Moving...

I've been planning to move this blog to another domain for awhile, while still in the works and not yet done, I plan on moving over to phillyscreenwriter, my new blog. I will keep this blog up because there are people, few people who do have live the beat as a bookmark. I will no longer post here though. I'm moving to wordpress so I can have more control over my post. I also plan on writing about more topics then just screenwriting so look forward to that.

The reason I'm moving early to a blog that is not completely designed the way I want it to be, is because 1) I'm not posting things that I could be posting because I was working on the design of the new blog and didn't want to make any post until I start the new blog, 2) I really don't have an idea about how I want the blog to look so instead of waiting and not writing I thought I would just start using the new domain and blog and work on it behind the scenes.

With that being said, head on over to Philly Screenwriter.com and check out the new blog.

Just a quick update.

I’ve updated the books I read last year as well as some new ones from 2006. I still have plans to move this blog to another name, my domain name, but I’m having trouble with setting up wordpress. Once all is said and done, the books from 2005 will get their own link/page and only the 2006 book will be on the front page.

Where I hope to be in 2007.

The benchmake for every independent film is the Sundance film festival. Why? I have no idea. There are other film festivals that will do the same thing for an filmmakers or and actors career, but for some reason this is the first and only place that really count in peoples minds. Chalk it up to good company branding as well as marketing. Everyone wants the “Official Sundance selection or winner” placed on their film.

I plan on shooting a short this year and having it edited in time for, you guessed it, Sundance. This week the festival kicks off in Park City with a more films then any one person can see. The part of this film festival that I like the best is the Online Film Festival that they do for shorts. One reason is, you get to see what kind of films get into Sundance and find out if you may be able to come close to any one of them. This doesn’t seem hard with the quality of the films online, but being that I haven’t shoot a film yet, in my life, I’m sure its much harder then it looks. The second reason I like the online film festival is, I can’t get to Park City and see the films play at the theater and this may be the closest I ever get to see a Sundance.

Early today I watched the film DIVORCE LEMONADE which is only 7 minutes long but was very well done. You can check it out here
As well as some of the other short films. Next year keep an eye out for my short coming to a browser near you!
Divorce Lemonade

Golden Globes

I don’t watch many award shows but I try and catch a few of the major ones. The Golden Globes happens to be one of the few I actually like. That being said I didn’t know about them being on until about an hour before they started. As I already had a date with a little show called 24, I figures I could just catch the after show or find out who won on the net the next day.

First the good. I was happy for Philip Seymour Hoffman who has been my one of my favorite actor for a long time. Very underrated. Boogie Nights, Almost Famous, Red Dragon, 25th Hour. The list goes on and on. If you don’t believe, just watch Along Came Polly and see how he took a small part in a movie and made it the only thing good about that movie. Also underrated, Mrs. Rachel Weisz’s win was well deserved.

It’s nice to see some of the older actor making a come back. Last year it was Teri Hatcher, this year it was Geena Davis. That was cool. I wish it could have been a three way tie between Zach Braff, Steve Carell and Jason Lee. I hope Steve Carell’s win will draw a bigger audience to The Office. Being in the new Thursday night line up, which is pretty good, should help. Sandra Oh’s win was also well deserved. Terrence Howard’s nom was cool too. Great actor!

The Bad. I know this was Hollywood’s year to come out of the closet with Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica’s Felicity Huffman winning big. But for Crash to go home globeless is really a shame. Crash was by far one of the best movie of last year as well as one of the best films to come along in awhile. When was the last time a movie came out, a fiction movie, and sparked people to have discussions about what they just saw on an intellectual level? Here in Philly, where I live, there were group discussions held after screenings of Crash. I haven’t heard or read from anyone who didn’t like this movie. I know they exist, because they have to. Not everyone likes everything. I find it hard to fathom that the screenplay didn’t at less win. And to not even get nominated for Best Picture – Drama is just blasphemy. Maybe it was the subject but I doubt it. Anyway, I hope that it wins an Oscar for something, anything!

Its been a while…

I haven’t posted in awhile. Just chalk it up to plan old laziness. With the New Year, here is a new post.

Last year I did a lot of things I set out to accomplish. Most feel short. I had planed on reading 15 – 20 books. I got to 11 as you can see on the side of this blog. The highlights of those were Improbable by Adam Fawer. Making Memories by a co-worker of mine was an also a favorite. I’ve never read an unpublished book and doing so was a wonderful experience. I wish I had the means to keep focused on one thing that long. The broker was the worst book I read this year. Another thing set out to do was take more classes in subjects that interest me. Last year I took the beginning television writing class at the writer’s university. This class was way too hard for me. I wouldn’t say this was a beginner’s class. Maybe it was but not for me. I did learn a lot from this class, one being that I have a lot of work to do.

The other class I took was an acting class. This was my second acting class. I’m not sure if I took the class the first one in 2005 or 2004. This class was with Mike Lemon of Mike Lemon casting here in Philly. I had fun in this class and met a lot of cool people I hope to keep in touch with.

