Hello, chaps and chappettes. Time for a year ending thingamapost to placehold my wordpress account before they kick me off for lolligagging. Truth be told––and those of you who know me already know this––I’ve been attacked by many projects at once. Those of you who really know me also know that I tend to check out from the world when embroiled in a number of creative adventures, and I’ve come to find that includes online worlds, as well. Sure, I supply my share of comments in this forum or that blog but when it comes to concentrating on reportage of the more personal variety, I tend to leave it go. The idea overwhelms me a bit, and I’m sure you’ll see why very soon.

Novels –– I’ve completed what really feels like a polished edit for sWitch. I’ve queried it around, gotten some positive feedback and some garden-variety rejections. Next up: get it to print so I can send it around in its complete form (I think of it as an art piece of sorts, so it has to be framed) and create a website for it. I’m thinking of using social networks to create a naughty buzz. I feel I’ve written something the likes of which you’re not likely to find at your local bookstore, and I’ve decided to make that an asset rather than an obstacle. You don’t get the chance to review your own work in a query, and to be honest it’s not really my style. Still, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that sWitch is challenging, smart, fun, scary and not afraid to push all of your dirty buttons. Who knows, if it becomes cultishly popular in the next year, maybe I’ll work up an illustrated coffee table version that will offend and delight your guests in equal measure. Or perhaps I’ll edit a trailer for the outrageous film it’s begging to be. My ultimate dream is for people to throw “sWitch Parties” where everyone dresses like a suburban square save a few sexy, paganistic touches and dances to lounge music while eating pentagram cookies. Can you dig it, man? Anyway, also coming soon is Square One –– a science fiction novel about the rediscovery of humankind by our own cybernetic creations centering on the most unlikely love story of all time against an all-too-familiar sounding rebellion. Notes are being taken with the first chapter not far off in the horizon.

Screenplays –– I’m still querying Shelf Life and am considering a few fledgling filmmakers to send it to. I’ve given some thought to making this one, as well. Since becoming pretty handy with my relatively new Canon XH A1s digital video camera, the idea to shoot something for a festival has greatly appealed. I write like a filmmaker, so why not take the next step? Ditto for Welcome to Cydonia, which needs making in a bad way. Cape May is still waiting, and you don’t keep an old girl like that waiting for long.

Other writing projects –– my animated vignette The Ballade of Haunted Hill will hopefully be completed sometime early in the new year thanks to the extraordinary efforts of my wonderfully talented collaborateur and sometime tea lady Teodora Parvanova (Soon to be Teodora Jones, which is probably the coolest name since Cleopatra Jones). She and I are also working on an animated TV series that we’ll be entering into a European animation contest. The story is based on an old Bulgarian Fable of sorts about an incorrigible young boy who finds his heart after losing his head in hell and it’s pretty rad in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way. And if you’re wondering, yes, finally getting my big break with an animated TV series after collaborating with a Bulgarian animator I met over the Internet by answering her “ad” for a writer is exactly how I envisioned my career path to go. All kidding aside, Teddy’s a delightful gem with a bright future and it’s been educational and fun to work with her. Whatever comes of our projects, I’m already proud as punch to have created what we have and hope to continue our partnership long into the future.

Music –– because there’s still a little time left between working, eating and sleeping, in addition to gigging and embarking on various projects with my band Surrounded By Idiots I’ve been putting my solo acoustic act together and am available for hire come the new year. It’s been an embarrassing amount of fun to get serious about––not only writing new songs and finding my identity as an acoustic artist––but honing my guitar skills. Most of my weekend is taken up playing and rehearsing and if you’re interested in learning more, head to my website and check out my artist list (which is constantly growing).

TV/Web Productions –– for the past few months I’ve been developing a cooking/reality show called “Table 42 with Chef Darryl Harmon” that takes place at The Water Works Restaurant in Philadelphia. Chef creates special dishes for a lucky couple who have been selected to dine at the famous “Table 42″ where over 300 wedding proposals have taken place as well as all sorts of other special moments. For more info on that, check out the website and look us up on Facebook. Shooting is scheduled to begin next month and we’re hoping to host a premier party at The Water Works for Valentine’s Day. Forks and fingers crossed we’re able to pull it off. So watch all spaces and keep an eye on your HDTV sets, as the table is set for us to be there, too.

