The Frenzy '09 Support Thread
 

Hi, all.

I'm coming out of the closet. The Script Frenzy closet. I'm a 2009 participant.

Initially, my plan was to write, and not to talk about it. Action, not words. And that worked for awhile. But now that I've gotten a big chunk of words down, I kind of feel like I'm in a bit of a vacuum. So I've decided to talk about it here, and I could really use your support.

This year's goal, for me, was not actually to finish 100 pages, but to finish four short film screenplays. So far, I've finished one and I'm making progress on a second. Since this is the most I've written in... well, it's been awhile... I'm proud but apprehensive.

I have an evil creativity censor in my mind - to use annoying verbology from our love-hated self-help creativity guru - that steps in to belittle whatever I'm doing whenever I'm making progress, but I've basically been able to shut her up enough to get through this.

Anyway. I'm not ready to share any of the actual writing yet, but I'm going to share a quick logline of the four pieces I'm working on this month. At the end of the month, the goal is to have a trove of stuff for me to actually film.

Short Film #1 - Cupcake noir, "Bringer of War."
I'm pretty sure I talked about my concept for this film with some of you, perhaps as long ago as 2007. I'd been stewing on it all along, and finally made some breakthroughs, and finished it up last week. Basically, two roommates discuss dessert, and in an elaborate noir-style fantasy sequence set to Holst's "Mars, the Bringer of War," one of them imagines a demonic cupcake has developed an evil plot to wage war.

Short Film #2 - a musical with a twist, "Away From Me."
This one is underway right now, inspired by a new interpretation of a lyric from Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away From Me." A woman remembers an ill-fated affair through song.

Short Film #3 - coming-of-age documentary-style comedy, "My Bellagio."
A teenage girl dreams of being able to choreograph a dancing fountain. Determined to fight the limitations of her empty pockets, she ropes her fledgling documentarian best friend and their quirky social circle into helping her achieve her goal whichever way they can - be it by spitting streams of water, an epic coke/mentos experiment, or something a little bigger (and less sticky.)

Short Film #4 - short story adaptation, "The Littlest Hitler."
I wanted to try my hand at adaptation, so I've selected a favorite modern short story by Ryan Boudinot, about a little boy seeking the scariest Halloween costume of all time, and his run-in with a girl dressed as Anne Frank.

So, that's my April. It's busy, it's a little scary, but it's progress.

Those sound amazing! I want to read them all right now. Are they done yet?

They really do sound fantastic. You've got a gifted imagination and mad linguistic skillz.

OMG, We can enter The Littlest Hitler in the Oscar Short Films Category and WIN!




And I don't know why, but I really like the pitches on Nos. 3 and 4, the ones you haven't started yet.


SO GET GOING!! WRITE WRITE WRITE is RIGHT!

Finish all four and Ill send you a cookie!

Just don't forget all of us little people when you become rich and famous!

You are SO talented! :D

*nods head with vigor*
Truth.

Sounds cool. Good luck with it.

Pedant/wet blanket alert: do you have the author's permission to adapt his story?

As for me, I'm in the process of adapting some of my filmable trove into novels for artistic reasons. Those being that I have a friend who's become a literary agent.

Not yet! Not all of them, anyway. I'm a-workin', I'm a-workin'!

I think the first two are more visual (and I'm kind of keeping quiet about the second one because I don't want to spoil the ending.) But the last two are meatier, indeed. I really have liked working on the shorts, because I can finish one and move on to the next before excitement dies down. The long-term projects are great but they require marathon-like discipline and I'd just like to get the momentum up.

Can you send me an Obama keychain with an amazing typo in it, instead? Oh, wait. You've already done that! Well, I'll finish all four in return.

Come, now, you'll have your own red carpet, you know it!

Aw, hopeful truth. But thank you guys so much for your support. It really means a lot.

Oh my gosh, I had just planned to walk ignorantly into the good night without any thought of legal at all!

Seriously, though, the general process for untested writers, as I understand it, is to adapt the work, or at least part of it, as a spec script before rights are requested - so that the author can consider the spec script before granting anything. And that's what I'm doing now.

Oh do tell, what was the typo?

Teh Obama Family.

If we wish an actor to "break a leg", what do you wish a script writer?

That wasn't a typo. It was part of the new LOLPres phenomenon. ;)

That's teh awesome!

I never doubted you for a second. It just seems that, notwithstanding its enshrinement in our constitution, the kids today don't have much regard for kindly old Mr. Copyright.

That's good to know. Now, I can get to work on my screenplay inspired by the spermcube.

Withering criticism alert: Ideas 2 & 4 genuinely intrigue me. Ideas 1 & 3 set off my alarms that the stories are going to be about jokes & gestures & moments that will resonate to the author and her quirky friends but will not have sufficient universal appeal. Of course, movies and shows about people and their quirky friends get made all the time whereas movies that, to use a random example, set the Oedipus story in the Clinton White House, don't. So what do I know? I look forward to reading anything you're inclined to share.

I really do appreciate your support, SL.

Before you make a judgment on 1 & 3 as focused on jokes and gestures, you should definitely read them. (And I'll share them, in the long run.) A log-line may express the point in just one sentence, but it can never encapsulate the whole! Storytelling, for me, really needs to be about characters and their relationships, and I intend to reflect that in each of them. (This has been a frequent topic lately in our household, inspired by a show created by one of our favorite writers who has eschewed his usual character-development stories for one about non-development.)

Tomorrow, I shall read! I'd say I'm drooling with anticipating, but you would be able to glance over at my desk and know I'm exaggerating. So, I am invisibly quaking with anticipation.

Also, I very much want to read that short story. Unfamiliar with the writer.

If it isn't headed toward movie, I bet it would make a great novel! In which case, I look forward to reading it.

I can lend you the book if you like! (I will be done with it in May.) I think you will love it. I wanted to hug it.

Yes, please.

Maybe that's because kindly old Mr. Copyright refuses to die, like all things are supposed to. Tell me where it's enshrined in the constitution that copyrights are endless, and works never, ever become public domain.

Sorry for the potentially derailing rant. But old Mr. Copyright should be put out of our misery.

You can't be saying that copyright laws should be banished in their entirety? Maybe a cap should be put on it, but not abolished altogether.

Write write write write write!
:) :snap:

Last I looked, which was a while ago, it was life of the author plus 50 years. Patents, I think, are 17 years.

Sounds fair to me.

I've researched enough to call myself anti-copyright, but I do have a lot of respect for Creative Commons and am interested in derivative works.

Also of interest is an essay by Jonathan Lethem entitled The ectasy of influence: A plagiarism, though more than he I believe an author should at least credit his references, even if kept vague. (Example: I've quoted verbatim the works for So And So.)

And though this is seemingly unrelated (other than I've been reading about him and he had some interesting things to say about patents and intellectual property), I give you Tesla, who saw the future rather than dreamed it:
As soon as it is completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction. - On the Wardenclyffe Tower, in "The Future of the Wireless Art" in Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony (1908)

So, as part of my research for the current piece I'm working on, I've been gathering imagery from the era. And while I was pulling together fashion history, it felt almost as though I were assembling an outfit via Polyvore.com - only vintage.

So I made a "Retrovore" collage and I thought I'd share it here.

I love my wife, but oh you cutie. Why am I thinking 23 skidoo, and what does that even mean???



As for copyright, I belive 50 years after the death of the author is fine. yes, caps. Immoveable caps. Not stretched out by corporate desire. Not expanded because of increases in life expectancy. I'm sure the copyright period is longer than it was, but why? I'm against that, so if it was once 10 years after the death of the author, I retract my earlier "fine" from 2 sentences ago.

That one will probably stay in dramatic form. After all, Sophocles didn't write a novel. Why should I?

However, the great vasectomy script is going novel, and my midlife crisisy Oscar-written-all-over-it tearjerker "And Somewhere Children Shout" may as well.

Awesome, H. Get writing! :) I can't wait to see finished product.

I look forward to reading them all, but especially #3. :cheers: