All Eyes on Me

So earlier this week, I got a very encouraging email from my producer contact! Bernie and I sent her our Hood pilot at the beginning of the month, and she read it right away and gave a very positive response! She not only really likes it, she thinks it has potential in the current market. I am ridiculously pleased, as our effort was to create something solid that was specifically commercial, and it looks like she thinks we succeeded. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that she told us she's sharing it around with colleagues; the more eyes on it, the more people can get behind it.

She asked us to write a show bible for it as our next step. That's our next important project, with the intention of getting it to her in the next two weeks. That means I'll be prioritizing that over scene generation until it's finished, so I may not have time to focus on new scenes. Of course I'll still be writing, so I'll just post Hood scenes that were an equivalent amount of work in its place.

Like today, I have focused myself on getting a good start into the bible. So I'm posting this scene of Robin and John from around the midpoint of the story. It takes place after all the Hood scenes posted up to this point except for Day #3 - Rich Boy Out of Water, which it comes a little bit before.

( Day #21 - Run )

I am at my happiest when I have a goal to work towards and sufficient encouragement to make me feel like I have hope to achieve it. I'm pleased to say I've got that going for me right now.

Bernie and I had a very encouraging meeting with that cool producer that loved the Adonis script and asked to read the Mrs. Hawking TV pilot. She liked the pilot too and indeed saw production potential in it! She had some very good criticisms of it, the kind that made sense, supported realizing the vision, and were definitely conducive to making edits. She thinks she might be able to hook us up with a manager or agent by introducing us to the right people. God knows nothing's sure, but it's definitely encouraging to know that the possibility is there.

So we have a lot of work to do from here. Bernie and I are going to make the requested edits to the Mrs. Hawking pilot. She also thought it was a good idea to write treatments for the other Hawking stories, which would involve adapting the plays into episodes. AND she asked if we had anything else we were working on, to which we gave her our pitch for Hood! That's our Robin Hood heist series updated to a modern setting. So that means we need to put together that pilot, to a high standard in short order. This piece is supposed to be a little more commercial, cheaper to produce, and broader of appeal than some of the other things we've done, with an end to helping it get sold.

It's a tall order, but I'm really excited to get to work. Nose to the grindstone!

Bernie and I are very close to having the current version of the Mrs. Hawking pilot finished. As I said, I've had a really hard time getting perspective on how it's doing due to a persistent negative mentality I've been dealing with lately. On one hand, I worry I'm being too hard on it, but as soon as I start to relax, I worry if I'm not I might let it go out at less than its best. What if I miss something? What if I'm kidding myself? But I think we're finally where we need to be, or just about. I'm giving myself a deadline of the 27th, as that will be exactly one month since I spoke to the producer I want to show it to.

The show bible's also giving me trouble. Bernie thought it would be a good idea to hand one in along with the pilot, so the producer can read it if she cares to and get an idea of the whole show. We researched what it needed to contain, which is basically an overview of the direction and format of the series, plus the setting, the important characters, and the broad strokes of the arcs. It needs to be quick and efficient, no more than five pages, and I find I'm having trouble expressing things concisely. Right now my strategy has just been to vomit out whatever I can think of, while Bernie's cutting it down to size since he has a bit more distance from it. So it's not done yet, but at least it's coming along. It also needs to be done by the 27th so it can be sent in with the pilot.

As with the show bible, the biggest struggle with the pilot has been keeping it concise and moving quickly. It can never be allowed to drag. Right now it's fifty pages, which is not too bad, given that these things are allowed to fall basically between forty and sixty, but I don't want to go beyond that. It's an action story, and action always takes longer than it seems like it will on the page. There's also the one-minute-per-page metric, and an hour-long drama these days is usually only forty-two minutes, but it's more a guideline because some things are quicker, some things are simultaneous, and it's hard to represent that in the text.

Fortunately, we've had some good feedback from people. Bernie's brother Joe in particular had some interesting suggestions for punching up the atmosphere in the beginning, and for keeping the non-literal "specter" of the Colonel present throughout the piece. Joe suggested playing up the "gothic mystery" aspects of Mary first arriving in Mrs. Hawking's house, given how strange and unwelcoming she's supposed to find the place at first. This gives it a bit more of a surprise when we find out what secret Mrs. Hawking is truly hiding. Also, he had the idea to make the motif of the roses recur in the background whenever the Colonel is invoked. I really liked this, though it's tough to express "background" presences in text without making them seem too overt. Still, I think I incorporated it okay. I'd actually like to continue the idea with other characters in future episodes. Like think of something to indicate Gabriel as well, though I don't know what it would be.

