Philly Screenwriter

Of the few new shows that came on BTWS (before the writers strike), one that I really liked and was looking forward to coming back on ATWS was Life . The show follows Detective Charlie Crews who, after being convected for a crime he didn’t commit, returns to the force. He gets a new lease on “Life” after being given “Life” in prison. He has to deal with all the people who turned their backs on him including his ex-wife and former partner, while trying to find the person who actually committed the triple murder he was sent away for.

It was recently reported in early April that Life would be coming back for a second season but was given and the dreaded Friday time slot. While NBC is touting this as a move to get people to watch TV on a Friday night, I highly doubt this is the best strategy. Shows like Life, which is procedural based, but has an over all mystery that must be played out over the season, haven’t done good recently. The show Journey Man comes to mind. The shows are billed and promoted as big mysteries that cover spans of time (think Lost), which makes the person who might have missed the pilot or the first few episode not want to even bother trying to catch up. 

Luckily, there are ways with sites like Hulu, to keep up or catch up on what you might have missed. I just hope Life gets the push it deserves and this Friday placement wasn’t just a, “If it keeps it’s audience, we’ll keep it, if not, oh well” move. Either way, checkout the pilot below on Hulu.

(Photo by Marisag)

It’s been awhile since I’ve had the urge to write something for pure entertainment. I do still do a little writing over on my other blog, but nothing that’s along the lines of why I started this blog. For the past few months I’ve been saying I was going to leave work and go directly to Borders to do some writing. Maybe outline a new script or update an old one. It never happened. I would just come home, get on the Internet and emerge from cyberspace hours later with nothing to show for it. If I didn’t get on the Internet, I’d either watch some TV, or fall asleep. Sometimes I’d do both.

Lately, I’ve been beating around this idea in my head and earlier this week I decided to jot it down on a piece of paper just in case I felt the urge to write. The plan was, if I do actually, finally, go to Borders I’d have a starting point. This was the writing before the writing. With this, I had something to at least stare at if I did show up.

Today, I left work, came home, packed my Booq bag with my MacBook Pro - yes I’m a snob - and headed to Borders. Just the action of putting my laptop in my bag and the thought of going somewhere to write, not for work but for entertainment, excited me. I chose Borders because I don’t have a t-mobile hotspot account and can’t get detracted by the lure of the Internet. I’ve been to a few Internet cafe type places in the past and tired to write but the free wifi always wins.

Once I set down, pulled out my laptop, and put my Bose headphones on - I know, snob right? - it just felt right. I proceeded to write for two hours, “brain dumping” a bunch of ideas, scenes and character from the little note I jotted down earlier this week. It’s a small step, but a step none the less. And the fact that I’m writing this right now lets me know that I’m heading in the right directions.

I hate it when people with blogs who haven’t written on them in a longtime say things like, “I’m back!” or “I’m going to start blogging again!” or anything along those lines, so I won’t either. What I will say is, I’m excited to be presently writing and besides Borders, this will be one of the places I will continue to do so.

cove, originally uploaded by Cecil E Rudd.

bird

Originally uploaded by Cecil E Rudd

Now that I’m getting back into Screenwriting (and blogging), I wanted to write about one of the problems that’s plaguing me with my writing. Paralysis by analysis or analysis paralysis . This is a big problem for me. I think to much about what I’m about to write and then over analyze it the point of frustration. If I don’t give up at that point - most times I do - I start to “research” which turns into surfing the Internet then into watching TV. Afterwards I’m always upset that I walked away.

Another example would be reading Screenwriting books or information on screenwriting. While this isn’t bad, I tend to hope and think that inside those pages there will be that one gem that will get me out of the funk and help fix whatever problem I’m having with plot or whatever it is. In reality, it just a form of procrastination. I’m always looking for answers to something that hasn’t been written yet, when I’m sure if I start writing the answers will come. Sometimes you have to just jump of that cliff and build your wings on the way down.

I learned this by starting another blog. The idea was simple. The execution shouldn’t have taken as along as it did, but I got caught up in the idea. This is where most of my projects stall. What was different about starting that blog was I decided to just do it. If it failed so what. How many blogs start and stop on a daily basis? The risk of failing was minimal. I had everything I needed. The only thing holding me back was actually writing the blog.

When I first started taking a stab at Screenwriting, it was all about the writing. The first thing I wrote was a color coded 25 page scene in Microsoft works. I knew nothing about Screenwriting and better yet I feared nothing. There is a quote by Alec Bourne that says; “It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.” Relating to this issue, for me it means, just write. Put down the book. Forget proper format (until you’re done ). All the books, articles and seminars will help you learn more but they don’t help you do the one thing that should come easy. Writing. How do you handle this?

I’ve been away learning about blogging and having issues with my hosting company. I lost all of the comments that used to be on this blog but I did manage to save all the post. Oh well, here’s to a new start. I’ll be back with more soon.

In the meantime, check out this cool video.

