I had a relaxing time over the holiday and I wasn't productive at all. Right before I left though I did a new draft of Happenstances, I love it.
I leave LA again for the holidays in three weeks, there's a lot to do before then.
My blog's birthday is on December 17th, it will be three years old. I started it twenty two days before I left Maryland to move to Los Angeles for my semester long film program at the LAFSC. For my blog's birthday I'm going to send a lucky someone a copy of Pastor Jones: Preachin' to the Choir aka Pastor Jones: Heavenly Voices. All you have to do is comment here as to why you deserve it the most. I expect a raging competition.
If you want I can also write you a note on it or you can ask me to keep it in the condition that it's in when I buy it used off of Amazon, ha!
You might be wondering, Pete, you wrote a Christmas movie, Johnson Family Christmas Dinner, and it's Christmas time, why not give away a copy of that too? 1) Don't be so greedy, 2) There is an improvised joke that was not in the script I wrote that irks me so much that I don't really talk about that movie too much anymore, I explain the situation in an old blog post here. So Pastor Jones it is.
Also, a new episode of The End. is up, find it on the sidebar to the right or catch up on every episode here.
This is the Thanksgiving Episode of The End. I wrote and directed this episode. This is the first one that I wrote entirely, I've directed all of them that have been released so far.
Just for fun, here is the script! This site Scribd hosts documents and I've wanted to use it for a while and this seems like a fun one to share since it's produced and the formula for The End. is no secret (and now that we've established that formula we're going to start playing with it in future episodes). The End. of Giving Thanks
Ash and I are heading down to San Diego for Thanksgiving. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas I have some important meetings, a lot of writing, and another shoot day for The End., all of which I'm thankful for.
You can catch up on all the episodes of The End. here and follow The End.'s blog here.
I recently guest blogged on a cool, more popular blog than mine here at Amanda the Aspiring Writer's blog. I wrote about my journey so far, in general, and more specifically writing Direct-to-DVD movies. Check it out and follow that blog, it's interesting and she gets a lot of insights from different people in different aspects of screenwriting as well as her personal journey.
This is a great episode of The End. I'm really looking forward to our Thanksgiving episode though. We had a great shoot day for The End. over the weekend. Remember to check for a new episode every Sunday.
We have another shoot day of The End. coming up soon. We plan on doing about 20 episodes and seeing where we're at by the end of them, if we've found an audience, if there's more we want to do with it, etc. So far it's been a good experience and it's both ignited and rekindled some connections.
I directed four out of four episodes so far, in the next shoot other crew members are going to take turns directing with me. I've written some upcoming episodes that are going to be great.
Writing quick, short episodes of The End. is a great break from feature writing. They're only a few pages long, they have easy structure, and they can be really weird without effecting the story/ mythology. I should write shorts to take a break from features way more often. I have a bunch of short story premises banging around too.
I'm in the middle of the first draft of the second script I've attempted to write with a writing partner. Both partnerships have been very different.
The first script I wrote with a partner was the baseball script with Phil. In that partnership we would meet often, we talked, he would give me ideas to add to the story we we creating (the original story was based on his idea), then I would do the writing, give him a hard copy (Phil doesn't do computers), he would give notes, then I would make corrections using the notes I agreed with and debate with him on the points I did not agree with. Another tough thing about that partnership, besides Phil's aversion to technology, was that his memory isn't the best so I would have to debate him on the same point several times. A cool thing about the whole ordeal was, because Phil's hearing wasn't great and he didn't want to meet at the usual coffee shop (he doesn't drink the stuff), we met at a baseball field, which was cool because of the content of the script, but also after a couple meetings Phil told me to look up at the name on the backstop and it turns out we were meeting at Pote Field, Phil's last name is Pote, we met at the baseball field named after the guy I was meeting with.
And it's not like he did it to show off or anything, he's a really humble guy and was kind of embarrassed almost to tell me, he just loved to meet there and it was convenient for both of us. Plus it was quiet so he could hear me and the weather was always nice.
My current writing partner is a guy I'm working on The End. with, a roommate of mine from the LAFSC. In this case we both write new pages, he's probably written more fresh pages than I have so far, and we send them back and forth then I tweak and polish them just because I have more experience. He wrote the outline that we're working off of but we've talked about everything every step of the way.
They've both been really positive experiences, I also would like to work with a partner who has more writing experience than me. It would be like training with a better athlete, it would elevate my game more than me having the final say like I have had in these past two partnerships.
Happenstances is looking very promising. I'm not going to get my hopes up but in a perfect world where everything works out ideally it would be shot in 2011. I don't expect that but I am really optimistic.
My goal (it's important to me to set goals and deadlines) is to finish up these two projects I'm currently writing, at least a first draft of the one and a possibly final draft of the other (no draft is a final draft until the movie is locked in editing, but a "final" draft that my Producer can attach to the business plan). I would love to write a new spec starting at the beginning of the year so I would have a bunch of things in my pocket to just give to my manager, enter in contests, etc, etc when my baby is born so I don't have to necessarily be thinking of new ideas and writing, just promoting all the things I've already written.
