Pirates of the Carribean II

Well I finally saw POTC/Dead Man’s Chest. I’d have to say it is classically a sequel, in every way. This means that at some levels it is satisfying, because I’m seeing the same mythology and characters I did in the original, but it is also somewhat less than the original.

And yes, if you haven’t seen the movie, there will be some plot points I talk about, so if you don’t want to read about them go by-by.

There are four things that disappointed me about it. And of course, you can’t always tell if these were because of the writing, the directing, or the editing. But here goes:

1) Too long. The whole movie had a tendancy to drag, and the big action sequences had a tendency to go on for two long. I thought that both the cannibal island/rolling cage sequence and the three-way sword duel bits were about twice as long as they needed to be, or should have been in particular.

2) There were some serious continuity issues from the first movie. Probably the most obvious one is if the Curse of the Aztec Gold was removed in the original movie, and all of the original pirates affected were returned to mortal status. Yet the monkey, Jack is still undead. How’s that? Oh, that’s right, we can put some great undead gags in the second. Right.

3) It tried too hard to bring character back from the original movie. Every character of any note is back, even if there is no reason for them to be, and even if they were killed off in the first movie. There was no plot to fill all of this up, plus we had lots of new characters with screen time, so we ended up with much less time with the characters we really cared about.

4) The ending just sucked. Sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked sucked. The only reason the ending was done the way it was is that the next sequel is coming out in one year. Let’s make sure everyone is thirsting for it! Well, after, that ending, I’m not sure I’m going to want to see the third.

So it was some good entertainment, but it was just over-commercialized off the success of the original, and way too formulaic in its approach. I’m sure it will make lots of money, maybe more than the wild success of the original. But It was far smaller than the sum of its parts.

New assignment

Well, just as I was starting to get concerned, a paying gig flies through the door and lands on my desk. It means i won't the desperate when I pound the pavement in LA next week. that's always a good thing.

I had just come off an amazing strecth of march to September when I always had something paid to work on. There was a feature script rewrite, a contract for an original short, four travel guides, a rewrite of a travel guide, and a host of little white papers and odds-and-ends. It was a busy time. So when I finished my last assignment three weeks ago with nothing on the docket I was first thrilled for the break. But the last ten days I was starting to get a bit worried.

So now I have a simple gig... rewrite an publisher´s in-house book. It will pay some bills and give me something happily to do.

Mango Mulling

It’s Sunday and I’m feeling a bit stiff and lazy. Yesterday I’d done a hard workout at the gym, enough that my hamstrings hate me this morning. I shuffled up from bed and out to the kitchen to put coffee on. While it rumbled and grumbled on the stove I threw one of the dog’s toys about so she got her morning exercise.

I’ve become used to Ecuadorian coffee, at least the ‘café con leche’ version. This is troubling in many ways. Ecuador is a coffee producer. You’d think a coffee producing country would know how to make good coffee. The coffee in Colombia, for example, is just fantastic. But here in Ecuador all the good coffee is exported. The most popular coffee is Nescafe Instant (a moment of horrified shudders). Tins of Nescafe inhabit massive lengths of shelves in Ecuador’s supermercados (super markets – sort of).

For the intrepid few, like me, you can get ground coffee and with a small stove top coffee maker brew up an expresso-strength brew, then cut it with water or milk. I’ve become used to the café con leche, half coffee half milk. It’s not great, even with the Colombian coffee I got on our last trip to Cartegena. Still, it’s whole universes better than Nescafe Instant Coffee.

So then I head out to the back patio to throw the ball again for la perrita. My gaze falls on the hammock there and I realize it has been some time since a good relax in its soft folds. When I’ve run most of the energy off Ellie I lay down and spent a good thirty minutes looking up at the green mangos ripening in the trees towering over me. I thought of Ecuador politics and my coming trip to Los Angeles, international flights and international terrorism, baseball and the NFL, and will USC be in the hunt for another football championship.

You noticed there was no hint of writing in any of this?

I noticed that there was none, so at 9:30 I had a lazy breakfast with my wife… breakfast burritos and fruit.

