Unsealed up on Zoetrope

Just a short post this time...

I've put the screenplay for Unsealed up on Zoetrope - American Zoetrope's "virtual studio" site. It's in the short script section.

If you want to check it out, either sign up for an account there, or feel free to email me.

A new screenplay... and a new title...

Little Miss Litty is getting a rename... it's now called "The Mara". It's a little punchier, and a says "horror movie" a lot more than the original title. Hopefully it'll sell better.

Speaking of selling.. I've not heard anything back from any production companies yet. I faxed Twisted Pictures (the guys who did the Saw movies) a couple of days ago. I also emailed Vincenzo Natali's agent over at Endeavor LA - and got no response.

Goddamn, this industry is crazy. Back when I was a journo, it was pretty freakin' easy. Phone an editor. Pitch the story. Go off and write it, send it in. Easy. Of course, when I first got started there was an extra step - write a short 300 word synopsis... but that went away after the first couple. (Oddly, the need to write synopses came after writing for Your Sinclair for a year... weird).

If you're a script reader for a production company and you come across this page, please feel free to email me.

Meanwhile...

It's time to crack out my old notebook and start working on a new one so that I can get some distance before doing rewrites on The Mara. This next one I already know the story for from soup to nuts, and I have a synopsis written up and ready to go. (This was back during my sit at Bandoleone with a glass of wine and write period, and the story itself is one that I put together back in 2001). It's called Dot Comedy right now, but really it's a kind of heist movie... naturally with quirky twists on the basic formula.

Step one, take the ten pages of notes, put them in OneNote where I can edit them more easily, and work out the structure scene by scene. Then, it's time to get down to the real writing :)

I'm like butter, baby... I'm on a roll.

Of course, the slightly sad part of this is that I'm now cannibalizing my stash of stories that I was hoping to direct myself. This one is budgeted at a cool $270,000 if I was filming it myself. If it was done full on Hollywood Style (which it really should be), it'd probably come in at a respectable $4 to $10MM.

The log line for this one?

Dot Comedy

Two collegues get laid off from their high paying jobs. In an effort to continue their lifestyle, they decide to borrow money from a loan shark, reprint it using the office printer, and take it Vegas to launder it with the help of an alcoholic gambling addict. But the loan shark wants his money back and he's coming to get it - with interest.

(I hate log lines... take a story, and squeeze all the juice out of it... it just doesn't get across the full fun of the story. Ah well).

Little Miss Litty - The Pitch

The elevator pitch:

Little Miss Litty is the story of a schoolteacher who discovers that one of her children is being haunted by a demon. In an effort to save her, she ends up burning down a classroom full of children - and then, the demon latches onto her.

 So what now?

I'm working on wrapping up the rewrites on the screenplay. I've identified about 10 extra pages I need to add to the script... possibly 15. (I know... it's weird, but I have a tendency of writing short... So it's too tight, and needs a bit of padding - and missing pieces added back in... I try to err on the side of assuming that my audience can read my mind... I just took it a wee bit too far this time.).

I'm officially looking for representation at this point. I need an agent who can push this to the right people.

This puppy is officially for sale :D This is page 2, by the way...

What else?

Well, if I have my druthers, I'd get it in the hands of Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Cypher), or James Wan (Saw, Death Sentence). Somehow I can see David Hewlett playing Miles, and he's basically part of the package with Natali, so that's cool :)

Either way, time to get this puppy wrapped up, and into the hands of people who can do something with it.

If you'd like to be part of my read-through crew, or if you are an agent, or know a good one, please contact me at simon at popcorn films dot com.

Champagne Time!

The first draft of Little Miss Litty is now complete!

This calls for a drink ;-) Why don't you join me?

That's probably all I need to say. Two more drafts, and I should be done.

Current version comes in at 90 pages. I expect the final one to hit about 93/95. (There's a few bits and pieces that I put in really rough that need expanding once I get more eyes on it).

Yay!

Photo credit: Strawberry & Champagne, by Velo Steve, used under Creative Commons license.

Cooking Mama: The Spitting Pea Soup Edition

I love Cooking Mama. It combines two of my favorite genres – Iron Chef and The Exorcist.

Don’t worry… Mama will fix it… Mama fixes everything…

Little Miss Litty...

... just hit the 80 pages point. I'm in the home stretch! (although I need to take another roll through my treatment and convert the end into something I can screenplayify).

And then, the glorious task that is 1st draft is done. It will then be time to get my readers' feedback, and print it out, and start getting medieval on its ass.

I have a 3 date maximum. Some people have a 3 date minimum, but to them I say "live a little!". Some writers will rewrite and polish until you can see your face in it, hitting hundreds of drafts. To them, I say "Push your children out of the nest!". Hah!

Good times :D

Little Miss Litty - The Treatment is Complete

I finally finished the treatment for Little Miss Litty, and I think it's good :)

I write these things in stages. I know that for me, the biggest hurdle I hit when I'm writing is that if I know how the story ends, I stop actually writing it down. I tell it to people instead. Nowhere near as useful, or as satisfying as a well crafted story - but unfortunately at that point, my personal need to understand and tell the story has been met.

This time I tried something else; Little Miss Litty is a short story I first worked on about 12 or so years ago. I never completed it, but I came across it recently and it seemed like a great kernel for a longer story.

So I took what I had, and expanded on it, this time in screenplay form.

Once I ran out of that source material, I started "rolling" on the story. I normally hate planning stories too far in advance because once things get going, the characters like to do their own thing. I can push them in one direction or another, but the rest of it is really truly and honestly up to them.

Sounds kind of weird, I know, but the characters do know what's going on better than I do at any point.

So my new process involves writing a chunk of treatment in OneNote - enough to get me going for the next 20 to 40 pages, and then a very brief outline following that of the next 30 or so pages after that, in italic so that I know it's not yet fleshed out.

(I do the same thing for any bits I get stuck on - just put them in rough, in italic, so I know I need to do some research or expand on them later - this stops me from getting stuck, or letting myself succumb to writer's block).

Next, I write this up in Final Draft in screenplay format, striking out bits of the treatment as I go through it.

This method seems to work well. It means I have a guide-rope (so to speak) that I can follow through the story, but without blowing it all for me as I'm discovering it. It's just enough to keep me going without having to make it up on the fly in long-form.

Some writers keep note cards to plan out scenes, and rearrange them once they have a script going. I don't do that - I don't need to. Programming (for better or for worse) has taught me all the tools I need to do that in my head. Once I have the script written, I've got a visual map of elements and blocks that I can rearrange to make sure the structure's right. To be honest, I don't need to do it that often - like with my day-job, I seem to have gotten that down to an intuitive process, so most of the time it comes out right first time.

I also use OneNote to throw elements of story ideas I come up with in there. That way I can mine it later for bits and pieces that I want to use later. The other advantage to this is that once it's written down, I can drop it out of my brain until I want to pick it up again later, rather than spinning on this latest greatest idea for too long and letting it get in the way of the real writing work.

That doesn't, of course, stop me from wasting time on the blog though ;-)

Current screen-play page count: 69. Dude. About 30 more to go, give or take.

More medical writing to come soon, btw. It's such a heavy topic, and things have been rough at work with the crunch, so I needed to switch to something a little easier for the time being... More soon on that topic, I promise.

More writing...

Over the last two nights, I've written 20 more pages in "Little Miss Litty" - the horror screenplay I'm working on.

I'm happy. This is now officially 20 pages longer than the last script I wrote - Unsealed - a couple of years ago. (I wish I could find a way to make that... but 45 minutes screen time is a weird weird length).

Of course, there's a long road ahead - at least two more drafts of the script, some heavy editing, and some fixin' up. It's a little ... condensed right now too. I get the feeling that to find the rhythym for this and make it more tense and suspenseful instead of just out and out shock and gore, it's going to need a little stretching out. Just a little. (I also want to try to balance the cool shit with the essential plot building shit... find the right cadence, if you will, for the scenes).

Either way, I'm happy. I think I'm well on track for having the damn thing finished by the end of the year. Then, it's time to shop it :)

Some time soon, I may post a link to the unfinished short story this is all based on, as somewhat of a teaser. (Although I ran out of that material about 36 pages ago :) ).