Monday, November 24, 2008

Movie Poet Blog


I've recently found this website, Moviepoet.com , and it's pretty radical, if I don't say so myself. What you do is write a five page screenplay every month. At the end of the month the script is reviewed by the members of the site and the top three are posted. The top three are also placed in a magazine that I cannot recall. A few scripts have been picked up for production and the site is an avid hotspot of indie filmmakers to connect with fledging writers. It's pretty tight, really. This month is a one page screenplay on any topic of your choosing. Yall should sign up n shit.

Moving on. I saw Role Models last night. It wasn't that great. It had it's shining moments, but my brother and I were the only people in the entire theater to laugh at them. It could have been way better with Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott; didn't have enough material. It seems the whole movie was on the spot improve, rather than a concrete screenplay. The starbucks jokes that were used, I've been hearing the past three years now. I'm sure you all know it: venti, tall, grande are all large! We know, cashcow, we know.

Saturday was a mess. Michigan-Ohio State game. Didn't care. I went down after the game to hang out with some friends after having spent all night friday with a bottle of pinot noir and a wheel of cheese.

Oh, I didn't just eat cheese and drink wine, I wrote about the first ten pages of a script, directly after my completion of the film Boogie Nights. It was incredibly inspiring, as any PTA film will be, and as soon as the credits rolled I had my laptop fired up and my fingers rummaging through the keyboard, hungry with lust for letters. Those letters came together to form words, which ultimately helped me towards my goal of compiling sentences and paragraphs. It was pretty intense to witness this all in person.

So, back to Saturday. I meet Ben at his girl's place. We tried to wake up his g/f, to no avail. They'd been drinking since, oh, about 7am, as most lushes do whenever rival teams play. Needless to say, when I arrived at 4pm they were TRASHED. Incoherent mumbles of "fuhkin shots dood. leth ohrda Peeza" and other shit that I couldn't comprehend. I asked myself why I tolerate this, they offered to pay for the pizza, I then understood. After the pizza it was pretty much bouncing back and forth between friends in peril amongst themselves. Friend A was upset at Friend B who was upset at Friend C who only wants to hang out with me.

I hang out with friend A for a while. He wants to sit home and get more pizza. I didn't drive an hour to get some fucking pizza. I leave. Friend B wants to go to the most crowded, shoulder to shoulder, wait 20 minutes to get a warm beer, p.o.s. bar in all of campus. So we go, it sucks, I leave with friend C. Friend C wants to go back to the house and have some more pizza before going back out, somewhere a little less crowded. That's fine, I say, tired of all the god damn pizza being slung around. We eat some terrible goop of liquid atop a cheesy crust and head past friend A who is passed out on the couch. We go out for a while and friend B calls every five minutes wanting to know where I'm at. He thought I was going to come back and go to that stupid bar. NO. He's upset now. Friend A wakes up and calls, he thought I was gonna sit with him and watch tv all night, he's upset. Friend C gets into it with his brother's friend and I'm reminded of mommy and daddy fighting again.

So, I left. Friends are overrated.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Screenwriting for Blog


Finally! I finally managed to sit down and hammer out page after page of the screenplay I've been meaning to get at. Took long enough! Appears I've been in a creative spurt as I've written the beginning of this screenplay, wrote a one-pager for moviepoet.com and even finished an article for a magazine. I'm ecstatic as it's about time I got back to doing what I know how to do.

Friends coming in from Vegas on Tuesday. It'll be fun; he's the lawyer type, which means he has money, which also means he'll spend some of it on me wherever we go. I like those kinds of friends. I'm not really a good friend to people, I know, but I do put forth a concentrated effort. Honestly, I'm pretty self-absorbed. Not in the way that I think I'm hot shit, or overly attractive, or anything of that nature. I'm just absorbed in my own life: I do what I want, when I want, with whom I want, however I want to do it. I put my needs in front of others. That's a bad thing, to an extent. But I'll come around eventually; I do miss the affection of others.

Oh, wow. Here I am bitching and moaning about my feelings. I promised myself I wouldn't do that. That'd I'd just do the stream of consciousness, rambling prose thing. I guess feelings will come out when you do that. Maybe I'll go cut myself later, that helps teenage girls, addicted to Twilight, to deal with the pain.

