April 28, 2007 by Dave.

I’m a little pissed at the moment. I have a script that I’m trying to submit to the Sundance Writer’s Lab. They need the first five pages of the script to review. I try to write at home, but a lot of times I will write at work when I have time and then email the pages back to my house. I revised some of the pages of the script headed to Sundance, including the first five pages.

Here’s the problem. I was working from a copy of the full script at work. However I don’t think I sent it back home. I thought I did but when I went to do some revisions at home, I was working with the old script when I know that I did the work. And the other day, I was cleaning my work computer of files I no longer need. At the moment I don’t remember if that script was one of them, but it’s possible.

The date of postmark for submission is Tuesday, May 1. I go back to work on Monday. It’s not undoable of course, but I am tired of cutting things this close. Everything else is ready to go, I just needed this one thing and it would have been off today. As it is I’m gonna stress another two days to get things done. Plus I did do about 20 pages of rewrites that I’d like to keep—if I can find them.

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April 28, 2007 by Dave.

Interesting commentary at the Fresh Pond theater a few weeks ago– Possibly the sequel to “Shoot the Piano Player”?:

In the theater’s defense, the movie on the other screen was “Dead Silence.”

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April 26, 2007 by Dave.

I still have no idea what I learned from yesterday. Maybe it’s because I only had five hours (six tops) of sleep then drove to New Jersey and back, stayed up until 3:30 decompressing (okay, playing Texas hold’em online) which just left me with a nasty headache all day, but I’m only now able to assess yesterday’s pitch session.

It was a mass pitch session where Larry Meistrich and his business partner (whose name sadly I can’t remember) listened and critiqued about 10-15 pitches over three hours at Rutgers University. I was second to last because I showed up late (I timed it to be an hour early, but an hour-plus was the time of the delay on the I-95 before the GW Bridge). I was fine with that because I was still going over what I was going to say about my script, and I needed to three-hole punch my script just in case they asked for it (which they said they might do). There were a couple of good pitches presented (one documentary and a sci-fi computer animated web series were big standouts), but a lot were college kids/aspiring filmmakers trying to pitch their first script. Larry and friend critiqued the pitches after they were given. I got my three minutes or so and pitched my script Generocity (an interweaving ensemble indie drama that follows four homeless people over 24 hours on the coldest day of the year in New York City). Their critique of the pitch was pretty right on in how it went—I started off great with an opening talking about a homeless guy in Times Square and his rap leading into my characters, but it got a bit lost and muddled as I hit the middle of the synopsis. Larry’s partner said I should make sure I tell one straight through line/story to hook onto through the pitch. He was right and I realize I should have done it differently. It’s not like I didn’t know my script, but I tried it differently focusing on each character’s drama instead of pitching the themes (which is how I finally ended it).

Larry and his partner spent the time after the pitch session talking to us about what they were trying to do with his company. It was a little depressing to me if only because the model they are trying to do (movies that tell good stories but can be marketed in web presence and other new emerging media) doesn’t fit my script. Even worse, one of Larry’s first films was Laws of Gravity, which was a kind of seminal film of the indie films of the 1990s, and he himself said that that film could not be made and/or sold today in this market. Since Generocity really fits into the ’90s indie model, I’m screwed. It basically means I HAVE to make the film myself because no one else will touch it. It’s good to know that, but depressing at the same time. It also means I need to focus on a couple of scripts I have now and get them sold (if anything to use the money to produce Generocity), and look at how to create content for the new existing and emerging media. It’s good but hard.

That was the only good part of the day. Aside from the traffic jam, I got a ticket for speeding in Connecticut (luckily the cop caught me a break because I actually admitted I was speeding). I was speeding to get back to Boston because I was supposed to meet someone for a late supper. That turned into a bust as well (I got lost and she never called back). Plus I was dragging my ass all day from a long-ass day before.

I’m not holding my breath that they want my script for the company, but I am going to his lecture in NYC on May 8. Lessons learned: don’t give up; this is a rough business; you have to create outside the norm to make a dent; and I need more sleep.

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April 22, 2007 by Dave.

And I mean his stand up stuff, not the Cosby Show crap.

