Real vs. Believable

I'm in LA, and met with a friend of mine who is working on a pitch. He told me the premise, which is quite promising, but lacks narrative drive. Everything about his research is spot on, consulting with specialists in the field he's writing about, so it's all real. When I suggest a change, he tells me he needs to make sure that alteration is something that could realistically happen. I counter that it needs not be real, just believable.

People don't go to the movies to see stuff that's real, even if they claim they do. What they want is to see something they can believe. Even "real" gritty dramas rely on a certain degree of fabrication, starting with the fact that they're fiction. And the most realistic and truthful of documentaries are basically edited and pre-packaged interpretations of reality, what with they're limited timeframes and composition framing requirements.

(We could get into a whole philosophical argument about reality being subjective given the limited information our sense give each of us at every given moment, or even that reality is a construct our mind fabricates from this limited information, but that's for another day. And another blog.)

The point is, there is no such thing as "real" in cinema. As long as people are willing to suspend their disbelief, a filmmaker's job is to make that suspension as accessible as possible. Hell, people fall in love with actors based on their characters, with no inkling of what the "real" person is like. People want to be lied to when they go to the movies, and they want to believe those lies.

That's the beauty of storytelling: it's the lies people love.

Edit yourself, man

My posts tend to be long. I get all worked up, or verbose, or just plain lose track of whatever the hell I'm saying and ramble like a drunk on Mardi Gras. And being a screenwriter, I can seemingly talk for hours about ridiculously inane stuff. Who knew? I always thought I was the quiet type.

So maybe I should write shorter entries. That would help.

The good news is that yesterday I caught up on a lot of writing that I hadn't done in almost a month (full disclosure: it was the holidays. Two weeks of playing tour guide and tourist).

Lots of potential gigs have come up, so I'm running around. May seems to be jam-packed already. Sweet.

I liked Watchmen, but...

The jig is up. Watchmen has failed to catch on with the general public and may very likely struggle to make a profit for Warner Bros. Add in the extra cost of sharing money to Fox over the whole rights squabble, and it all just seems maddeningly frustrating. With good reason.

I think the film's biggest problem is in being faithful to a fault. The key aspect of any adaptation from one medium to another is the word "adapt", which many fanboys seem to have a problem with. Not me. As long as the main aspects, thruline and spirit of a property is respected, I'm all for making changes. After all, a movie is not a book. Or a graphic novel. There is no way the quiet, internal experience of reading Watchmen can be replicated on the silver screen. The work needs to be "adapted", not transferred panel by panel.

Most of my quibbles have to do with how tone would be affected, and if many choices that turned out not to work were in fact satirical in nature, then tone would've been all over the place. The greatest thing about the graphic novel is that the satire is biting and dark, not laugh-out-loud funny.

In the end, I can't say I blame the filmmakers. It mustn't be easy to try to satisfy the fans (who seem to always be up in arms over something) while trying to sell to the general population. Their version of a happy medium swayed too much towards the former. I'm not the filmmakers, and I can't tell them how to do their job. But if it were up to me, these are the problem areas I would've dealt with.

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SPOILER WARNING!!

• This ain't 1985 no more. Setting the film during the Cold War was problematic. It makes a lot of sense in the graphic novel, but in the movie there's a huge lack of urgency. It may be the first time I side with a studio on anything geek-related, but setting the film in a more contemporary setting might have helped. Perhaps it's that the urgency wasn't set up properly (bad makeup on Nixon and the Dr. Strangelove war room make the whole conceit seem more like a parody of nuclear threat). The audience for this kind of movie is not old enough to remember 1985. Maybe setting the film in an unnameable time, but bringing the threat to the foreground in a more urgent way could help. The graphic novel's subtlety can't work in the film-- way too much happening and no chance to flip back a few pages to tie up any loose knots.

• It's just too damn long. I think if keeping the film as faithful as possible was such a concern, a six-episode miniseries on HBO or something would have been better suited because it is such a complex story. But the movie would have benefited from a more streamlined approach. Also, better intercutting, to remove the whole episodic structure. But removing the Tales of the Black Freighter segment is exactly what they should have done. But the movie's exhausting, but not because of the emotional burden we should carry out of it.

