain amounts of darkness in it, and this new story would have more than "Unbitten" would.
And yet I know, should I tell the guys over at Mania about it, they'd probably say WRITE IT!
I'll sketch out the basic idea for it, and see where it goes. Then I'll likely put it to the guys at Mania, because they can't seem to get enough werewolf and vampire movies, even though this isn't the standard werewolf movie project I've dreamed up, just like "Unbitten" is less about neck biting monsters and more about the tragedy within.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Life And Times Of An Ongoing Series (Or Two)
I've discussed "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story" openly here, as I'm currently promoting it.
For the better part of 2008, I discussed "The Life and Times of Igor" with several Maniacs regularly as I was, in essence, keeping them up to date with my promotions of the comic book version, finding the agent in Oregon, waiting, waiting, more waiting which saw time being filled with various excerpts posted on the now mostly dead blogs at Mania, some more waiting, and then eventually the Dear Writer letter I received.
But I'm not bitter.
Well, not anymore.
Truthfully, I wasn't bitter then -- exhausted, yes, but not bitter. I'd just squeezed another sixty pages out of a story I'd been writing, rewriting, updating, changing, and polishing since 2004.
A brief, full account of this can be read at my MySpace page, you'll find the link in the "Everything One Could Ever Hope For..." section here. (Please don't laugh at the picture, I'm not too terribly fond of cameras.)
"Life and Times of Igor," amazingly, always resurrects itself somehow, and there's always some new detail I can throw into it, and I'm always amazed how I never thought of that before.
The basic idea of the original screenplay was simple: Dr. Frankenstein gets arrested for dumping toxic waste and Igor, suddenly unemployed, needs a new job. He finds odd jobs in rural Transylvania, Utah, and encounters the Wolfman, Dracula, the Mummy, the Blob, Quasimodo, Lady Esmerelda, a bunch of angry villagers, Dr. Jekyll and, of course, Mr. Hyde.
It's not as complicated as you might think. Think "Van Helsing" only funnier.
And without Van Helsing.
I feel there's still a very good chance for my hunchback story to survive, cause we'll be getting remakes of Dr. Jekyll, Frankenstein, and a few other B - Movie monster stories in the coming years.
I still have the original 120 page screenplay, plus the sixty pages of new material for what would've been the comic book. I'm still kicking around the idea of a mini-series for this, as the material I wrote last year serves as an accidental prequel, detailing Igor's lack of interest in baseball, Victor Frankenstein's lack of interest in the Bearded Lady at the circus where he performs, and so on.
There's also references to a Temple of Scienceology and crazed cult members that Igor brain washes (using a mop and Brain-O) in the bowels of said temple.
Victor runs away from the circus to join Evil Medical School, Igor quits his brain washing gig, and they both encounter each other late one night at some weigh station of life and two destinies converge forever.
That's my Igor story.
Another increasingly growing story I've worked on has the overreaching title of "Interesting Times," and it finally grew to have six episodes, all running at two and a half hours or more.
I should probably detail the birth of "Interesting Times" now in print, as I'm afraid I'll forget it.
Fall 2000
I'd officially become interested in ghosts those autumn months. I'd picked up a book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Ghosts And Hauntings," and read through it feverishly. I'd also, interestingly enough, encountered in my French classes a young lady who actively described herself as "Wiccan," along with an interesting person who was actually a victim of poltergeist activity.
"How convenient," I thought. I soon realized there was a term for this: synchronicity. It was as if the forces of the universe itself said Now's Our Chance. Light The Passion And Hold On Tight.
In the fall of 2000, I wrote something like fifteen pages, but had to put it on hold.
Spring 2001
Spring break rolled around, and with a week of nothing to do, I sat down and wrote eighty pages worth of material in five days. I then show it to a person who is still my most trusted literary critic.
She read it, and uttered that famous last word: "sequel."
I railed against her, said she was crazy, and that there was no way in hell I could write a sequel. Doing the first one had driven me crazy as it was.
Up until that time, I basically worked on what was then known as "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary..." for a few months, off and on, while not really taking it too seriously. I'd started promoting what would eventually become "Summertime Blues," and found myself constantly reading any book that seemed legitimate dealing with the supernatural. I read Sylvia Browne, I devoured John Edward, I took comfort in James van Praagh's experiences.
I read countless other books on hauntings, haunted locations, and mysticism.
But I still had no plans for a sequel.
Spring 2002
By this time I knew a lot more about the paranormal world, and realized "Ghostbusters" had gotten it all wrong. I wanted to now make a movie that was, arguably, more realistic than the "ghost in the bedroom" movies Hollywood had been making for countless years.
I'd even found a hook for a sequel, so I started writing what was then called "Shake And Shiver," a sort of homage to Scooby Doo and that phrase which comes from the opening theme song.
I wrote that fairly quickly, and found myself rewriting "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary..." as I was going along.
Then a third one popped up, straight out of nowhere. It was, as originally conceived, to complete the sequence of events which was then thought of as a trilogy. That final episode was to be called "Stranger Things."
From June to December was spent on rewriting those three scripts, plus "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring" debuted and I was passionately in love with it. It didn't truly influence the material I was working on, but it did truly inspire me creatively.
I kept working, feverishly.
I kept reading, constantly.
Those mysterious forces behind me kept pushing me forward, and I started having the craziest dreams I'd ever had in my lifetime. Mysterious things started happening in my waking life, such as encountering the spirit world in the form of long dead felines I'd once loved.
And I pressed on, like a madman destined to discover new lands he didn't know he was looking for.
2003
Sometime in this year, a fourth movie appeared in my head straight out of the blue. It was to push "Stranger Things" back to number four while this new one was to be called "Amazing Things," and referenced a line from scripture that Jesus speaks. It also dealt with Atlantis.
So now here I was working on a whole new script that came out of nowhere, and suddenly I was working now on four episodes.
I spent that year working on what was then called "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary, "Shake And Shiver," and "Stranger Things" all at once while embracing this new third episode.
I also suffered burnout badly sometime around summer.
But I kept reading.
The rest of the year was devoted to more reading, more writing, more rewriting.
2004
By this time, I believe I'd officially changed the title of "Shake And Shiver" to "Almost Unreal." The name for "Stranger Things" had officially been dropped, and it was temporarily left nameless.
Sometime in this era, I'd also come up with yet another installment, one set in Louisiana that explored Voodoo. I flirted with this idea, then dumped it, but not totally as I would find out later in life.
So the rundown went like this, 1 - "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary," 2 - "Almost Unreal," 3 - "Amazing Things, 4 - fka "Stranger Things," and what would eventually become Part 5 was dreamed up as well, which put the plot details of "Stranger Things" back another episode and the newly vacant four would become a story about voodoo.
September came, and a friend then told me she'd read a little book she'd think I'd like, and it was called "The DaVinci Code."
I was instantly upset, because the game had been radically changed for me. It also inspired a whole new level of historical relevancy to everything I'd been writing about earlier, so delved into whole new territories of study and it lead me to one conclusion:
I needed to do, basically, a page one rewrite of a lot of the stuff that had come before. My parents also just happened to buy me a new computer in that upcoming December, so I had to transfer all my files to the new system, and a new word processor.
All the work I had done, I now felt, was average. It was okay, but it needed a hell of a lot of work to be really, really good to stand up against the now complete trilogy of "Lord of the Rings" and the works of Dan Brown.
So, I went back to the original sources of material I'd had, and flipped what was once called "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary" on its side, taking it from a different angle, and rechristened it "The Fountain of Light.
Then I started having those strange, mysterious dreams again, along with yet another newfound passion and inspiration. "Fountain" took the original story, kept it basically the same, and made it much more profound and, subsequently, changed the entire overreaching basis of the series.
2005
About one month, and 150 pages later, I and my friend who read the very first draft nearly four years earlier were stunned at what had happened. I then set about revising the other scripts.
I started watching entire new documentaries, reading whole new books on history, and Sylvia Browne herself seemed to illuminate all these things I'd conveniently ignored the first go around.
In between these incidents, I took to revising "Summertime Blues" into a more contemporary form, as I'd been working on it for a good five years at that time. And "The Life and Times of Igor" was officially becoming a major player in my life, so all of "Interesting Times" took a sudden backseat.
2006
I kept working on all the above listed projects in some form or another, tweaking here, adding there, revising this, polishing that.
Then, in February, the forgotten idea of doing a voodoo story in Louisiana came back up. It was to become Part Four, and dealt with the devil himself. That spring "What The Devil Made Me Do" became the first script to go through a first draft stage that was so very close to the finished project that I, amazingly enough, felt could've improve on it at all.
Four years later, very little has changed in Episode Four.
When I finished one of the drafts of "Devil Made Me Do" back in '06, I had to deal with "Igor" and "Summertime Blues" some more, and also kept up my research for "Interesting Times."