And that, folks, is all the time I can afford to give you. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it just means you’re a few pegs down the list. Hey, at least you’re on the list, you ungrateful, time-stealing, bas–just keeding. Allow me to leave you with one of the most beautiful folk guitar performances I have ever seen and a song I hope to include in my repertoire. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesse Winchester singing Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding on Elvis Costello’s excellent Sundance Channel series “Spectacle“.

I agree, Neko. Have the best damn holiday ever, everyone. Peace to you all.

Most of my time leading up to this day was spent writing and filling my portfolio with “product”. In the beginning, I was bold and ambitious, drafting huge titles such as B.L.O.O.M., a five night miniseries about humankind being scanned into android containers in order to escape a self-destructing planet earth and continue the race in the unfriendly climates of outer space. I was sure it was better than anything being offered on the Sci-Fi channel at the time, and whether I was wrong or right remains a mystery. If one were to deduce from my success and the success of those scribes responsible for classic fare such as “Yeti” and “Mansquito”, I would have been proven quite wrong. As it was, I could only contact a small bunch of agents as many that might have found it interesting required I be represented already; a quandary I’ve yet to get my head around. Anyway, it was too much for anyone to accept for a new writer, or such was my conclusion. Maybe it was just bad. Who knows? But it remains in a drawer where it is likely to stay until human beings really do need to escape the planet–which, if I may borrow a little cynicism to cheer me up, could be soon from the looks of things.

After B.L.O.O.M., I began to pen wildly: big budget horror trilogy here, complex, semi-animated dark coming-of-age tale there. Getting smart–or so I thought–I eventually wrote a screenplay for something that I thought fit the budget of most of those producers one finds on Inktip.com (where I listed all of my titles for $50/ea). It was a small movie, but scary in a subtle, unsettling sort of way. It was, I thought, tightly scripted, yet loose enough to include a director’s touch. It pushed the moral envelope, as I’m wont to do, but I suffered great pains to reset the compass at the end in order to include a larger slice of American movie-going public. As Hollywood cranked out remake after remake, I dared them with my story of false redemption by the sea. I even made a video about it for a contest that I didn’t win. But no matter, some projects you believe in no matter how many signs seek to convince you otherwise.

And then I got a call.

It was an honest to goodness Hollywood agent. I’ll never forget it, as it was a dreary Sunday night and I was already heading for bed. It was damn near the greatest phone call I’d ever received at that time slot: she fawned over my style and craft; she loved the characters, right down to their clever little names; she got all my inside jokes and was picking Hollywood A-listers in her head for the roles. She even shared my interest in characters with skin color anomalies! And then, after two hours, my phone’s battery began to alert me that it was about to cut off. She said no worry, we would talk later. In a few days, I think she said.

Errr…no. It was never, actually. A few reassuring emails and another screenplay sent post-haste to her door later, the romance was over. I’m not sure if it was the second screenplay I sent her (complex, semi-animated, dark coming-of-age thing) or something entirely unrelated to me and my writing. People, as it turns out, are human. And humans have shit come up all the time. But instead of getting bitter, I took the little jolts of confidence that the original phone call sent through me and decided to write something new; something that seemed a surefire sale, but without compromising the subject matter and style inherent in my other “product”. This one would be something I could almost budget over the phone, and I even had a high concept teaser to go with it. “Lost in Transfusion” I called it, in an attempt to excite another to call with dreams of pushing an indie horror film that boasted an elegant, Sofia Coppola vibe but with a large toe in the vampire zeitgeist pool. It was set at a three-day horror convention in a hotel and everything (timelock!). Young girl with tragic past meets old author dude with a horrific solution. So excited was I–and undaunted by my rejection–that I started immediately penning a character sketch of the main character, Eliza.

Two months later I had a novella. Yeah, I wasn’t feeling burned about Hollywood at all. Noooo.