Now I’m at my computer working.

Happy writing from Ecuador!

Ceviche, Ecuador and Oswaldo

We spent a nice time today with Oswaldo. Oswaldo is a kind gentleman in his forties and a typical everyday Equadorian man.

Oswaldo is a technician who works on the communications of the Guayaquil Airport. This is the position of a well-trained technician. In the US he’d be making $40-50,000 a year. Here in Ecuador he’s paid $380 a month and supplements his income by driving a taxi. That’s how we met him. My wife wanted to find a reliable guy to drive us around when we needed the service.

His wife is in her sixth year of medical school. They have one boy. They live in Sueces 3, a middle-class neighborhood in the North of Guayaquil not far from the airport. The streets are in poor shape and dirty. They live in a one story structure. The masonry is cracked, but it’s comfortable and clean.

We were there because we’d helped Oswaldo out on a business problem he had. He asked us over so he could properly thank us. Dinner was Ceviche de Manabi and Ceviche de Camarones. Cevishe is a cold dish, a soup really, with seafood, lime onions and a variety of spices. The Ceviche de Manabi is made with fish. The fish is not cooked, but is cured in lime juice for 24 hours. The Ceviche de Camerones is made with shrimp, and the shrimp is cooked.

In the hot climate of Guayaquil the cold ceviche was delicious and refreshing. Oswaldo’s family was a joy. We spent a relaxing three hours talking and practicing my atrocious Spanish.

Getting ready for Hollywood!

My trip to LA and Palm Springs is pretty finalized now. Looks like I’ll hit LA on Sunday, stay to do a few meetings Monday AM, then head to Palm Springs to do some personal business.

I should flip back to LA on Thursday for some more meetings and what not on Thursday and Friday, before heading back home on Saturday. On the way I hope to get some good feedback on a project I’m working on, plus see some friends and catch up with some of the family.

Lots of discussions but no paying gigs yet finalized. It now is 15 days since I finished my last project. Now I’m really getting antsy. This is such a crazy business. You can work for months on end with no thought to worrying about your next paycheck. Then suddenly the spigot stops and you’re not sure what to do.

Still, I have the spec projects working. I’m splitting writing time between a sports/action script I’ve wanted to do for a long time and a sci-fi novel that I’ve fiddled with for the better part of a year.

But still hoping for something to hit my desk, soon.

Short Film Ready to Shoot!

I just found out that a short, original horror script I wrote is going to start filming on September 23 in San Francisco with Poche Pictures. I can’t wait to see it!

Silliness and Expectations

I’m building a reputation among independent producers that I can do good work for them. It is, of course, completely different from saying I’m the next John August. I’m too old for that in any case. Still, I am in a happy situation that many people now come to me to offer me work, or to ask my opinion. Many of these people are professionals, working hard for that dream of reaching Spielberg heights of success.

Some are just people with a dream who’ve never worked a day in their life.

They are legion: the vast swarms of people who’ve never written a proposal, never written a script that was remotely shoot-able, who’ve never directed or produced more than a few of their friends in a drunken party with their video cam. They swarm over everything remotely connected to Hollywood. Their refrain is pretty much the same:

“I have a fantastic idea that no one has ever done before. It’s going to be a fantastic hit and everyone (especially me!) will make lots of money. How do I get it made?”

Sorry. M. Night Shamaylan or Steven Spielberg can scribble something on a napkin and get a green light for it. That’s because they have a track record of taking ideas and molding them into a successful work. They have a track record of attracting the right talent and shooting something on (or near) budget. If you aren’t someone with “The Chops” of someone like that, you have to sell your idea.

That means, if you have a feature movie idea, you get it made into a script. If you have a TV idea, you make up a proposal.

How do you do that? Well you write it.

If you don’t know how to write it, take classes and learn. Then sit down and write.

“Wait! I just have great ideas! I don’t know how or want to write it.”

Then hire a writer to write it for you. That’s what serious producers in this business do. They buy the rights to a book, they get an idea, then they contact writers, choose one to write the script to their story. When they are happy with the script they then take it out and they start calling people.

