BANNER FEB2010

From the category archives:

Screenwriting

Twitter in 2010

by Brian on February 22, 2010

in Cleveland Cavaliers, Screenwriting, Twitter

Antawn Jamison Cavs(I fully support the picture to the right.)

So upon return from my big-time Twitter/Facebook/whatever hiatus, the question becomes, “what now?”

To answer this question, I need to make a bullet-point list, and then put the bullets in little digital disguises that make them look like numbers.

For example, take these bullet-points:

*
*
*

Once I’ve finished getting their espionage clothes on them, they’ll look more like this:

1)
2)
3)

You see?

As the alleged numbers explain the positives and negatives behind why I should and/or should not be an avidly aggressive Tweeter, nobody will even know that they’re really bullet-points, and that’s how the logic starts to come into place?

Anyway, in the two weeks I was gone, I wrote a complete screenplay, two full movie treatments, did good on the other thing I do, and got in six fewer I’m-Tweeting-while-driving based car wrecks.

Take that for what you will, and please let me know where to buy little hats for those bullets, because that will look so cool on them when they’re doing their spy work.

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{ 4 comments }

BRIAN_BWSo I am very close to getting my Nexus One SuperPhone, and in preparation for that – as well as recuperation from WSM? – I am going away for a couple weeks.

I also have a script to finish that requires some underwater research – eliminating all distractions and not getting electrocuted is essential.

No blog posts.
No instant messaging.
No Facebook.
No Twitter.

I even deleted UberTwitter from my phone – frankly I need to rethink the manner in which I personally use Twitter altogether.

Anyway, I’ll see you on or around Monday February 22nd – of course I’ll have email, but like I might be deleting every third message just as a kind of sport or game of chance with myself.

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{ 6 comments }

I’ve been working on this script for something that’s being put together, and I’m a little back and forth on the writing style – I do think my time in novel-land messed with me just a bit.

Anyway, here’s a small piece.

Chelsea follows Jazz to the back – she’s all giddy as she passes Colleen, who notices Timothy being all fidgety and nervous. She sits next to him and gives him a napkin.

COLLEEN

Here.

TIMOTHY

We’ll get out of this, right? He can do this?

He takes the napkin all thankfully, but he’s terrified – NOT EVEN THE NAPKIN IS HELPING.

COLLEEN

(hesitant)

I’ve seen Jazz do some...

(beat)

I was at the Jefferson Incident. The Memorial.

TIMOTHY

I know that, Miss Burns.

He unfolds the napkin and starts tearing it up.

TIMOTHY (CONT’D)

I know a lot of things I shouldn’t.

Anyway, the part I’m questioning is the action line that ends with the big “NOT EVEN THE NAPKIN IS HELPING”. Especially the end, but the whole line is in question.

Debating with myself:

1) It does nothing to help from a production angle – it’s really a bunch superfluous words, and there are more compact ways of getting the point across that the napkin isn’t making him more at ease.

Example: He takes the napkin – it brings no comfort.

2) On the other hand, this isn’t a shooting script, and the way it’s written all over-dramatic to the point of stupid helps put across the ridiculous-played-straight tone of the material.

It needs to be played like this napkin should be a Xanax or something, and this is a way to do that without having to be all “even though it’s a napkin, he takes it from her like it should be relaxing him”.

At the same time, I do know that some readers will need their hand held like that, though. (And that’s fine – they’re not predisposed to like this, if I had to guess.)

3) A lot of the script is written in this style, and it reads FUNNY. So tell a coherent a-b-c story along with that, and you’re in good shape – a good story that made you laugh is a successful comedy screenplay.

I dunno – my thoughts – would love yours.

NOTE: For you Prelude to a Super Airplane fans, Timothy is someone you will know, at least indirectly. (It’s not Colonel T, and this story takes place in 2001.)