Now, from here on, the details get sketchy as it's all blended together too seamlessly.
Sometime, now knowing a great deal more about the paranormal, I'd realized the Part 5 script I wanted to write was going to be too big, and the decision was made to cut it into two parts, which effectively left me at a six part series.
A lot of rewriting, reading, revising, and so on has been the norm since that has happened.
And, as of now, I still have no official script for what will become the sixth and final installment of "Interesting Times." I'm polishing up about 30% of Part 1, the same goes for Part 2, and in either 2006 or 2007 I started a Page One rewrite for "Amazing Things."
I wrote sixty new pages...and somehow lost it.
Burnout hit me hard. Very hard. I couldn't make myself write it.
Part 4 is still in 95% excellent condition, and will not change so drastically.
Parts 5 and 6, though, are up in the air, but more so for Part 6 as the script for Part 5 does exist, it's just going to be retitled.
In the spring of 2007, after witnessing a wonderful documentary about vampires, I'd came up with "Unbitten," and tried to give to a friend to write. She wouldn't make the time, so I started writing it.
It was good, but it got harder and harder to write as it progressed. I finished it, and thanked God that it was over. I never touched it again, though I do like it and feel it's not yet finished.
It doesn't need a page one rewrite, but it's not finished either, and I'll worry about that later.
Late summer came about, and then I came up with the idea of "Sweet Dreams - A Sandman's Story." In about two months I'd started from scratch and came up with something truly magical that got me away from everything else I'd worked on for nearly a decade. It came in at 139 pages, and has stayed that way ever since.
That was 2007, and when 2008 rolled around I said to my friend "I've got to finish the series this year. I've just got to, or all the work will be a waste or I'll go out of my head."
I'd set out a schedule to work on it.
I flat out completely failed to do it, and somehow working on "Life and Times of Igor" again.
2009 And Beyond...
There's lots of work yet to be done. I often look at the stack of manuscripts and research materials and get cold feet, yet I'm continuing my research which, fortunately, I scaled back because it was getting too top heavy.
I still swear I'll finish the six part series.
After all, I made a promise to a few individuals it would get done and they like to remind me every so often that I'm not working on it. They didn't push me when I had serious burnout again when the latest version of Igor was returned last October or so, and I thank them for that.
The work will continue, and I will complete it.
But I've learned I can't be rushed, can't be pushed, and it has to all come naturally or else it'll all fall apart.
But I thank the sources of inspiration that leaked the secrets of the series to me over the course of four years because, if I honestly knew back then it'd evolve to such a level of complexity, I would've flat out refused to do it.
As a side note, this may be the final blog entry I make for awhile, at least. There's promotions to write up, mail off, and other things that need to be attended to.
The most recent revisions to "Summertime Blues" are very nearly complete, and then there's what to do with "Life and Times of Igor" as well, but some other things need my attention as well.
So, until next time...happy reading.
For the better part of 2008, I discussed "The Life and Times of Igor" with several Maniacs regularly as I was, in essence, keeping them up to date with my promotions of the comic book version, finding the agent in Oregon, waiting, waiting, more waiting which saw time being filled with various excerpts posted on the now mostly dead blogs at Mania, some more waiting, and then eventually the Dear Writer letter I received.
But I'm not bitter.
Well, not anymore.
Truthfully, I wasn't bitter then -- exhausted, yes, but not bitter. I'd just squeezed another sixty pages out of a story I'd been writing, rewriting, updating, changing, and polishing since 2004.
A brief, full account of this can be read at my MySpace page, you'll find the link in the "Everything One Could Ever Hope For..." section here. (Please don't laugh at the picture, I'm not too terribly fond of cameras.)
"Life and Times of Igor," amazingly, always resurrects itself somehow, and there's always some new detail I can throw into it, and I'm always amazed how I never thought of that before.
The basic idea of the original screenplay was simple: Dr. Frankenstein gets arrested for dumping toxic waste and Igor, suddenly unemployed, needs a new job. He finds odd jobs in rural Transylvania, Utah, and encounters the Wolfman, Dracula, the Mummy, the Blob, Quasimodo, Lady Esmerelda, a bunch of angry villagers, Dr. Jekyll and, of course, Mr. Hyde.
It's not as complicated as you might think. Think "Van Helsing" only funnier.
And without Van Helsing.
I feel there's still a very good chance for my hunchback story to survive, cause we'll be getting remakes of Dr. Jekyll, Frankenstein, and a few other B - Movie monster stories in the coming years.
I still have the original 120 page screenplay, plus the sixty pages of new material for what would've been the comic book. I'm still kicking around the idea of a mini-series for this, as the material I wrote last year serves as an accidental prequel, detailing Igor's lack of interest in baseball, Victor Frankenstein's lack of interest in the Bearded Lady at the circus where he performs, and so on.
There's also references to a Temple of Scienceology and crazed cult members that Igor brain washes (using a mop and Brain-O) in the bowels of said temple.
Victor runs away from the circus to join Evil Medical School, Igor quits his brain washing gig, and they both encounter each other late one night at some weigh station of life and two destinies converge forever.
That's my Igor story.
Another increasingly growing story I've worked on has the overreaching title of "Interesting Times," and it finally grew to have six episodes, all running at two and a half hours or more.
I should probably detail the birth of "Interesting Times" now in print, as I'm afraid I'll forget it.
Fall 2000
I'd officially become interested in ghosts those autumn months. I'd picked up a book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Ghosts And Hauntings," and read through it feverishly. I'd also, interestingly enough, encountered in my French classes a young lady who actively described herself as "Wiccan," along with an interesting person who was actually a victim of poltergeist activity.
"How convenient," I thought. I soon realized there was a term for this: synchronicity. It was as if the forces of the universe itself said Now's Our Chance. Light The Passion And Hold On Tight.
In the fall of 2000, I wrote something like fifteen pages, but had to put it on hold.
Spring 2001
Spring break rolled around, and with a week of nothing to do, I sat down and wrote eighty pages worth of material in five days. I then show it to a person who is still my most trusted literary critic.
She read it, and uttered that famous last word: "sequel."
I railed against her, said she was crazy, and that there was no way in hell I could write a sequel. Doing the first one had driven me crazy as it was.
Up until that time, I basically worked on what was then known as "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary..." for a few months, off and on, while not really taking it too seriously. I'd started promoting what would eventually become "Summertime Blues," and found myself constantly reading any book that seemed legitimate dealing with the supernatural. I read Sylvia Browne, I devoured John Edward, I took comfort in James van Praagh's experiences.
I read countless other books on hauntings, haunted locations, and mysticism.
But I still had no plans for a sequel.
Spring 2002
By this time I knew a lot more about the paranormal world, and realized "Ghostbusters" had gotten it all wrong. I wanted to now make a movie that was, arguably, more realistic than the "ghost in the bedroom" movies Hollywood had been making for countless years.
I'd even found a hook for a sequel, so I started writing what was then called "Shake And Shiver," a sort of homage to Scooby Doo and that phrase which comes from the opening theme song.
I wrote that fairly quickly, and found myself rewriting "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary..." as I was going along.
Then a third one popped up, straight out of nowhere. It was, as originally conceived, to complete the sequence of events which was then thought of as a trilogy. That final episode was to be called "Stranger Things."
From June to December was spent on rewriting those three scripts, plus "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring" debuted and I was passionately in love with it. It didn't truly influence the material I was working on, but it did truly inspire me creatively.
I kept working, feverishly.
I kept reading, constantly.
Those mysterious forces behind me kept pushing me forward, and I started having the craziest dreams I'd ever had in my lifetime. Mysterious things started happening in my waking life, such as encountering the spirit world in the form of long dead felines I'd once loved.
And I pressed on, like a madman destined to discover new lands he didn't know he was looking for.
2003
Sometime in this year, a fourth movie appeared in my head straight out of the blue. It was to push "Stranger Things" back to number four while this new one was to be called "Amazing Things," and referenced a line from scripture that Jesus speaks. It also dealt with Atlantis.
So now here I was working on a whole new script that came out of nowhere, and suddenly I was working now on four episodes.
I spent that year working on what was then called "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary, "Shake And Shiver," and "Stranger Things" all at once while embracing this new third episode.
I also suffered burnout badly sometime around summer.
But I kept reading.
The rest of the year was devoted to more reading, more writing, more rewriting.
2004
By this time, I believe I'd officially changed the title of "Shake And Shiver" to "Almost Unreal." The name for "Stranger Things" had officially been dropped, and it was temporarily left nameless.
Sometime in this era, I'd also come up with yet another installment, one set in Louisiana that explored Voodoo. I flirted with this idea, then dumped it, but not totally as I would find out later in life.
So the rundown went like this, 1 - "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary," 2 - "Almost Unreal," 3 - "Amazing Things, 4 - fka "Stranger Things," and what would eventually become Part 5 was dreamed up as well, which put the plot details of "Stranger Things" back another episode and the newly vacant four would become a story about voodoo.