“Sounds expensive,” you say.

There are lots of writers who will write it for free… hobbyists and students… mostly never have and never will sell anything to anybody because they don’t have the knowledge or talent to write something good enough. You can find someone to write it for free, or promise them thousands of dollars “when it sells.” Of course, you’ll probably get exactly the quality of script you paid for… one that is worth nothing.

Or you can go with a low-end talent – like me. I’ll write a script for a few thousand dollars. It will be a professional undertaking. It will have a chance because it is professionally done, by someone who knows what producers and directors and actors like to see in a script. But without a name director, producer or actor attached to it your idea will still have a long road to travel.

Or you can pay lots of money… $30,000 or $100,000 or much, much more… for a Goldman or August… or one of the other Hollywood elite to write it. Then you have something that everybody will sit up and take notice just because of the writer’s name. It still may not sell, but it will have every chance to.

I was contacted by a fledgling writer who was approached by someone who had an idea. In fact, this person, oddly enough, had a brilliant idea! They’ll be happy to pay our writer up to $100,000 if she writes the script… when it sells. Of course, she gets nothing now. She’ll work hard and give the guy what he needs to be in business, selling his idea, but she doesn’t see anything unless his idea IS brilliant and he markets it BRILLIANTLY and they beat the 1,000-1 odds and get it bought. And she won’t see anything for several years even if it is successful.

It’s a horrible assignment for any professional writer. No writer that expects to be paid for their work should ever do this. It’s an okay idea if you’ve never written a script on assignment and are just learning the craft. But if you are a professional writer, even a struggling one, it is stupid to even consider such a deal.

You must know that the person offering such a deal is usually one of the bottom feeders of the Entertainment Industry. Despite all their claims and bluster they rarely have any money and never have any contacts. They generally have already gotten a reputation… a reputation of hawking dead projects from talentless people.

In my mind, you are better off working on another spec script.

Ready For Work

Okay, it’s official. I’m chomping at the bit.

I still have no assignments, which makes it 10 days and the longest stretch this year I’ve been without a paying gig. Of course, in that time I almost worked myself into the ground. But ten days with lots of sleep has refreshed me wonderfully and I’m getting the old itch.

This weekend I fiddled around with a sci-fi novel I’ve played with off and on. I completely reworked the first chapter to give it a more focused opening and I like the result. I’ve decided to work on that until a paying proposition pops up.

It now looks like I’ll be going to Los Angeles and Palm Springs for the first week in October. I’ll do a few meetings and take care of some business issues. I hope to have an assignment before I hit the loony city, but if not, I’m sure I’ll have something by the time I head back home.

A Disclosure by any other name...

An odd thing landed on my desk. I was asked to sign a Nondisclosure Agreement because someone wants to talk to me about a potential project. This is odd, because there is rarely anything you talk about in an initial meeting that would need a Nondisclosure Agreement.

The general meeting usually runs about like this:

“Nice to see you. I love what you did with that thing you wrote.”

“Thanks. I love your work. The last picture should have landed you an Oscar, maybe two.”

“Well, that’s how it goes sometimes. Have a drink?”

“Diet Coke if you got it.”

“Sure, bottoms up!”

“Cheers.”

“Did you see the last Tom Cruise fiasco?”

“Angels or Dodger fan?”

“Think Kobe can ever win a championship without Shaq?”

“Here’s what I do…”

“In general, we have an action/adventure project based on a true story.”

“Wow, sounds great!”

“We’ll get back to you.”

“Thanks for the diet coke.”

So why do you need a NDA for all that?

Crimson – Coming soon to DVD

The Vampire Project with Poche Pictures now has a name – Crimson. It is in the final stages of post-production and will be hitting the market soon, with ads and reviews in the horror press like Fangoria and Rue Morgue within a few months.

It looks like the script I did had some changes made at the last minute. Evidentally one of the actresses, who was signed to play one of the parts, was an awful person to work with. She was driving all the crew, and especially the director, absolutely nuts. It got so bad that they decided to kill her off right away, damn the script. So they had to throw out my third act and revert back to the original third act to cover her death.