Twilight: it's just the new Last Vampire, from Christopher Pike. The storyline that singlehandedly introduced me to my own erections. Nothing is sacred anymore.

Monday, November 17, 2008

The Miracle of Blog


My cat, Kitty, birthed an inept baker's dozen (eight) kittens last night. I had no clue she was even prego. I was a little upset that I didn't get to go through the whole process of Juno with my cat. You know what I mean - the pseudo new-age way of disussing teen pregnancy. It probably would have gone something like this:

"Yo, owner, I'm pregos fo sho, u know!"

"I'm sorry, did you say something? All I heard was 'meow!'"

"Dint youz hear me? I gotta bun in the oven and no mitt! Ascootin you best get cuz yo carpet is all wet."

"I don't comprehend a word you're saying right now. Here's your milk."

"Fool, I can't drizzle that mizzle or my litter box'll be liquizzle. Anyhoo, I'm about to, honest to blog, birth the girth right outta yo wallet."

"Yeah, that's a good kitty. Run along now, you're staring at me again."

Can we get this animal an Academy Award? Not only did her steadfast weight gain decieve me, but every single one of her kittens are a different color, which leads me to believe she's a sexually rampant alley catstitute.

So now I'm stuck with finding a home for six of the babies. I'll keep one, the strongest of them all, of course, and one will go to someone at work. The rest, I hope to pawn off as christmas presents for people who seem to need the gift of responsibility. Hopefully they'll enjoy!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

The Lost Weekend Blog


I should have been writing. This weekend turned into the Lost Weekend, a film by Billy Wilder. Rather than hole up in front of the computer, with a movie playing in the background, for inspiration, I went out Saturday night. It's not as though I was suffering from writer's block; I simply went out for it was convenient; the worst reason.

The audition was at 2PM. I was already late getting there. The role was man that used to be a superhero but lost his powers and is now a villain. It was intriguing because I was told the inspiration for the role was Kevin Spacey in Se7en (the coolest movie title/spelling ever) mixed with Heath Ledger as Joker. This is the kind of role that is creatively satisfying and I couldn't wait to try out for it. Come to find out, the script was so poorly written, the dialogue so atrocious, I turned down the opportunity for the role. I felt terrible for the director, thinking this material was worthy of being made into a film. Now, I'm no screenplay connoisseur but I like to believe that I can spot decent writing when it's placed in front of me.

The way things are going in Hollywood, anymore, I'm sure this is the kind of movie that would be greenlit after the producer heard the pitch. "Good guy turns bad, tries to kill new good guy, says things like 'Who's laughing now?', SIGN ME UP. Here's a check for 30 million, have it done by Thursday"

And it will probably happen just as I wrote it.

So, my next goal was to leave the audition, head back home, lock myself in and write all night. Didn't happen. Not even close. I left the audition and went to meet Ben and his fine honey, Shawna, at a local dive bar so we could swim in the molten jacuzzi of lushhood. Ohio State won; I could give a shit less. The sea of scarlet and gray was boring and the people sporting their proud colors were no more entertaining. Ben and Shawna are cool as hell, don't get me wrong, and they kept me thoroughly entertained throughout. It's just the people we met, out and about, that were either obliterated to the point of obnoxiousness, or they were simply inept at carrying on a conversation about anything other than their prior nights endeavors, which undoubtedly involved even more alcohol than they were currently consuming.

Not as though my way of drowning it out was any better than their way of celebrating. I drank to descend myself to a lower level of consciousness. It was then I was able to "relate" to them. And when I say relate I'm actually talking about the words "Oh yeah?", "Really?", "You don't say!" and my personal favorite, "Fascinating!".

So the evening pushes into late night and we find ourselves at a party being held by some of the coolest people I've met. Our friend, Evan, noticed the drumset was avail to anyone looking to get the bodies moving. He did just that, but well! I think it had to do with being away from the Ohio State fans, who use the team's victory as an excuse to be a binge lush.

All in all, I'd say I had a great time. I certainly gained a few memorable lines and happenings that will find their way into a scene in a script I'll work on soon.