September came, and a friend then told me she'd read a little book she'd think I'd like, and it was called "The DaVinci Code."
I was instantly upset, because the game had been radically changed for me. It also inspired a whole new level of historical relevancy to everything I'd been writing about earlier, so delved into whole new territories of study and it lead me to one conclusion:
I needed to do, basically, a page one rewrite of a lot of the stuff that had come before. My parents also just happened to buy me a new computer in that upcoming December, so I had to transfer all my files to the new system, and a new word processor.
All the work I had done, I now felt, was average. It was okay, but it needed a hell of a lot of work to be really, really good to stand up against the now complete trilogy of "Lord of the Rings" and the works of Dan Brown.
So, I went back to the original sources of material I'd had, and flipped what was once called "Once Upon A Midnight Dreary" on its side, taking it from a different angle, and rechristened it "The Fountain of Light.
Then I started having those strange, mysterious dreams again, along with yet another newfound passion and inspiration. "Fountain" took the original story, kept it basically the same, and made it much more profound and, subsequently, changed the entire overreaching basis of the series.
2005
About one month, and 150 pages later, I and my friend who read the very first draft nearly four years earlier were stunned at what had happened. I then set about revising the other scripts.
I started watching entire new documentaries, reading whole new books on history, and Sylvia Browne herself seemed to illuminate all these things I'd conveniently ignored the first go around.
In between these incidents, I took to revising "Summertime Blues" into a more contemporary form, as I'd been working on it for a good five years at that time. And "The Life and Times of Igor" was officially becoming a major player in my life, so all of "Interesting Times" took a sudden backseat.
2006
I kept working on all the above listed projects in some form or another, tweaking here, adding there, revising this, polishing that.
Then, in February, the forgotten idea of doing a voodoo story in Louisiana came back up. It was to become Part Four, and dealt with the devil himself. That spring "What The Devil Made Me Do" became the first script to go through a first draft stage that was so very close to the finished project that I, amazingly enough, felt could've improve on it at all.
Four years later, very little has changed in Episode Four.
When I finished one of the drafts of "Devil Made Me Do" back in '06, I had to deal with "Igor" and "Summertime Blues" some more, and also kept up my research for "Interesting Times."
Now, from here on, the details get sketchy as it's all blended together too seamlessly.
Sometime, now knowing a great deal more about the paranormal, I'd realized the Part 5 script I wanted to write was going to be too big, and the decision was made to cut it into two parts, which effectively left me at a six part series.
A lot of rewriting, reading, revising, and so on has been the norm since that has happened.
And, as of now, I still have no official script for what will become the sixth and final installment of "Interesting Times." I'm polishing up about 30% of Part 1, the same goes for Part 2, and in either 2006 or 2007 I started a Page One rewrite for "Amazing Things."
I wrote sixty new pages...and somehow lost it.
Burnout hit me hard. Very hard. I couldn't make myself write it.
Part 4 is still in 95% excellent condition, and will not change so drastically.
Parts 5 and 6, though, are up in the air, but more so for Part 6 as the script for Part 5 does exist, it's just going to be retitled.
In the spring of 2007, after witnessing a wonderful documentary about vampires, I'd came up with "Unbitten," and tried to give to a friend to write. She wouldn't make the time, so I started writing it.
It was good, but it got harder and harder to write as it progressed. I finished it, and thanked God that it was over. I never touched it again, though I do like it and feel it's not yet finished.
It doesn't need a page one rewrite, but it's not finished either, and I'll worry about that later.
Late summer came about, and then I came up with the idea of "Sweet Dreams - A Sandman's Story." In about two months I'd started from scratch and came up with something truly magical that got me away from everything else I'd worked on for nearly a decade. It came in at 139 pages, and has stayed that way ever since.
That was 2007, and when 2008 rolled around I said to my friend "I've got to finish the series this year. I've just got to, or all the work will be a waste or I'll go out of my head."
I'd set out a schedule to work on it.
I flat out completely failed to do it, and somehow working on "Life and Times of Igor" again.
2009 And Beyond...
There's lots of work yet to be done. I often look at the stack of manuscripts and research materials and get cold feet, yet I'm continuing my research which, fortunately, I scaled back because it was getting too top heavy.
I still swear I'll finish the six part series.
After all, I made a promise to a few individuals it would get done and they like to remind me every so often that I'm not working on it. They didn't push me when I had serious burnout again when the latest version of Igor was returned last October or so, and I thank them for that.
The work will continue, and I will complete it.
But I've learned I can't be rushed, can't be pushed, and it has to all come naturally or else it'll all fall apart.
But I thank the sources of inspiration that leaked the secrets of the series to me over the course of four years because, if I honestly knew back then it'd evolve to such a level of complexity, I would've flat out refused to do it.
As a side note, this may be the final blog entry I make for awhile, at least. There's promotions to write up, mail off, and other things that need to be attended to.
The most recent revisions to "Summertime Blues" are very nearly complete, and then there's what to do with "Life and Times of Igor" as well, but some other things need my attention as well.
So, until next time...happy reading.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Starlight's Plan To Conquer The World...Part II
Part I in my plans of my cinematic vision of world domination detailed how, if I had an agent representing me, I would go about promoting "Sweet Dreams - A Sandman's Story" to a bunch of less than jubilant studio execs and other reptilian suits.
I should add to those previous statements, an unorthodox world premiere in a large, outdoor setting to form, basically, a drive in theater much like the ones we used to see in the 50's.
I admit I don't know how feasible that is, but hell Pixar took to NASCAR (of all the godforsaken places) to debut "Cars." I'm not stating I'd have the power of Pixar and Disney behind me, but I am stating it'd be appropriate and unique to do something quite different.
Also, I'd combine efforts with Cool Bobby B (from the 50's on 5) and we'd compile an album of the best doo wop from the 50's and use it as a sort of secondary release to the official soundtrack.
Now that those plans have been laid out, maybe I should mention what brought me to the here and now - ten years ago I realized I wanted to make it to Hollywood. I was, then, twenty-one.
I'd always been writing or rewriting something, be it for my own personal kicks or for some kind of project (both in high school or college), and I looked upon some of my favorite movies of the day, such as "The Mask," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," and "Back To The Future," as having the best possible means of getting my often manic vision across.
My philosophy has always been, for better or for worse, that "I can't tell you what it is, I'll just have to show you."
In other words, I could go into a bland description of golf courses exploding, snakes squirming their way into Victoria's Secret, and dirty old men bragging about their favorite conquests in the nursing home.
It sounds fun, but it lacks the actual punch - the sand traps being shot up into the sky, lingerie clad females running out through the mall, and the adventures of Barry and Gary while they tried to make time with the one woman who gave them a sponge bath every day.
So it had to be shown.
At this time, I was also a huge fan of "The Drew Carey Show," which was probably the last great sitcom, as I haven't tuned in one since ABC ran Drew's poor show into the ground. "Friends" went away, and I was glad. Drew's show went away, and I never even noticed, I'm sorry to say.
I'd even taken to writing my own scripts for "The Drew Carey Show," and even writing to Scott Adams about what the procedure is to become a television writer, as he was currently working on the "Dilbert" television show. Adams, who admitted he couldn't accept unsolicited ideas and such, gave me a brief behind the scenes look at the writing process for his show back in those days.
I, hopefully, still have that email. I state "hopefully" as that computer crashed some six years ago, and its sitting in the floor of my bedroom closet waiting to be turned on yet again to see if any remnants still exist within its hard drive.
I never tried writing to Drew Carey after Adams gave me his advice, but I still kept working on those scripts, knowing full well they'd never see the light of day, but I needed the practice.
As I'm in Arkansas, I've had to gather sources from all around me and do the best I can. I'd purchased possibly up to fifteen or twenty different volumes on screenwriting alone, not to mention the others that dealt with filmmaking itself.
I taught myself the craft. I had to, because no one here knew what it entailed.
That was 1999 through the Summer of 2000.
At the end of my Summer semesters, I accepted a project which would see me become an active writer, director, and co-editor of a collegiate promotional film. I recruited, directed, and chose what locations I could to help bring this to life, and presented a rough copy to a panel of suits from all over the campus.
They loved it.
I was then given license to make a second for the upcoming semester, and onward we went.
Now this is a long way from Universal Studios, I admit, but it does show you can take a self taught nobody, put him in a unique position, and prove to himself and others that, yes, I am capable of doing these things.
Then comes the notions of actually going Hollywood, via the New York Film Academy. Apparently, the NYFA offers "crash courses" in filmmaking which lasts anywhere from four to twelve weeks.
The first chance I get, I'm taking a six week stint out to California, which is most agreeable to me as Florida has hurricanes, and if it came to running from them, I'd likely get trampled.