So the reckoning turned out to be there was an original script from which I did a page one rewrite. The original writer then came back to do some additional revisioning. Then on set the producer and director decided to do a last second melding of the various scripts to settle the bitch-of-an-actress issue. So now I’m one of the writers, but I have no idea what the final product will look like.

Of course, this is the type of thing that happens when you write scripts. Ever wonder why there are sometimes 8-12 writers’ names credited to a film? You know what I mean… Story by George Jones, Peter Peters, and Sandy Smith, Screenplay by Tiny Topper, Loopy Lindy and Roger Wingbat, etc, etc, etc.

Accordong to WGAw rules, there are up to three writers who get a Story By credit, up to three get a Screenplay By credit, up to three get a Written By credit (and what the difference is between a Screenplay By and a Written By is I’ll never know). So if you have lots of writers, one or more are often left out to dry. Of course, on the infamous Waterworld up to 19 writers had a hand in at one time or another. And of course, that is under WGAw Contract Rules. Independent films can be a completely different kettle of fish, but it looks like Rich Poche is going to do right by me.

Of course, in the past, when I’ve been involved in such silliness I was always the guy edged out without a screen credit. This time, I’ll get a minor one. Huzzah!

Saturday and a long weekend!

No assignments staring me in the face so it’s looking like a made-to-order relaxing time. I think I’ll bring out a couple of spec projects I worked on previously and maybe play around with them some. One is a spec script which I’ve been tinkering with for over a year. I also have a novel that has stuttered along for six months.

I’ll look at both of them and start working on one until my next assignment turns up.

Discussions, Discussions, Discussions

The good news is the vampire movie is now a wrap and officially in post-production. We might actually get a name for this thing before it’s released!

It’s funny, I’ve been involved in writing scripts in a lot of different situations. I’ve been involved in two projects: a two-episode West Wing and the comedy Phat Girlz, neither of which I got a writing credit for (of course, with Phat Girlz that was probably a good thing). Everything else I’ve been involved in has never been produced. All those scripts have lived and died in Hollywood development hell. Only one, Crimson Snow, an original action/adventure script of mine, still has any life left. It is on life support.

So it is great that a little project, even this vampire rewrite I did, will actually see the light of day. Okay, even if it is a direct to DVD special. It will probably spend more time in the scream-fest circuit than in Blockbuster. But hey, there are different levels of success. I still have my “Guaranteed-to-get-someone-an-academy-award” set of scripts in my desk drawer, waiting for Spielberg or Hanks or SOMEONE to express their interest.

One day.

And meanwhile, the great thing about writing scripts is that even if they are not produced you get paid. And you get a credit for your efforts.

If you were writing books and you put “successfully wrote 27 unpublished novels” you’d have “LOSER” stamped broadly in bright red ink on your query.

However in scriptwriting you write “Action/adventure script optioned by Small Time Pictures; Rewrite without credit of comedy Flubbabbuba by Who Knows These Guys Entertainment…” and you are a successful, working and earning screenwriter.

What a business.

Meanwhile, although I have no writing assignments this moment, I’m in “discussions” on several projects right now. Of course, “discussions” are exactly that. Lots of people do lots of talking and most times it comes to nothing. Still, with any luck I’ll have a paying gig soon. If not, it’ll be time to start back on that spec script I keep wanting to finish.

A Breath of Fresh Air

About five months ago I was a bit worried about work. I’d had a nice run of several months of steady assignments but it finally looked like the well had run dry. All assignments were finished. All rewrites were completed. While I did have several proposals circulating, nothing looked ready to go. So I was ready to take a week or two off and enjoy myself.

Before I got worried, anyway.

Well, my reverie lasted a mere three days, as I soon was inundated on a long series of assignments. There was a feature length script for me to rewrite. Then there was a series of travel guides to write and rewrite. There was another original script to write on contract. And there was a nice little white paper that was a weekend-rush proposition.

