On Dating and Why Prostitution is a Sound Investment in Today's Economy
Friday, January 29, 2010
Posted by Marko at 1:32 AM 0 comments
Quick Update
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
In case you didn't figure it out already, I haven't been posting as much because I have been working on writing this screenplay. And I guess that's a good thing.
Posted by Marko at 2:14 AM 0 comments
Labels: Screenwriting
What I am thinking at 4:45 AM on a Sunday night
Monday, January 25, 2010
Greg Dorn narrowly missed being cast along side Dane Cook in Good Luck Chuck.
Posted by Marko at 2:28 AM 0 comments
You Can't Smell Yourself
Saturday, January 23, 2010
I just found out the hard way that the screenwriting software I use does not have an autosave feature.
Posted by Marko at 3:47 AM 0 comments
MLK Day
Monday, January 18, 2010
HAPPY MLK DAY EVERYONE!!!!!!
You can't say that, can you? I mean, that seems like it could very well be the equivalent of smiling for a picture in front of the Western Wall. Anyway, back to MLK.
Civil Rights Leader. One of the great orators in American history. His "I have a Dreamcast" speech is regarded as possibly the greatest of all time, with only Jake Shuttlesworth's monologue in He Got Game Cube more highly acclaimed.
As you should very well by now, I like movies and lists. In honor of the aforementioned, Dr. King's great achievements, and the Golden Globes, I bring you--THE AFRICAN AMERICAN GLOBES (because you can't say black).
Best Civil Rights Movie
4. Mississippi Burning (1988)
3. Do the Right Thing (1989)
2. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967)
-Can someone PLEASE tell James Cameron to get a haircut? He is a ponytail away from looking like the biggest douche on Earth.
- Visit the Red Cross web site
- Text "HAITI" to 90999 to make a $10 donation to Red Cross relief efforts. The $10 will appear on your cell phone bill
- Text "YELE" to 501501 to make a $5 donation to Wyclef's Yele Haiti. The $5 will appear on your cell phone bill
Posted by Marko at 6:41 AM 0 comments
The Night Pasta Begat Greatness
Friday, January 15, 2010
Thursday night. Two-forty in the morning. Couldn't sleep. Again.
Decided to cook some pasta because, well, I'm weird like that.
I brought along a new comedy script to read--research--while the water boiled.
Toy's House by Chris Galletta.
I knew nothing about it besides the fact that it was towards the top of the 2009 Black List and that Carson Reeves at ScriptShadow called it the "funniest script I've read in months" in his review today.
Couldn't hurt.
Page One:
STATEN ISLAND, 1997
EXT. JOE'S BACKYARD - DAY
Hammer strikes nail. It hits off-center, driving the nail in crooked.
Reveal the carpenter: JOE TOY (14), Our Hero. A scrawny, skater-type kid with greasy brown hair parted in the center.
EXT. JOE'S BACKYARD - DAY
On a magazine pho--
I stopped.
I put down the script.
I smiled.
See, I had been struggling for the last week with a major problem--two gaping holes in my script. I couldn't figure out a way to satisfy one without compromising the other. I was stuck in mud and every time I tried to get out I was only digging myself a bigger hole.
I had written detailed notes on the first 15 pages.
My protagonist, for one, was unlikeable. An ethics teacher who tries to seduce a student for money? It's not easy to make this guy likeable, and not surprisingly, I failed to do it.
I didn't have any explanation for a primal desire to drive the A-Story into what becomes the B-Story. Money? Why did my hero want money? I had envisioned him as this uptight dickweed type who always lived by the book. There's right. And there's wrong. And my hero always did the right thing. He is the douche bag that you honk at for driving exactly the speed limit on one lane streets. He is the guy who is given too much change by the cashier--and then gives it back. After all, he is an ethics professor. It didn't make sense for him to want millions of dollars. He is more of a four walls and a bed kind of guy, anyway.
Basically, I needed to find something that my protagonist desired enough to make him stray from his righteous path of rigid ethicality to even consider sleeping with a student. All the while, I had to make him the good guy.