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{ 5 comments }

If you haven’t yet watched Chapter 7 of Who Shot Mamba? you might want to do so – what follows will be filled with spoilers, because this segment is LOADED with revelations.

Do it, then join me below.

(If you haven’t watched Chapters 1-6, you have some homework to do, friend.)

Again…spoilers follow…

So Calvin Stadiums is the instigator of the shooting of Mamba, and continues to threaten people with guns.

If you haven’t quite put the pieces together, Calvin Stadiums is 90% based on Wizards star and gun enthusiast Gilbert Arenas…and this was written well over two years ago – long before he was suspended by the NBA for his firearm incident.

Calvin Stadiums

Calvin is so much a Gilbert avatar that a couple years back we were in discussions with Arenas’s people about him playing the character. We were told “yes” at one point and put the entire production on hold to wait…and wait…and wait.

Dylan Mooney came in and owned the role in a way that made for a better movie anyway, but we hold that Gil has The Curse of the Mamba hovering over him.

You laugh, but guess who was very close to playing Sherpa (from Chapter 1) and then decided against it?

Yep…Greg Oden.

In any case, while writing WSM?, just how much Gilbert was there inserted into Calvin? Here’s the breakdown of the basketball-based aspects of the character:

GILBERT ARENAS
- Obvious play on the name
- Uniform number
- Agent Zero/Henchmen Zero
- Aloof and Quirky
- Obsessed with Orange Roundie
- Unique father-son relationship
- Big Tiger as symbol of sorts
- Washington, DC
- Gunplay (unintentional)

MICHAEL JORDAN
- Greatest ever
- Gambling problem
- Competitive arrogance
- Petey Skippen sidekick

KOBE BRYANT
- the complete lack of self-awareness the younger Kobe had

The biggest Calvin-Gilbert-gun similarity of all is something I can’t talk about until the movie is over, but it was what struck me most heavily when the Arenas/gun stuff started, because it was something I had decided on years ago.

Keep watching – and there’s much more about the transition from Arenas-to-Stadiums right here.

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{ 5 comments }

10+ Hours of V

by Brian on November 2, 2009

in Screenwriting, Super Airplane, TV, Violence, Weightlifting

V Marc SingerI spent about an hour and a half yesterday watching the marathon of the two original V miniseries on SyFy while I worked.

When I was done with that, I stopped pretending to get work done, and instead embraced my wild nostalgia for the subsequent 8.5 hours.

After that, I went and read the recaps of the single season of the regular TV series.

It wasn’t until I reached this synopsis of the last episode that I realized what a profound effect this franchise had on my work, particularly the type of writing I’ve been doing for about the past year.

When Diana learns that Mike and Philip have agreed to a friendly fencing exhibition, she orders James to make sure the swords are deadly — instead of unarmed exhibition weapons, Mike and Philip will use swords charged with nuclear disintegrators.

Now, if that doesn’t sound like it’s right out of my Brad Radby book or my Saved By the Bell Begins, I don’t know what does.

After reading that, I couldn’t help it, and started watching the episodes on thewb.com – particularly because of the way Marc Singer’s Mike Donovan embraces the action jump, the action run, the action ladder-climb, the action casual walk, and the action going-out-to-dinner.

Those of you who have seen 2WO G2N G2Y – which is nobody – would be as shocked as I am to see I’m basically doing Mike Donovan in that role.

You can watch some choice Donovan clips right here.

Oh, and if you’ve read my Prelude to a Super Airplane book, you know that the V screengrab at the start of the post was also good for a mild heart attack.

What is your favorite kind of action thing to do and when was the last time you did it.

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{ 7 comments }

Rod Belding(This is it – the conclusion to my big budget, theatrical Saved By the Bell reboot movie. Links to the Intro, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)

Zack is inspired for sure now, and decides to get serious and organize a Zack Attack. He has to hurry, because Keanu has pushed the button, and the bronchitis is making its way through the tunnels to Bayside City, and it’s going to come out of all the nuclear oil wells right during the the Miss Bayside City Pageant, which is happening at halftime of the Valley City-Bayside City Professional Football Bowl, sponsored by Buddy Bands.

