Hey everyone-- sorry I haven't been posting lately. Two AMAZING things happened to me in the last month. The first is this: I received a call from a hollywood producer interested in making an animated version of my screenplay Magic Power Day . Only part of the screenplay exists on this website-- if you're familiar with part 1 you may be surprised to learn that part 2 takes place almost entirely inside an AIDS virus and is about the Tim Taylor family's attempt to regain the favor of an angry god. And later a furious Christ.
The hollywood producer said I needed to get out there, so I drove a van all the way to Tinseltown for a seemingly endless string of meetings that culminated in my arrest. In retrospect I should have compromised on the Zak Snyder directs and my trailer has free candy beans in it issues. But no charges were pressed, and I reluctantly left Hollywood with what I have to admit was a bad taste in my mouth. That taste was mace.
But even as depressed as I was I knew a writer like myself must never stop stoking the furnace of creativity. That day I pulled the van into a sleepy California mountain town to see what I could summon. For two days I wrote nothing. Then, around the darkening orange embers of a great bonfire, I began a screenplay I'm certain will one day change the world. I don't want to say too much, but I will reveal the name. It's called The Man Who Could Not Stop Crying.
And that is the second amazing thing that happened to me. It will be the most fantastic screenplay I ever wrote, better even than the heartwarming Scoliosister. Perhaps I will post short segments of it here for feedback. But the truth is I don't think I'll need any feedback. It's an epic screenplay that's flowing out of my typing hands like water out of a hydrant. Like bees out of a disturbed nest. No offense but I only started writing this post because I couldn't think of a good name for the dog. Wait-- I'll name it Lucifer. Perfect.
I need to get back to TMWCNSC but real quick let me give you some pointers on pitching your screenplay. Read hard cause I'm only gonna type this once.
• Studio executives are busy men and one woman, and they don't have time to read everything. Before you go in think of two movies that you can combine to approximate your movie in the form of "It's [title of movie] meets [other title of movie]." This helps the studio exec visualize your film. For Magic Power Day I said "It's Mary Poppins meets Innerspace, but I have also had success with "It's Predator meets Jaws" and "It's Predator meets Die Hard 4." If you only took your ideas from one movie it's okay to just tell them that.
• Studio execs love to feel important, so when you first go into an exec's office offer to massage any part of their body they choose as a "meeting warm-up." Only rarely will they accept, but it makes them feel important. This is also why you should always bring them a bouquet of flowers and some myrrh.
• Hint frequently that other studios are already interested in making your film, or even that the film is already being made in El Salvador. The Salvadoran film industry is a total fucking joke, so you can always tell them later that the cameras had to be sold to buy bananas or some shit and the production was abandoned.
• Don't just sign anything they put in front of you if they say they want to buy your movie. Rushing ahead without talking to a lawyer is why John Grisham STILL doesn't get paid to write the Saw movies.
Well, I better be getting back to working on The Man Who Could Not Stop Crying. I think I'll work on it all night, in fact! But remember: Don't give up, keep writing, and one day the dream of Hollywood could be yours!
4 comments:
Hey Steve, I'm super excited to hear about see this new screenplay excerpts. As someone from the automotive industry, I really respect what you've done here. Your screenplays have ways to evoke thrills and laughter and scares and facitainment - a word I use for fascinating entertainment. Look closely - the word is a combination of the other two words.
I'm listening to this advise series not as if it were the voice of the one true God. That I won't do. I do not blaspheme. That being said, I'm listening to it as if a wise old man on a yoga mountain top was telling me this. I will come down from the mountain, your words etched out into stone. I will follow your commandments and hope that they lead to a life as a screen writer for the motion pictures. I've also stopped shaving.
