What I've Written

If I'm going to be spending all this time writing, I suppose I should explain what it is I write.

Today: previous work. Tomorrow: vague and frustrating allusions to upcoming projects, which is as much as I can post on the Internet for the entire world to see.

Current Preoccupations of My Work:

• The Formation of An Unlikely Gang
  
  A motley bunch of misfits team up to do whatever. The Goonies. Star Wars. Rio Bravo. This is a hardly an unusual preoccupation for a screenwriter. And at least two of my next projects hold this one.



• Really Annoying Girls
  
  Amelia in The Last Whatever walks into Cox Hall, rips down the no-smoking sign, walks over to a table, sweeps someone else's backpacks and books off the table, sits, lights her match off a dude's corduroy pants, and smokes. The thing is, I've never met a girl like this. And I'm not sure that I'd enjoy it. So I'm not really sure where it comes from - maybe it's a Jungian projection of some sort. In any case, I love Marla Singer from Fight Club. Every line of hers in that movie is pure battery acid.



• The Abdication of All Professional Responsibilities
  
  There's a genre of movie I call "escape porn". Field of Dreams. Rain Man. Thelma and Louise. The idea that at many moment, you could just drop everything and away from your life. Only to lose yourself in pure spontaneity. Hmm. Sounds awfully familiar.

My Writing History

Elementary School through College:

• Many Abortive Short Stories That Went Nowhere
  
  I remember writing retellings of famous movies when I was a small boy, but recasting talking animals in the main roles. I don't think anyone thought this was a good idea except myself. In college, I was obsessed with the collection and presentation of cool, nifty details, but didn't have the patience to build a narrative to hang them on. Despite this, I won a summer workshop scholarship at Emory, and was asked to give a reading before a small audience. Afterwards, one of the visiting professional writers approached me and said, "You've got talent. I'm serious."

Film School:

• Lots and Lots of Short Scripts
  
  These nearly broke me in two. I had been "trained" as a fiction writer, which means I didn't know shit about dramatic storytelling, and the transition was a bitch. I nearly dropped out of film school after one semester, and just barely stayed on thanks to the efforts of my friends and family. There's a story about my friend Danielle's emergency intervention which I will share in a future post.



• Republic of Strangers
  
  This was my first full-length screenplay. It's about coyotes - illegal alien smugglers - trying to move Mexicans across the border into El Paso. It actually made the first cut in the Sundance Film Festival's screenplay competition back in 2000, despite the fact that I wrote the last thirty pages of it in about two days. Mark my words: no one will ever read this script.



• Age of Wonder
  
  This one is about a world-wide conspiracy involving the Knights Templar and... what? Dammit! Just kidding. Dan Brown and I actually stole from the same book: Holy Blood, Holy Grail. (But I did it four years before he did.) Mine takes place in a mythical, steampunk France, and involves demons and superheroes, and lots and lots of gunplay. As unlikely as it sounds, I ended up using many elements of this script in my next script...

Post-Graduation:

• The Last Whatever
  
  The official logline: a group of college misfits discover a mysterious force of nature running beneath their campus, which leads them to solve the mystery of a single moment in time, repeating itself over and over.
  
  Many of you have read this. If you haven't, feel free to request a copy in the comments. If you know me personally, or know someone I know personally, I'll send you one. There's a story about how I came up with the idea for TLW, but I'll share it in another post.