The problem with Potter

On Friday evening Beth got her grandmother to come babysit AJ and we went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I love the books. I kind of like most of the movies. This one was made perfectly competently, but the ultimate problem is that trying to cram all of that rich, detailed writing into one two and a half hour flick always results in the same thing: the feeling that you've just had someone describe what it was like reading the Cliff Notes of that particular book. Prisoner of Akzaban seems to be universally viewed as the best of the movies thus far, and yet it's my least favorite. It might be great if you've never read the books, but I'll never know. Strangely, I think Chamber of Secrets is one of the best of the movies, and I'm almost positive it's my least enjoyable book of the series.

As for the recent offering, I've been writing a lot lately and that led me to watch it thinking about decisions that the writer made. There were some odd omissions and choices, to say the least. But really, it's a thankless task for the screenwriter. If he sticks to the material, the result invariably gets dubbed as "slavish to the source material," or some other nonsense. If the script veers too much in another direction, then it just infuriates the fans. There's no way to do it perfectly. Actually, there might be: film it as a cable series, with about a dozen episodes dedicated to each book. I think that could do the trick, and I really wonder if someone will attempt that some day.

Despite the fact that I think not one of the movies has hit it out of the park yet, they might have a shot of doing so with the upcoming, two part Deathly Hallows in 2010 and 2011. I'll be getting a baysitter then too.

The Diablo Cody Backlash

Latest 'It' Talent Feeling Backlash

Boo hoo.

It's an odd situation. Screenwriters almost never get any recognition, so I should be fundamentally happy for her to begin with. And yet I'm not, for a couple of reasons.

#1. I haven't even seen "Juno" yet and I'm already kind of sick of it. It's wonderful that this little movie has made $125 million, but I'm already tired of the dialogue just from the snippets, clips, commercials, and promos that I've seen, and that's absurd. If I have to hear poor Rainn Wilson say "this is one diddle that can't be undid, home skillet," one more time I think I'm going to snap.

#2. It might be a fantastic screenplay. At least on some level, I'm pretty sure it is. And that's great, for the movie, for her, and for independent film in general. Did she deserve the Oscar? Maybe. Probably, even? Who knows. But the sheer amount of attention she's getting is absurd, and I just want to know if she'd be getting it all, or anything close to it, if A) she didn't look like she does B) she didn't have "former stripper" on her resume, and C) she hadn't changed her name to the ridiculous moniker Diablo Cody.

Maybe I should change my name. Lucifer Laramie, perhaps?

Anyway, I've already got Juno in the Netflix queue. But I'll be perfectly happy if I don't see her name again until the movie's credits roll.

Second draft

The second draft of the screenplay is in and things continue to go well. We received a list of short, specific notes from our producer and it won't be too tough to put the changes in. He also asked that the scenes be numbered in the next draft--a sure sign of a subsequent production draft down the road. The word around the producer's office is that we are "a go picture" and that the association with the group I referred to earlier is "a slam dunk." I'm still taking a wait-and-see approach, but it's all very encouraging news.

The NFL conference championship games went just as I expected they would, which is nice since I had bets on both games. Before last week's action, I also placed a future bet on the Seahawks to win the Super Bowl, so now I have them as a no-spread money line bet in the big game at nearly 3-to-1 odds. I believe that the opening line has Pittsburgh favored by 3.5, which is right about where everyone thought it would be. They have played great and they should be the favorites, although it's a little odd to see the #6 seed in the AFC giving points to the #1 team in the NFC. Just goes to show how great the conference really is. Right now I like Seattle plus the points, although I think the line may get even higher before kick-off. I always love the goofy prop bets that come out for every Super Bowl so I'll make some bets and post those before the game. Some people think they are sucker bets but I've always managed to find great value plays there.

The script is alive and well

Johnny and I have been working hard on our screenplay this week. Before the holidays we got a round of solid, positive feedback from our producer and we've been doing our best to incorporate most or all of his notes. The script is definitely running long (currently 135 pages) but we've decided it's not our place to cut anything until they ask us to. We're turning in our second draft next week.