But you know what, I loved it when it was finished. Still do. And it got me to do my next book, which I’m buttoning-up just now. And it seems I’m starting back at the beginning when I was writing about subjects that you will not easily find on the Border’s front tables. In fact, just yesterday I took a stroll around the popular bookstore franchise and was a little hard-pressed to work out where this new story would fit. Horror was close, but not quite right. And up front next to the new offering from the guy who wrote The Kite Runner was a stretch too far, for sure. Where do the genre-benders go? Do we have a special club where we smoke cigarettes and say clever things until the wee hours? Is their a movement about, because I’d really like to know. At the moment I’m calling it “high-camp, dark fiction”. I could just as easily call it an “over-the-top thriller with horror elements”. A part of me would love to just slip a few next to a Martha Stewart cookbook, and see how it goes over. Anyway, the queries for this one are in production, and at least I get a chance to say there’s a message under all that romp. We’ll see, won’t we?

Anyway, today’s professional specialness is running a little low. I don’t think I’ll get that call, but I’m likely to get a few others. And what is always as sure as “shit on your shoe”, I’ll be writing and querying and pushing the boundaries as I see them until it’s time to go home. Because possibly worse than never becoming a serious author in my lifetime is becoming one writing stuff that betrays those early efforts where I was bold and undaunted by the industry, the economy, remake hysteria and being just another guy in the middle of nowhere who thinks he has something to say. I think I always want to be that guy.

It still wouldn’t hurt to get another Sunday phone call that doesn’t go where you think it might, though. But like so many journeys a writer takes, if he takes them for the right reasons, where you end up may prove well worth visiting.

Rest in peace, Ms. Page.

But now comes stage two of the life of the story where I dig out names of parties and individuals who might be interested in the concept and style, and send them a letter. So in a sense, I’m sending out my own S.O.S., and hopefully there won’t be the usual lull in pace that often accompanies this particular phase. I’ve not given up on my other works, but I made the decision that they were too ambitious from an unknown writer to use as bait for representation. I felt I needed to write something that an agent or interested buyer could wrap their head around in a brief sitting. I needed to give them something they could take a chance on that wouldn’t translate into possibly the biggest risk of their careers. And as previously stated, I wanted to keep them riveted as they waited for their laundry to dry or in between their deep tissue massage and tee-time. Hopefully, I’ve done that and I thank everyone who has taken the time to give it a read. You’re truly awesome.

So I dropped 14 bottles into that Cydonian Sea yesterday, along with a few carrier pigeons by way of online submission in hopes that someone, somewhere, finds it, opens it up, and likes what I’m selling. It was nice to have a link to a video pitch that could be found right here on my blog, along with a somewhat lengthier synopsis, and I have the Massify contest to thank for that. I also tried to show my work, including a paragraph that honestly explained why I singled out the intended recipient of the letter. Most of the reasons involved the work of clients they currently represented having similar tastes to mine, others involved me taking a stab at reps of talent who have been known to sign on a smaller film or literary property that may have something going for it. It’s very likely those will get returned or binned, as 99.9% of film companies and talents agents won’t touch unsolicited ideas with a thousand foot Saudi yacht. They do this to protect themselves from future lawsuits in the event their company or star is involved in material that may incorporate overly familiar elements to the unsolicited work. But every once and awhile someone takes a chance on someone if they present themselves as honest and professional, and I wanted to be there if my lucky number was called – even if I wasn’t a stripper with lots of professional writing experience and more than likely a real life agent with deep Hollywood connections.

Hollywood really does like a Cinderella story. Especially if she takes off her gown and a few suitors are swept under the carpet.

Regardless, I really think I overturned lots of stones this time around. And in many cases, one stone lead me to another which lead me to the one I really was looking for. Hey, when you live on an island and you write about an island and so often when seeking to get a foot in the door of the film industry you feel like you’re stranded on one, what else is there to do but turn stones and send bottles?

And of course, keep on writing.

Okay, that’s not exactly fair, even if it is absolutely true. To be honest, I never really expected to win for a variety of reasons, and I’m cool with that. I did, however, learn a few things:

1. Those who arrive late to the party end up with the stuff nobody wants. Don’t think you’re just going to waltz in whenever you damn well feel like it and get the best booze or cake or finger food because it’ll be gone. People who know this arrive early and generally walk away satisfied. They’re also massively annoying, undeserving of their reward, and almost always poorly dressed. Anyhow, I found out about the contest well late into it so I’ve no one to blame but myself. And just to show there’s no hard feelings, I’ve picked my horse. Does it shamelessly borrow from every horror trend that’s come along in the last five years? Yes, yes it does. Does it do it in a cool way? I think so. Good luck, gents.