Joe Toy and his hammer.
I hadn't even finished the third sentence of the script when it came to me, as if God had sneezed and sent the magical moron-dust I had been swimming in all week scattering about the room. It was so simple! How did I not think of this earlier?!
I ran to my room (well, briskly walked--it was 3 AM), I grabbed a pen, and I wrote, as the water boiled over just a room away.
I didn't make it past the 3rd sentence of Toy's House. I'm sure it would have been a riot.
I didn't end up eating any of my customary 3 AM pasta. I'm sure it would have been positively scrumptious.
But I did finally figure out a solution to the problem that has been nagging me all week.
It works. And it's awesome. A whole new sub-plot. An entirely different opening scene. A couple scenes I was married to, including the one that gave me the idea for the script originally, are officially gonzo. And guess what? I finally thought of a TITLE! It was killing me, but I did it. Most importantly, after a week of being pretty bummed and thinking I might have to scrap this entire idea, I'm finally out of the mud in which I had firmly entrenched myself.
And that made it a successful night in my book.
4:25 AM Update: I made 4 AM pasta--positively scrumptious, indeed. Yes, a successful night...indeed, indeed!
Posted by Marko at 3:51 AM 0 comments
Labels: Screenwriting
151 Random Thoughts
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Sometimes when I order something or make appointments over the phone I’m asked to spell my name, which I use as an opportunity to mess with the faceless voice on the other end of the phone: “M as in MNEMONIC…” It just gets worse from there, with “K as in Kernel” and “O as in Oeuvre” right behind. Sometimes I’ll throw in a “T as in Pterodactyl” for fun.
Which brings me to my next point—homonyms are gay. Gay nyms.
Before I get any complaints, I know Mnemonic and Kernel are neither homonyms nor heteronyms. They are heterographs. So I suppose I homographs are gay. Gay graphs.
See what I did there? I just turned "homograph" into a heteronym.
If you didn't follow any of the above, congratulations, you might be normal.
Lorena Bobbit works at a Washington D.C. beauty salon called “Classy Cuts”.
The “People You Might Know” section on Facebook should be renamed the “People Who You Don’t Really Like That Much” section.
I saw Precious last week. It wasn’t nearly as funny as The Hangover.
You know when you’re talking to someone in a loud bar or on a train and you can’t hear what they’re saying? You ask them several times to repeat their statement with a shouted “WHAT?!?!?” but no matter how many times you ask them to repeat it, you can’t understand what they’re saying. My question is, how many times should you ask your conversation-mate to repeat what they’re saying before nodding your head, smiling, and pretending like you heard them?
Speaking of "on a train"....when you tell someone you are are "on a train", aren't you really "in a train"? Unless you are Jackie Chan, I'd say that's pretty likely.
A rubik’s cube is a lot like a drag queen—it’s really colorful and I’ll look at it for a minute or two, but I definitely don’t want to do it.
If you register to vote, you’re just ASKING to be selected for jury duty.
In the world of showers, I much prefer soap bars to body wash. I just don’t feel as clean when I use body wash, I just feel soapier. Sure, loofahs are awesome, and that’s definitely a sacrifice you make when you opt for the barred soap. That’s why I compromise by using a loofah to wash to my hands.
I’m just kidding. I don’t wash my hands. Why would someone need to wash their hands after they go to the bathroom? If you are peeing on your hands, you have bigger things to worry about.
If you spill a glass of milk, no worries--no use crying over spilt milk. But what about chocolate milk? Does the idiom still apply? I mean, it's a whole new level of mess.
On the flip side, a good thing about living in Darfur…no traffic.
I hate people who brag about running marathons. I like sprints, personally. I guess you could say I’m racist in that sense.
Tasteless: picking up a chick at a funeral.
Classy: wearing a black condom.
When I was in AP Statistics class in high school I gave myself the nickname "MODE". I wanted everyone to think it was because I was completely average, but in reality, it meant "Master Of Double Entendre."
That’s it for now. As, always….
“Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever.”
Vitz, out.
P.S. Identify the other not-so-hidden heteronym in a comment on this post and win a prize.
Posted by Marko at 3:08 PM 0 comments
The Boiling Frog
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Can you remember your first real crush?
I bet you can.
He/she was the only thing you thought about. You spent all day dreaming about them, and when you weren't with them, you were wishing that you were, and would do just about anything to spend even a fleeting moment in their presence. You were obsessed.
I think I have a crush on screenwriting. I am unequivocally, without-a-doubt, 100% infatuated with this unfamiliar thing. I need to know everything there is to know about it and I have a feeling that it will stay that way until I master it. It's all I think about now. It's 5:54 in the morning and I am reading about act breaks, for christ's sake. I barely sleep anymore. But when I do, the first thing I think about when I wake up is the last thing I was thinking before I fell asleep--as if my life is one unremitting day that never begins and never ends.
Back to your first crush. Where were we? Ah yes...you were obsessed. Willing to do anything to spend even one minute with them. Your day was made or broken by the otherwise trivial interactions you had with them, whether it was a not-so-accidental encounter in the hallway, or god forbid, a meeting of eyes during geometry class! But as much as you ached to be with that special someone, you never did anything about it. Maybe because you knew that nothing would come of it or maybe because you were scared they might not like you back. Not knowing was easier and safer than spilling your heart out only to be rebuffed or rejected. So you did nothing. And it nested and grew and grew and grew until it was oozing out of your ears.
Have you heard the legend of the boiling frog?
If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I am consummately terrified to write this screenplay. It's all I think about, but I dread it every second of the day. What if I suck? What if it doesn't love me back? I've let it build up to a point where it's become such a burden that I can't even start. I had the idea two weeks ago. I could have started then. I was perfectly satisfied just finishing a script to get the first out of the way. But I need it to be perfect now, or as close as it can be. I will start then and only then. All I know is that if I don't do this soon, I'm going to slowly boil alive. There's nowhere for this crush to go. It isn't one that fizzles or fades. There's only one way it is sated.
Okay, I just went back and read this post. And it's so fucking lame that I want to simultaneously kick and punch myself in the balls. If my neck was long enough I'd throw a headbutt in there, too--just for good measure. Leave it to me to sensationalize something as inconsequential as writing a fucking screenplay. But that's really how I feel right now. I am truly engrossed by something and it has been a long time since I felt anything like it. It's wonderful and harrowing and beautiful and grotesque all at once. I will say this: if I knew two weeks ago what I know today, I would have jumped and just written the damn thing then. And it would have sucked, as it likely will anyway, but it would be written. Instead I'm taking a nice bath in a boiling pot of water. And I only just realized this now.
#17: Go the way of the boiling frog.
Posted by Marko at 5:48 AM 0 comments
Labels: Screenwriting
Getting there while going nowhere
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
I haven't officially started writing my screenplay yet. Still, I spent about eight hours--a full work day--on it today. Most of what I am doing is ensuring that my story is structurally sound and doesn't have any holes in it. I could have easily started writing a week ago. But I would have sooner or later reached a point when I realized that I had made a mistake and had to rewrite entire scenes, or even worse, start over at Page One. EXT. WOODS' BACKYARD - DAY Elle's parents -- DANIEL, in tennis clothes, and the face-lifted SAPPHIRE -- stare at Elle over juice by the pool. DANIEL (frowning) law school? Sapphire puts a hand to her throat in distress. Elle is confused. ELLE It's a perfectly respectful place... DANIEL Sweetheart, you don't need law school. Law school is for people who are ugly and boring and serious. And you, Button, are none of those things. Sapphire is in agreement. SAPPHIRE You were first runner-up in the Miss Hawaiian Tropic contest. Why throw all that away? INT. ELLE'S ROOM - DAY Margot pulls something off her wrist and gives it to Elle. MARGOT Here, you're gonna need this. ELLE Your scrunchie? MARGOT My lucky scrunchie. It helped me pass Spanish. Serena rolls her eyes and looks at Margot disapprovingly. SERENA You passed Spanish because you gave Professor Montoya a lap dance after the final. MARGOT (duh) Yeah, luckily!