• Killing the squid was awesome. It may have been the greatest change the filmmakers did, a fantastic solution to a wholly fantastic problem, which would have set the audience rolling in laughter. I understand people's beef about what it represents in a contemporary political climate, informing the world's view of the USA, but in the end, it makes a lot more sense. It would've helped, though, to see the chaos, mayhem and destruction the catastrophe wreaked, instead of a big giant crater where New York used to be. Not that I wish to see a pile of bloody cadavers onscreen, but after all the violence played out in gruesome fashion before, what's with the censorship? The reason it was so powerful in the graphic novel is because it personalized the threat, made it affect us as humans. It may have been gory, but after seeing all sorts of impersonal havoc on screen in tons of less serious action movies, the audience's expectations have already been defined and distanced.

• Dr. Manhattan's genitalia. It shouldn't have been displayed so proudly. Dress him up? 'Course not. But maybe keeping the money shots for when it was vital to see him full frontal would've helped. Audiences (especially audiences for what was marketed as a comic book film) are still quite unprepared for male nudity. That may very well have to do with a sexist hypocritical puritanical society that loves women being nude, but in the end, it hurt the movie. It was a bold choice, and I applaud it. Keeping him naked was right. But choosing more carefully how often we get to see that nudity in all its splendor would've helped a great deal.

• The songs are on the nose. Some of them were right on the money: "The Times They Are A-Changin" was both a sardonic and amusing choice. But "Ride of the Valkyries"? I see what the intent was, but in the end there were so many songs that had the same purpose, it wound up being a similar emotional beat in terms of musical/artistic pop-culture references. All of them good choices and maybe even downright inspired, but not next to one another. It feels like sonic overkill.

• Dr. Manhattan's exile was simply perfect. The Phillip Glass piece helps a bunch, but it is clearly a case of using film to compress a whole chapter of the book effectively into an emotionally successful sequence. If only the same could have been done to many other parts of the film, then it would have been the roller-coaster it was meant to be.

• The cast was too young. Not to say they were bad in any way. Matthew Goode surprised me, I confess, because I thought he was going to be pretty bad from the trailers, but he put n a great transformation that was equal parts sad and distant. And they all did great jobs with the material, rounding out their characters despite the internal conflict we didn't get to appreciate as much on screen. But these are retired superheroes, beaten down, frustrated. I can buy a few of them, but others, try as they might, they still seem way too fresh and upbeat for the screwed-up weight they were supposed to be carrying. Kudos to the actors chosen, because it isn't their fault. Also, the poor makeup doesn't help either.

• These superheroes have no superpowers. Well, one of them does. But the rest were still treated as superhuman, with the strength of a thousand Grizzlies and the agility of a gazillion flying squirrels. I love how they fight and it's cool slo-mo trailer-bait material, but in the end the whole point of this story is they're still human, with very human flaws. I would have loved to see them flinch a little at least, especially after all these years of inactivity.

• Rorschach dies alone. I really don't see why Nite Owl needs to be there. Maybe they were trying to set up their relationship earlier, but in the end Dan's melodramatic scream removes any weight to the death of his "friend". His being alone when it happens is the whole symbolic point of his "sacrifice".

• The sex scene is good/bad. Too long, and the music doesn't help. I love what it means and accomplishes, but its length just makes it funny (but in the best way possible). It would have been just as great if it were shorter. That said, I love that it's included.

• The marketing was off. They knew they had a weird movie here. They knew it was a hard pill to swallow, and maybe selling it all comic-book/action-mystery-like was the right choice. But it turned off people who went in expecting a more straightforward movie. So maybe it was the right choice after all, 'cause it drew in the crowds. But most of them left feeling gypped.

END SPOILERS
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I could go on, but it's moot. What's done is done, and it helps as a cautionary tale for the future. The small-ish Watchmen fanbase isn't happy, and the general public is just confused. And it's a shame, really, because in the end the fans are who should have supported this film more from the start. I think Zak Snyder did a fantastic job despite the film's flaws, but it needed more work and sadly the response has been disheartening. The result is Warner Bros. is limiting most of its DC properties to a PG-13 rating, and filmmakers interested in bringing work like to theaters will have an even steeper uphill battle.

This week, though, I'm happily seeing it again. Maybe everyone should check it out again. It requires bold choices to make a movie like this, warts and all.

Why We Flee

There has been much speculation as to the downward spiral of movie ticket sales in last few years, and the accusatory finger tends to point to piracy. Which makes sense, in a way.