I'm also reviewing J. Michael Straczynski's book "The Complete Book of Screenwriting." Mostly it's the parts on getting and keeping an agent I'm concerned with. That, and the warning signs.
I haven't (yet) been taken for a ride over my nine years of actual writing and promoting, and I've also been read several times. Some wanted to read earlier drafts of "Summertime Blues," several wanted to read "The Life and Times of Igor" (but didn't know what to make of it), and so on.
After a good strong nine years, I think I've realized I can effectively ditch the various Writer's Digest publications that list fewer and fewer screenplay agents. I won't say I wasted a crazy amount of money on these yearly publications because they have proven helpful, I'm just saying it's more economical to get the WGA list of agencies off their website and phone them up for their contacts.
Also, a note on query letters for all those who mass produce envelopes: what the hell happened? I've always had two formats of envelopes available to me, and one would always fit easily inside the other alongside the query letter.
Now I've found that the "standard" 4 1/8" x 9 1/2" is the largest one available at all major retailers, and the puny 3 5/8" x 6 1/2" are the only two options available to me, which leaves me in a quandary - do I use two 4 x 9" envelopes, and just fold one over to fit inside the other, or do I use the 3 x 6" which would require the agent to fold my original letter over to fit in the returned envelope?
Either way, I feel, it's a disaster. Either I submit a letter with an unprofessional appearance, or send a neat and tidy package that requires the agent to be unprofessional.
It's been like this for a year now. No matter where I go, be it Wal-Mart, Office Depot, Walgreens, Target, or any other specialty place you can mention, all I find are the exact same sizes.
And if that's not enough, I find myself waiting for the newest price hike in stamps. Ten years ago I could get a Pepsi from a vending machine for just fifty cents, and in a few years (or less) it'll cost that just to mail one damned letter.
But that's life.
I've survived years of agents, price hikes, loss of properly sized envelopes, and so far haven't fallen for the "okeydoke."
I'm doing pretty well, I must say.
And, though I most likely will not rule the world, I will, at the very least, make it to Hollywood and have the career I've been working so very hard at obtaining for a good decade now.
It's only a matter of time, just like everything else in life.
I should add to those previous statements, an unorthodox world premiere in a large, outdoor setting to form, basically, a drive in theater much like the ones we used to see in the 50's.
I admit I don't know how feasible that is, but hell Pixar took to NASCAR (of all the godforsaken places) to debut "Cars." I'm not stating I'd have the power of Pixar and Disney behind me, but I am stating it'd be appropriate and unique to do something quite different.
Also, I'd combine efforts with Cool Bobby B (from the 50's on 5) and we'd compile an album of the best doo wop from the 50's and use it as a sort of secondary release to the official soundtrack.
Now that those plans have been laid out, maybe I should mention what brought me to the here and now - ten years ago I realized I wanted to make it to Hollywood. I was, then, twenty-one.
I'd always been writing or rewriting something, be it for my own personal kicks or for some kind of project (both in high school or college), and I looked upon some of my favorite movies of the day, such as "The Mask," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," and "Back To The Future," as having the best possible means of getting my often manic vision across.
My philosophy has always been, for better or for worse, that "I can't tell you what it is, I'll just have to show you."
In other words, I could go into a bland description of golf courses exploding, snakes squirming their way into Victoria's Secret, and dirty old men bragging about their favorite conquests in the nursing home.
It sounds fun, but it lacks the actual punch - the sand traps being shot up into the sky, lingerie clad females running out through the mall, and the adventures of Barry and Gary while they tried to make time with the one woman who gave them a sponge bath every day.
So it had to be shown.
At this time, I was also a huge fan of "The Drew Carey Show," which was probably the last great sitcom, as I haven't tuned in one since ABC ran Drew's poor show into the ground. "Friends" went away, and I was glad. Drew's show went away, and I never even noticed, I'm sorry to say.
I'd even taken to writing my own scripts for "The Drew Carey Show," and even writing to Scott Adams about what the procedure is to become a television writer, as he was currently working on the "Dilbert" television show. Adams, who admitted he couldn't accept unsolicited ideas and such, gave me a brief behind the scenes look at the writing process for his show back in those days.
I, hopefully, still have that email. I state "hopefully" as that computer crashed some six years ago, and its sitting in the floor of my bedroom closet waiting to be turned on yet again to see if any remnants still exist within its hard drive.
I never tried writing to Drew Carey after Adams gave me his advice, but I still kept working on those scripts, knowing full well they'd never see the light of day, but I needed the practice.
As I'm in Arkansas, I've had to gather sources from all around me and do the best I can. I'd purchased possibly up to fifteen or twenty different volumes on screenwriting alone, not to mention the others that dealt with filmmaking itself.
I taught myself the craft. I had to, because no one here knew what it entailed.
That was 1999 through the Summer of 2000.
At the end of my Summer semesters, I accepted a project which would see me become an active writer, director, and co-editor of a collegiate promotional film. I recruited, directed, and chose what locations I could to help bring this to life, and presented a rough copy to a panel of suits from all over the campus.
They loved it.
I was then given license to make a second for the upcoming semester, and onward we went.
Now this is a long way from Universal Studios, I admit, but it does show you can take a self taught nobody, put him in a unique position, and prove to himself and others that, yes, I am capable of doing these things.
Then comes the notions of actually going Hollywood, via the New York Film Academy. Apparently, the NYFA offers "crash courses" in filmmaking which lasts anywhere from four to twelve weeks.
The first chance I get, I'm taking a six week stint out to California, which is most agreeable to me as Florida has hurricanes, and if it came to running from them, I'd likely get trampled.
I'm also reviewing J. Michael Straczynski's book "The Complete Book of Screenwriting." Mostly it's the parts on getting and keeping an agent I'm concerned with. That, and the warning signs.
I haven't (yet) been taken for a ride over my nine years of actual writing and promoting, and I've also been read several times. Some wanted to read earlier drafts of "Summertime Blues," several wanted to read "The Life and Times of Igor" (but didn't know what to make of it), and so on.
After a good strong nine years, I think I've realized I can effectively ditch the various Writer's Digest publications that list fewer and fewer screenplay agents. I won't say I wasted a crazy amount of money on these yearly publications because they have proven helpful, I'm just saying it's more economical to get the WGA list of agencies off their website and phone them up for their contacts.
Also, a note on query letters for all those who mass produce envelopes: what the hell happened? I've always had two formats of envelopes available to me, and one would always fit easily inside the other alongside the query letter.
Now I've found that the "standard" 4 1/8" x 9 1/2" is the largest one available at all major retailers, and the puny 3 5/8" x 6 1/2" are the only two options available to me, which leaves me in a quandary - do I use two 4 x 9" envelopes, and just fold one over to fit inside the other, or do I use the 3 x 6" which would require the agent to fold my original letter over to fit in the returned envelope?
Either way, I feel, it's a disaster. Either I submit a letter with an unprofessional appearance, or send a neat and tidy package that requires the agent to be unprofessional.
It's been like this for a year now. No matter where I go, be it Wal-Mart, Office Depot, Walgreens, Target, or any other specialty place you can mention, all I find are the exact same sizes.
And if that's not enough, I find myself waiting for the newest price hike in stamps. Ten years ago I could get a Pepsi from a vending machine for just fifty cents, and in a few years (or less) it'll cost that just to mail one damned letter.
But that's life.
I've survived years of agents, price hikes, loss of properly sized envelopes, and so far haven't fallen for the "okeydoke."
I'm doing pretty well, I must say.
And, though I most likely will not rule the world, I will, at the very least, make it to Hollywood and have the career I've been working so very hard at obtaining for a good decade now.
It's only a matter of time, just like everything else in life.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Starlight's General Theory Of Cinematic Believability
What is reality?
If you'd posed that question to Descartes when he was alive (and you weren't) you might've gotten an answer that could be best summed up thusly: "damned if I know."
We're going to have a second "Transformers" movie debut in the not too distant future. I know this because Jarrod, our beloved news editor at Mania (All Hail Jarrod!) has told us so.
That and the trailer was running on Reelz Channel the other day.
(Quick Note - "The Big Tease" needs to stop pretending they're the Siskel and Ebert of trailers. You don't review trailers, you watch them. I don't need two people getting excited or bored over a movie trailer when I can do so all by myself.)
I still find "Transformers" laughable.
Here's this big ass intergalactic space machine that goes crashing through buildings only to transform into a car that has probably one tenth of the mass (at most) of the previous incarnation of this piece of technology.
But seeing these huge hulking machines walking about on planet Earth is quite laughable. I don't care how much money the first movie made, I'm not interested in how many toys are sold. I just don't buy it, at all.
Well some might say "it's besides the point. It's all in the name of fun."
And that's fine. I've no problem with fun.
The issues of believability bend when it's an animated film, though.
I'm quickly becoming a fan of anime, namely "Full Metal Alchemist" and such. I intend to find "Bubblegum Crisis" and a few others. I also own my own beloved copy of "Final Fantasy - Advent Children."