So how's this for a slogan? "Right now means 'write now.'" I've made that up, and I'm going to sell bumper stickers to writers. Last month I was water skiing in the Pacific, and as I shred the waves, I was thinking about how water skiing is a dependent sport; it's not something you can do if somebody isn't driving the boat. Is there a movie in that somewhere? I've decided there is. Currently, I'm about 30 pages in. Picture the best water skier in the world. He's Dash Robuck, and he's the biggest sports celebrity since the last famous water skier. But then his boat driver Gorge decides that all the fame has gone to Dash's head. He's quitting. Of course, Dash doesn't think it's a big deal at all. He's water skied his whole life and all Gorge has ever done was drive the boat and live in this country illegally. Surprise, turns out Dash Robuck ain't too good at skiing when Gorge isn't driving. Gorge goes off to Switzerland to make watches and live illegally, so Dash is totally out of luck. But then he meets Walt. Walt the best boat driver the world has ever seen and also an American Citizen. Still, Dash tries to lure back Gorge from the watch world. Tick-tock to symbolize time passing and literalize clocks and watches. Gorge doesn't want to come back, not to America, and especially back where he came from. Dash is upset and one day he's just sitting on the dock in his water skis, holding onto the handle that's attached to a driverless boat. Then Walt pops up out of fucking nowhere and clubs Dash on the head with a illegally modded boat oar. Was that what he was using to be the best? No, it turns out. Later, in the concussion wing of the hospital, Dash is like "yes, I want press charges against Walt." Walt says "Hey. Listen. Do you know why I hit you with that illegally modded oar? It's because you've grown complacent. Look, you're the best water skier. Everyone knows that. But still, when you first started, you were hungry for it. you fought for every wake and bounce. Now though, you're just satisfied being the best. You don't want to get better. That serious head injury I gave you was just to say 'wake up! Yeah, you're the best, but don't you still want to get better?' You see Dash, I gave you brain damage just so you'd appreciate living. I did it so you can find that hunger again." And Dash would say "It's not that I'm not hungry. It's that I lost my boat driver! You almost killed me!" Then Walt would feel really guilty, and he'd sort of try to sneak out of the hospital, but not before hospital security caught him and made him spend 16 days in the slammer. At the trial, the judge would sentence Walt to be Dash's permanent boat driver. Walt and Dash would start to work really well together, and sports journalists would say that it was truly the dream team of water-skiing. Of couuuurse, that's when Gorge would come crawling illegally back, and he'd ask Dash for his job back. Turns out Gorge was no better at making watches than he was at having a social security number. Dash would look at Gorge and Walt, standing next to each other, and he'd have to choose. But you know what he'd do then? He'd say "fuck it. I don't need either of you two posers. Then he'd build a remote controlled boat that you could control from the water ski handle, and there'd be a new best boat driver in the world. But then Dash would compete against that boat driver with his remote controlled boat and he'd win. But then he'd wake up. It would turn out he'd been in a coma back from when Walt hit him with the illegally modded oar. He'd get up to get revenge, and realize that Walt did it because he has a serious Uppers addiction. "Turns out Walt isn't just a speed freak on the water," Dash would say, and everyone would laugh.
You've given me this creativity juice that's not V8, but nevertheless it fortifies the same way except V8 fortifies with essential vitamins and minerals.
I got this idea from your TMWCNSC.
Eskimo Tears
There's this eskimo in alaska and he just loves his pet penguin. They fish together and wear parkas together and they build ice blocks for those houses eskimos make. But then one day the eskimo and the penguin are attacked by a polar bear, except to show the polar bear is bad, instead of being white, the polar bear is bright red. (Not blood red. The audience will need to be able to differentiate between the bright red of the Polar Bear's fur and the copious amounts of blood that will soon be drenching Umak's fur. Note: The polar bear's name is Umak.)
So Umak shoots the eskimo's parents, and just when he's about to shoot the eskimo, the penguin flys, yes flys(!) in front of Umak's bullets. The penguin dies and it's this really tragic scene with penguin blood and the eskimo trying to wake up the penguin with eskimo kisses.
Umak says that the penguin must have been the eskimo's best friend if he was able to fly and that makes sense because suddenly that's eskimo penguin lore.
Laughing, Umak skips away, not worried about the eskimo, not thinkin about the mankimo he will one day become.
The eskimo cries eskimo tears over the penguin. And here's where the title comes in. Eskimo tears are tears that freeze as they are cried. Eventually, as the eskimo keeps crying, they grow into salty icicles. These icicles are then removed and used as hunting spears. So you can darn well bet that the eskimo is going to keep these eskimo tears and use them to kill that big red Umak.