But the evidence suggests otherwise: Wasn't this past President's Day the highest ever in box office revenue? Haven't December, January and February been quite profitable, especially compared to other years? Haven't female-oriented films ("chick-flicks" as they are labeled, in a somewhat derogatory fashion) made more money than average?

And during the current economic crisis, no less. I'd think that if people really wanted to save money, they'd just resort to piracy. I know plenty of people who are so cheap and lazy they download movies that are still in theaters-- which means they don't give a hoot if the film looks good or not, because most of the pirated copies of current releases are camcorded during a screening. Sound, lighting, focus-- everything is terrible, and they include audience participation, even (pirated copies of DVD releases is fodder for a different entry).

I think, if we ask around, that people who truly love watching movies, they'll go to the theater, no problem. It's just such a hassle.

Problem: It's not cheap. Cheaper than the theater, and a club, and a lot of other things, for sure. But dinner and a movie for two can add up; even skipping dinner and sticking to popcorn and soda results in a less-than-friendly attack on the personal expense bill. And the loyalty programs designed to keep audiences returning to a particular chain are not exactly easy to grasp, and their rewards are pitiful.

Potential solution: Cinema chains in Mexico, where an average ticket costs about US$4 for a pretty damn decent theater (and $9 for a VIP theater with large, individual recliners and sushi-serving waiters) have devised a simple way to acquire repeat business: an all-you-can-watch card. Pay about $10 bucks a month, watch everything you want, no matter the schedule, the location, with no limit on movies per day or restrictions. It's like cash. Pre-paid movie cash. Kinda like Netflix, if you will, but you don't spend on popcorn every time you get a DVD in the mail. And that's the trick: audiences don't feel like they're spending if they purchase goodies at the concession stand because they're not shelling out for
the ticket on the spot. It doesn't feel like spending.

Problem: Movies aren't good enough to warrant a trip to the theater. Especially for the coveted male teenage population, who tend to watch a movie they like more than once, and who cherish the vacuous explosion or nifty FX. Why would the average American kid bother with an international film like Slumdog Milionaire or a three-hour romantic drama like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?

Potential solution: Make better movies. And that's easy to say, I know, but the two films mentioned above have actually been quite successful, without the teenagers carrying the box office weight. Instead, it proves that if the movie is of at least a certain quality, odds are it's gonna find its audience. Of course that's hard to predict. Figuring out exactly what will please the audience is pretty much a loser's game within the entertainment industry, so executives tend to prefer remakes, rip-offs, sequels or prequels, because they guarantee business. It makes sense. I can't entirely blame them. But, you know, originality doesn't kill, and risks tend to be rewarded.

Problem: Other people in the movie theater are idiots. There's the guy who repeats obvious plot points to his neighbor. The teenagers who talk too loud. The woman who doesn't turn her cellphone to off or at least vibrate (and then there's those who even answer!). The text messagers. The noisy eaters. The backseat kickers. Those who didn't find a nanny and those who figured their kids could handle a rated R gorefest.

Potential solution: Education. And this is not just the audience learning to be more considerate, respectful, quiet. The ArcLight in Los Angeles does its part by having an employee walk into the theater, personally welcome the audience, and request, at that very moment, that they silence their phones, explaining that it ruins the experience for the rest of the viewers. Other theaters kick people who answer their phone. In the dark, people tend to be bold, but shine a light in their face and guilt overcomes them. I've understood why movie theaters are not allowed to block cellphone signals (for emergencies), but when they claim that it infringes upon the service they provide, it seems logical to counter that phone calls do the same by interrupting the audience's enjoyment of a film. It may not be the same, but an another level, it is.

Basic etiquette:
-If you're expecting an important call, don't go to the movies. Except if you're a surgeon. I can understand. But I'm guessing surgeons don't like cellphones ringing during surgery, so they're probably among the respectful types who put their phones on vibrate.
-If you're going to the movies and don't plan on using the phone, turn it off, or at least to vibrate.
-If you forget to turn it off, try to have it on hand so you can shut it the moment it rings, instead of having to shuffle through your purse in the dark.
-Don't answer. Don't. If it's really that important because you're vital to the survival of the universe, step outside. Say "hold on a second," leave, and then continue your conversation. Don't walk and talk.
-Text messaging is highly distracting. The light on your phone is very bright in the dark. Is it really that important? I sincerely doubt it, but step outside if it is.
-Whisper. Seriously. We're all watching the same movie, so we don't need a play-by-play account. And if you figured out some plot twist before it happens, keep it to yourself. We're all trying to enjoy the movie.
-If you're not talking about something regarding the movie, why are you here? If you're going to chat, go to a restaurant.
-Try to open that wrapper during the loud scenes.
-If you kick the seat in front, apologize. Try to avoid it. It's uncomfortable for the person in front.