We got some great news about it this week, although it's hush-hush and unofficial at this point...but one of the guys that works at the production company called to let us know that our producer has already tabbed him to direct our movie. This is fantastic news for two reasons: one, Johnny is friends with the guy, so working with him will be much easier than dealing with some director we've never met, who might just immediately brush us off to the side. But this guy in question has already confirmed that he wants to work with us when the time comes. Secondly, and more importantly,the naming of a director clearly means that the producer is seriously looking ahead to production, which means we'd get a nice check as well as actually see the movie get produced. All of that is wonderful news, but there's another potential rumor that would be really great as well. Unfortunately, I probably shouldn't say what it is, but it has to do with a certain organization/group getting involved with the movie. Can't add much more than that, I'm afraid, but it would be super-cool if it ever comes to pass.

Steve, I'll give you my Super Bowl picks when the time is right, but if you need them now (blatant homer alert), I'll say Patriots-Seahawks. The Pats should handle the Jags Saturday night, and then the toughest test will come the week after that, whether it's a trip to Denver or Indy. As for the NFC, I just think Seattle will be too tough to beat at home, and their offense is clearly the class of the conference. A Pats-Bears 20th anniversary Super Bowl match would be pretty interesting too.

Busy few days

On Thursday we got the first batch of notes on our script and I was really happy with what we heard. My expectations were pretty low, based on how many changes our producer wanted from our original treatment, plus the fact that we threw a ton of stuff into the first draft and worked on it very quickly. Well, it turns out that he really likes it. He didn't ask us to cut anything and he only asked for a few small changes here and there, some of which were things Johnny and I had already discussed. So we're very excited about the positive feedback and we're looking forward to quickly implementing the producer's suggestions into the second draft. Oh, and this is pretty funny: apparently the producer's next movie he's making is a zombie movie...and he wants me to be in it. Johnny the professional actor found this very humorous: "Nice that you're getting acting gigs out of this," he told me in an e-mail. I certainly won't hold my breath waiting for it to happen, but who knows. If I do end up in "Fist Full of Blood"--yes, that is the working title--I'll certainly write about it here!

On Friday night Beth's division at work had a group meeting in a luxury box at Alltel Arena (fittingly) for an Arkansas Rimrockers game. They are a minor league hoops team in the NBA's developmental league. Looking over the rosters I only recognized three or four names but it was still an entertaining game to watch. Not Memphis Grizzlies--blasting G'N'R entertaining, but still fun. And if you are headed out to an NBDL game anytime soon, it seems that there will be plenty of good seats available. The announced attendance was three thousand and change but it looked like about half that. And the luxury box is definitely the way to go for a game that you really don't care about--free food and free beer, enough said.

On Saturday we went to watch the Jermain Taylor fight at the house of one of Beth's co-workers. Now, I don't want to say that this friend lives out in the middle of nowhere but the directions included things like "turn after you pass the three trailers on your right" and "if you see a toothless guy with a banjo you went too far." Truly it was only 20-30 minutes away but it felt like more. But it was fun to get to watch the fight, although we won't be seeing this bout on ESPN Classic...well, ever. But hey, the hometown hero of Little Rock got the job done and retained the title. I bet he'll end up facing Winky Wright sometime next year.

Nice win for the Pats on Sunday. Sure, it was pretty ugly again and the Jets truly suck but I'll take them any way I can get them right now. My theory is that Coach Belichick is playing a little bit of rope-a-dope, knowing full well that we're going to win the division easily and we don't need to do anything tricky or exotic to get there, and then when the playoffs roll around, anything can happen. And if we can keep Cory Dillon and Kevin Faulk healthy, well, then we might actually have some semblance of a running game for the rest of the season.

The script / a final table

We turned in the first draft of Eden's Bluff on Tuesday. We had to scramble a little bit to meet the deadline (not shocking to anyone that knows me), but that is due in part to the fact that our filthy little nudist colony comedy clocked in at a robust 121 pages. Yes, that's long for a comedy script, but our mindset was simply that we wouldn't throw anything out of the first draft--instead, we'll let the producer make those decisions for us. There's definitely too much in there for the rumored budget number that we have heard but, again, we can deal with that later. We really just wanted to make it as funny and as good as possible for this draft and we really feel that we succeeded. There are parts that still make each of us laugh out loud when we read it, and that's a great sign.

I made the final table of a $5 tournament on Full Tilt the other night (265 players) and it's my first strong showing in a while. I was actually the chip leader a couple of hours into the tourney after winning a huge pot like this: I had pocket queens and raised three times the big blind before the flop and got two callers. Flop came down with two clubs, including a queen. All the money ended up going in the middle right there for all three of us--I had the top set, the guy to my left had a set of 8s, and the third player had A-Q of clubs for top pair and the nut flush draw. The turn and river were bricks and bingo, my stack was gigantic. Quite a hand. Then I went card dead for the last hour and got knocked out in 8th place.