Of course, his plan isn't as easy as you'd think. I'm not sure how it's harder yet, maybe it'll involve heat waves (in the north?!?) but I've really just started on this screenplay. I'd like to hear your thoughts and advice on both this and my water skiing screenplay. TTFN!
Hey Steve. It's me, Derrick. Still waiting to hear from you.
Here's another one I started working on yesterday.
V8tive
These people in South Dakota are trying to make the next V8 health drink. But then somebody spills something into the batch. Tyson Bigsby, the official taste-tester, drinks the concoction and all of a sudden he's super duper creative. He keeps thinking of things all the time. And every single thing he thinks is an idea. Every time. The V8 people are just like "well what the heck did we spill in that drink?" Well Tyson Bigsby has some ideas. As noted above, that's all he has. He's like, "Did you spill maple syrup?" No. "Did you spill cinnamon?" No. "Did you spill trace amounts of lead?" No. But with Tyson's newfound creative powers, he keeps thinking of potential things that they could have spilled into the mixture, and then the scientists keep testing out his ideas, hoping to find the mixture that makes people super creative.
As the scientists test things on Tyson's list, such as milk, water, juice, whales, and bees, Tyson goes home. He's thinking, "What if his home was actually the inside of a whale?" And, "What if that whale was also living in a house except that the house was a bigger whale?" And so on etc, in a huge creative snowball affect.
Before going to sleep, Tyson writes a song that's about being creative and writing poetry and drawing good. A song about it! When he's done with all that stuff, he makes up a new imaginary creature, one that's part whale and part bee. He draws this good picture of it and then he makes a new origami shape.
These V8 competitors hear about how creative Tyson is, and they want him so they can make a drink that compete with all of the essential vitamins and minerals that V8 provides. These competitors are bad news. They hire somebody to kidnap Tyson.
And, while Tyson is sleeping and having this creative dream where he can live underwater and spout air from his back, he's kidnapped by thugs. They blindfold him and put him in a van and laugh at him. Tyson looks at the ropes binding his hands and wonders what it would be like if the rope was actually a snake. "What are you looking at, Tyson?" the thugs would say. "You'll never know. You can't see what I see," Tyson would say, all the while imagining his eyes shooting lasers at his captors.
Tyson would use his creative powers to escape the van somehow, and then hide out in a dance club. He'd invent a new dance, though creatively the dance would be way ahead of its time and the laypeople at the club wouldn't appreciate it at the time.
Derrick: glad to add another reader to the ranks of those reading Screaminglygoodscreenplays. Your ideas are all pretty good, except I think you could really benefit by focusing on one idea instead of trying to write three movies at once. If you look carefully, you may see what my far more experienced eyes caught in a flash: each of these three screenplays could more effectively be combined into ONE epic screenplay, a screenplay astonishing in its scope and majesty, a screenplay capable of rivaling The Man Who Could Not Stop Crying itself in terms of unrelenting horror, confusion, and tragedy, all brought into the harshest relief with witty, realistic dialogue that will tear through the emotional walls of the average American moviegoer like a blood-soaked murderer escaping from the polizei would comically tear through a sign held aloft by cheerleaders just as a local high school football game was about to begin. A look of utter desperation as he stands there on the field!-- how did he wind up in this stadium? Everyone is staring at him! And, then, BOOM!, he is smashed into and driven to earth by the this-simile-equivalent to the film's cinematography. And now here comes the whole football team! Trample Trample Trample Trample Trample: how many players could there be! For Gods sake, someone stop them!
The cops arrive but the murderer is already dead. The audience- parents, students, alumni, their cheeks red against the chill of the autumn night- look on aghast. They know not what they witnessed. A young girl on her father's shoulders begins to choke.
So what I'm saying is: you can water ski in the arctic and you can have creative snowball effects in the arctic, and the poignancy of a magic red polar bear eating someone is all the more vibrant if that person is the last, best hope for humanity finding out how to make imagination juice. Let me know what you think.
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