The Dotted Logline

2004 was a big year, especially in terms of my writing. I won a fellowship for my first play, Goodbye Dolly and had it produced at Emerson, which was an amazing experience. I also submitted it for publication, the first time I’ve sent out a major work. I had my first legit publication on Graphic Novel Review. I read for the first and last time in the Emerson Graduate Reading series. I (finally) completed my first full length screenplay, and with it, my graduate study at Emerson for my MFA. And perhaps most important but least tangible, I feel like I took some very big steps forward in my ability to honestly critique and revise my own work.

So 2004 was a pretty big year. But I’m hoping 2005 will be even bigger.

I’m finally the proud owner of Final Draft. Now I can become a serious screenwriter. As soon as I actually get it installed. Which will be as soon as I have a stable computer. Which might take a while.

Normally I avoid movie spoilers whenever possible, but when a friend pointed me to the Batman Begins screenplay online, I had to read it. After the property went so far down the toilet with the last release, I have been a bit concerned about the upcoming movie.

While I did find a few spots that could have been trimmed, I really liked it overall. It is the first time a non-animated film has really FELT like the “real” Batman. With a top notch cast and what appears to be reasonable directing based on the clips in the trailers, I’m very excited. My one concern is that the weakest character (the artificial love interest) is played by what is probably the weakest actor (Katie Holmes). Luckily, that’s not a terribly important element of the film.

I recently took a look at my second screenplay project I started at the beginning of this year. It was awful. I had the sort of disgust you usually only feel when looking at something you wrote many years ago, not eight months.

But this week, I realized what changes I need to make to the storyline to make it work. Nothing huge, just stuff like tying more of the locations and backstories together and making the characters seven or eight years younger.

But recognizing these things shows me that I’ve taken a big step in terms of my writing. It’s one thing to be able to write something that’s good. But to take something that doesn’t really work and MAKE it good… that’s what makes a real writer, in my opinion.

While in Boston, I’ve attended a number of Playwriting Workshop classes and readings. It’s been a lot of fun.  Some of my old friends are in the class, there have been some really interesting plays, and my old professor Betsy keeps telling me how wonderful it is that I’m back (nothing like feeling useful since I had minimal work to do on my thesis.)

Anyway, because I’m a sheep or very competitive (or a competitive sheep,) being around a bunch of playwrights again has inspired me to start working on a new play. It’s very rough at this point, but unlike Dolly, I’m not sticking with a straightforward linear story and instead am playing around more with elements of the stage. Should be a lot of fun (assuming I figure out the stuff I’m stuck on at the moment.)

It’s so hard to find anything truly unique and original in writing these days. Therefore, I must congratulate my friend Alexander Danner for writing a play that includes (what I assume is) the world’s first pornographic quadratic equation.

I can honestly say that I’ve certainly put characters through the ringer before, but I’ve never ever written anything comparable to what happened to me yesterday with my thesis.

First was the six hours I spent panicking about how to pad my script to make it longer… I’d been informed that it needed to be 120 pages long and it was more like 107. After spending the entire morning working (rather futilely) on that, I got official word that it only needed to be 100 pages and I was fine on length.

Then I figured out the margins were wrong on my signature page. For those who have never done a thesis before, the margins are far more important than the actual content of your thesis. Unfortunately, my committee had already signed, and my reader was flying out of town in less than two hours. I needed to reprint the page, run to the school from Cambridge, get it copied on the special magic thesis paper, and then rush to his house back in Cambridge and have him sign. Unfortunately, I couldn’t connect to my host’s printer, and by the time I got it printed, he had been gone for over an hour. And of course I’d forgotten my cell phone and wasn’t able to call him and let him know I wasn’t coming. Fortunately, the department chair was willing to forge his signature. Apparently, he thinks the graduate office is as insane as I do.

I won’t even get into the printing problems. Let’s just say it involved many building, even more computers, even more printing errors, and the use of all seven semesters worth of print credits I still had stocked up.

But now I am done. Done done done. And no more thesis. Unless I someday go get another degree. Don’t want to think about that right now.

I’ve been working on my thesis/first screenplay on and off for 2.5 years now, and while I’ve made a lot of progress, it is lacking one crucial element: a title. I’ve had a number of working titles since I started the project, but none have really encompassed the entire scope of the story. Some of the failed titles include the following:

The Dangerous Lives Of Butlers (Joke title)
Sherry Summers By Day
Altered Egos (Title thesis will be submitted under)
Editing Jack Johnson
Engaging The Hero
Hero Complex

Right now, I’m going with Editing Jack, which is a little shorter and catchier than the full name version but still not quite perfect. It’s been driving me nuts because I feel without a good (or at least consistent) title, I don’t really have a good grasp on a project. I usually don’t have this much trouble with titles either.

On a related note, my favorite title I ever used was “#66 Heartbreak Red”. It was for a poem about lipstick. Actually, it was from the POV of the lipstick.

The entire concept of the thesis defense has never really seemed scary to me. In fact, I was looking forward to my MFA defense. A chance to talk about a project with people who actually want to hear the background info and the details on how certain decisions were made. I was a little nervous about pitching the movie but managed to get some really good ideas down before.

I had no idea that the whole thing would go so amazingly well.

Both of the professors on my committee loved it. LOVED it. There are a few things they want to see tweaked and the ending needs to be rewritten, but overall, most of the “defense” was spent listening to two people I respect say really nice things about my screenplay. I’m glad I recorded it.

Even better, Chris Keane, whom I took three semesters of screenwriting workshops with while at Emerson, has a friend in L.A. with “connections up the wazoo” that he’s going to send it to. I hope she likes it.