To be fair, these are in the name of fun as well, and yet I don't find myself bitching at how unrealistic it is when Cloud Strife and his friends do battle in Migdar with the great big beastie of the skies and, eventually, Sephiroth.
Why is this?
I think the answer lies between the sheets of animation and live action. Live action suggest you went outside and saw it, or that one could see it. Animation can present any world it wants: a Parisian rat can speak English, cook, and has a French guy for his own marionette. A car can talk and manipulate its world, yet it has no opposable thumbs to create the gas tanks or design electric circuitry used to power his world. A talking moose can foil Fearless Leader and a squirrel can take flight.
All those scenarios I accept, for some reason, yet giant machines doing battle on Earth in a real live setting is both silly and yawn inducing to me. For some reason, the more unreal it is in our real world, the more ridiculous appears yet, the more unreal it is in an unreal world, the more authentic it seems to be.
Here's another dilemma of believability: should a movie be released at a particular time of the year to make it more authentic?
I posed this question after the sudden departure last summer of "The X-Files: I Want To Believe" from movie theaters. Let's be honest, I don't feel XF2 was much of a "summer movie," and it got swallowed up during the freakishly large run of "The Dark Knight" and its other competition.
(Let's be fair: TDK's success was a fluke. Fluke's happen. Testosterone fueled fan boys feel TDK's box office bonanza proves this is just the best damn movie ever made, it should've won a Best Picture or Best Director award at the Academy Awards, and so on. It made the money, but it's certainly not worth of those nods.)
I was there on opening day, at the very first showing to see what Mulder and Scully were up to. I wasn't the only one there. I also wasn't disappointed with what was projected before me. I easily got lost in the story and found myself very glad I didn't buy popcorn or a drink when the third act rolled around.
But, it's the middle of the summer, and I'm in a darkened theater looking at frozen winter landscapes. There's an incongruity there, I feel, and outside of TDK's runaway profit margin, I have wondered out loud many times if XF2 would've played better during the winter, that way it might've connected to us more effectively if we'd just driven by big heaping piles of snow.
I don't know that, one way or another. I can't prove it or disprove it, but it is a question that so far will remain unanswered.
I won't complain about XF2, except on one account: the title. Chris Carter was happy with it (or so the story goes) but I'm sure, considering how talented Carter is, that he and his crew could've come up with a title much better than that. In fact, that weak title might've been the second strike against this movie.
As for my own works, (namely "Sweet Dreams,") I wish the old fashioned drive in theaters still existed. I can't speak for other states, but in my area they simply vanished. In fact, we still have the parking lot from one that used to exist, and possibly ten years ago the screen was still up at the far end of the lot, but it had been abandoned ages ago.
I'd like to recreate that era of movie going for the eventual first run of "Sweet Dreams," but that is most likely a pipedream.
But there are possibilities - I remember "Cars" was debuted at, of all things, NASCAR, with the use of multiple screens, projection units, and an elaborate audio system. I'm sure we could come up with something similar, and far superior. Just eliminate the hick mentality, find a nice wide open space on a gentle summer evening, and let the experience begin.
It's not as crazy as it seems - every summer, up in Fayetteville, public screenings are held of previously released films up in Gulley Park, I believe. It's always free, and the organizers always tell the population to bring their lawn chairs and anything else they can think of.
As for the General Theory, it's simply that. I'm sure there are more than several exceptions to it to disprove it, but in an interesting paradox, my General Theory believes in those paradoxes and actually goes forth with encouraging them.
See you at the cinema guys and gals, wherever it may be!
If you'd posed that question to Descartes when he was alive (and you weren't) you might've gotten an answer that could be best summed up thusly: "damned if I know."
We're going to have a second "Transformers" movie debut in the not too distant future. I know this because Jarrod, our beloved news editor at Mania (All Hail Jarrod!) has told us so.
That and the trailer was running on Reelz Channel the other day.
(Quick Note - "The Big Tease" needs to stop pretending they're the Siskel and Ebert of trailers. You don't review trailers, you watch them. I don't need two people getting excited or bored over a movie trailer when I can do so all by myself.)
I still find "Transformers" laughable.
Here's this big ass intergalactic space machine that goes crashing through buildings only to transform into a car that has probably one tenth of the mass (at most) of the previous incarnation of this piece of technology.
But seeing these huge hulking machines walking about on planet Earth is quite laughable. I don't care how much money the first movie made, I'm not interested in how many toys are sold. I just don't buy it, at all.
Well some might say "it's besides the point. It's all in the name of fun."
And that's fine. I've no problem with fun.
The issues of believability bend when it's an animated film, though.
I'm quickly becoming a fan of anime, namely "Full Metal Alchemist" and such. I intend to find "Bubblegum Crisis" and a few others. I also own my own beloved copy of "Final Fantasy - Advent Children."
To be fair, these are in the name of fun as well, and yet I don't find myself bitching at how unrealistic it is when Cloud Strife and his friends do battle in Migdar with the great big beastie of the skies and, eventually, Sephiroth.
Why is this?
I think the answer lies between the sheets of animation and live action. Live action suggest you went outside and saw it, or that one could see it. Animation can present any world it wants: a Parisian rat can speak English, cook, and has a French guy for his own marionette. A car can talk and manipulate its world, yet it has no opposable thumbs to create the gas tanks or design electric circuitry used to power his world. A talking moose can foil Fearless Leader and a squirrel can take flight.
All those scenarios I accept, for some reason, yet giant machines doing battle on Earth in a real live setting is both silly and yawn inducing to me. For some reason, the more unreal it is in our real world, the more ridiculous appears yet, the more unreal it is in an unreal world, the more authentic it seems to be.
Here's another dilemma of believability: should a movie be released at a particular time of the year to make it more authentic?
I posed this question after the sudden departure last summer of "The X-Files: I Want To Believe" from movie theaters. Let's be honest, I don't feel XF2 was much of a "summer movie," and it got swallowed up during the freakishly large run of "The Dark Knight" and its other competition.
(Let's be fair: TDK's success was a fluke. Fluke's happen. Testosterone fueled fan boys feel TDK's box office bonanza proves this is just the best damn movie ever made, it should've won a Best Picture or Best Director award at the Academy Awards, and so on. It made the money, but it's certainly not worth of those nods.)
I was there on opening day, at the very first showing to see what Mulder and Scully were up to. I wasn't the only one there. I also wasn't disappointed with what was projected before me. I easily got lost in the story and found myself very glad I didn't buy popcorn or a drink when the third act rolled around.
But, it's the middle of the summer, and I'm in a darkened theater looking at frozen winter landscapes. There's an incongruity there, I feel, and outside of TDK's runaway profit margin, I have wondered out loud many times if XF2 would've played better during the winter, that way it might've connected to us more effectively if we'd just driven by big heaping piles of snow.
I don't know that, one way or another. I can't prove it or disprove it, but it is a question that so far will remain unanswered.
I won't complain about XF2, except on one account: the title. Chris Carter was happy with it (or so the story goes) but I'm sure, considering how talented Carter is, that he and his crew could've come up with a title much better than that. In fact, that weak title might've been the second strike against this movie.
As for my own works, (namely "Sweet Dreams,") I wish the old fashioned drive in theaters still existed. I can't speak for other states, but in my area they simply vanished. In fact, we still have the parking lot from one that used to exist, and possibly ten years ago the screen was still up at the far end of the lot, but it had been abandoned ages ago.
I'd like to recreate that era of movie going for the eventual first run of "Sweet Dreams," but that is most likely a pipedream.
But there are possibilities - I remember "Cars" was debuted at, of all things, NASCAR, with the use of multiple screens, projection units, and an elaborate audio system. I'm sure we could come up with something similar, and far superior. Just eliminate the hick mentality, find a nice wide open space on a gentle summer evening, and let the experience begin.
It's not as crazy as it seems - every summer, up in Fayetteville, public screenings are held of previously released films up in Gulley Park, I believe. It's always free, and the organizers always tell the population to bring their lawn chairs and anything else they can think of.
As for the General Theory, it's simply that. I'm sure there are more than several exceptions to it to disprove it, but in an interesting paradox, my General Theory believes in those paradoxes and actually goes forth with encouraging them.
See you at the cinema guys and gals, wherever it may be!
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Starlight's Plan To Conquer The World...
Yesterday I was struck down with a rather nasty stomach bug that, literally, pounced on me from out of the long grass.
At about four in the afternoon, after having forgotten to get the mail, I made the walk up the hill to where the mailbox is firmly planted off the dirt road in its cement foundation.
I almost fell down on the spot. Plus the necessity to walk back to my house wasn't one I was fond of, and with a constantly increasing lack in velocity, I had to sit down twice next to parked automobiles and wait a few minutes while I recovered.
