Riding The Bus Part 5

Yo yo. Happy Tuesday, Happy Talentines Day. I tried to sent a t9 text to my Valentine and the word "Valentine" wasn't a choice, however "Talentine" was. Does anyone know what a Talentine is? I know what a "Valentine" is, but the fine people at t9 do not. So...

Anyway, so busy getting the damn script done, it's brilliant, but I have to fight my urge to make it perfect. DON'T GET IT RIGHT GET IT WRITTEN! All the first draft is, is doing yourself the favor of giving yourself an editable document. It makes life much easier. So...

Absent Justin and Kate, Sandy Stephe and I plowed through the first read of pages 24-48 at the last meeting on this. A lot of stuff works, but a lot of this plot was written out of comic premises (bits) and now in the first read we are refining the mission statement of each scene, adding non-funny lines to round out the movement of relationships in each scene. The first act was easy in terms of internal motivation. 1) What is an Alderman? 2) Ed has something he's never had before, an opponent. 3) Ed's family. 4) Jason challenger. Intro. Intro. Intro. Intro. Like a good first act should. Now, like any good second act should, we dig deeper, not into what they do, but who they are.

After Ed accepts the idea of a Campaign Manager and Jason Challenger as well, we have a series of bits in which Jason tries to keep up with Ed, garner his attention and present his plan. Ed, it turns out has only accepted this new step in his life verbally, not emotionally, but the scenes that take us into the second act did not deliver that.

Jiffy-Lube
Ed and Jason sit down at Ed's favorite place to get coffee...the lobby of the Jiffy Lube. In the previous version Ed doesn't accept Jason in very broad jokes. Last night we really crafted this scene and the scene before (Jason's first day with Ed) into an emotional struggle. It now has tension in that Ed is really fighting this, and he simply can't, too much is at stake. Previously, at the end of this scene Ed accepted Jason and they went into a wild montage of Jason's plan. Last night we felt this was accepting Jason too quickly. One of the stops in Jason's plan was an opening of an auto dealership, Zulevic Honda, it was a series of bits intended to ratchet up the tension of teh approach of Gretchen Ross-Stephenson's noise machine. But now having taken out the montage we turned this not into just another stopoff but Ed's test of Jason, if Jason can take one of Ed's standard appearances and make it better, then Ed would accept Jason. Same dialogue as the old Honda scene now completely transformed by the conversation that proceeded it adding a new tension and new stakes. That's screenwriting.

The end of Honda led right into the intro to Gretchen. But we decided

We focused on Holly flyers, now coming after Honda, Ed rebukes Jason's first foray and tells him to get to work flyering. Jason's line: "This was an ambush who are we up against" leads into Holly shouting: "Gretchen Ross-Stephenson!" We wrote a mission statement for the scene about Holly's POV (just a job a step in the direction of her career) and Jason's POV (this is everything).

And now I'm pushing through to the VERY END so we can edit mid-second at through third on Wednesday night. Actually we might be mapping out our book proposal so I may get a grace day, but I'm trying to keep to the deadline anyway, getting it written not right again. Did I just break news? Yes, we are turning in a book proposal. Hmmm, how much to tell you right now? Maybe I'll just blog the minutes from tomorrow nights meeting and let that be the scoop.

Bottom line: A LOT is going on right now, Kate and Sandy are in Las Vegas, Justin is basking from being at Broken Lizard, Alderman is almost done and I'm already wrangling indy money to get it done ourselves, we could very well have a book by the end of the year (we have one of those concepts that has people smacking their heads saying "why hasn't someone done that before" - good feeling in a world where "everything's been done." We have definitely embraced the post-radio era like it's air. AND (scoop) I just made a connection with a VERY prestigious indy film outlet and am vying to be the Chicago comedy content producer on a 24 hour comedy channel on their site which whill shift over to cell phones when the technology gets up to speed. Can't jinx it now, don't have the facts, just one convo so far, but they are beneath the ground floor, which is a good place to come in.