2. People liked my idea, and in the way I hoped they would. I got a handful of nice comments that I will pump straight into my ego reserve tank, even if they were at least partially motivated by electoral need. They could have said Welcome to Cydonia was “kinda scary” or “reminiscent of popular Russian propaganda films circa 1983″ but instead they said stuff like:

“…diggin the pitch. Very good concept.” – AIMark2

“This has a creepy, fantasy element to it that I love.” – Cruellty

“I like your pitch, it’s very interesting.” – Fear

“I just checked out your pitch. Really original, I’d love to see it as a film. I love character buildup, and just in your synopsis, you’ve left me wondering what happens to the characters.” – BinderGang

“Ooh, this sounds different. I like it.” – jazztastic

“I like the prospect of this character, it’s a very creepy idea, I like it “ – deathtiger

“Very cool concept…I always liked playing with concepts of the afer life but you’re literally creating an entire movie around one. And a very unique and creepy take at that…the poster is also really great. Looking forward to more…” – raffi

“Awsome! a very unique idea.” – draven

So a HUGE THANKS to that talented bunch for their motivating words. And I want them all to know that I voted for each and every one of their ideas, as well. Check out their pitches when you get a chance.

3. The online filmmaking community is definitely out there and growing. This is a good thing. Massify should be commended for their efforts, and no matter how it really comes together in the end, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to give and receive feedback in this way and offer this kind of opportunity to, well, the masses. I have high hopes that the future of filmmaking is branching out a bit more to the people and not remaining so closed inside the Hollywood system where so much gets done in a vacuum and often for too much money. I’m not a blockbuster hater or anything like that, nor do I think the system has necessarily failed us, but I am worried how infrequently fresh and original material is supported and encouraged. It’s great when graphic novelists and authors of other media get their shot in the sunshine, just as it is when a classic old movie gets remade for the third and fourth time. But it’s doubly cool in my opinion when risks are taken and rewards divvied out to the thousands of individual voices who have no interest in doing anything other than making their art and possibly supporting themselves in the process. I think the film industry needs that, and it can only make a good thing better.

So to all of those who checked out my pitch, and the eleven of you that voted for me, thanks. I really mean that. Also, do any of you think the above picture and title would have been more successful? I’m curious, as it certainly seems to fit in with the others better.

Also, if anyone is interested in reading the screenplay, I’ve decided to make it available for a few days. Enjoy!*

*Sorry, script is down. If you really want to read it, contact me. If you’d like to watch the video pitch, click here.

]]> http://scottstories.com/2008/03/18/contest-update/feed/ 1 scottyus http://scottstories.com/2008/03/14/exercise-your-right-to-make-this-blog-more-interesting/ http://scottstories.com/2008/03/14/exercise-your-right-to-make-this-blog-more-interesting/#comments Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:30:03 +0000 scottyus http://scottstories.wordpress.com/?p=56 ]]> Which is what will happen if I win, or at least get into the top ten. My story fits this contest like The Twist fits a dance contest on Soul Train but dammit, I think it’s good. To be totally honest, it’s a little scary to even imagine that I’ll lose the concept for a producer and “orginal story” credit, but there are worse things than lucking out of utter obscurity to see your story idea made into a film and be allowed to take part in the production. The thing is, I’m shit at digging out votes from others gathered on Massify. They send you an email, ask real nicely if you’ll have a look and throw them a vote, and then you never hear from them again. Thing is, at first I voted for whomever asked. I wasn’t sure I was even all that interested in entering. Then I started playing with that poster and thought “what the hell”. Now, I’ve cast more votes for others than I actually have. Smaaart.

The other sticking point is…I don’t feel comfortable asking people to vote for me unless they truly think it’s something they want to see, and more to their taste than what the others have entered. This “vote for as many as you want” policy makes for a big clusterfuck that I have trouble getting behind. I’ve been up against it with a battle of the bands once and it was disastrously annoying. There were people figuring out how to vote more than once and the count reached a total surpassing the amount of people who actually owned computers in the United States. It was ridiculous. I understand that Massify and After Dark Films have entered into some kind of partnership where they’ll increase user traffic and therefore generate a larger audience for their products, and I think that’s internetastic and whiz-bang clever and all, but it’s not exactly trolling for quality, is it?