The rest of the afternoon wasn't much better, and this morning has seen an improvement, but I'm not back up to the challenges just yet. The mail can wait, so to speak.
So while I'm currently physically unstable right now, I've been granted the kind of opportunity that only comes when I'm bedridden -- the opportunity to think without any real distractions.
It was in one of these moments I came up with "Sweet Dreams - A Sandman's Story," and last night came the chance to figure out how to promote it to jaded studio execs and the population at large.
If I was in a room right now with a group of suits, this is what I'd tell them.
The Creative Side
To be perfectly honest, it feels to me the magic has long since disappeared from the cinema. Since the mid-90's, we've had "The Matrix," lots of super hero movies and such that are, essentially, CGI top heavy.
And I'm a child of the 80's, which is the era some of my favorite movies come from, and that's not simply because I was a kid at the time.
There was more authenticity, there was more realism even if the movie was something like "Back to the Future" or "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." The effects of a time traveling DeLorean were great, but they didn't make up the story, nor did they detract from.
Plus there was the true special effects wizardry of the time. Now we just slap a computer generated image into the film and be done with it, but Robert Zemeckis and crew had to be creative to figure out how to get Roger Rabbit to pick up a dish and break it on his head and so on.
With the loss of that creativity, we've had the loss of authenticity.
"Sweet Dreams" is a movie about two generations, but we can blend them effortlessly to make people forget they're watching something time specific. Would a 21'st Century guy or gal care if Mathon and Becca's relationship has a tragic end way back in 1953, a time when their parents weren't even thought of?
Sure, "Twilight" has proven it for the girls. Edward is a young man from a different time, but he fits in effortlessly. He is also, in the classical sense of filmmaking, genuinely romantic. We haven't seen this in a character since Mulder and Scully's very quiet relationship that began in the 90's.
The 50's have a specific look, but the more movies that come out displaying that era, the more they look artificial: the clothes always seem to look brand new, the hair looks like it came out of a fashion magazine, and the slang is repeated but also lacks authenticity because only that generation understands it.
So I've eliminated all slang from "Sweet Dreams," be it past or contemporary. This helps make things more uniform, and also keeps all the romanticism of making a "nostalgic" movie dead.
There's also the elements of fantasy, as our Sandmen battle mares with The Starlight Guard on a nightly basis, and these beasties get a good walloping every night, but they manage to do a fair amount of damage themselves so any guy looking for a good fight scene is going to be satisfied.
Plus there's a genuine mystery in the fact Mathon is uncertain of how he became a Sandman, if he's actually alive or dead, and so on. Why can't he enter the cemetery? Why are they kept out of the hospitals? Some have deduced that they're simply not needed there, but Mathon isn't satisfied with that answer.
When "Back to the Future" debuted, something wonderful happened: the kids came out to see a time travel, science fiction story while their older counterparts came out to relieve their youths. I'm willing to bet something very similar would happen with "Sweet Dreams," as the music and other artifacts from the past are brought out for a breath of fresh air.
But the music is important.
This is a movie about an era in time with music that was night time specific. We had truly wonderful artists singing songs like "Twilight Time," "One Summer Night," "Blue Moon." If that wasn't enough, there were artists like The Moonglows and various others that referenced various aspects of all things that occurred past sundown.
And all this music, along with my countless months of staring up at the night sky, has served me well in the writing of this script because it's all part of the atmosphere. And very few movies seem to capture that kind of atmosphere anymore. They show you want you need to understand, and tell you what you need to hear to take you back in time, but it's all just to serve a purpose.
Seeing it and hearing it isn't enough - one has to feel it. And such innocence and wonder was ran out of California a very long time ago. Hell there probably isn't a person in LA, Burbank, Beverly Hills, or Bakersfield who can actually see the midnight sky, let alone the stars themselves due to all the smog they've sent up into their skies.
And playing 50's doo wop might get someone shot.
No wonder they're jaded.
The Marketing
I've been on Myspace for, what, three years now? I've got a fair amount of anonymous readers, and all my high school friends that keep up with me.
Also, on Mania, I somehow managed to get 10,000 profile views in approximately seven months which, I'm told, is unheard of. A year later after joining, my amount of friends continues to grow and I'm well over the 12,500 views that I had back then.
The term "Starlight Guard" which is my handle, has existed for a year and has had that amount of time to sink into the minds of several known, and countless unknown, fanboys who are familiar with me, my work, and all my ranting and raving I do.
Plus there's the new blog (this one you're currently reading) which is just another means of getting the message out.
That's three avenues of communication, and the first two are very well established, so a fan base has existed all this time, and there has to be a large group of people who've remained silent that must, at the very least, be curious about all this stuff they've heard about all these years.
I do know for a fact, that among those friends I know of publicly and virtually, I've got contacts across the entire United States, from coast to coast, on up into Canada and even as far away as Germany. Not bad for a guy living in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas.
There are no guaranteed successes in movies, and no guaranteed failures, but how could anyone pass up with this much pre-existing publicity and awareness I've accomplished in my own time?
The music, as stated, is important, and valued source for the music I've been enjoying comes from Cool Bobby B's Doo Wop Stop, arguably the most successful show on the 50's On 5, as featured on XM Radio. Cool Bobby B has listeners on XM, Sirius, DirecTV, and likely even on Dish Network. That's four possible outlets alone, especially if we partner with him in the promotion and the selection of the appropriate soundtrack for the film.
But the influence doesn't end there, the message can be spread all across the spectrum of Sirius XM's radio channels, because they cross pollinate each other, so the entire XM Nation would be aware of this movie.
Plus, I can pull double duty over at Mania, as I'm acquaintances with three of their staff, which obviously also have the power to get the message out.
Never before has such an "unknown" project had so much going for it, and this is even before an agent has asked to read it.
Now this is a sales pitch, of course, but it's a pretty fair analysis of the potential and the promise to lay down golden stretches of pavement headed to cinemas across the country.
I need to lay down now. I've been working on this proposal for the last hour in brief spurts. At least I've got XM Radio to keep me company...
At about four in the afternoon, after having forgotten to get the mail, I made the walk up the hill to where the mailbox is firmly planted off the dirt road in its cement foundation.
I almost fell down on the spot. Plus the necessity to walk back to my house wasn't one I was fond of, and with a constantly increasing lack in velocity, I had to sit down twice next to parked automobiles and wait a few minutes while I recovered.
The rest of the afternoon wasn't much better, and this morning has seen an improvement, but I'm not back up to the challenges just yet. The mail can wait, so to speak.
So while I'm currently physically unstable right now, I've been granted the kind of opportunity that only comes when I'm bedridden -- the opportunity to think without any real distractions.
It was in one of these moments I came up with "Sweet Dreams - A Sandman's Story," and last night came the chance to figure out how to promote it to jaded studio execs and the population at large.
If I was in a room right now with a group of suits, this is what I'd tell them.
The Creative Side
To be perfectly honest, it feels to me the magic has long since disappeared from the cinema. Since the mid-90's, we've had "The Matrix," lots of super hero movies and such that are, essentially, CGI top heavy.
And I'm a child of the 80's, which is the era some of my favorite movies come from, and that's not simply because I was a kid at the time.
There was more authenticity, there was more realism even if the movie was something like "Back to the Future" or "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." The effects of a time traveling DeLorean were great, but they didn't make up the story, nor did they detract from.
Plus there was the true special effects wizardry of the time. Now we just slap a computer generated image into the film and be done with it, but Robert Zemeckis and crew had to be creative to figure out how to get Roger Rabbit to pick up a dish and break it on his head and so on.
With the loss of that creativity, we've had the loss of authenticity.
"Sweet Dreams" is a movie about two generations, but we can blend them effortlessly to make people forget they're watching something time specific. Would a 21'st Century guy or gal care if Mathon and Becca's relationship has a tragic end way back in 1953, a time when their parents weren't even thought of?
Sure, "Twilight" has proven it for the girls. Edward is a young man from a different time, but he fits in effortlessly. He is also, in the classical sense of filmmaking, genuinely romantic. We haven't seen this in a character since Mulder and Scully's very quiet relationship that began in the 90's.
The 50's have a specific look, but the more movies that come out displaying that era, the more they look artificial: the clothes always seem to look brand new, the hair looks like it came out of a fashion magazine, and the slang is repeated but also lacks authenticity because only that generation understands it.
So I've eliminated all slang from "Sweet Dreams," be it past or contemporary. This helps make things more uniform, and also keeps all the romanticism of making a "nostalgic" movie dead.
There's also the elements of fantasy, as our Sandmen battle mares with The Starlight Guard on a nightly basis, and these beasties get a good walloping every night, but they manage to do a fair amount of damage themselves so any guy looking for a good fight scene is going to be satisfied.
Plus there's a genuine mystery in the fact Mathon is uncertain of how he became a Sandman, if he's actually alive or dead, and so on. Why can't he enter the cemetery? Why are they kept out of the hospitals? Some have deduced that they're simply not needed there, but Mathon isn't satisfied with that answer.
