State of the Union

Writing-wise, what's going on with Pete you ask?  Oh, you didn't ask?  That's OK, I'll tell you anyway.

As far as I know Happenstances is dead for now, I haven't talked to the Producer yet but I hope to soon just to get closure about that whole situation.  I also want to write some short stories, webisodes, etc, in the Happenstances world to supplement the screenplay.

I have been communicating back and forth with the President of a small, independent comic book company about turning my script Love Bites into a graphic novel.  Here's the pitch:

Love Bites
Twilight meets Superbad, if Twilight didn't suck (no pun intended). Drake, your average teenage vampire, falls for Julia, the new human girl at Vincent Price High School. Julia's not looking for love, she's still having trouble adjusting to her new town, a monster friendly community in Pennsylvania. Even if they did hit it off, Julia's father, a monster-racist, would have a few things to say about his daughter dating "one of those bloodsuckers, or flesh eaters, whatever they do for fun."
WGA # 1376156

I used to read comic books when I was younger but haven't in years really, except for a couple like V for Vendetta and 30 Days of Night, so I'm not even sure how the whole process will work, but I was listening to a podcast a few months ago where the writer of the Scott Pilgrim comics was talking about writing comic scripts in screenplay format.  I thought of Love Bites immediately and asked a friend who does brutal illustrations if he wanted to help with a pitch to show to my manager.  I took the friend's non-answer as a no and a few months later put up a Craiglist ad asking generally about turning a screenplay into a graphic novel.  One of the responses I got sounded good and I talked to him further.  It turns out we both know a guy that's an LAFSC alum from a couple years before me!

I'm supposed to meet with him soon to talk about the project.  I'm excited about that.

My manager gave a treatment of mine to Akon and he liked it, I've been working on that script for a couple months but it's a thriller and the story is pretty intricate so it's been taking longer than expected.

I recently did another draft of the project Orlando Brown and I developed, I sent that script to my manager.

"Relapse" is on A&E Monday nights at 9pm, watch it please!  If you like "Intervention" you'll like it as well.  (I have been with Intervention in my current position for a year now and just asked for and got a raise!!)

My webisode team has been working on a sketch that should start shooting in the next week.


And The End. is almost over.  The finale should be released this weekend and I will post it.  It was really fun to shoot, we had a wrap party, it was great.

I think The End. was both a success and a failure.  Negativity first: we don't have a lot of views on Youtube or Blip.tv (and never really tried on Funny or Die) or a lot of followers on the blog or Twitter, we spent our own money out of pocket and haven't made any of it back, we pitched it to at least one new media division and they passed on it.

Successes
* The project was originally intended to get the actor who plays Duke into SAG through the new media rules, not only did Justinh get into SAG but me and a couple other actors who did guest roles are now SAG eligible.

* I kept in touch with some LAFSC alums and also made new friendships through the project (awwww).

* I got to write for and direct Orlando Brown.  The other directors and I split up his arc so that we would all have an episode with him in it to put on our reels.  He was fun to hang out with and fun to watch work.  Not to mention the other actors and actresses who did guest roles and were awesome.

* Credits on IMDb.

* Learning about web series' by doing, writing short episodes, getting material produced, table reading, working with one location and a small budget (which I already was the king of, but still).

* Getting my act on.

* Creating and maintaining a blog and other social media sites.

* Growing a joke-goatee!!

Just to name a few of the benefits to making The End.  Overall it was definitely a worthwhile experience and I would/ hope to do it again whether it be a The End. miniseries or a whole new show altogether.  In fact, I have an idea for a new web series and I'm talking to a couple actor friends of mine about getting it started.

I think that's it for now (that I want to divulge, you know I always have some secret projects brewing).  I'll leave you with another clip from my smash hit movie Walk By Faith 2: After the Honeymoon



LOL Aussie-tizers!!

Blog Chat!!!

I read a couple different screenwriting blogs regularly, including Amanda The Aspiring Writer where I guest blogged about writing direct to DVD movies.

But enough about me (more about me soon though), recently The Bitter Script Reader had an awesome post about another blog Notes From a Hack that, among other things, chronicled the blogger's experience writing In the Mix, aka That Usher Movie... No Not She's All That The Other One, in seven parts. Here is the link to the seventh part, the blogger has links to all the parts there, or use this link for The BSR's post.  Read it in order, it ends with a hair raising cliffhanger each time.  I am a huge fan of the journey from lowest totem on the pole to produced screenwriter, this is a great example.

Another fun fact, one of the screenwriters, that the blogger is talking about in his epic tale who eventually got a 'story by' credit for In the Mix, wrote the first two Nora's Hair Salons, which I of course wrote the third of the trilogy.  It truly is a small, interconnected world, especially in the realm of movies targeted to Black people.

Since I'm name dropping all these other blogs, their readers might stumble across this blog, here is a silly episode of The End.



The season (possibly series) finale of The End. is shot and being edited currently.  I'll post it as soon as it's released.

And I'm getting a raise at my day (aka night) job soon, woop woop.  But I need to remember to never settle, never get comfortable there, the dream is to be a full time writer (but if I were to write for the show then that would be awesome too).

2011 Beverly Hills Film Festival

The Awards Ceremony is tonight.

2011 Beverly Hills Film Festival

I made some postcards for the promo table at the Beverly Hills Film Festival.

I'm going to a couple movies tomorrow then I'll stop by the after party tomorrow night.  Hopefully more movies Saturday and then the gala Sunday evening.

The 2011 Beverly Hills Film Festival starts Wednesday.

The other TV show that I work on besides Intervention, called Relapse premiered tonight.  The AV Club, where I get a lot of my news, reviewed the show, which is exciting to me.

 

The secret guest star on The End. was Orlando Brown from "That's So Raven," Major Payne, etc.  Watch him in the "The Rise and Fall of The Boomshadow" arc, episodes 17, 18, 19 and the yet to be released episode 20!!  I wrote 18, 19, and 20 specifically for Orlando and he agreed to do it.

We shot the finale of The End. a week or two ago and it went great, a couple familiar faces show up in the end of The End.

In sad news, the Producer who wanted to make Happenstances her first feature production got a new job and will not have time to work on producing it in the foreseeable future.  I'm supposed to meet with her next week to talk about it.   

Happenstances is definitely the script I've worked the hardest on, I've done probably ten to fifteen drafts of it over about six years.  At least I never get excited about anything and thus never have any expectations so I'm not too crushed, but I am bummed nonetheless.  But, with Christian coming this summer, which is when the Producer wanted to shoot the movie, it wasn't the ideal time for it to get made anyway (except financially for me, haha) so hopefully when Happenstances gets made, because it will get made, it's my max out credit cards and call in favors movie, Christian will be older and I'll be able to fully devote myself to making the movie.

There are so many things I want to do and stories I want to tell, I hope I get a chance to do a fraction of it at some point in my life.

Anything else?  I don't know, it's late.  I'll try to post more this month.