Sophia needs to learn to listen to both her mother and me. She doens’t a lot of the time and doesn’t seem to care. Yestreday she’s in the car with me and I roll down the front and passnger side windows of the car (thank GOD I have automatic windows now!). Sophia asks her window to be rolled down a bit since she was hot. I do it and she stickes her hand out the window. I yell at her to keep her hands inside the car. She yanks them back in. A minute later, she’s doing it again and I yell at her again, this time saying I told you before to not do that. She tried to argue andI think I told her I wouldn’t watch a video she really likes at the house if she does that again. I pull into our driveway after shopping, roll up the windows and I hear Sophia cry out. I suddenly realize her hand got caught in the window. And why is that? Because she stuck her hand out the window again. She’s crying in pain in the back seat, a nice indent in the back of her hand, and my response to her: “Sorry, but next time keep your hands inside the damn car!”

Today we spent the afternoon in a great playground in the neighborhood, her favorite. I tell her that if she’s good and listens to me, we’ll get ice cream later. I was going to do it too even at one point when she had a bit of a tantrum when she couldn’t work her tricycle correctly (she’s learning). But later she’s in the sandbox playing. It’s a communal place so everyone shares with everyone else, unless they brought their own pails and they have to go home. Sophia’s playing with a gigantic green pail, putting sand in it for a sandcastle. However the person whose pail that is is leaving. I’m there and we try to get the pail from Sophia, transfering sand from that pail to hers (yeah, I brought hers too), but she wants that green one. I give her her pail and she throws it on the floor, sand and all, saying the other pail was hers. Now some other kid nearly hit Sophia with a similar pail earlier and while her mom made her apologize, he kind of got off scott free. So I tell her that she can’t do that. I was goign to hand her the pail back to her, but she grabbed at it. I could tell she just wanted it to throw it again. I tell her that if she throws it again, we’re not getting ice cream. I give her the pail and she jsut tosses it away– not far, but she tossed it away. So I told her we’re not getting ice cream. She had a fit and kept crying about not getting ice cream. I reminded her that she didn’t listen to me; she said “I’m listening now.” I kept telling her too late and I’m not going to reward her for not listening to me before. Note that this was a continuous argument and I’m trying to use logic on a four-year-old. Needless to say she didn’t get any ice cream.

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April 21, 2007 by Dave.

So I was hoping to at least get some work on my cover letter or the synopsis to the script I’m submitting to Sundance. I try to get a little bit done at work when I can. So what happens the second I step in? ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!!!

First, it turns out that we have two people out today and a third leaving early. So that means more work piled on the schedule. Plus it’s Friday which is always more work for us in cpationing. I have to air a proram for tape at 2 pm. The captions are so garbled I had to redo them myself at 3pm. Meanwhile I’m prepping a file to be punched later today at 5pm– we don’t have a stenographer for this show so we have to do it by the file. Of course we’re waiting for a script file from the client that by 4:50 still isn’t ready yet. We scramble to get a steno lined up to do the missing part of ths show. She has a hell of a time hearing the show (ironic when we’re captioning for the deaf) but does a decent job. Get done at 5:30 wih that, and find out that the final script was sent to us at 4:59 pm–way to go guys, right on time! Of course it turns out that the client had a problem on there end and we have to redo the show at 8:30. But that means getting an audio put over speakerphone just so we can get the damn show. We can’t get audio until 8:35 at which point I find out it’s a live to tape satalite feed which means they can’t rewind the show. We go with what we can caption and jsut go with God. I stay an hour after my shif to make sure we have manpower and nothing goes wrong come 11 pm.

End result: nothing got done on my end and things ahd to get done twice for work! On top of that my elbow is throbbing througout the day and the Yankees lose a 7-6 heartbreaker in the first game of the series with Boston!! Basically this day SUCKED!!!!!

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April 20, 2007 by Dave.

Well, since I was slow getting the last blog up here, I’ll start this one here first.

I’m doing two things that will hopefully boost my career and are a little out of my comfort zone/league (if only slightly). The first is I’m going to a pitch for Larry Meistrich’s new company NEHST Pictures. It’s a mass pitch session held down at Rutger’s university and I’m going to pitch one of my oldest and most ready scripts. I’m driving down to Jersey and back the same day an dgoing to work the next day. Wish me luck and good stamina!

The next big thing for me is I’m readying my application for Sundance Writer’s lab. I may have mentioned this before, but now it’s getting the cover letter written just right and getting the synopsis down to two pages. Plus it’s FUCKING SUNDANCE! Inthe indie world you don’t get more prestigious. I know I have a shot, I just need to get the stuff out there and into people’s hands.

Unfortunately, yes, this pushes back the next chapter of Running the Southern Comfort back a bit, but it is worth it to me to take these opportunities when they come. we’ll see how things go!

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April 20, 2007 by Dave.

I wrote this on my Myspace blog a few days ago. Sadly it still applies.