When "Back to the Future" debuted, something wonderful happened: the kids came out to see a time travel, science fiction story while their older counterparts came out to relieve their youths. I'm willing to bet something very similar would happen with "Sweet Dreams," as the music and other artifacts from the past are brought out for a breath of fresh air.
But the music is important.
This is a movie about an era in time with music that was night time specific. We had truly wonderful artists singing songs like "Twilight Time," "One Summer Night," "Blue Moon." If that wasn't enough, there were artists like The Moonglows and various others that referenced various aspects of all things that occurred past sundown.
And all this music, along with my countless months of staring up at the night sky, has served me well in the writing of this script because it's all part of the atmosphere. And very few movies seem to capture that kind of atmosphere anymore. They show you want you need to understand, and tell you what you need to hear to take you back in time, but it's all just to serve a purpose.
Seeing it and hearing it isn't enough - one has to feel it. And such innocence and wonder was ran out of California a very long time ago. Hell there probably isn't a person in LA, Burbank, Beverly Hills, or Bakersfield who can actually see the midnight sky, let alone the stars themselves due to all the smog they've sent up into their skies.
And playing 50's doo wop might get someone shot.
No wonder they're jaded.
The Marketing
I've been on Myspace for, what, three years now? I've got a fair amount of anonymous readers, and all my high school friends that keep up with me.
Also, on Mania, I somehow managed to get 10,000 profile views in approximately seven months which, I'm told, is unheard of. A year later after joining, my amount of friends continues to grow and I'm well over the 12,500 views that I had back then.
The term "Starlight Guard" which is my handle, has existed for a year and has had that amount of time to sink into the minds of several known, and countless unknown, fanboys who are familiar with me, my work, and all my ranting and raving I do.
Plus there's the new blog (this one you're currently reading) which is just another means of getting the message out.
That's three avenues of communication, and the first two are very well established, so a fan base has existed all this time, and there has to be a large group of people who've remained silent that must, at the very least, be curious about all this stuff they've heard about all these years.
I do know for a fact, that among those friends I know of publicly and virtually, I've got contacts across the entire United States, from coast to coast, on up into Canada and even as far away as Germany. Not bad for a guy living in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas.
There are no guaranteed successes in movies, and no guaranteed failures, but how could anyone pass up with this much pre-existing publicity and awareness I've accomplished in my own time?
The music, as stated, is important, and valued source for the music I've been enjoying comes from Cool Bobby B's Doo Wop Stop, arguably the most successful show on the 50's On 5, as featured on XM Radio. Cool Bobby B has listeners on XM, Sirius, DirecTV, and likely even on Dish Network. That's four possible outlets alone, especially if we partner with him in the promotion and the selection of the appropriate soundtrack for the film.
But the influence doesn't end there, the message can be spread all across the spectrum of Sirius XM's radio channels, because they cross pollinate each other, so the entire XM Nation would be aware of this movie.
Plus, I can pull double duty over at Mania, as I'm acquaintances with three of their staff, which obviously also have the power to get the message out.
Never before has such an "unknown" project had so much going for it, and this is even before an agent has asked to read it.
Now this is a sales pitch, of course, but it's a pretty fair analysis of the potential and the promise to lay down golden stretches of pavement headed to cinemas across the country.
I need to lay down now. I've been working on this proposal for the last hour in brief spurts. At least I've got XM Radio to keep me company...
Thursday, March 26, 2009
That Place Where Ideas Come From
Where does a good story come from?
Well, in the case of my friends, it comes from experience. (See the "Stories To Tell...") entry on that matter.
But, in the case of fiction, they sometimes can come from anywhere.
I'm not entirely sure how I came up with the idea of "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story," but I do know the condition I was in when I sketched it out:
Sick.
Very, very sick.
I'd spent the previous day with a chain smoking friend who had little to no ventilation in his small trailer, and no matter how I tried to avoid it, I caught a lungful by the end of the day.
The next morning, which was a pleasant late Summer\early Fall morning, saw me laying in bed with my windows open listening to the 90's On 9 XM Radio station.
A mid 90's dancehall tune came on, called "Sweet Dreams," by La Bouche.
The chorus went like this:
sweet dreams of rhythm and dancing
sweet dreams of passion through the night
sweet dreams are taking over
sweet dreams of dancing through the night
I then casually looked at the DirecTV display (yes, XM on DTV), read the title, and sort of just laid there a second.
"Hmm, sweet dreams."
It had obviously gotten me thinking.
Prior to all this I'd casually thought of one day doing a story about a sandman, but I never had any details and never really gave it any thought. It was just a statement.
But I rolled over, managed to grab a note pad, a pen, and while coughing up a pound or two of second hand smoke, I sketched out the most basic ideas of what would become "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story."
Odd that a 90's tune should inspire this script, 'cause my real inspiration (which was at that time unknown) came from a more magical presence: 50's doo wop music, and staring up at the night sky in the very early morning (5:30) and the early evening, just after the sun had gone down and the first stars had appeared.
I'd been doing that all summer.
I'd also been paying attention to the lunar phases.
And all these notions formed an alliance in my mind and I immediately set to work writing a story about a 17 year old guy living in 1953, becoming a Sandman, and living out the rest of his life watching the modern world go by.
Of course it's a little more complicated than that, given the mares, the Egptian Mau, Kieran the other Sandman who disappears mysteriously (only to reappear just as mysteriously in the 80's), and ultimately passing the bag of sand to a younger man who really fouls things up by rejecting his new duty and puts the entire town of Twilight Place to sleep.
So, the night, music, and a sickened state of being.
That's one place where ideas come from.
There are others.
Oh yeah, I was writing this in the fall of 2007, a full year before I had even heard of Stephenie Meyer's series "Twilight." I just want to clear that up.
And, again, I can prove it to be so. Hell I only started reading "Twilight" after I saw the movie back in November.
Well, in the case of my friends, it comes from experience. (See the "Stories To Tell...") entry on that matter.
But, in the case of fiction, they sometimes can come from anywhere.
I'm not entirely sure how I came up with the idea of "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story," but I do know the condition I was in when I sketched it out:
Sick.
Very, very sick.
I'd spent the previous day with a chain smoking friend who had little to no ventilation in his small trailer, and no matter how I tried to avoid it, I caught a lungful by the end of the day.
The next morning, which was a pleasant late Summer\early Fall morning, saw me laying in bed with my windows open listening to the 90's On 9 XM Radio station.
A mid 90's dancehall tune came on, called "Sweet Dreams," by La Bouche.
The chorus went like this:
sweet dreams of rhythm and dancing
sweet dreams of passion through the night
sweet dreams are taking over
sweet dreams of dancing through the night
I then casually looked at the DirecTV display (yes, XM on DTV), read the title, and sort of just laid there a second.
"Hmm, sweet dreams."
It had obviously gotten me thinking.
Prior to all this I'd casually thought of one day doing a story about a sandman, but I never had any details and never really gave it any thought. It was just a statement.
But I rolled over, managed to grab a note pad, a pen, and while coughing up a pound or two of second hand smoke, I sketched out the most basic ideas of what would become "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story."
Odd that a 90's tune should inspire this script, 'cause my real inspiration (which was at that time unknown) came from a more magical presence: 50's doo wop music, and staring up at the night sky in the very early morning (5:30) and the early evening, just after the sun had gone down and the first stars had appeared.
I'd been doing that all summer.
I'd also been paying attention to the lunar phases.
And all these notions formed an alliance in my mind and I immediately set to work writing a story about a 17 year old guy living in 1953, becoming a Sandman, and living out the rest of his life watching the modern world go by.
Of course it's a little more complicated than that, given the mares, the Egptian Mau, Kieran the other Sandman who disappears mysteriously (only to reappear just as mysteriously in the 80's), and ultimately passing the bag of sand to a younger man who really fouls things up by rejecting his new duty and puts the entire town of Twilight Place to sleep.
So, the night, music, and a sickened state of being.
That's one place where ideas come from.
There are others.
Oh yeah, I was writing this in the fall of 2007, a full year before I had even heard of Stephenie Meyer's series "Twilight." I just want to clear that up.
And, again, I can prove it to be so. Hell I only started reading "Twilight" after I saw the movie back in November.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The Tao of Bartlett
If you're an up and coming screenwriter (or at least you hope you are, like me, wanting to kick open the seemingly permanently sealed shut doors of Hollywood) then you're likely aware of Bruce Bartlett's Screenwriting Tips.
His is a blog I follow, and only just recently as I only discovered it, well, just recently.
But I've known the name for a good long time now because he's the guy to contact at the Above The Line Agency out in California. His listing is among the first, if not the first, in a long list of agencies that are listed alphabetically both in published form and on the WGA Agency list.
Bartlett has stated two things I'm keeping in mind - one of which I knew, the other which is a helpful thought to have.
The first statement is to "own the room."
This is for those lucky bastards who actually get called in to promote themselves. You have to, basically, own not just yourself and all those in the room, but the room itself.
This doesn't mean "be a cocky bastard."
It means YOU GOTTA RAZZLE DAZZLE 'EM!
That, fortunately, is something I'm quite familiar with.
In the past, when I've filled in for the Humanities\Music instructor I worked for back in my collegiate days, I had to not only keep a class of unruly freshmen interested, I also had to keep their respect.
That, I must tell you, is very difficult. They're like predators, and if they get the slightest scent of fear they'll eat you alive in a second.
But I, thankfully, was born under the star sign of Leo. I'm a natural showman.
(Egomaniac some might've said a decade ago.)
But, as a sort of crazed wannabe entertainer, I tend to need to shine as bright as I can to get as many people to notice me. If I can get them to notice me, and if I can hold their attention, I can do whatever I need to do.
And these were the underhanded tactics I used to keep countless groups of freshmen & sophomores intrigued as I would climb up on the teacher's desk, walk an entire row empty desks in the classroom, jump, shout, scream, play movies on the expensive DVD theater system, and pipe various forms of modern music through the speaker systems before and after class.
I had to remind them that, not only was I one of them, I understood them. I was them once. And it always worked.
I was also called in for a few talks at my old high school by my former art teacher, who asked me to show a few of her newer students how to get things done properly. And, of course, I'd climb the desks, draw on the chalkboard, and even sing and dance if the subject called for it.
So I can own a room.
Hell, I do more than that. At times, it's like I've purchased the entire building.
The second thing Bartlett mentions is have three projects completed when you get in that room.
I have that as well: "Sweet Dreams - A Sandman's Story," "Summertime Blues," and "The Life and Times of Igor."
"Sweet Dreams" is about a young man who has his entire life taken from him at 17 due to an automobile accident, but he is reborn the very same night as a Sandman. We follow this young man from 1953 on through present day as he watches the ones he loved fade away, while joining in the nightly battles against nightmarish creatures called "mares."
In case you're wondering, this particular project involves the Starlight Guard and the Sandman's bag of magic sand, which of course served as the inspiration for this blog URL, it's description, and my handle both here and on Mania.
The Starlight Guard is group of recruited individuals who fight the mares nightly, along with the Sandmen, only these select people have no absolutely no idea they lead a different life at night. Only the Sandmen are aware of this fact.
"The Life and Times of Igor" is, simply put, a Transylvanian story gone completely bonkers.
Dr. Frankenstein, a former circus clown, gets arrested for dumping toxic waste, Igor tries to fit in by doing various odd jobs, The Wolfman is part Jack Russell Terrier, The Mummy is an accidental subject of reanimation by Igor one day at the Natural History Museum, and Dr. Jekyll suffers multiple personality disorders such as the evil Mr. Hyde, along with Richard, the Tango Dancing Squirrel.
Other featured stars are Quasimodo, Igor's incessantly jealous cousin, not to mention Dracula, and The Blob who is a living science experiment and door to door salesman.
As Igor tries to fit into life of modern day Transylvania, Utah, things unravel completely for the hunchback and he realizes there's only one place he belongs: with his beloved master.
"Summertime Blues" may borrow the title from the old Eddie Cochran song, and some of its themes from the Bob Seger tune "Night Moves," but it's based more so on what my misspent youth would've been like had I'd been healthy enough to undertake these manic adventures.
It's partially true.
And it's a hell of a lot of fun as it revives my preferred style of comedy: that with grand gestures, lots of shouting, and uncivilized behavior. Think Jim Carrey's earlier works with the naughtiness of "American Pie" thrown in.
I should note these are all copyrighted. I've got the proof to back it up, so no funny business.
A note on my style of comedy: comedy should be passionate. It should have you doubled over laughing with tears streaming from your tightly closed eyes while you pound your fists into the floor.
This is something I personally feel has been lacking for a good....well....several years.
Judd Apatow is the comedic Anti-Christ, and its his movies that have dominated screens for far too long.
I've tried watching a few of his movies, I understood the jokes quite clearly, and I couldn't see an ounce of humor in his bland, rice cracker comedy style.
Sorry Apatow, but for the good of the nation, you've got to go.
His is a blog I follow, and only just recently as I only discovered it, well, just recently.
But I've known the name for a good long time now because he's the guy to contact at the Above The Line Agency out in California. His listing is among the first, if not the first, in a long list of agencies that are listed alphabetically both in published form and on the WGA Agency list.
Bartlett has stated two things I'm keeping in mind - one of which I knew, the other which is a helpful thought to have.
The first statement is to "own the room."
This is for those lucky bastards who actually get called in to promote themselves. You have to, basically, own not just yourself and all those in the room, but the room itself.
This doesn't mean "be a cocky bastard."
It means YOU GOTTA RAZZLE DAZZLE 'EM!
That, fortunately, is something I'm quite familiar with.
In the past, when I've filled in for the Humanities\Music instructor I worked for back in my collegiate days, I had to not only keep a class of unruly freshmen interested, I also had to keep their respect.
That, I must tell you, is very difficult. They're like predators, and if they get the slightest scent of fear they'll eat you alive in a second.
But I, thankfully, was born under the star sign of Leo. I'm a natural showman.
(Egomaniac some might've said a decade ago.)
But, as a sort of crazed wannabe entertainer, I tend to need to shine as bright as I can to get as many people to notice me. If I can get them to notice me, and if I can hold their attention, I can do whatever I need to do.
And these were the underhanded tactics I used to keep countless groups of freshmen & sophomores intrigued as I would climb up on the teacher's desk, walk an entire row empty desks in the classroom, jump, shout, scream, play movies on the expensive DVD theater system, and pipe various forms of modern music through the speaker systems before and after class.
I had to remind them that, not only was I one of them, I understood them. I was them once. And it always worked.
I was also called in for a few talks at my old high school by my former art teacher, who asked me to show a few of her newer students how to get things done properly. And, of course, I'd climb the desks, draw on the chalkboard, and even sing and dance if the subject called for it.
So I can own a room.
Hell, I do more than that. At times, it's like I've purchased the entire building.
The second thing Bartlett mentions is have three projects completed when you get in that room.
I have that as well: "Sweet Dreams - A Sandman's Story," "Summertime Blues," and "The Life and Times of Igor."
"Sweet Dreams" is about a young man who has his entire life taken from him at 17 due to an automobile accident, but he is reborn the very same night as a Sandman. We follow this young man from 1953 on through present day as he watches the ones he loved fade away, while joining in the nightly battles against nightmarish creatures called "mares."
In case you're wondering, this particular project involves the Starlight Guard and the Sandman's bag of magic sand, which of course served as the inspiration for this blog URL, it's description, and my handle both here and on Mania.
The Starlight Guard is group of recruited individuals who fight the mares nightly, along with the Sandmen, only these select people have no absolutely no idea they lead a different life at night. Only the Sandmen are aware of this fact.
"The Life and Times of Igor" is, simply put, a Transylvanian story gone completely bonkers.
Dr. Frankenstein, a former circus clown, gets arrested for dumping toxic waste, Igor tries to fit in by doing various odd jobs, The Wolfman is part Jack Russell Terrier, The Mummy is an accidental subject of reanimation by Igor one day at the Natural History Museum, and Dr. Jekyll suffers multiple personality disorders such as the evil Mr. Hyde, along with Richard, the Tango Dancing Squirrel.
Other featured stars are Quasimodo, Igor's incessantly jealous cousin, not to mention Dracula, and The Blob who is a living science experiment and door to door salesman.
As Igor tries to fit into life of modern day Transylvania, Utah, things unravel completely for the hunchback and he realizes there's only one place he belongs: with his beloved master.
"Summertime Blues" may borrow the title from the old Eddie Cochran song, and some of its themes from the Bob Seger tune "Night Moves," but it's based more so on what my misspent youth would've been like had I'd been healthy enough to undertake these manic adventures.
It's partially true.
And it's a hell of a lot of fun as it revives my preferred style of comedy: that with grand gestures, lots of shouting, and uncivilized behavior. Think Jim Carrey's earlier works with the naughtiness of "American Pie" thrown in.
I should note these are all copyrighted. I've got the proof to back it up, so no funny business.
A note on my style of comedy: comedy should be passionate. It should have you doubled over laughing with tears streaming from your tightly closed eyes while you pound your fists into the floor.
This is something I personally feel has been lacking for a good....well....several years.
Judd Apatow is the comedic Anti-Christ, and its his movies that have dominated screens for far too long.
I've tried watching a few of his movies, I understood the jokes quite clearly, and I couldn't see an ounce of humor in his bland, rice cracker comedy style.
Sorry Apatow, but for the good of the nation, you've got to go.
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