I took a day off. From, well, damned near anything that required work or responsibility. Yeah, sure, I probably SHOULD have gotten a few things done on Saturday, but I just didn’t feel like it. Instead, I stole Meredith (her hubby wasn’t interested in going with us) and went out to eat at Imbiss Grill for lunch. Absolutely GREAT german food. Then we went shopping for cheese (yeah, I’m not joking. We went shopping for cheese. Can’t say that’s something I ever had given serious consideration to before, but, since we’ve been drinking some nice wines, we were adding some nice cheeses to go with our wines.) Then sat around the house, watched the rest of her Firefly series DVD’s, drank wine, and ate cheese.
I guess it was just time for a little downtime to recharge. Didn’t realize I had been going at things as hard as I had until I had some time to relax.
Have to admit one of the bitches about my choice of “fuck it, I’m not dating until I know what I want” is the lack of someone to go do stuff with. Grumblegrumblegrumble. Good thing I have friends like Meredith and Lance who can quickly identify when I really need to get out of the house (and either go with me, or not bother asking questions 🙂
So, after doing laundry, grocery shopping, dishes, cooking, etc. I FINALLY got to set back down and play with the script some more. The problem with being lazy for a day is, well, you have to play catch up the next day to make up for it!
Right now, the script could best be described as a “series of moments” – it’s not connected. I created lots of script files in Celtx to work on the most important or well thought out scenes first, then work my way towards interconnecting them. I’m not done with the “series of moments” yet, but I really like what I’ve got. It’s cool.
One of the interesting side effects of working on the script is having to write a couple of fights in there that lift the emotions almost directly out of real-life with my ex-wife. I sort of stormed out of the house at one point to go have a cigarrette and chill out for a moment – writing it had actually evoked those old ghosts of fights past, and pissed me off. So, I have no doubt I’ve managed to get an appropriate amount of emotion and realism into the script. While the emotions are taken from real life, and even some of the phrases (“I call bullshit”, for instance, was actually used in more than one fight – though in the script I have the female delivering it, but I think it was me who said it in real life!) the content of the fights aren’t. I think Heather would be justified in killing me if I put some of our real fights on screen 🙂
So I think I’ve got the anger portion down well. My conveance of love could probably still use a little work. There’s just not enough depth to it, IMO. Of course, the real trick isn’t just in what I write – it’s also in how it’s delivered on screen. It’s an interesting process, movies, in the fact that the guy who writes the story doesn’t TELL the story – yet another person (actually, set of people) have to extrapolate what he felt and meant, then convey it. A solid script is important. And solid actors are just as important. And a solid director who can identify when the actor and the script are matching emotionally are important.
I am SO fucked on this movie thing 🙂 A director who’s never done movies before (he’s done TV), an wet behind the ears screenwriter and executive producer, and mostly green actors (not all of them are new – Abri is a student of stage acting.)
I need to get this particular obsession of mine, and go back to the “Act 2” script – this is going to be so damned much fun doing it the first time! We’re going to make all sorts of stupid mistakes the first time around, but, there’s no better way to learn than doing it!