Here is a list of all the movies I’ve seen this year. The ones I saw in the theater will have a (T) next to them. All others where on DVD.

Assault on Precinct 13

Hitch (T)

Diary of a Mad Black Women

Hostage

Sin City (T)

A Lot Like Love (T)

Crash (T)

Mindhunters

Layer Cake

Star Wars: Episode III (T)

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

High Tension

Batman Begins (T)

Wedding Crashers (T)

Hustle & Flow

The 40 Year-Old Virgin (T)

The Exorcism of... (T)

In Her Shoes (T)

Elizabethtown (T)

Saw 2 (T)

Jarhead (T)

Rent (T)

The Family Stone (T)

Of all those, I enjoyed Rent, Crash, Hitch and Sin City the most.

The one that I wanted to like the most but turned out hating; Elizabethtown.

The one that I wanted to hate the most but turned out loving; The Family Stone.


Enough with last year. Let’s look forward. I plan to continue taking more classes this year. I plan to read 20 – 25 books this year as I read better and faster then I did at this time last year. This year will be the year where I shoot the short script I wrote. I have two feature scripts I plan on having done by the end of the year.

I want to post more on my blog, so the subject matter will be a little broader. There will also be a new website where I will host this blog under a different name. So check for that soon.

I’m pretty sure I could list more stuff but I’m to tired and have a New Years Cold so I don’t feel like doing anymore. 2006 will have more post, I promise! May you have as much success in 2006 as you allow yourself.

Dinner With Friends

With my acting class approaching fast I had to choose which monologue I was going to perform. As I said in the last post my last monologue was a little too hard for someone with no acting experience. With this class I wanted pick something that was more on the comedic side, but with a little drama mixed in.

I chose a monologue from the play Dinner With Friends by Donald Margulies. The monologue goes as followed:

I don’t know about you, but I’m at the point in my life where I want to enjoy myself. I don’t want to go through life hoping I’m gonna get lucky with my own wife. You know? You go to bed and you think you’re gonna have sex and then you say something, some kind of offhanded remark of no consequence whatsoever, and it pisses her off and the mood is gone and it’s lights out and that’s it. I must’ve masturbated more then any married man in history.

I’m not asking for it twenty-four hours a day, all I’m asking for is a little affection.

No, Gabe, there were no other women. There were opportunities, though. I mean, when you’re out of town as much as I am… You’re lonely, you’re far from home, it doesn’t seem like you’re living in real time. I’d be in a hotel bar and strike up a conversation with a female colleague, or some divorcee with big hair, and I’d make them laugh and they’d look pretty and I’d feel competent again, you know?, and think, gee maybe I am still clever and attractive after all. There’d be that electricity in the air, that kind of buzz I hadn’t felt since college, remember?, when a single move, and move at all, and there’d be sex? But I’d get scared and say goodnight and go back to my room and call Beth out of guilt, or hope, and get some shit about something I neglected to do or did badly. Well, by the time I met Nancy --- she made me feel good from the first time I talked to her on the phone --- I hadn’t even laid eyes on her yet --- she booked all my travel.

She had this great laugh and this flirty sense of humor, and she said, “We’ve been talking for weeks, I want to meet you already!” And I began to think, Why the hell not? What am I saving myself for? This hypercritical woman waiting for me back home? Who looks at me with withering disappointment. All the time. This accusatory, how-could-you-be-so-thoughtless look. So, on one hand, there’s this delightful women who makes me feel worthwhile and there’s this other women, my wife, who makes me feel like shit. Who would you choose?

Nothing to hard but challenging enough. The class starts on Tuesday Nov. 15th. I'll update on the Wednesday after. Wish me luck!

Back to school

Earlier this week (Oct 24), I started an online TV writing class at the Writers University. The class is Beginning Television Writing, which covers exactly what it says. Buy the end of the class - four weeks from now – I should have a tight, well plotted outline and all the knowledge I need to start writing my spec teleplay. We shall see about that. I’m only 2 days into the class and the information I’ve gained so far has been well worth the $119.96 + $10.85 for the book by the two course instructors, Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin.

I found out about the class from Lee Goldberg’s blog A Writer's Life which I go to daily. His blog is very informative and updated nearly everyday, unlike my mine. I have a few ideas for TV shows and never really understood how to write them. I get the whole screenplay thing for movies, but TV is a whole different thing altogether. I think once I get the basics I should be fine. I’m sure there will be a lot more to learn after this class but this class will lay the foundation for what I do in the future.

I also will be taking my second acting at Mike Lemon Casting her in Philadelphia. I had so much fun in the first one I took which was, the basics of acting with Donna Marrazzo

For that class I had to do few scenes with others, some improve, script analysis and a two minute monologue. I decided to pick a very hard monologue which at the time I thought was a good idea. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to but I did learn a lot.

With that class I had all 8 weeks to go over my monologue and got feed back from the class along the way. With the new class I’m taking – Film Acting I – I have to have my monologue ready for the first class on Nov 15^th. This class is also an on camera class so I will be videotaped and forced to watch myself act like a fool. No pun intended. Well maybe some pun intended.