Written on a hot Memorial Day weekend Sunday night...

What a night for writing!

Summer's here, thank God. I am sweating my ass off and loving every minute of it. I would rather be uncomfortably hot than cold at all. This is why I think I was meant to live in L.A. I credit Zippy with my love of heat. Oh, Zippy? Zippy Zipperchest? I have talked too few times of Little Caesars. I'll get to Zip.

Writing to James Newton Howard's Unbreakable Score, thank you Fred. Maybe the best writing music ever. A couple weeks ago it was Bear McCreary's Battlestar Galactica soundtrack, which was given to me by a Schadenfriend, though I forget now which one, but thank you. It fucking rocks. If anyone out there digs the Aliens Soundtrack, get Battlestar!

It's like 80, sitting on the patio of this bar in Ravenswood with an empty sidewalk pavilion called Joie De Vine (nice) drinking Miller Lite, contemplating entering the Steven Spielberg/Mark Burnett reality show on finding America's next great director. Part of me's like "I don't want to be discovered on some reality show, I want to be discovered like Steven Soderbergh or David Fincher, working hard and having my work catch the eye of the bigwigs in the industry who invite me in for a development meeting, are charmed over by how hilarious AND centered I am, and give me a development deal for the Moon Knight live-action movie." And part of me says I'm 33, I'm tired of choosing the headline of my future interviews on indiewire.com and would just like to make a fucking movie. Plus I need to shoot shorts anyway to beef up my reel to "actually has made a short" level and enter some festival I've entered like one festival in my life, and it was for Phudi Mart, which was rejected because they didn't accept parodies. Ever since SXSW I've been dying to make a short just to get to another film festival, have that buzz of an audience reaction, like performing, but pushing a different pleasure button.

So I'm writing a couple things for fun right now. One short which I want to turn into a comic, One short that I want to turn into a feature, and one short that I want to turn into a downloadable series and then a tv show. But I can't write too long because I've got some films to do for the website and I've been falling behind on writing the character blogs on the site. So, shit to do, I guess. If only I could free up forty hours or so, let's see, what's blocking that amount of time...

So I started drinking at work. I know they say that's a sign of alcoholism, but what if you ONLY drink at work? I like the old salesman cliche, I've finally accepted that I'm not a movie producer, I'm a salesman and I think the powers that be would rathr jump balls-first onto the Picasso than let anyone else have creative control over a paperclip. Which means my life is like everyone elses, just have to keep trying harder.

This week we begin to rewrite Alderman to finally turn it in. It's a pretty damn good first draft, but I can't wait until a rewrite that we all sign off on, then let's send that fucker out. We've got a couple people willing to look at it. It's pretty good when you realize that it was all written with various pieces of information about Ed that came out in shows over 8 years, and yet, it's a pretty cohesive story, there's just too much plot in this current draft. But if you remove it then it's just a series of things that happen and no tension. I hate letting the audience off the hook. So many writers want to do that. I just did a rewrite on this other screenplay and finally learned the value of the 20th draft, but throughout the process you really fight against this inner laziness that just wants to let the audience off the hook and call it "good enough." What's going to have to go are a lot of jokes, so much time is spent on jokes, which is, obviously the point, but some jokes take on a life of their own. I love all of them, but you have to send characters to entire locations and have them engage in an entire conversation to get in the joke about how Billy Goats is sharply divided between toursits and old-schoolers.

THE COUNTER

Jason stares up at the piss yellow translucent menu.

JASON
Ahhhhhhh.

BILLY GOAT
Double cheese?

JASON
Ahhhhhhhhh.

BILLY GOAT
Double cheese? Double cheese!

JASON
Ham & Cheese on pita looks good.

BILLY GOAT
Double cheese?

JASON
Tell me about the perch dinner.

BILLY GOAT
Double cheese?

HOLLY
Jason.

JASON
(to Holly)
Wait, is this the place? The
Saturday Night Live place?

HOLLY
Yes.

BILLY GOAT
Doublecheese?

JASON
Really?

Holly nods. Jason turns back.

JASON
I'll take the double cheese.

BILLY GOAT
Doublecheese! Drink!

JASON
(snickers)
I'll take a...a coke?

BILLY GOAT
...We don't have Coke, would you
prefer a pepsi instead?

Jason laughs, stops.

JASON
Wait that's not the line...

BILLY GOAT
That's not my line, that's Zeds.
Zed!

Billy Goat shouts over to Zed. Who stubs a cigarette in an
ashtray, puts down the paper and comes to the counter.

BILLY GOAT
Gentleman would like a Coke?

ZED
NO COKE, PEPSI!

The Nordstrom bags APPLAUD, Zed throws a spatula, they
scatter.

Not that I would cut that scene. The point is, that's one joke, essentially, all the other jokes take time to get into and get out of.