I'm really close to done. I just want to finalize it, and make sure the show bible is clear and concise. That's the most important personal project I've got right now, and I've got ten days left to finish it.

Tomorrow I have my Skype meeting with the film executive who gave me this report of my Adonis script. I'm really excited, as this is a super positive step for me, but really nervous at the same time. All she said was she "wants to discuss Adonis and my writing career," so I'm not sure what to expect.

Don't get me wrong, this is uniformly a positive thing. I earned an executive's interest through the strength of my pitch and my screenplay. She wants to talk to me because of that. But I want to present myself as well as I possibly can tomorrow. I want to vouch for my talent, my ability, my prospects of being a hireable screenwriter, but I don't want to seem like I'm demanding anything or just focused on what she can do for me. I hope, if she asks to see anything else I've written, the rest is up to snuff. Adonis is the best thing I've ever done, which of course makes sense since I chose that as my "audition" piece, but it makes me nervous if nothing else lives up to it. I KNOW I am talented, I know I am reliable and good to work with. I just need to make sure I present myself that way.

I know one conversation is not likely to be the key to all my hopes and dreams, but if this moment is in fact some kind of opportunity, I really want to make the most of it. If only to make a connection and a good impression. Wish me luck, guys.

Got my Adonis screenplay requested for reading by another company!

Recently I delivered my Adonis pitch in another screenplay pitching session, and they asked for it! Very pleased with that, because the response from the executive was so positive. Out of three verbal pitch sessions, I have gotten three requests to read, which is a damn good track record and confirmation of the fact that I have a good story, a good pitch for it, and I am doing a good job of pitching.

This one I know won't go anywhere. The executive said she thought it sounded great but it wasn't the sort of thing her company was looking for right then. Still, she wanted to read it. That's still good for me, because the more people in the business get eyes on it, the better. I have a feeling that if I make it, it won't be because this script sells-- it will be because it impresses people, and they'll want something else from me which I'll have an easier time getting made. And then, when I have a little cache, then I can possibly push a big gun like Adonis.

But this executive, like others before her, asked me a question that's been kind of on my nerves in recent years-- "Have you considered making this a book?" I've gotten that on not only on this project, but also Mrs. Hawking. Lots of people think I should turn both or either of these properties into a novel rather than the dramatic form I've originally conceived of them in.

I've some idea of the reasons people tend to think this. Some don't or "can't" read scripts and would rather read books (never mind the fact that I don't understand why it would be harder to read something that's a third as dense). Some people think it would be easier to get it out their in published form than in trying to get it produced. Other have apparently artistic aspirations on my behalf, and think the level of detail and world building I would be able to do in a novel form would really make the most of the stories.

The idea makes me feel grouchy. First of all, if I wanted them to be books, that's what I would have written. I want them to be films/television. But moreover, I don't even know if I could write a good book. I am trained in dramatic writing-- I am thirty thousand dollars in debt for a degree in it, in a program that separated instruction in fiction and in drama --and not trained in novel writing. I do not really write prose anymore. The last time I tried, incidentally, was that two-page banging out of the very early, very initial idea for Adonis. The process was incredibly difficult for me, and the results were pretty banal beyond the germ of the idea-- so banal and free of significance or meaning that the scene I depicted in that piece ended up getting cut out of the screenplay version. Mrs. Hawking and Adonis are my two most important properties right now. I don't want to wreck them by writing shitty novels because I don't have the skill to do it.

I'm a good enough writer that I could probably learn. But it would take time, and in that time, I wouldn't be producing anything good. I'm not sure I want to take a year or whatever off to just write crap to get over that hump. I want to be moving forward. I guess if somebody promised me, yeah, if you write these books they will take off, it would be worth the time, but there are no guarantees like that.

I don't know. I'm considering it. Maybe I should. I will give it more thought. I want a career in this badly enough that I'm not ruling it out.