I should shut up. This is about the people.

But I’m not done.

Heh, here I am semi-dissing the contest I’ve just entered. I really should be nice because the entering has gotten me to dig into the minutiae of marketing of my screenplay. I’ve got a neat little video and even a poster that might get some attention, and it’s basically put me on a roll and for that I’m grateful. But if you look at my entry and the others, mine is more about finding the madness in the straight lines and hospital bed corners than in the ragged fonts and mental asylum bed springs, if you know what I mean. Eh, we’ll see what happens.

Anyhow, if you’ve arrived here and feel like entering into this experiment with me, click on this link, check out what I’ve got on offer, register (I know it sucks, but the porn will be there I promise) and click the vote box that magically appears. And why not tell a friend? I mean, we could look at this as taking over the mainstream media one contest at a time. And don’t be fooled by entries that play themselves off as edgy and radical. Quiet is the new loud, doncha know? And I swear on the half-life of my plastic credit card that Welcome to Cydonia will literally make you so fretful the next time you go to the beach that you’ll wish Jaws was in the water with you.

And no one has ever died from simply going crazy, I don’t think.

I’ll let you know.

I suppose the biggest change to the story is the title. I’d had a love-hate relationship with Shh… since I first came up with it, and while it was fun, different and significant to the story itself, it’s also a pain to explain over the phone, annoying to write in a sentence, and a little insubstantial on a title page. So I’ve changed it to the title you see up there in my little movie poster mock-up. Interesting story behind that, actually. I came across a very cool website that was holding a horror film pitch contest and the winner got their film produced by After Dark Films and included in Horrorfest 2008′s “8 Films to Die For”. You even get a chance to audition for a part, and on-site voting would determine who made it right down to the final casting. Cool idea, I have to say. So I submitted a logline, a synopsis and the two requirements left were poster and pitch video. I’ve yet to make the video and am still not exactly sure I’m going to go through with it as this particular entry is rather left of center for what they’ve done in the past, but it was a cool little exercise to help me visualize my story a bit more.

So I figured I’d share. What do you think? Welcome to Cydonia is certainly more traditional sounding, which at this start-up stage of my non-career can be a good thing. I hadn’t really thought of changing it yet until I had this poster challenge thrown at me, so as I ran around google images borrowing shamelessly from anyone and anything I could find that might represent the story, it just seemed to fit better. I was shooting for a European flavor circa 1975-1980 and slapped something together. I think I just about captured the fun but twisted tone of the piece, so for now I guess I’ll keep it…unless I get a bunch of comments telling me I’m being really lame. Which is cool, too.

I saw a terrific little film last night by one of my favorite European directors, Alejandro Amenabar. It was his sophisticated directing genius that gave his 2001 smart as hell ghost story The Others, starring Nicole Kidman, the style it needed to win a ton of awards, including a Goya – Spain’s equivalent of an Oscar – yet without a single word of Spanish in it. Open Your Eyes (1997), his modestly budgeted, science-fiction/horror tale showcased the imagination and talent for directing actors that would eventually put him in touch with Kidman and it is very easy to see why she signed on with little or no Hollywood fanfare to speak of. She won an Oscar that same year for her role in that clueless mess Moulin Rouge! but if you ask me and a whole lot of Spanish people, I’d say they got her best film confused. Meh. Qué saben ellos?

Anyway, check out Open Your Eyes if you don’t mind subtitles and love to have your mind seriously blown by intelligent filmmaking and arguably the greatest overlooked plot twist of the last decade of sci-fi cinema. I also enjoyed watching the copious amounts of dialog, as Welcome to Cydonia™ has lots of it and at times I was afraid I was coming off like a Mr. Wordy McBlowhard.

And on that note…

With approximately a day and a half still left to go before my deadline, the first draft of Shh… is complete. It clocked in at exactly 100 pages, which is a little short for one of my screenplays. But every second counts in this story of an afterlife set in a strange, seaside community, and for a low budget production heavy on atmosphere and dialog, I think it’s about right. Although, I’m not entirely convinced on the title. You can’t just say it like most film titles, as you actually have to “act” it a bit. That might be a good thing as it contributes to the slightly campy, lo-fi/hi-fun tone I was shooting for. But as is so often the case in this business, depending on who’s got the checkbook, it might be a “problem”.

Having set out to write something that might catch the attention of smaller, independent film companies who will give a non-guild member a shot, I think I succeeded. So much so that I actually entertained contacting members of the Atlantic City Film Association (holders of the Atlantic City Film Festival) to see if I could find some production teams who might be interested in making this film with me possibly at the helm. Living in southern New Jersey doesn’t afford a wannabe filmmaker/screenwriter a lot of options in regards to starting a career, even one that lives in the veritable shadow of a camera-ready location like Atlantic City, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from trying. So with memories of attending the first annual Atlantic City Film Festival well over 10 years ago, I looked the organization up.

Aaaand, they’re no more. Guess I can stop trying.

What I’m going to do now is cast the net a little further out to surrounding markets such as Philadelphia and maybe this cat in the Washington/Baltimore area (although, I think I should be a little wary of anyone who describes themselves as “superdelicious”) to see if I can learn how independent folks are getting it done. As for the contest I was using as my deadline, that was pretty much all I wanted from it. I’m not really ready to drop a fifty to see how my offbeat tale of a man who kills his family and is rewarded a “vacation” fairs against a few thousand romantic comedies. Not yet, anyway. I’ll also be posting the script on Inktip where I’ve had a few downloads of late, one of them really interesting, and see if I can get a few bites. But first, I’ve got to roll up my sleeves and start polishing my product. And yes, I know how “PG-13, some language, nudity and sexual themes” that sounds. Heh.

Last night I watched Horror of Dracula with the greatest blood slurper of all time, Christopher Lee. The film is full of iconic horror imagery if somewhat unintentionally comically scripted, but one has to remember that Hammer Films back in the day made most of their product on a shoe-string budget, often against resistance from outside sources and quite often on the fly. There’s a very informative article about it here if you dig that sort of thing.

Okay, the phone is starting to ring. Time to get a few things out of the way so I can work some more on my story and get that ring to mean something else. Oh, and if you haven’t already, click the pic above for something amazing.

Well, I finally got around to seeing Cloverfield. And I must say, J.J., all is forgiven. It was riveting, fresh, and did well to create a sense of helplessness without losing the fun. The creature was impressive, as was all the little creaturelings, and the writing did a tidy job of answering any of the more obvious questions the audience might be asking such as “Where did it come from, and why continue to shoot footage when you’re in danger of being caught between the toes of a giant sea spider?” As a writer, you do need to determine how much of your arse you need to cover in any given story because there will undoubtedly be enough holes in your conceit to strain sandy lettuce. Again, I sometimes insist on writing my way around every piece of backwards logic and thereby muddying up the narrative, so it’s important to patch over only those that slow things down. If you’re doing your job of entertaining them, they’ll stop trying to find the gaps.

And that’s precisely what Abrams has pulled off with his monster flick. So many pictures describe themselves as an white-knuckle ride, but this is the first in a long time that actually made me feel like I was on one. It wasn’t that I was very scared, because while we know these characters in that intimate way the reality-based P.O.V. allows, we also see them as a vehicle for our amusement. However, the little that we root for our main characters is quite an achievement given the sort of film Cloverfield represents. The information on our leads is scant and rather petty in the larger scheme of things, much like the concerns of most teen-angst and twenty-something horror dramas. But they carry us, literally, and we want them to stay on their feet. I must say I’m really looking forward to the DVD and the extra featurettes, especially the director’s commentary. That should be as good as the film itself.

I’m debating on reporting a running commentary of my new story, serially leaking the narrative to give any curious readers out there the opportunity to follow along. I think it would be fun, more so if I managed to receive some feedback. Maybe I’ll consider writing a story that way, from scratch. Pick a few ideas, lay them out, and have you all choose which you like the most, suggest characters, and perhaps even direction. I’ve heard of something similar done before, but this would be more along the lines of an online, creative think tank. I’ll have a think on all that.

Back to it, then. My main character is trying to recruit the help of the town drug addict to help him find who took his daughter. The thing is, it all happens in a strange afterlife where our dirty secrets must never be revealed for reasons still unknown. Unfortunately, for an annoying telemarketing salesperson who once took his job very seriously, keeping your mouth shut doesn’t exactly come easy.