No such luck last night. Experts say that all you can do in poker is make correct decisions, but that is little solace when you do it and it still doesn't work--especially twice in half an hour. Case in point: I'm in the same $5 tourney last night, looking for back-to-back cashes. I've got pocket jacks, only to see my raise re-raised and re-raised again. I know that one of them has me beat so I lay it down. I was right--one of them had pocket kings...but the flop would have given me a set of jacks and a monster pot. Later, with a somewhat dwindling stack, I was faced with a big decision on the turn--I had top two pair and I knew my hand was winning at that point in the heads-up pot. I just knew it. There was a flush draw on the board, so I pushed it all in...and the guy called me with a K-8 off suit, and only the 8 to the flush draw! Naturally, he caught it on the river and I was out before the first break. Two correct decisions...and neither one helped me at all. That's poker.

Good script, bad football

Eden's Bluff, our screenplay about the "clothing optional resort," is coming along nicely. It has turned out to be much funnier and much easier to write than I had anticipated. When we got the whole batch of producer's notes, I really didn't know how we could manage it all. The protagonist seemed like a character that I couldn't relate to at all, and thus I thought she'd be really hard to write for. But the time in L.A. with Johnny was huge--we came up with a great outline and we've been working faithfully off of that. I don't think that this script would be in nearly the shape that it is if I hadn't made the trip out there. We're turning in the first draft next week and I'm very curious about what kind of feedback we'll get from our producer. The big plan has simply been to make it so funny and so good that he has to shoot it. But with two subsequent drafts in our contract, that would be quite a ways away, if it happens at all.

Last weekend we went up to Fayetteville for the Arkansas-South Carolina game. Let me tell you, it's a strange experience to be at a sporting event with no emotional investment in the game whatsoever. I was even planning to place a bet on Arkansas, just so that I'd have a real reason to root for the Hogs...until I saw that they were favored. I didn't want to be an ass and go the other way, so instead I just went to the game and it was pretty brutal to watch, even from a neutral observer's point of view. Their quarterback situation is a mess but they have a couple of decent young running backs, which translates into the most vanilla, predictable play calling you've ever seen. To sum up: in the 4th quarter, facing a 4th and 1 with the game and, essentially, their season on the line, Arkansas called time out. They came out with a formation that they had used all day, one that I immediately recognized indicated that they would probably run it off tackle. Now, throwing a nice play action pass or a little bootleg out of that set would have been great--it would have been almost guaranteed to pick up a first, if not score. Instead, they ran off right tackle...which they had done about 30 times already. Obviously, they got stuffed, and ended up losing. Their coach needs to go.

On the way back, we stopped on a scenic road called The Pig Trail to scatter some of Jim Bob's ashes. It was a beautiful spot, up in the mountains, surrounded by trees full of autumn foliage. The moment itself passed pretty quickly, but at least it was done nicely.

Other than that, not too much happening on the home front. I can't believe that it's the second week of November already. I find myself saying this every year, but every year it really seems like the holiday season arrives earlier and earlier. Thanksgiving is just over two weeks away! Crazy. The script will keep me busy for a little while but I'm curious to see where things take me after that.

Headed home

I head back to Little Rock on Tuesday afternoon after a very productive trip. The script isn't finished but it is currently in great shape--much funnier than I originally thought it could be. I'm really excited about it. More details when I get home. I hope everyone has an enjoyable Halloween night.

L.A.: Two earthquakes and a thirsty homeless guy

The flight into Los Angeles was pretty uneventful, which is always good. I got an exit row seat for the whole trip so I had a little extra leg room, which is big for the knee and for me in general. John picked me up but he had to work pretty soon after that--right now he has a job working in the art department of a low-budget film that is supposed to finish shooting tomorrow. He can't wait to be done so we can really focus on our screenplay.

Apparently there were two earthquakes here today but I didn't even feel either one. I guess they were around 3.0 or 3.1, pretty minor. I went through a much bigger one when I lived here--big enough that I could feel it, at least. The other "event" of today was having a smelly homeless guy ask me to buy him a beer at the store. I politely declined, only to find him peeing in the parking lot shortly thereafter.

John has to work Sunday but we're still going over to officially sign our contracts in the morning. We will also receive our first check, which is nice. And then, umm...I guess we have to actually write this thing. Wish us luck!

California

On Saturday, I'm headed to L.A. for a paid gig to write a screenplay for a producer out there. It's a long, sordid story and I'm still curious about how everything will turn out but I'm definitely excited about the opportunity. My friend John Kinsman and I will be co-writing this one together, as we did with "Whiffleball." We're not getting paid a ton but we will see a decent chunk of change on the off-chance that this thing ever actually starts production. But for now, I'm just happy to be doing it. We plan to have a first draft done by around November 1, which is a little ambitious. Should be fun!

Also, I did appear on the ESPN WSOP coverage this week. It was during the second hour at around the halfway mark, and just as I predicted, I caught a little camera time because of the guy next to me in the red shirt and big red pimp hat. ESPN re-runs these all the time but it's certainly not anything to sit down and watch if you just want to see me, because if you blink, you'll miss it. There's a chance I could be on again next week during the coverage of day two but none of my tables got any heavy camera action on that day so I think that my 15 minutes of fame--or, in this case, one or two seconds--are up.

Whiffleball goes to Hollywood

My buddy John and I finished the script for Whiffleball. He's in L.A. and he already has a couple of industry people interested in reading it, including one story that is so bizarre and "out there" that I'm not even going to write about it here yet. But I'm going to keep a running journal of our experiences shopping the script and I'll post stuff about it later on, when the time is right.

Don't even get me started on the Red Sox. I'm not sleeping well. Let's leave it at that.

ASU vs. USC on Saturday. Yeah...I'll say that we have a chance. I don't feel as well as I did the last time we had such a huge regular season match up like this, which was vs. Nebraska in '96 when we were 26 point underdogs and I told everyone I knew that not only would we definitely cover, but that we'd probably win the game outright. Of course people dismissed me as a blatantly home-rooting crackpot. Which I basically am, but I also don't go around making huge calls like that too often, and I'm not making one this week. Right now USC is probably the best college offense I've ever seen, and I really don't know if we can stop them or contain them. But there's a chance that we can make it interesting, and it should be a hell of a game to watch.

Not much happening

I've only got one more physical therapy session scheduled and they moved it from Friday to next Tuesday. Then I see the doc on Wednesday morning, and I really hope for full clearance at that point.

Got the script down to 107 pages with a little tweaking. The problem is that there are a couple of scenes that we want to add, so I haven't decided if we'll just put them in or if we really need to cut something else first.

The Spurs will win tonight. So will ASU in the college World Series.

Started season two of "Alias." Getting full seasons of good TV shows that you've never seen on DVD really is a beautiful thing. I think I might do that with "24" when we finish these. Another supposedly great show that I've never seen.

Sox are red hot. Just wait until we get Schilling back too. Back to back champs? It could happen!

Departure to Vegas countdown: 12 days. I can't wait!

Whiffleball first draft

We finished the first draft of the "Whiffleball" screenplay. It clocks in at a beefy 111 pages and the first thing I need to work on is cutting it down a bit. In screenwriting, there is a vague but generally accepted rule that movies time out to one minute per screenplay page on average. So 111 would be fine for an action movie or a drama, but it's definitely a little long for a comedy. I'd like to trim at least 5-6 pages, which might be tough. Other than that, we just need to whip it into shape and get it as funny as it can be before we check in with that producer. It was really fun to write--Johnny and I had an absolute ball with it, continually e-mailing and text messaging back and forth with notes, comments and jokes. And if the angle with the producer never works it, we really could strip it down some and make it ourselves.

I'm scheduled for my last week of physical therapy this week. I'm hoping that the three sessions are all that I'll need but I should get the definitive word from the doctor on the 29th. But right now, I feel good. I can walk without the crutches and I'm sure I can bend it enough to fly, although it starts to hurt and get pretty stiff after a while. But that's nothing that will hold me back.

Other random thoughts to start off the week ( in classic, cliched writer/dot dot dot style): we've been watching season one of Alias on DVD and it's fun and entertaining. A lot of the plots are pretty goofy but you just have to have an active imagination, suspend disbelief a little, and buy into everything they are selling. From what I've heard, the storyline of the show takes lots of big, broad turns so it will be fun to be able to fly through those on DVD, as opposed to waiting all summer to see how things turn out...(*cough*..."Lost")...my favorite show on TV this summer has to be "Entourage" on HBO. I loved season one and season two is off to a great start. Jeremy Piven as Ari the agent is one of the best characters on the tube right now...conversely, the worst show I'm watching is "The Comeback" on HBO with Lisa Kudrow. I love the idea of the show a lot, and the format. But her character is just brutal to watch and it makes the entire show painful and annoying. And yet, I'm still giving it a chance...I predict that the Red Sox will be in first place before I get dealt my first hand at the WSOP...I still haven't pre-ordered the new Harry Potter book yet because I don't know if I want to go get it at midnight or just have it mailed to me. I must be getting older. That, and just being in bookstores now feels different after B&N...Robert Horry is pretty damn clutch...I think it's going to be dreadfully humid here in Arkansas this summer, and that's something I haven't had to deal with lately. Although it probably won't hit 120, either.

That's it from me for now. As usual, nothing exciting going on.

Long time, no blog

Hi there!

I haven't updated the blog in a while mainly because there isn't a ton of stuff going on. I can't do my blog like Kevin Smith does his and tell you what I had to eat every day and stuff like that. But the last couple of weeks have been fairly interesting, so I'll get caught up now.

A couple of weekends ago, my friend Johny Kinsman and his girlfriend Lindsey came through town and stayed here for a couple of nights. He is a buddy of mine from back in Massachusetts. He's an actor living in L.A. now and they had gone back to Boston to pick up some stuff and a car that they were driving back to California. John co-starred in and co-produced the movie that we made in New York almost three years ago. Anyway, we always like throwing around new movie ideas and things like that and I had one that I had been saving because I thought it was something we could produce ourselves very quickly and very cheaply if we could just take a week or so and go to Cape Cod at some point. It's a goofy comedy idea about some friends that put on a whiffle ball tournament.

Well, John loved the idea. We ended up staying up until 4 AM on that first night, just throwing out ideas, characters, and scenes. Then he stayed an extra day so we could work on it even more. Although the more we worked on it, the bigger the whole thing became. Then he got back to L.A. and met with a new friend of his, another writer. Apparently this guy knows a producer who makes straight-to-video movies with budgets of a few million bucks, and this producer is actively looking for scripts right now (comedy and horror). So that's what we're aiming for now. Meanwhile, the story itself has gone from a subtle, pseudo-documentary small movie to a much broader, wilder, "Dodgeball," type story. We've been working on it essentially every day since John left here, with me writing script pages and e-mailing them to him, with him sending back changes, comments, etc. It's working pretty well, as we're almost done with a first draft. I think we're on page 73 of what will probably end up being a 100 page script. And we're already planning to write a vampire flick as a follow up after we sell this one for a few hundred grand. Piece of cake!

Other than that, the physical therapy has been keeping me busy. I go three times a week and the knee is gradually getting better. I still can't bend it as much as I'd like, but at least it's stronger than it was. I hope that it improves even more over the next few weeks, especially the range of motion. I have two more P.T. appointments this week and three scheduled for the following week, with a follow up doctor's appointment after that. I hope that it just keeps getting better...since the WSOP Main Event starts three weeks from today.

I've been playing a lot of poker too, with mixed results. There are two things that bother me about it: first off, there is just no way to simulate the actual tournament. Any on-line tournament just moves too fast compared to what the structure will be like at the real thing. For example: in No Limit Hold 'Em tournaments, there are two forced bets called "blinds" on every hand. They are at a set amount and they go up in stakes periodically. In any on line tournament, the blinds go up somewhere around every six to ten minutes. At the Main Event, they only start at $25-$50 (out of $10,000) and go up every two hours. This means that players can be patient and wait for good hands, which is a style that fits well with how I play. But on line, I can't do that at all. The other thing is that I'd really like to log some time at real-life tables before the tournament starts. But as it stands now, it might have to wait until I get to Vegas. I definitely plan on playing some warm up action out there on July 5 and 6. And in another week or so, I should find out what my first day will be for the tourney: July 7, 8, or 9.

So that's what I've been up to. Nothing really new or earth-shattering. I'm starting to get pretty stir cray at home and I really hope the doc clears me to start driving again after I see him on June 29. I've lasted this long, so I guess I can make it a few more weeks.