What I am doing now will hopefully minimize the amount of work I have later. I'm starting to get a better idea of what I want to happen now. I have about seventeen full pages of notes, yet I haven't written even one line dialogue and don't even have a vague idea of what I want my characters to be saying. I only know who they are. I have established Character Arcs, the change that my characters go through from the beginning to the end of the script. I beefed up my logline to include information about the antagonist, the absence of which was one of several fatal flaws of my previous effort. I mapped out the first 12-15 or so pages, the last 10 or so pages, and several scenes in between. I don't know exactly HOW I want to happen, but I have idea of WHAT I want to happen and, most importantly, WHY.
More important to me than progress on my first "real" screenplay is the fact that I am slowly learning how this all works. I'm not expecting to sell my first screenplay. I'm sure the amount of people who have sold the first screenplay they've ever written could be counted on nine fingers (I have one that is pretty broken still). So the fact that I am learning and positioning myself to really improve as a screenwriter is what matters most to me.
I had a proud moment today.
Exposition: Part of learning how this all works is modeling. I watch a lot of movies. Some I love, some I like, most I don't. But almost every movie I watch I can learn something from. A technique the writer used that I liked, something I would have done differently or even the same, etc.
As I am writing a comedy now, a genre I am not as familiar with, it is only reasonable that I watch a lot of comedies. So I have been. Tonight, I watched the surprisingly/extremely well-written Legally Blonde.
Starring Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods, a stereotypical, ditsy sorority chick who is dumped by her seemingly perfect boyfriend because he didn't take her serious enough, Legally follows Elle and her insistence on attending Harvard Law to win him back. Only one problem--she's a complete idiot. Of course, she managed a 4.0 GPA in college, but that was in Fashion Merchandising. Her A's were in classes like "History of Polka Dots". She's just too precious for law school. She tells her parents of her plans and it goes something like this (slightly tweaked in the film).
Elle's guidance counselor tries to dissuade her knowing how unlikely it is for Elle to be accepted. She'll need great recommendations from her professors, a killer admissions essay, and a 175 or higher on her LSATs. But Elle is not rattled in the least. As she tells her guidance counselor, "I once had to judge a tighty-whitey contest for Lambda Kappa Pi, so trust me, I can handle anything."
The next scene shows Elle wading in a pile of LSAT books as her two friends enter the room. A couple jokes later (good ones, too), and Elle informs them of her plans to take the LSAT to go to Harvard Law.
Surprisingly, this is really funny stuff. The structure is great and it's written extremely well.
Without knowing ANY better whatsoever, I took a wild guess at how these scenes were different in the film than the script. My first guess was that instead of "lap dance" Serena says that Margot gave her professor a blow job (I was close, it was hand job). My next guess was that in the pool scene, Sapphire suggested that Elle give him a blow job (this time, I was right).
This is a movie that did 100 million or so domestically at the box office. It worked as a PG 13 film. Looking back at the script after watching the movie, there were over ten instances where the film was "PG 13-ified". There was really no reason to include dialogue about dicks and weiners and blow jobs and hand hobs. Sure, the individual joke might have been a tad funnier if Margot had given her professor a hand job instead of a lap dance, but we got the idea. And not only did it lead to increased box office with a PG 13 rating, but it actually made the film better! Elle, Margot, and Serena were funnier as innocents than they were as whores. It added to the set-up of the film, in that we were dealing with girls who were in way over their heads.
Just a little thing, but that could be the difference between a winner and a loser.
I debated for a long time tonight if there was any way I could do something similar to my screenplay. At its very core, it is an R rated concept--Hero is given 30 days (by his asshole Grandfather) to have sex with Girl or he will lose his multi-million dollar inheritance.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that I have a PG 13 idea of a R rated concept. But, like Karen McCullah Lutz (who also penned two Shakespeare adaptations that I am a big fan of--Ten Things I Hate About You and She's the Man) did in her version of the screenplay, I'm just going to write it as is and let someone else worry about the rest. It hurts the commercial viability of the script, but as I mentioned, I don't expect to sell it, anyway.
