First Act: Complete

First acts are probably the easiest. And I write short anyway. This one clocks in at exactly 22 pages, written in just over a week. 9 days coming out to over 2 pages a day, though that’s certainly not how it was written. 12 last weekend, 10 this weekend. Nothing like my 15 page a day peek last summer, but then, I have a full time job and several part time gigs.

I am going to polish it up and send it to the manager guy sometime this week. Although it’s a first draft kind of, it’s not really.

I first wrote out the idea as a short film, which I shot 2 summers ago. Then, last summer, I wrote out a 4 page treatment and character profiles. And then, last fall, I did 40 index card outline. And then I hand wrote it the last month. So the typed version is not really a first draft, but it still feels fresh, new and exciting.

Hopefully I can get some feedback before I send it off to more judgmental eyes.

Tomorrow, the editor starts on the show I’m working on. I’m hoping to get to know him at least somewhat.

Sometime this week I need to meet with the actress whose reel I’m working on. She has some notes on it. Unfortunately, for what she’s paying me, I can’t afford to spend much more time on it, so hopefully when we meet this week we’ll be able to put it to bed.

I also need to finish this assembly/rough of the short I got last weekend. I’m about halfway through, but I wanted to be done tonight.

I also wanted to have the pilot for this web series written. I just need to sit down and bang something out, even if it’s crap, to get it off my plate. I’m just having a hard time drumming up enthusiasm for a 3 page script. It’s so little to work with.

The web series that I worked on and was going to post supervise and edit isn’t going to be happening. The deal they were getting was just unmanageable, which is a shame.

I have no idea what I’ll be doing as a job come Nov. 2. I spent the day e-mailing back and forth with my G.G.Aunt Margaret. I’m learning a lot about my family history and it’s all very cool and strange at the same time.

Tonight was the last night of my antibiotics for my weird strep, which the doctor thinks may be the cause of my severe fatigue and dizziness. Thank God, because I’m having to really focus on keeping it down. Nothing like knowing you can’t throw up because you’ll lose your medication.

Obviously I’m still a bit bummed on the Nicholl Snafu but I’m excited that there are possibly going to be phone calls this week. I really should have busted my ass to get a new draft of Bible Con done, but who knows, I may have gotten rid of whatever made it SF material.

And their cock up (sorry, too much Gordon Ramsay) was good in the sense that I broke 200 visitors in a day by posting it. And I discovered a few new screenwriting resources because message boards linked to me and sent traffic my way. DoneDeal and Zoetrope, if anyone is curious. I’ve never been much a part of the online screenwriting community because I know so many writers in the flesh, but it could be a cool avenue.

And if I haven’t said it before, Greg Beal is a class act — he’s everywhere online apologizing, explaining, and taking people’s thoughts into consideration. I’m really impressed with him. Now, if he could get some different people working the phones…

{advertisement}
First Act: Complete
{advertisement}

3 thoughts on “First Act: Complete

    1. Tom
      1.1

      Thinkpoint, for as much apparent effort as you put into that article, I find myself unable to address all the errors within it individually. But of course, the most fatal error you make is that you attempt to use reason. And hey, I appreciate the effort – many in the debate don’t even TRY to employ reason, relying instead on emotion, or uncloaked religious zealotry, or simply childish taunting. However, the only conclusion one can come to from your efforts is that it is simply not possible to support your position from a platform of reason.

      Truthfully, you don’t really make it out of your first paragraph before you begin basing your argument on false assumptions – in this case, that sexual preference is not genetically based. I’m not interested in debating whether it is or isn’t with you, but the very fact that you admit that it is at least debatable, means any arguments which depend on this assumption are meaningless.

      The vast majority of the remaining arguments depends on the assumption that homosexuality is immoral. However, you show no evidence for its immorality. I’m sure you believe it is immoral yourself out of your own personal religious bias, but this obviously has no place in a purely reason-based argument (nor within the framework of our constitution). And surely anyone with even the slightest bit of rhetorical acumen can admit that something can’t be demonstrated to be good or bad just because “it’s the way it’s always been done”.

      Really, once you go back and strip your argument of everything based in your own personal religious views and bias, there is not a single paragraph that holds up. Indeed, there is hardly a single sentence. Without these false assumptions, there is no support for the idea of “special laws” or “forced affirmation” or the like. Really some of the arguments you pose become quite silly when viewed through an objective lens.

      And I’m well aware that you hate this topic being included under the banner of “civil rights” because it in some way compares you to racists and slavery defenders. This SEEMS harsh because virtually everyone today knows how horrible those racial attitudes of yesterday were. Racists are just horrible people…

      But the people who were alive at that time didn’t think they theselves were horrible. They had reasons, and arguments, and counter arguments, and references to scripture, and moral principle, and community support, and a sense of certainty backed by thousands of years of tradition. Truth be told, they were simply flawed people whose views and biases were too rooted in that world to see that they would one day in the distant future be universally judged as villains. Or at least proponents of a monstrous position.

      It was certainly not the first time in history a people have clung all too tightly to a traditional idea they were unable to free themselves of. And now, years later, we watch movies about those people and think to ourselves: “Wow. How could people have been like that back then? They must have been crazy. Or filled with evil. I’m glad it’s not like that anymore.” But of course they were not crazy. They were just normal people… Like you… Unable to find the independence their eyes needed to see clearly through the cloud of their environments and biases. I imagine they wrote fervently in support of their positions… so sure of themselves… so confident that their fight for this traditional idea was a noble one.

      I wonder if we were somehow able to talk to one of them now on a message board or blog, if we would be able to find the words to make them think twice and to take a long hard critical look at themselves and their beliefs. To cut through all their defense mechanisms, if only for a brief moment. Do you think that’s possible? Do you think someone like that can be reached? I’d LIKE to believe it…

      But then, I realize that what I’d like to believe and what is true are sometimes quite different…

  1. 2

    Well, done thinkpoint (if that is your real name). I particularly enjoyed the argument against civil liberties legislation in matters of choice. As I have never met anyone opposed to gay marriage rights who is not operating from a religious base, I must ask you when it was announced that the Human Genome Project discovered the Christian gene. Or would you rather strip religious liberties from our code of laws, you ignorant twat?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *