It has been at least nine months or so since I last updated this "process" blog. I'm feeling considerably moody (that time of month it seems), so I thought I might my accomplishments thus far in perspective. If it amuses you, I invite you to read along.
1. After stalling on a re-write of an old slasher script, Fear of God (formerly Redgrass and Bible Camp), I'm knee deep in a brand new draft of the script. This one is heavy on character work and veers more toward religious guilt than tits and blood (but it seems to have plenty of those, as filtered through a repressed Christian vernacular, too).
2. While stalling on the slasher re-write, I managed to churn out three or four successive drafts of an action/sci-fi/comedy that had been tooling around in my head. Not only that, but I completed the task in about two months. Brawlers represents my finest work to date, without a doubt, an over-the-top film that I'd liken to an adaptation of the Capcom game Final Fight if written by Edgar Wright, Phillip K. Dick and Jody Hill. It represents my id at its purest, and is a must read for Ike Oden fans (a camp that includes my girlfriend and her son, who is allowed to read it on his 21st birthday-- it's THAT hardcore).
3. I've kept a pretty steady hobby in writing for DVD Verdict. I'm to 78 reviews now, with my 79th, for Blue Underground's upcoming Deep Red Blu-ray, pending. I enjoy the gig and not having to purchase DVDs/Blu-rays regularly, but find myself screwing up formatting, technical specs, and other details on a semi-regular basis, meaning my editor's eye for detail is still lacking (and driving my editor's crazy, to boot).
4. I've drummed up a couple of incomplete projects that have a lot of potential. Carl of Cthulhu, my H.P. Lovecraft meets John Hughes project, has been boiled down into a three page starter script (which I will post here later). I've also began outlining a hard-boiled Action/Revenge/Domestic Drama, set in rural Alabama entitled One.
5. My projects with Greg L. Mercer have included a short mock-documentary, the beginning of an Appalachian post-modern film noir, and an upcoming Ghostbusters-style horror comedy that'll probably be in outline form by the beginning of the summer. I'm very excited about all of these, and hope we manage to finish drafts of them eventually.
6. I've entered Brawlers into four big-league contests thus far, with an eye on another sometime this month. I don't hold out a lot of hope, but submitting is, in and of itself, sort of based on hope, so maybe something good may come of it.
7. I transcribed roughly four or five years worth of my father's articles from newspaper clippings and edited something like a quarter of them so far. Writing is the family business (my father's been a newspaperman/P.R. guy for a zillion years, my brother's in OU's grad school for non-fiction, and one uncle is a notable historical fiction writer). I feel working on these has been important, not only to get to better know my father's writing (a lot of it was from when he was my age or close), but to get a feel for my family's history (much of it is autobiographical) and collected interests. Also, it never hurts as an editing exercise.
8. I'm watching something like 6 to 10 movies a week, for Verdict and beyond, which means I'm clocking in a fair amount of film studying, which never hurts the old writing muscles.
9. I'm still tooling around the freelance journalist toybox, working on a new piece on Into The Pit: The Shocking Story of Deadpit.com. The film isn't getting nearly enough attention from average film goers, which is a shame as I feel it is one of the most important documentaries about movies to come out in sometime. So I'm gonna try and put somethin' together. When this'll get done, who knows, but if it helps garner the movie attention, it will get done.
10. I made a 100 "Top Five" list during an extended family trip last month. It was exhausting, but maybe I can do something with those sometime.
That's it, I believe. Look upon my professional accomplishments (or lack thereof) of the past nine months and weep (tears of joy or sorrow, your choice). Me, I gotta go grocery shopping.
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