So I’ve been writing straight through for five months. The bills are paid and there is a nice balance in the bank. I turned in my last assignment on Friday morning (another travel guide), which was the most incredible struggle I’ve had in a long time. I had nothing to write and I slept.

In fact, I slept most of Friday, Saturday, Sunday and a good chunk of Monday. Tuesday I finally started to fidget around and it is actually today, Tuesday, that I feel halfway human. I guess, that in the flow of all those writing assignments, and late nights, I didn’t realize how tired I was getting. Except for the three days in May and another four in August (when my wife and I went to Cartegena) I’ve been writing solid 6-7 days a week.

It is always a challenge, when you are an independent writer like I am, to balance assignments. You always want to have one or two next assignments on the horizon. You don’t want days or weeks, or heaven forbid, months, between assignments. You also don’t want so much work that you can’t cope.

I guess my break now is a good thing. I need a few days to refresh the soul and put some gas in the tank. I do have a few potential assignments in discussion mode. Of course, until someone makes a decision and approves the assignment you have nothing. If the week goes by with nothing new, then I’ll start to be concerned.

Otherwise I’ll be happy to relax for a bit.

Rush to Finish

My latest travel guide assignment had been going slowly. We’d gone on the trip to Cartegena, visited friends in Quito, and generally I had several days I did nothing on it. Then I had some computer and Internet connectivity issues, so more lost days. Then a friend of mine, and business associate, came by for two days to discuss some possible future projects and that killed more days. Thursday deadline was coming and I was still a long way to finishing it all up. Even though I wasn’t feeling that well, it was time for a writing blitz.

Most working writers do this from time to time. Heck, I’ve been doing this since I was a young reporter working on a weekly newspaper in Junction City, Oregon. I started writing and just kept going, and going, and going.

When the clock said 2:30 a.m. I was almost finished but needed some details I could only get off the Internet. So I hustled … staggered… to bed for a few hours of restless sleep. I was up by 6:00, took care of some household chores, then landed in the local Internet Café as soon as it opened, in fact, I had to wait ten minutes while they booted up their system. Then it was another hour to search for the information, finish writing the travel guide, and email it off as an attachment to the editor.

Now my brain is fried. I realized I didn’t eat breakfast and it is 2:00 pm, so I suppose
I should have some breakfast. I might follow that up with lunch. I’ll be a mess for the next 24 hours. But hey, the travel guide is done. I made my deadline (sort of) and I’m ready for the next project.

Just let me sleep.

Phat Girlz

Well, I saw my face on the silver screen. When I was working on the movie Phat Girlz they needed a few extra bodies to play extras at a couple of shots. So I played a background part as a film cameraman at the fashion show. I also get my one second of fame when “Jasmine” is turned down for a loan at the bank. When she snatches the loan officer’s toupee and throws it, I’m the guy in the back watching it fly off.

Of course, if you watch it, you’ll be one of about 18 people who did watch the movie.

All of us have to be associated with disappointments at one time or another. There were so many problems with this production, challenges that needed to be overcome. The writer/director was a first-timer and a bit out of her depth. The production was shut down several times for money problems. In fact, a lot of people worked for cut rates to get it done. It was my second time working on a comedy. It was a lot of fun, but I think it could have been so much better with better financing and more experienced people at the helm.

Still, disappointments are part of this business. The good news is the check cashed and I have another credit for my resume.

Breaktime in Cartegena

I’ve been away to the Carribean for five days. It was a great getaway. We toured Cartegena and took a couple of serious beach days a Santa Marta. One thing about Colombia, though, the Internet service truly sucks. It’s hard to find, and even when you find a place that’s open it’s klunky equipment that’s slow, can’t handle modern marvels like USB Port devices and is down 75% of the time.

In a way that was good, because even though I brought my laptop to fiddle a little around, I couldn’t do much do to the lack of Internet access. So it really was a good vacation in that respect.

Now it is back to the grind. I’m still finishing that Travel Guide. Also I need to see how things are going on the shooting schedule, as the horror script I wrote should be half way to being in the can now. It’s catch up time.