We hope to release one every Sunday, keep checking back for more info!! We have a great crew and the episodes we've already shot are awesome, we have a bunch of great scripts ready too.
Feel free to go to the blog and click the ads (don't hesitate to click my ads as well). And any feedback on the show is appreciated. Also, if you're in LA and you want to help in any way: craft services, acting, promotions, anything at all, let me know!
I'm also adding a set of buttons to the sidebar so you can get to The End. easily.
Pastor Jones: Preachin' to the Choir alternate title Pastor Jones: Heavenly Voices (2009)
The beloved Pastor Jones is grappling with yet another crisis affecting his church. The inability of the Pastor's church to pay off a loan has placed his famed choir at risk. In order to save the choir Pastor Jones must bring together its two lead members, sisters Tammy and Louise, who have been at odds. Both women find themselves on an emotional collision course over the future of the choir, all while seeking the approval and attention of the pastor. Pastor Jones must remind the church members that pride is a sin, a sin that is tearing the choir and church apart.
The choir enters a local competition that has a surprising effect on Pastor Jones parishioners. Can the competition bring camaraderie to the church, salvage the faltering group, and save Tammy and Louise's friendship?
(Plot summary from IMDb.com and Amazon.com)
WGA # 1289030
Johnson Family Christmas Dinner (2008)
This comedy drama focuses on the trials and tribulations that a family goes through, always reconnecting over Sunday dinner. As a mother and father observe the sometimes difficult events of their grown children's lives, they have to pick when and where to become involved. From Alex, who opened a failed restaurant with her husband Sam, to Robert Jr. who's just welcomed a new baby into the world, the dinner table sees its share of laughter and tears, but over time each family member learns that they depend on each other to get through it - even when they're at each other's throats.
(Plot summary from moviefone.com)
WGA # 1293335
In Development
The Happenstances at the Yellow County Community Swim and Racquet Club The Summer Before Last Finalist in the 2010 Beverly Hills Film Festival Screenplay Competition.
Jonathan, a total loser who secretly lives in the guard house of the local community pool, must train a team of misfits, including a struggling artist with webbed toes, a timid teen with a concave chest, and the beautiful heiress of the Comfort Inn fortune, to win the Tri-County Relay Race and save the club from being run by a management company that only cares about money. The management company hires a relay team of ringers including a girl with a prosthetic dorsal fin and a man named Carmichael Schmelps who looks suspiciously like a certain Olympic gold medalist.
WGA # 1332588
Spec
Addicted To You
Jake, a producer for the Intervention style documentary show "Confrontation," is devastated when is longtime girlfriend tells him she's cheated on him the night he set to propose. He goes into depression until his next "Confrontation" shoot. When he gets to the documentary subject's hometown he meets a girl named Amber and falls for her instantly. He continues to the subject's house and finds that Amber is the addict he's supposed to be documenting.
WGA # 1410852
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
Suicide Watch
A dark comedy, Charlie, an utter failure of a screenwriter, wants to kill himself but when he calls to quit his dead end job at movie rental store Popcorn Movies he is informed that he has to put in a two weeks notice. Charlie sighs and gets ready for his shift that night. He decides that he’ll spend his final two weeks figuring out how best to kill himself by enlisting advice from his co-workers under the guise of researching for a screenplay he is trying to write. Can a beautiful suicide hotline operator make him change his mind?
WGA # 1270560
Thanks to everyone who's been sending congratulations to Ash and I, we have been blogging to our baby here. I think that blog has more readers than this one!
My producer on Nora's Hair Salon 3 tweeted this picture a few days ago. I'm not sure if this is the official DVD cover art or what it is.
I watched the rough cuts of the episodes of The End. that we filmed. I'm excited to put out the first episode hopefully around Halloween. You can follow The End. on Twitter and Facebook.
There are a lot of additions I want to add to my blog including basically an E-Query that I can direct people to that has a list of my produced and spec screenplays, what stage they're in, WGA #'s, etc, etc. I also found a website called Scribd that hosts PDFs so I can actually post some scripts directly on my blog. I obviously won't put works in progress up, but producedscreenplays and shorts and thingslikethat I can. It will be interesting (to some) to see what I originally wrote and how it was translated to the screen.
Look for all of that soon.
I think, I thiiiiink, that I might also start weighing in on screenwriting questions that I see on other screenwriters' blogs. As you can see I've added a Blog Roll to my blog of other screenwriters/ filmmakers and when I'm reading their posts I feel like I have some insight and in some cases I'm further along in my "career" because I have produced work, a manager, and I've had many meetings with producers, actors, writers that I can draw from. That will also be a cool feature that will break up the simple updates about what script is doing what.
aka Pastor Jones: Heavenly Voices
, and it's Christmas time, why not give away a copy of that too? 1) Don't be so greedy, 2) There is an improvised joke that was not in the script I wrote that irks me so much that I don't really talk about that movie too much anymore, I explain the situation in an old blog post here. So Pastor Jones it is.