Just to make sure nobody tries any tricks, Keanu also has tied all Zack’s friends to different nuclear oil rigs throughout Bayside City, and if any of them are untied from the oil rigs, then the nuclear oil will destroy everything in the United States that Keanu doesn’t like, and that’s like a lot of things, and that’s what Keanu tells Zack in his video blog dot com email.

Zack is like all hardcore about having lots of guns strapped to him, and uses his jet-ski to sneak down the Bayside City Canal and get Screech free, who then uses his nerd tricks on the computer to get Kelly free, and then Slater gets Jessie free, and he calls her “Momma,” and that’s so the people watching the movie can have tingles about their nostalgia again.

Now the gang is back together, but while they were busy getting free, the bronchitis got everywhere, and now everyone in Bayside City is coughing really hard, and the stores are out of Dayquil, so everyone is overdosing on Nyquil, and the news people remind everyone that if you fall asleep with bronchitis you can die. Keanu is on top of the main nuclear oil rig taking bids on the land from the Portuguese gangs, and everything is on fire because he’s smoking a big cigar so close to the nuclear oil.

That’s when Zack gets everyone together and says that only by working together can they stop Keanu, and they all do like a jumping group-high-five, and then get to work climbing up the nuclear oil rigs around Keanu’s oil rig, and then like jumping from their rig to his, and Keanu sees this happening, so like he’s always making their rigs have a nuclear explosion right as they jump off.

That’s really real, but the heroes are serious about just how Zack this Attack really is, and they knock Keanu’s rig down to the middle of the football stadium, which is now filling up with nuclear oil, and Zack is even more mad because a goose died when it got nuclear oil on its feathers and lungs, and that’s when he stands up like a man and rips the last shreds of his tattered Bayside High t-shirt off, and even Slater is like, “Whoa, Preppie – what are you doing??” and Zack looks at him like Bruce Willis and says, “For once…the right thing,” and it’s the most intense thing anyone has ever said ever in a movie.

There’s a big fight in the middle of the pageant between Zack and Keanu, and the good guys win when they use their friendship strategies to drop the Bayside City History Tradition Bell on Keanu just in time, and Zack calls in a favor with Johnny Dakota to get more Dayquil, and like it’s clear that there are gonna be more adventures and that’s THE END.

During the credits is when Jay-Z does his modern and legit hip-hopping version of the original Saved by the Bell theme, and it’s close enough to the old one that everyone watching cries, because they’re also showing black-and-white still photos from the TV show along with the names of the people who made the movie.

At the end of the credits, there’s a trail of oil footprints that lead into the Oval Office, and you can hear Keanu muttering, “Let’s see you save THIS by the bell, Morris…” and that’s an ominous meme for the next movie, The Bayside Knight.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

(That’s it – I think I might actually make some calls on this. Follow me on Twitter here. Read my Perfect Strangers Begins summary right here – it’s Bruce Willis as Cousin Larry, and Antonio Banderas as Balki.)

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{ 35 comments }

I’m doing an interview for someone right now, and one of the questions was really interesting.

It was about how blogging and my other writing work together – whether one feeds the other, etc.

I hadn’t really thought about it much until I was asked this, but looking at it, pretty much every original idea I’ve had in the past four years started in one of my blog posts in some fashion, even if it was just a little afterthought of an afterthought, that then grew into something else.

For example, while it was folded into PTSA in a huge way, the entire Brad Radby book really started in this post, which was completely a throwaway gag that started as a discussion of a toy car.

So I guess the nightmare answer for all you writers out there is to never stop blogging.

Crap.

CAVS…I’m into it…not “schedule my life around it” into it, but I like what they’re showing me right now. None of this would’ve been an issue if not for that Washington game back in December.