Just not soon enough.

On a side note: I went to buy a scarf from The Gap. I opted against it when I saw that the scarves were FORTY FUCKING DOLLARS! Sorry, Gap, but we're in a recession and Goodwill has a better selection.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Jules, Jim & Blog


After much debate, I finally gave in and picked up Jules & Jim. I heard about this film from watching Vanilla Sky, which is enthralling. You can really note how influenced Cameron Crowe was by Jules & Jim, in making Vanilla Sky. A few key scenes are lifted almost directly.

Having imagined Jules to be the woman, as it's such a pretty name, I was shocked to find out that the female characters name was, in fact, Catherine. This would be the smallest tremor of shock I would experience for the duration of the film.

For some months now, I've been picking at a screenplay about an ex-girlfriend's free-spirited, nonchalance for the world. Her vile ways with numerous and various men, all the while up keeping a relationship with me. I'm not bitter, you can't be when you're ignorant to the ways of the floozy. I just thought it would make an interesting character study; going into the depths of what makes this girl the way she is. Soon, though, I came to the conclusion that searching for a reason "why" would be less entertaining than showing the actual results of the "why". I think it'd be more surreal to see her actions as they are committed, as a result of impulse, rather than due to years of Mommy hating. Whoa - getting off subject.

Jules & Jim, yeah. So basically, watching this movie brought to the forefront these memories of all my exes. Memories I had thought were repressed to my subconscious. This girl, and her relationship with these men, brought about an intercourse of loathe and love. I was actually drawn to her and wanted her to be apart of my life, if not me apart of hers. Certain scenes, though, frightened me in all her hostility and disdain towards her male subjects, particularly Jules.

I've already penned, in detail, the way I wanted certain scenes to play out. And here, right before my eyes, it was happening within a film crafted by the mind of someone else. The script I was working on now seemed to have already been done, and it had been, by Francois Truffaut. I'd say that's an admirable thing, but this is the only film from Truffaut that I've witnessed, as of yet. I dig the whole French New Wave thing; Godard is a new liking of mine. But I'm not some pretentious film snob; I merely pretend to be when I'm at the local art college. I do a lot of wine drinking and cheese eating whilst complaining about how "self-indulgent" Fellini was.

You see what happens when I start to talk about film. I get off subject quicker than my sex life does. This was one of the most profound nights I've had in recent history; here I am not able to think of a single, solitary thing, profound, to say. It's all minutia.

Well, anyways, my whole point was that viewing this film last night has brought about some sort of epiphany. I don't know what it is, just yet, but my intuitive side is telling me, tonight, to shut myself off from the objective world and hammer out a screenplay, John Henry style. If you don't know who John Henry is then you'll have to look up "folklore". He was one tough s.o.b. and he got it DONE.

Progress reports at a later time. Wine, Cigarettes and Coffee. Oh, and cheese.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

A Later Time Blog



So I'm off work now. It's sublime. Having recently finished dinner, I now stand on the verge of finding the willpower to finish the monumental feat of cleaning that I started yesterday. Cleaning is underrated; most people enjoy sloth. Me: I'm a neat-fucking-freak when it comes to the aesthetics of my humble apartment. That's a good thing, right? Right?

After the cleanliness portion of the night has passed, I intend to embark on a journey of rewriting a screenplay that I one day intend to direct. Where do I ever get the inspiration, you must wonder. I'll tell you; Paul Thomas Anderson.

If you haven't seen a P.T.A. movie then you're doing yourself a grand disservice. Immediately stop reading and head to your nearest Blockbuster. Upon arriving, go straight to the counter and ask for the Manager. When he comes to, promptly challenge him to tell you if that branch has Magnolia on the shelf. When he tells you, albeit sadly, that he does not; tell him how dissatisfied you are with their selection.

Then head to Hollywood Video. They have it.

A New Day For Blog

Here is today's blog: I'm at work.

There, this blogging thing isn't as hard as everyone imagines it to be. I suppose people have problems with their feelings and whatnot; feeling the need to lament, to the world, their simple lives and impoverished emotions.


Thank you,
Shane