About two months ago (at least before I went away to Los Angeles for the film conference), i took a nasty fall in the parking lot of my favorite deli store. This was the winter from hell, but it wasn’t pack ice, it was black ice. I mean It was literally a thin film of ice just over the palce I parked. I fell flat and broke my fall with my left forearm/elbow. At the time it wasjolting but it didn’t hurt. A week later, I finally had a bruise and swelling and I couldn’t either straighten my arm or bend it completely. I thought okay it was a bad fall, it will be like that for a little bit and go away. And it did.

Cut to two days ago. I’m in the gym on an eliptical rider for about 30 minutes. Was doing fine, till later that evening when my elbow got sore in the same spot as the bruise– which is about an inch below where the tricep ends to the tip of my  elbow. The thing is there’s no reason for it to hurt when I’m jogging and not using my arms! I went to the gym yesterday to do a light eliptical plan (and I do mean light–i’ve never ran so slow in an exercize machine in a long time), and stayed in the whirlpool to try to heal the swelling and pain. Yesterday evening, I was in constatnt pain. Last night I woke up evey two hours in pain, at one point shivering for no reason. This morning I actually broke down and bought a sling to keep my arm immobile. The pain was unbearable. I still can’t bend the arm that much, but thatnkfully Sophia’s mom gave me some of her 800mg Ibuprofen and that’s helped a lot. I went with Sophia back to her mom’s place to hang out as I needed someone to help me out. Hard to watch a four year old when you’ve only got one good arm. Still hurts but I think the range of motion has gotten better.

So far I still think it’s tendon damage of some sort, if only because before the fall I also developed tendonitis in my left wrist (sadly I can’t even chalk it up to too much mastubating). Since the fall the wrist gets affected by the elbow more and vice versa. Twisting my write the wrong way hurts my elbow (this includes washing my hands!) and this morning my fingers were sore. I have a doctor’s appoitnment in a week and I am going to ask for an x-ray to make sure nothing is broken. Actually a friend scared me by mentioning to me that she once sprained her ankle and a bone chip lodged itself in there causing even more pain. God I don’t need that. I just want to be pain free!

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April 10, 2007 by Dave.

I need to apologize to all those wanting to read the next chapter of “Running the Southern Comfort”—all five of you. The whole idea of doing the novella online was to write one chapter each month for a year and have a completed novella by the beginning of 2008. As you can see on my site, two months later and there’s just the one chapter.

So what happened? Well, in a word, March. I was in LA for a film conference and things havent’ been the same since (almost before even). I’ve been dealing with beg bugs, stomach viruses, lack of sleep, a dead car, getting a new one, biking in sleet and snow in the dead of night, four consecutive days of getting up with only 6 hours of sleep or less, and generally being wiped out due to all the reasons mentioned. Yes you can read all about it in the blogs—the occasional blog has been the only thing I’ve had the energy to write for the last month. On top of all that, a number of opportunities to get my screenwriting career in gear has presented themselves and I’m trying to pounce on them as well. Suffice it to say I haven’t been able to start on that next chapter of the story. Like I said I wanted to have one chapter a month, and that failed to happen.

I do hope to have another section of the story coming soon, but please be patient. I try to be a man of my word, but I messed that up due to life cropping up in the strangest ways. Look to early May for the next installment of “Running the Southern Comfort.”

Thanks.

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April 10, 2007 by Dave.

I can finally report that I have a new (used) car. I bought it on Saturday in New Hampshire. I’ve been driving it since the sale but I finally got the new registration on it today, which is why I didn’t say anything until today—just in case there were a few Boston cops reading my blog (or if anyone might be a narc!). It’s a red 1994 Chrysler Concorde. It’s actually pretty smooth ride, although I’ve been warned about a possible gasket problem. In the test drive there wasn’t a problem. Later I kind of see what they were talking about. It’s minor unless I’m driving all over Montana any time soon, which I’m not. It’s got automatic windows and door locks, cruise control, and trac control wheels. Honestly I’m glad that I now have a car where the seats are fully upright and the heat works. The only thing that really sucks is that the radio is broken! And it’s such a nice sound system too, but the radio is stuck on scan mode on AM radio! The tape deck doesn’t even work either. Other than that, I’m glad I was able to get a ride in time for the approaching snow.

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April 10, 2007 by Dave.

There’s a guy at my church who also works in the same office space I do (KInd of remarkable since WGBH has 1700 employees). He was talking to Sophia at the pancake breakfast at church yesterday.

Man: Your father and I work together in the same bulding. He works in the caption department and I work in interactive.
Sophia: I work at mommy’s.

Never thought of being four as work.

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