Small but important point that could become a massive issue over the next two months. I think the new Star Trek looks amazing. My brother is like the biggest Star Trek fan ever, and if you’ve read PTSA, you know it’s even a pretty big story point for his character’s actions in the book.

I have no idea, therefore, how much I’m allowed to like this movie, or how excited I can be for it. Growing up, we had this thing wherein we each had possession of certain franchises.

Tim was Nintendo, I was Sega.

I had Spider-Man, he was Fantastic Four.

Star Wars was shared, but he eventually took possession.

The Batman movies were all on me. There was no counter for him on that.

Similarly, Star Trek was Tim’s – like 10000000000%.

But…this new Star Trek looks like it plays way more to my sensibilities, ie it’s loud and fast and explosiony. Plus, Tim has the entire loyalty to the original thing happening, ie William Shatner, etc.

We’ll see what happens – every trailer gets me more excited.

UPDATE: 2WO G2N G2Y did not come from a blog post in any way that I can remember. I actually don’t know where it came from – I think for some reason I needed to have a few ideas for TV shows on-hand for something.

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here.)

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{ 38 comments }

So one of the cool things about Twitter is the meeting of people.

I’ve been very deliberate about trying to actually build a base of people who I’m interested in, and vice versa, rather than just blast up as many followers as possible.

(I’ll delve into this in my next Twitter-usage update analysis.)

Obviously, fellow filmmakers, writers, and people who do actoring have been high on that list of people-types, and one such person is Alejandro Adams, whose new film, Canary, is debuting at Cinequest Film Festival on March 1st, with another screening scheduled for March 7th.

This is the brief synopsis of what Canary is about, from the film’s website:

Canary is an intellectually daring dystopian thriller set in a not-so-alternate universe in which organ harvesting is commonplace. While a mute organ redistribution specialist stalks unsuspecting citizens of every socioeconomic stripe, a rag-tag news crew investigates various conspiracy theories and inches closer to discovering the cause of epidemic organ failure.

That type of world-next-door sci-fi is just the type of thing I’m into, and we got to talking and such, and so I decided I wanted to ask him some questions for here on the site.

This is not a joke-filled, stupid question interview. (Well, not fully.) It’s also quite long – if you’re into this type of film, or filmmaking in general, or just a conversation with a really interesting guy, dive in after the break.
[Like here is how to read the rest.]

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{ 20 comments }

I actually get this question a lot:

I’m thinking about writing a screenplay, blah blah, what should I do, tips, etc blah?

I don’t know why this comes to me, considering my one produced feature credit and my one web series credit, neither of which have been released yet.

Obviously this isn’t all that I’ve written or even had made – it’s just those are the only two that are public in any way.

I suppose it’s because I have a lot of readers who are writers, and I’m all accessible and have perfected the art of pretending to be able to pretend I’m intelligent.

So yeah – I was asked this over the weekend again, and decided to just put my answer up as a post for the long haul.

I’m doing it on Sunday, because a lot of you won’t care about the answers, but it’ll be here to link to in the future.

Thus…read on if you wish. Little to no jokes follow.
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{ 6 comments }

(The following is an excerpt from my book, Prelude to a Super Airplane. It can be purchased by clicking on any of the roughly 400 banners adorning this site, or by clicking here. It’s also available on Amazon.

I’ve posted the first 20 chapters (roughly 55 pages of PTSA) on this site. Links to each of those are at the end of this post, or you can download all of them as a pdf by clicking here.

Ah, ye ole Writing Hat – this one is simple, because a writer is a person who does writing.

Movie scripts entail the vast majority of my writing work, and I’ve been told that I have a singularly unique ability best described as, and I quote, “an a-hole-like ability to take anything and turn it into a screenplay”.

(The fact that you’re reading this book makes this ironically true.)

Additionally, at various times and for various reasons, I’ve written songs, and for a brief window, I attained godhood in the professional basketball online internet blogosphere.
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