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Billy Cardigan
Kurt Colder
Honey Hardwicke
Donna Harper

The Vicious Circle Turns

Maybe I'm a lonely man
Who's in the middle of something
That he doesn't really understand

Almost a year since I started this blog. A year since I got the call that my play got into SPF, and things started to turn. Turn very slowly.

No mistake, I got exceptionally lucky. Just to get in is an amazing stroke of luck. But managing to align the best creative partners, and managing to erect a show that -- for the most part -- got some positive buzz. Then the whole movie deal, which is a pretty absurd outcome.

A lot of people have unreasonable expectations going into SPF. Truth is, nothing's really handed to you. It's a brilliant opportunity but so much is still dictated by chance. The right people seeing your show and connecting with it on some level.

Hardest thing for me now is paying it off.

In a strange way, the movie business seems to have a clearer route to "success". When you're dealing with a studio, a movie either gets made or it doesn't get made. Live theater, by nature, only exists for a limited time. I may have gotten an enviable door prize at last year's SPF, but I don't have the history of productions that other people have.

So I'm the new kid on two coasts. Known but unknown. Trying to make a go of something larger. No matter where it goes, it always begins in a quiet place. And I am most certainly in a quiet place.

Love is an Angel Disguised as Lust

I need all the inspiration I can find...

Soulful teenage romanticism. Being in high school and feeling jaded, feeling like you understand the world. When you don't understand the first thing about the world, or the volatile emotions that are evolving inside you.

I had a shit time in high school. I don't know anyone who had a shittier time than me. I had a handful of friends at school, but I'd rarely hang out with them outside of school. I'd hole up and write short stories in my room. My social life was practically non-existent.

But in hindsight, even I'd say it was sort of a magical time. Magical in that there was this pervasive sense that anything could happen. The clumsy attempts at dating. I wrote an elaborate short story for this girl in my AP Chemistry class as a way to ask her out. I took another girl on a date driving a stick-shift that I could barely operate. Everything was meaningful. Every day was the beginning and end of the world. As miserable as I was, there was always a sense of possibility. Something could happen! More often than not, it didn't... but when it did, there were skyrockets.

Back to writing the screenplay, after several weeks of notes and discussions. It's in a good place, in my head. I'm no longer adapting a play. I'm revising a screenplay. Adaptation's for the birds...

The Darkness

Said I'd write more this weekend, thought I'd make good on it. (Dunno if "good" is the word I'd use, but for the lack of something better...)

Sketching out a partial outline for my next revision of my screenplay, just to give us something productive to discuss before I dive headlong into the actual writing. The mechanics of plot are a fucking bitch.

Spent a good snatch of the weekend assembling my documents for tax prep. A good stretch of hours taping receipts to pieces of paper and typing numbers into an EXCEL document. Meeting with the accountant tomorrow (today) -- hope they've remembered the appointment.

My internal clock is way off. Went to bed Sunday morning at 5am, got up past 1pm -- the longest I've slept in ages. I'm uncomfortable with getting too far off the normal cycle. I just work better when I'm surrounded by darkness. It's quieter. Less light means I can focus more clearly on what light there is. The computer screen shines brighter. Glimmering through the blackness.

I hate seeing the sun begin to filter through the window, though. A reminder that I'm way off course. Hold on. All my work, now, is about cracking drafts. I wish it were easy as crunching numbers, it's not. But I've got it. Yo la tengo. Just give me a minute here.

Death of a Teddy Bear

Oh, sad, neglected blog! I'm sorry I don't update you more often. And when I do, it's mainly to make sure that the blog doesn't fall off the radar completely.

Things just develop slowly and it's difficult to talk about things that are still steeped in development. Still, for those interested enough to check this blog, I'll try to sketch out an update here.

One thing you won't find in the "Butcherhouse" movie adaptation is a teddy bear. I tried to fix in a cameo for the little bugger, but the cameo's nixed and I've got nowhere else to put him. If we're so lucky to get the movie made, lucky enough for it do well enough to warrant a sequel, and lucky enough to get the job scripting the sequel -- MAYBE I can try to find a place for him in there. But for now, he'll be relegated to the stage. Where teddy bears belong.

The adaptation's going well. Another Paramount conference call tomorrow evening. Some helpful notes on where I need to take the script. The writing's well-received so far, which is encouraging. I need all the encouragement I can get.

I've been wrestling with another draft of my second play, "Chinadoll Overdrive". I'll be diving into that as soon as I publish this entry. It's a strange place to go after "Butcherhouse". It's a play I started writing many years ago, and it's slightly at odds with where I am now. But there's a lot I'm writing, so I'm endeavoring to write it out to a point that I'm at peace with. Even if that peace is only temporary.

There's a lot more in the pipeline after that, but I can't talk about stuff that's too embryonic. Maybe another entry this weekend, with some updates.

Has it really been a year since I started this blog?