It basically boils down to being considerate. People forget that it's courtesy to treat others the way they'd like to be treated. And they don't know how to apologize-- I've gotten into many an argument with people who instead of silencing their phone, defend their right to ruin the movie experience for others. And it sucks that I have to miss five minutes of a movie by stepping outside to get an employee who will kick out the offending party.

Yes, I will get you kicked out. Either way, the film's experience is ruined, but at least I don't have to deal with you anymore.

In the end, if producers and exhibitors put their heads together they'll find a way to keep audiences in the theater. It's not that they don't want to go see the available movies, it's just that the experience should be an enjoyable one.

Oscars snubs and snobs

As usual, the Academy Award nominations have stirred concerns that voters are off their rockers. Claims and accusations vary, but they're as wildly polarizing as they are stern, ranging from "pretentious" to "populist". It's hard to wade through them all, but it just goes to show how little the movie-going audience fully understands about the awards, and how little the Academy does to communicate with those that fill their coffers. But I'll do my part as best I can to give this issue some sort of level-headed cease-fire (and if any Academy members read this and want to tell me how misguided I am about something, I'm all ears).


Audiences think the Academy gets together in a dark and smoky room to pick the movies.

The nominees aren't pre-selected. There's no conspiracy, no rubbing of hands, no mustache-twirling. The way ballots are counted is not simple. If anything, it's over-complicated if you ask me. There's a quick quasi-explanation on Variety. Click here to read it.

"For example, there are 375 voting members in the directors branch. The accountants take that 375 number and divide it by six — i.e., the number of eventual nominees (five) plus one. The division yields the number 62 — and then you add one, so that’s 63. (There’s a reason for adding these ones, but don’t worry about it.)

The accountants then take all 375 director ballots and go through only the first choices, putting each helmer-contender into his/her own stack. When a contender hits 63 first-place votes, he has enough for a nomination.

Anyone who voted for this director gets his ballot set aside, and none of the voter’s other choices is tallied. The reason is to make sure that every voice is heard.

It’s possible, but not likely, that when the first round of voting concludes, there are five contenders who got 63 votes. If not, the PWC crew take the remaining ballots and go through people’s second choices, to see who gets enough votes in this round."

Okay. So no conspiracy. What about hive mentality?

Possible, and likely. Once word gets out that a certain movie is the bee's knees, people wanna go see it, see what the fuss is all about, and as humans, we tend to have our minds made up way before we've even reached the point of argumentation. For instance, I went in wanting to love The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. David Fincher could point a camera at wallpaper for two hours and odds are I'm gonna love it. And guess what? I did. Maybe I don't think it's the year's best movie, but I certainly wanted it to get a nod. With the Academy's complex and complicated vote-counting system, I'd over-think the way to list my fave five but try to get Benjamin Button to be included. It can be headache-inducing and head-scratching, and anything and everything could influence someone's choices. Even vox populi.

Perfect example: everyone wants Heath Ledger to win. The Joker was an awesome, memorable, unique, popular performance... and not long after, Ledger died. It's a tragic story, made for the headlines and the history books. Even if someone else had been a better supporting actor, there's a human element to our choices which we can't deny. I'm sure even his fellow nominees want Ledger to get that posthumous award.


Come on. The Oscars are meaningless and irrelevant.

Tell that to the short film director whose career gets kicked off thanks to a nod. Or the documentary filmmaker who gets to make a new film. Or the foreign film director. Or the thousands of people whose job it is to make a movie look, sound and feel great-- not the directors or stars or producers, but the gaffers and grips and editors and sound recordists and make-up artists who work as hard as you do, are not rewarded with private jet planes and love getting an award as recognized by their peers. Also, the smaller movies. You know, the ones audiences refuse to see because they don't star the current Diva or the great special FX.

Meaningless to you, perhaps.


Some of these categories are booooring.

To the average moviegoer, watching the sound FX guys thank their kids may be lame. But when they watched the movie, they probably felt the booming thunder of the ship's cannons. They just don't think about it. Show a little respect to the people who love their craft. Don't care who won and hate to listen for their speeches? Um... why are you watching, then?


