Yet More Japanese Corporate Ingenuity

This time, they solve the retirement pension problem.

Home of the Pregnant Burrito

Also on the menu:

The Lactating Flan
The Menstruating Chimichanga
The Prematurely Ejaculating Churro

Letter to Another Aspiring Screenwriter

A college friend living out of Los Angeles recently asked me to help him sell a pair of screenplays he has written. Here was my response:

I'm pleased that you believe me to be capable of selling screenplays through my efforts. I kind of feel like the Michael Rappaport character in True Romance. Yeah, sure, I live out here. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I can move a briefcase of cocaine, or a pair of screenplays.

Though if you have a briefcase of cocaine, feel free to send it. I don't know if I could sell it, and don't use it, but I could certainly move it up the noses of a lot of sexy chicks in exchange for gratifying my strong --- if dully conventional --- physical needs.

All I can offer is the same, hackneyed advice that everyone ever gives about the biz. Because it is true. And that is to make a list of agents and agencies and actors and producers and send them a copy and hope some of them get some flunky to read it. Really that's all that someone without writing credits can hope for.

All that connections and face-time really gets you is the ability to skip the flunky and get the script directly to the agent or star or producer or studio exec directly. In other words, to jump over a possible dead end. Then the script has to stand or fall on its merits.

There is another hackneyed bit of verbiage that gets thrown around the screenwriting world a lot here, and it is also true. If a great script were to be thrown out the window of a moving car on the 405, it would still get made and opened wide in two years.

There is a ravenous, insatiable, burning hunger in this town for great scripts. Great scripts are like the seed crystal that drops into a supersaturated solution, and immediately cause the other elements of a film to bond to them. Stars want to be in a great scripted film. Directors want to direct big stars. Producers want to make a movie with top directors and stars. Studios want to distribute a movie made by top producers, directors and stars. The audience duly lines up to go see The Prestige.

This is all true.

Those of us who are churning out words on paper, formatted with actions, characters and dialogue don't want to believe that this is true.

One, because we see films coming out to the theaters that fall far short of the "great script" standard.

And Two, because writing a great script is so fucking hard and we know we aren't doing it, and don't even really know if we want to do everything it takes to write one. Or if we can.

I mentioned True Romance up top. That was a great script. So was Pulp Fiction. For all his eventual excesses and indulgences, Tarantino has put down some strikingly fresh, original, smart, interesting stories down on paper. Stories that are informed and grounded in the time-tested principles of drama, yet break free of them in an exciting way. True Romance would have been made if it had been found under a bush in a lawn. So would Pulp Fiction.

I know that I'm not writing Pulp Fiction right now. I am, more or less admittedly, writing Stir of Echoes. But so what? It's only my second go at the form. By script six or seven I might be a bit closer to the mark I'm shooting for.

So, a neophyte screenwriter might wonder, how do all these sub-great scripts get made? And how, he might continue to wonder, could he get his bad Stir of Echoes clone turned into a film? This is where connections and favors and obligations and misjudgments and chance enter the picture. After all, the movie industry has to make movies. If there aren't enough great scripts to go around --- and there aren't --- other factors enter the selection process.

People that went to USC or NYU film school with decisionmakers prevail upon them to buy a script. TV writers have their agent push their feature film onto producers and execs for them. One decisionmaker buys a script he isn't in love with because he's making a marketing decision to capture a demographic he thinks will love it. Another decisionmaker has more money and power than taste. A third has a personal, political or social agenda he/she wants to push.

Sadly, you and I cannot count on those factors.

We simply haven't done the things in our life that would bend and tweak and push the system in our favor. We didn't know we were supposed to, for one thing. And we were busy doing other things for another.

So we just have to write a great script, send it into the world more or less through the usual channels, and see what happens. I've watched some people have what this industry calls success through this route. Typically, they've had one script get some buzz and interest, but nothing happen. Then a couple scripts get bought, but languish and expire afterwards. Then they pitch a ton of other scripts, get some rewrite jobs, and bang out a few more spec scripts. Then something gets made that disappears. Then, maybe, something gets made that people see and like. To be honest, the process looks an awful lot like work to me.

Alternatively, we could turn ourselves into a producer, and director, and craft services provider and make our films ourselves.

Believe me, I wish I had more to offer you than cliches and exhortations to work even harder for an uncertain reward, but I simply don't.

P.S. If you have not read The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, I cannot recommend it more highly. Dude breaks it all down. Why we want to be creative, why we aren't, how we can be, and why we should.

O-Borg-Ma?

True. I can’t help myself from mutilating Obama’s name to make my silly writing points.

But seriously. Has anyone noticed that Obama has the uncanny habit of absorbing his former opponents into his organization?

Joe Biden, VP. Hilary, Secretary of State. Bill Richardson, Commerce Secretary. Republican-Picked, Surge-Supporting Robert Gates to stay on as Defence Secretary.

Indeed, say some progressives, Obama seems to prefer appointing people from the center and even center-right --- where the real challenges to his nomination came from, incidentally --- over the progressive and left elements who formed his earliest, loudest and most eager supporters.

Resistance, apparently, is not futile. It is rewarded.

Eliot Spitzer: Columnist

Disgraced former NY District Attorney and Governor Eliot Spitzer has published his first column for Slate, in which he astutely criticizes the form that the taxpayer-funded bailout has taken. Whatever you may think of Spitzer, it's clear that the man recognizes a good fucking when he sees one.

Burger Assault

A South Florida man was arrested and charged with domestic violence for repeatedly smashing a McDonald's cheeseburger into his girlfriend's face.

The original charges of attempted murder were dropped when police determined that he was not trying to make her actually eat it.

The Jolie Bible

A new, illustrated version of the Bible has been released, which includes glossy photos of Angelina Jolie, cruelly placed right next to the chapters that tell you not to masturbate.

Sarah Palin's Book Contract

The publishing industry is abuzz with speculation about Sarah Palin's memoir sales.

Insiders say that if Gov. Palin writes a book, she would get paid $7 million dollars. Furthermore, if she reads one, she'll get $8 million.

College Too Expensive for Most American Families Now

A report has come out that trends making higher education more expensive and household income lower makes puts college out of reach for most American high school graduates.

That's the bad news. The good news is that they've just released "Girls Gone Wild: The Burger King Breakroom Edition."