Office hours

Been wondering if next term is my last in this cubby hole of a home away from home, my office at PSU. I hope to teach next year but given the economy, hard to say if I'll be kept on, even though I'm really the only one in the department qualified to teach my class. And I did start the program, so it's dear to me. Hate to end with a whimper and all that. But uncertainty is in the winds, anything can happen. It's not a disaster since I was going year by year whether or not to retire totally, and the decision to continue teaching next year was a close one. At the same time, I'd really like to retire from this on my terms, not the terms of bean counters. I'm letting the gods handle it, at least as best I can. What happens happens. I say that a lot lately.

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After the rush of writing the first 70 pages of the new splay, I'm slowing down and letting the last act come slowly, lots of brooding and thinking of alternative actions. This is where I always screw up in Hollywood's terms. This story is too big, too commercial, too well timed, for me to screw it up. I really want to do the ending right. I have the ENDING, actually, what I don't have is how to set up and execute the Big Showdown. I am close. Of course, then the real fun begins, printing it out, the red ink, and getting some feedback from some well chosen colleagues. Digest it all and finish up. I'll be done in April, I think. I'm going immediately to the high concept low budget I have in mind, which I think I have a good shot at selling on Inktip since that's what they like. This is the first low budget high concept I've ever had. Usually high budget ideas are Big Movies, at least when I think of them. But high concept does not come easily for me, it's amazing to have two ideas back to back. Going to run with them and see what happens. I'm getting my art-rocks off with the novel and libretto, don't need to get artsy with the splay stories.

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One of my continuing, advanced students is a wonder. An absolute wonder. First of all, she has a natural rhetorical talent for screenwriting unlike anyone I've worked with before -- in a form where story matters more than rhetoric. But she has a flair for minimalist writing that is witty, clever, and keeps you reading on. Her weakness has been storytelling but she is learning and improving through an amazingly rigorous course of self-study, watching a movie a day and analyzing it, keeping a blog about her brainstorming, this lady is nothing but energy aimed at learning the craft of screenwriting -- I think she's not only going to learn but "make it." How can she not with her energy and talent and willingness to pay the dues? I read her blog in wonder. I wish there was a grade higher than an A to give her.

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I don't quite understand how or why but I actually feel that my screenwriting has reached a new plateau with the new script (and with the idea for the next one). I think I've finally stopped "thinking like a playwright" and have digested my agent's constant mantra, Hollywood Hollywood Hollywood, and am beginning to get the hang of what to do. The real breakthrough for me was seeing SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. There is not one thing "new" there except window dressing. And by the gods, there is the key! Exotic window dressing, so exotic no one realizes is the same old story told the same old way! This for the mainstream market, at any rate. And my agent doesn't want to market anywhere else -- why should he, the mainstream is where all the money is. It's not show art, it's show business. I've known this for ages and maybe even understood the "theory" of what makes a Hollywood movie work, but SLUMDOG was so different, so exotic -- and yet exactly the same. Yes, it is magic. Dress it up so much that no one sees how you do the trick. The writer as magician. And this is the insight I'm applying in my new script.

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Showing a doc film DREAMS ON SPEC in class, excellent Reality 101 story about 3 screenwriters trying to make it in L.A.