"Foreign-language film"? Who cares?

It's one of the most controversial categories. Asking the country to select the movie it wants to represent it, limiting the choice to one film per country-- so many things are just plain screwed up about it and many have no easy fix. But it matters to that country. Films are the most important cultural export from the US, but it's an industry, and a damn huge one. Not so in the rest of the world. Many countries make plenty of movies (especially India), but for those that only get to finance a handful of projects every year, getting the recognition (and eventual box-office receipts) from a country that has plenty of money to afford plenty of crappy movies, it's a pretty big deal.

I'd argue that Swedish vampire flick Let The Right One In is a better movie than many of those up for awards this year, but the way the category is handled snubbed it.


Critics accuse the Oscars of being populist.

Nominating (and rewarding) a box-office darling like Titanic or Forrest Gump seems like a good idea to get viewers to watch the telecast, but the truth is it's not a popularity contest. They're both good movies, well made, technically proficient and artistically sound. But accusing hundreds of voters of thinking about ratings instead of their personal favorite movies is like blaming Ben & Jerry's for selling more chocolate ice-cream than any other flavor. It's what people who buy ice-cream like.

Chris Rock's visit to a Harlem movie-theater, when he was the Oscar host, should also be an eye-opener: when he asked audiences if they had seen any of the nominees that year, he got a lot of stoned silence. Favorite movie of the year? One interviewee said it was Alien vs. Predator. That means it should have been nominated for Best Picture, right?


Audiences think the Oscars are pretentious.

This argument is the direct opposite of the above. How can the Oscars be both populist and out of touch with what the populace likes? Well, bad news for the general viewership out there: the Academy Awards are voted on by the Academy members. Want to vote? Join the Academy (get invited into it and approved, actually. It ain't easy). It's near-sighted to blame the Academy for picking what they like the best. Within my family members, we have favorite restaurants. You think our choices are atrocious? Tough-- it's my family, not yours. As blunt as that may sound, it's true. Popularity is for the People's Choice Awards.


There's a lot of politics involved.

Of course. I'd be foolish to assume that all of the above could not be tainted by a well-placed handshake or impending deal. But if it's all controlled by some mastermind(s) behind the curtain, why do the studios place so many expensive "For Your Consideration" ads?


Hollywood is a liberal recess of hedonism and self-important social brouhaha.

Yep. And thank goodness. Many claim to hate when stars talk about politics or social issues, but they have every right to do so. Nobody likes being told what to do, yet everyone (even Joe the Plumber) loves trumping their own political agenda. We do it at the local bar, with our friends, on message boards or during heated political-discourse picnics. At work. At play. Everywhere. Stars have a venue that gets their ideals to more people. I say, more power to them. I think some stars' politics (and the way they express them) are ridiculous, half-baked and absolutely insane, but it's their right to speak their mind, and if they've earned the ability of using a venue, good for them. If stars have the power and ability to provide well-being and positive change for society, we should support them. If we don't like what they say, we don't have to listen.


Wait. What does this have to do with the Oscars?

A common complaint is that the Oscars tend to be handed out to socially-minded films or preachy crap (depending on who you ask). I'm not too big a fan of making a movie just to get a message across, and instead prefer it when the message is clear thanks to a compelling story, but if a powerful film with a powerful message is well-executed, why shouldn't it get recognition? George Clooney said it best when he asserted that Hollywood's lack of touch with the rest of the country was a good thing-- he meant that if positive changes can come from telling a story on film, why shouldn't that change come from a place dedicated to telling stories on film? Accuse Hollywood of being a decadent cornucopia of sin and consumption all you want, but I think everyone is potentially smart enough to discern between one's personal life and one's work. And even though the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal proves that's not always the case, at least we know the difference between a clubbing heiress and a film about war crimes. Don't we-- or better yet, shouldn't we?


The Oscars are out of touch with contemporary audiences.

This is true, but it's (mostly) not the Academy's fault. In keeping with the "Wanna Vote? Join the Academy" motif, there's a lot of ill-advised privacy in how votes are handled. And during war times and a rough economy, seeing a bunch of well-to-do people pat each other on the back seems almost like a slap in the face to the general mortgage-challenged moviegoer. But the truth is, the Academy is not some evil entity. Could they be a little bit more open? Sure, but to what avail? To reward The Dark Knight as opposed to Slumdog Millionaire? Again, that's what the PCA are for, and if you're not happy, join the Academy.

