Enough with Madonna's kid, already? Like I'm not hurt enough that I wasn't invited to the shower.
On Sunday I began writing the week's assignment, after having done the preliminary work on it, and I realized that what I had written sucked because I didn't know one of the main characters well enough. So I wrote out the character sketches, just like our teacher has told us to, to get a better handle on Jack. I thought I already knew Charlotte pretty well.
(The scenario, in case you're interested, is that Jack takes an office where he used to work hostage after he gets laid off, and Charlotte is one of the executives who gets el dinero grande for arranging these layoffs...only Jack doesn't know that.)
On the flight home from Chicago I revised my outline and when I got home from Business class last night I started writing (after I wasted time on the computer). I got about half the way through. Knowing Jack's character better helped a LOT. But I was tired and I went to bed -- not that that helped, because I couldn't fall asleep.
I woke up this morning and finished writing it. Wrote it, polished it some, got to Kinko's (which had an overflowing parking lot -- was Kinko's having a sale or something today?), made copies, went to class. We read everyone's scene out in class today and the teacher commented on all of them. He said the main problem with mine was that Charlotte's objective was not clearly defined, which I agree with -- it's not enough to have her be a tough, uncaring bitch; she must be a tough, uncaring bitch with an objective that's stronger than "to survive".
Everyone, bar none, has to rewrite their scenes for next week. Having written and rewritten the assignment for this week I'm learning what's meant by the term "rewrite" and it isn't pretty. It means you open a new document in Word and start from FADE IN:. In the past rewrites have always been tweaks and judicious excisions and additions.
In addition to the full rewrite, we also have to write the three scenes that follow the three scenes that we handed in today, and this second triad must comprise a beginning, middle, and end, the way the first one did.
I know how much time the first assignment took me. I am now paralyzed with fear with how much writing and thinking and creating I have to do this week.
Waaaaah. This is hard.
Anybody who's out there who thinks, "Well, screenwriting is easy, hell, you only have to fill 120 pages," hasn't the slightest clue. I'm beginning to think that this is the hardest kind of writing there is to do, because nothing can be wasted. If you want to be a good screenwriter, a worthwhile screenwriter, you have to make use of every line on every one of those 120 pages. (If you're writing Die Hard On The Love Boat, well, maybe you're not putting in the same kind of quality effort I'm talking about here.)
Don't tell me you haven't thought that it must be really, really easy to do: after all, we all watch movies, and we can all string sentences together. I admit here -- I thought it was going to be easy. But it keeps getting harder.
As David-the-teacher said tonight, "If you're the kind of person who writes 50 pages of a screenplay and thinks, 'I only have 70 more to go,' you're in big trouble. You may have 170 to go." No wonder people earn the big bucks for doing two week turnaround on a rewrite if it's a page one rewrite. Unless they're dashing it off and saying, "Here, take this," they're working 100 hours a week on getting that puppy turned around. (Sure, a $1000 an hour, I'm not going to turn that down, but I like having a life too. There are, after all, only 168 hours in a week.)
My friend Tiffany has pointed out that my main web pages haven't been updated for months. Months, I tell you. Well, yes, I know. At first, it was laziness; then, I forgot about them; now, when I want to update them, I have to pencil in which page I'm going to update at which break in my schedule. Maybe I'll do one tonight, while I also writing the coverage on this play.
By the way, in case Palo Alto Homicide starts making inquiries, Greg Marriott's recent disappearance and his failure to tape Monday's episode of Wiseguy are not at all related. The mob of furious Wiseguy fans found outside Greg's house have no, repeat, no connection to any tarring and feathering that may have happened.
I was watching Law and Order on A&E tonight and noticed for about the seven millionth time that Chris Noth is really, really good-looking, and I wonder why it's guys like David Caruso who make the jump, albeit short-lived, to the big screen. And why the hell did Dick Wolf get rid of him? Argh.