Tomorrow will be a long day, as will Wednesday. But I'm getting there. Every day I learn something about my story, and every day I learn something about screenwriting. As long as I am making progress, I am happy.
For now.
Posted by Marko at 8:12 AM 0 comments
Labels: Screenwriting
I've been bad, yeah.
Monday, January 4, 2010
It was recently pointed out to me that I have been really slacking with the blog updates. That's because I've actually been writing. Or struggling to, at least. It has not been going as smoothly as hoped and it looks like I will need to take a step back and iron out my plot structure before I continue any further. It sucks enough writing something that I have little to no interest in writing, but it sucks even more that what I'm writing sucks. That's a whole lot of suck.
Besides that, there are a few things I do want to mention.
Most of you reading this know who I am. I'm deathly afraid of popcorn and nail files. I have been known to eat sandwiches on occasion and I enjoy a good Bill Murray flick. If you knew those things, you most likely know the following about me:
1. Sobriety. As mentioned in an earlier post, I have taken a vow of sobriety. As of this post I'm half way through day 4...of 365. So I'm basically 1% done already. This is a cinch.
2. Ohio State. I am a die hard Ohio State fan. This is of noted significance because Ohio State won the Rose Bowl on Friday evening, defeating the Oregon Ducks 26-17. I am not altogether displeased. With the win, the 2009 Ohio State team has reached a handful of milestones.
- The 2009 Ohio State seniors won more games than any other group of Seniors in OSU history (44).
- The 2009 Ohio State football team defeated five different 10-win teams (Navy, Wisconsin, Penn State, Iowa, and Michigan. JK--Oregon).
- No other team in CFB history has accomplished the above feat.
- The most 10-win teams any other CFB team defeated in 2009 was two.
- Ohio State has played in more BCS games than any other school in the country (8, going 5-3...only USC has won more)
- Ohio State has finished the season ranked in the Top 5 in six of the last eight years.
3. Michael Cera. I don't hate Michael Cera. He seems like a nice enough guy. I mean, I don't blame him. He's just a guy who was handed a golden goose and ran with it. I'm sure he realizes that he is talentless and only has portrayed one character in anything he's ever done, and that character isn't all too far from himself from what I can gather. No, I don't hate Michael Cera--I hate the people who like Michael Cera, the enablers who actually make it possible for someone as talentless as he is to thrive. I mention Michael Cera because he has a new movie called Youth in Revolt coming out this weekend. What's different about this particular film is that Cera will be portraying a character different from the one he has in every other film/TV show he's ever been involved with. Sure, he's playing that character too, but he's also playing another one. And what's even more different is that I am actually going to go see this one. This is Michael Cera's one chance in life to prove me wrong. He will not get another.
4. Manny's. There is no better place in the world to eat a Corned Beef sandwich than Manny's in Chicago. If you are in Chicago and like to eat Corned Beef sandwiches, I highly suggest you stop by. And no, although the question has been posed to me by two different gentiles, you do not have to be Jewish to go--I saw DePaul basketball back-up center Krys Faber last time I went and apparently President Obama and Mayor Daley eat there too. If it's good enough for those three, it should be good enough for anyone.
5. Sherlock Holmes. I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey, Jr. It was entertaining but not that great. Once again, of greater significance is that my dad looks exactly like Basil Rathbone, the original Sherlock Holmes. The likeness is eerily disturbing, as a matter of fact. Perhaps that explains my uncanny ability to solve mysteries, like in 1997 when I correctly predicted that Lance Bass was gay. Of course I predicted the same about Justin, Chris, Joey, and JC, but one out of five ain't nothing to sneeze at--besides, I was 12.
That's all I got for today. I'm off to the non-chi-kent library to do some writing. Wish me luck.
Posted by Marko at 3:28 PM 0 comments