William Goldman

I have lived another day…

I still haven’t gotten past page 8 of my screenplay [The Shadow Prince]. I seem to be having trouble getting the tone I want from the scene I’m working on, because I’m not really sure what I want, and it’s a pretty dark scene. It might not seem that dark to a reader (or movie viewer) who reads (or watches) it in a minute or two. But trying to understand the world from that character’s point of view, it’s pretty terrible, nothing I’d want to experience. So it’s one of the basic challenges of writing: how do you get a character to react believably to an experience real people could never have? One could write a book chapter on that. Or maybe an entire book. (And probably someone has.)

I finished reading William Goldman’s book Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade the other day. Very good book. But, gah, kind of frustrating because you know you can’t just all the sudden be a part of the [film] industry, and it’s all written from the perspective of someone who’s in the industry. Don’t you hate when famous rich people do that? They’ll be in an interview and nonchalantly say “so I had lunch *famous name here* and discussed my project” … blagh.

Also, I created a formspring.me page, after seeing a bunch of other people do and jumping on the bandwagon. Basically anybody can ask you anonymous questions through it. Might be fun, might be stupid and annoying, but it’s all the rage. I put widget for it on the side of this blog, as you should be able to see. As if the columns weren’t cluttered enough.

Hey, guess what? They’re calling for snow Friday night and Saturday! I am scheduled to work on Saturday! If the fates are kind, maybe, just maybe, I won’t have to go? We’ll see. Come on, sky. Give me a storm. Paint the outdoors an ocean of white. Let it tear the people from their schedules, let it frighten and anger the innocent drivers on their weary ill-fated journeys through the restless roads. And let me sleep! O, dear fates, let me sleep and rest and dream of the goodness I shan’t wake up to see!

Bravo! Bravo!

Thank you, thank you.

By S P Hannifin, ago

The Shadow Prince and such other things

I’m still trying to figure out the story details for my next original screenplay, The Shadow Prince, but I’m fairly sure the main concept will not change at this point: A young prince awaits to be crowned king when mysterious murders begin to plague the kingdom by a killer who calls himself The Shadow Prince.

Bum bum bum!!

I don’t think I will keep the identity of The Shadow Prince a mystery though; I plan on revealing his (or her?) identity fairly early on so that the fun of the story can come from a sort of cat-and-mouse game, along with the other issues of why exactly he’s on a killing spree. (Fine… I don’t think there’s any harm in revealing that it will be a male character.)

Anyway, there are still plenty of details to be worked out in my outlines before I can begin actually writing the screenplay. And while I’m really excited about the story, I’m not sure anything will ever come of it because it will probably require a big budget to shoot. Especially since I hope to put a dragon in it… you know, for good measure. Ahhh, it would be such an awesome movie… daydream daydream daydream… especially with some exciting fantasy music.

Hmmm… anything else? I’m currently reading William Goldman’s Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade which just makes me want to be part of the film industry like crazy. Which I hate, because there are so many wannabes already, and who really wants to be a yet another wannabe? Anyway, it’s a fun book. At one point, I think Goldman says that an original spec is the hardest to write because you’re starting from nothing. I can’t truly agree, mostly because I’ve only written one screenplay so far and have nothing to compare the experience to. But I think I would agree, and I’d further speculate that writing your first screenplays, with no guarantee that anybody anywhere will be interested in them, is perhaps the hardest of all, because while you’re writing you know that all your work might come to nothing. At all. No paycheck. Perhaps not even very many readers. Then again, maybe that makes it easier, because there’s no pressure, no deadlines. I don’t know; even if a screenplay I wrote never got produced, I sure wouldn’t mind a paycheck. But deadlines? Blagh! But if it was my one and only job… I probably wouldn’t mind so much.

But I’m probably just daydreaming. Even if I ever do make money off this, it probably never gets easier.

And it’s so much fun at the same time anyway.

I probably will buy a professional camcorder at some point, but I’ll hold off for now and focus on The Shadow Prince. Maybe I’ll buy one when I actually start trying to market The Melody Box to entertain myself while I wait for the dismal rejections and non-responses.

By S P Hannifin, ago