I think the current times and the technological changes we've seen in the past few years are very much responsible for this disassociation, and how these things have morphed our social consciousness about popular culture and our response to it (again, hive mentality). Celebrities are made and unmade in a matter of weeks, reality TV creates stars out of the folks next door, and the democratic movement of Web2.0 represents a cultural shift in audience's appreciation of artistic and entertainment-related endeavors. People seem to have more fun with a thirty-second clip of a guy falling off a skateboard than a two-hour film about a Nazi war criminal. So how is the Academy--an institution dedicated to the art of filmmaking--supposed to be in touch with Failblog? Two different beasts altogether, but due to the broad definition of entertainment, it's not surprising that audiences tend to lump them together in terms of the resulting audiovisual stimuli and the satisfaction each may or may not provide. Apples and oranges.

It also doesn't help that for all its marketing and business-deals and industry-gibberish, at the end of the day, the Academy is, in their own complicated way, trying to reward a certain degree of artistry, even if it does so for monetary reasons or as a business-like transaction. A vicious circle. Cynical? Sure. But realist.


Of course. The Oscars are all about the money.

Well, sorta. People tend to use "Academy" and "Oscars" interchangeably. "Oscar" is the pet name (and registered trademark) of the Academy Awards, a series of recognitions given out to the greatest achievements in film during a certain time period, as selected and voted on by the members of the Academy (process and rationalization notwithstanding).

The Academy is the organism: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But the Academy isn't only about handing out golden statues to well-endowed starlets in low-cut dresses. It serves a purpose, as a sort of hub that registers, supports and maintains the filmic arts, providing an invaluable resource in promoting movies as a historical, cultural and artistic document. It's not necessarily a school or museum, but it certainly could be seen as both in how it has developed, and even though it takes on the responsibilities of cultural authority in all matters movie-related, the simplistic way of seeing it is as a club for people who make movies. But it's more than that, and it's importance in film is unquestionable. And the movies that receive nods come nomination time do tend to see an upswing in ticket sales. Nominees get more work and more work means more money.

Well, duh. Everyone wants to make money.

It has its missteps, and I'm sure members of the Academy could be even more forthcoming than what I could ever possibly explain about the voting mechanics of the Awards. But I see it very clearly: if I don't like whichever movie won or was nominated for an Oscar, tough. That's my problem, not the Academy's. I just won't see the ceremony when it airs on TV (yeah, right).

And if it comes to that, I'll just hand out my own awards.

Long time no see...

...because it's been crazy. I really need to get back to this a little more often.

So I finished the big editing gig. I'm sure I'll still have to go back and do some tweaking, and there's still some uploading to the webpage to be done after some revisions, but in general, it's done. It was eight months of communication breakdown, but in the end, the client is satisfied. Good.

My short film, Killing Killian, has been once more singled out by Bobby Miller's fantastic web series, The Best Short Films in the World. Except this time, it's as The Best of the Best!

Next year brings a lot of challenges and changes in my schedule (ah, the perils of being a freelance writer). I hope to have good news early on, but I'll also be taking a semi-steady job to keep the money coming in. The writing, however, must go on!

Happy New Year!

My brain is full

I have to thank Bobby Miller and his great show, The Best Short Films in the World, for exposing Killing Killian to a gazillion people.

Okay, so 1500 so far isn't a gazillion, but it's certainly a lot, and it's always great to see people enjoyed it. some didn't, but what the hell. That's life, and that's movies.

In the past few days I've been working on a few more translations, as well as a bunch of pitches that are both so specific and so wide-ranging that I've burnt up valuable brain cells. It's hard coming with stories you're not necessarily going to write, because they need the same amount of thought --at least in the early stages-- as a full screenplay. But when the idea is cast aside, it's time to clean that slate, which is easier said than done. And what with translations on my mind as well, it all gets bunched up.

On the other hand, I just finished a major rewrite on a script I'm looking to get financing for next year. Plus a new draft of another a managing company asked for. And working on finishing yet a third that I was asked to submit (they have the previous incarnation, but if I finish soon, they might not have read it yet and would be happy to see whatever changes I've made). Oh, and I'm currently rewriting a project I've been helping a friend with.

Plenty on my mind...