Here is a quick list of all the movies I’ve seen this year. (That I can remember and were in the theater.)
1.    Hostal
2.    Annapolis
3.    Final Destination 3
4.    16 Blocks
5.    Block Party
6.    Inside Man
7.    Brick
8.    Hard Candy
9.    United 93
10.    Mission Impossible 3
11.    One Last Thing…
12.    The Da Vinci Code
13.    X-men: The Last Stand
14.    The Break-Up
15.    Superman Returns
16.    The Devil Wears Prada
17.    Clerks 2
18.    Lady In The Water
19.    Little Miss Sunshine
20.    Talladega Nights
21.    World Trade Center
22.    Half Nelson
23.    Invincible
24.    This Film is Not Yet Rated
25.    The Last Kiss
26.    The Departed
27.    Saw 3
28.    Borat
29.    Deja Vu
30.    Dreamgirls
31.    LOL
32.    The Descent

Top Ten Eleven in no particular order:
1.    Half Nelson - Saw this at the Philadelphia Film Festival. Great acting, and hearing the director talk about the movie made it even better.
2.    Dreamgirls - and I’m telling you, Jennifer Hudson was Great!
3.    United 93 - Well directed movie, gripping.
4.    Deja Vu - Took a lot of thinking but I really liked this movie.
5.    Little Miss Sunshine - Great cast. A very good “Dramedy.”
6.    Hard Candy - WOW! Very, very tense. Also viewed at the Philly Film Fest.
7.    Brick - Detective noir, set in a high school? Great!
8.    Clerks 2 - Pillow pants!
9.    This Film is Not Yet Rated - Great Doc about the MPAA. Philly Film Fest.
10.    The Departed - Great cast. As good as if not better then the original.
11.    The Pursuit of Happyness - Will Smith, also great!
Movies that underwhelmed me:
1.    LOL - Saw this at the Philly Film Fest also. I maybe in the minority because a lot of people thought this was good, but I can’t say anything positive about it so I won’t say anything at all about it. The director and cast were there which made it cool. Maybe I missed something and should watch it again.
2.    Super Man Returns - Boring.
3.    Block Party - I guess I thought this was going to be more of Dave doing jokes and stand-up. A good concert movie, but I really didn’t like it. On the DVD they have extended footage of the performances. Maybe I should have watched that.
Movies that surprised me:
1.    The Devil Wears Prada - After being highly disappointed with Super Man me and my girlfriend walked  into this movie as the trailers started playing and thought we might as well stay for awhile. Very funny movie and well acted.
2.    Invincible - Didn’t have high expectations for this one. Good, plus the Philly connection was a plus.
3.    One Last Thing… - Philly Film Fest, also. Another local touch and the Director was present and took a swipe at Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Distribution company for not distributing the movie right. Only in the theater for 3 weeks then to DVD didn’t help this little movie. Check it out if you get a chance.
As far as writing, I didn’t do as much as I wanted to this year. I did send out one of my short scripts to get notes. The best and worst parts of this process was reading the notes and finding out what I knew was wrong with the script, (I know I shouldn’t have sent it out but I did.) and being told that there is something there and with a few rewrites it could be a better script.
That’s a quick wrap up of the year, and I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and good luck on whatever it is you set out to do this year!
Next week I will talk more about the Sitcom and other projects I have planed.

Surfing around the Newyorktimes.com website I came across an article on Indie Sitcoms . While the article didn’t go in depth, it did highlight a few shows like, Duder, Floaters, The Burg and Soup of the Day. One of the projects I’ve been working on is a sitcom. I had the idea of producing it myself for straight-to-Internet distribution but I wasn’t sure it could be done or how to do it. After waiting a few episodes of those straight-to-Internet sitcoms, I plan on making that my focus and creating either a sitcom or a drama.
Check back on Wednesday for a more detailed description of my plan and how I will go about doing so. Until then click on the links of the sitcoms and check them out.

A few days ago I popped over to one of my favored finance blogs and was greeted by the picture you see above. Although this is a finance blog the caption resonated with me. “I’ll do it tomorrow” has become my mantra. I’ve been waiting to start blogging again and hoping to have that great come back blog post that would tell everything about why I was away and hadn’t blogged, but I’ll do it tomorrow always won out. The first draft script that’s been done and in need of a rewrite, I’ll do it tomorrow. The Grey’s Anatomy script I want to write? I’ll do it tomorrow. Sitcom script? I’ll… you get the picture.
I’ve had every excuse to not do any of those things and some were legit (my computer breaking), but laziness is the only real answer as to why I’ll do it tomorrow turned into the broken record that hunted me daily.
So no more I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m starting with this post today.

I haven’t blogged in awhile, but it’s not my fault. I host this blog through yahoo’s small business starter plan and for some reason it stopped letting me acsses my log in page. After a long fight with yahoo’s non-existent customer service, I decided to just delete the blog and start over. To add to that the computer I used to design the blog crashed and I lost all my pretty CSS stylings. Most of my post were saved since I started this blog on blogger, but some of the newer ones where lost. Also lost in the crash were all of my scripts. Every last one of them! I have yet to take the computer to the shop so I’m hoping I can at least get them back. If not, oh well, I’ll start all over.
The worst part of this whole fiasco is I was just starting to get a few readers and now I have to work to get them (you) back. But that’s OK, I will do my best. Please be patient as I rebuild and add all the old post back in along with changing the layout. I will be opening the topic up a little more also to include more the just screenwriting, so be on the look out for that too.