Thursday, June 23, 2005

Not Meant to Be
Thoughts on a beautiful review gone bye-bye...

So it's been a month since I proclaimed that I had not disappeared off the face of the earth. I'm a little tardy on getting back into it, but I've been busy. Not work busy. God forbid. I only wish I was that kind of busy.

Things have been slow going for jobs in the old entertainment industry. I assume they are because I've not reaped the benefits of any whirlwind of work. I've had a lot of false starts and a few short gigs. Some folks have the luxury of picking and choosing which projects they go onto. I'm not one of them.

I take them as they come.

I took one that involved my up close and personal dealings with cow sh!t..but that story is for another time.

I started off my return with a thoughtful looke at Walter Hill's 1978 movie, The Driver. I was proud of the fact that I had finally chosen something that someone could actually find at a video store, or that they might have caught on TNT in the middle of the night. I did a whole study of the car movie, the fascinating subgenre of the 70's and early 80's. I talk about the segway this film showed in the styles between the 70's grit and the 80's Miami Vice glam. I thought I did pretty well.

Sadly, Blogger ate it through some minor snafu. I didn't have it in me to chalk the same thing up again.

So I thought I'd post something if only post something. It's a writing thing.

See after two years, I accidentally wrote a novel. I didn't even know I was doing it. It just sort of happened. One day, I wrote a few lines, and two years later I wrote 'The End.' When I went back to see what I had done, I had actually produced 400 some odd pages of material. Then I read it to see what I had wrought. When it didn't completely makes sense, I had to comb back through and bring a little more cohesiveness to the table. Needless to say, accident or no, this took up a lot of my free time. When I got back to 'The End' again, I suddenly didn't have anything to do.

I don't do well with blatant amounts of free time on my hands.

So, I've had to start something new. Only this time, I'm doing it on purpose. For some reason, that's harder. It's more daunting.

Thing is, I'm not sure whether to go ahead with this novel thing. (It still feels so goofy and pretentious to say 'I wrote a novel.' That always seems like something someone else does. I read them. I don't write them...well, until now.) I could write another. It's that sensation of wanting to make sure you can do it. You keep thinking, 'Did I really do that? Can I do it again?' I wish I knew more writers so that I could ask them.

On the other hand, there's the screenplay thing. Now, I had largely given up on it for a couple of reasons: 1) I don't like the current atmosphere of Hollywood and have had little luck getting anything off the ground, and 2) I got tired of the format. See, I've got this thing about maybe wanting to make one of these things, but I've yet to produce my Clerks/Slacker (ie. something I could possibly scrape the money together for). My story ideas tend to be a little grandiose for the low budget indies.

I've been encouraged to go for either one, or both.

I decided to start back here.

You've got really low expectations from me.

Thanks for caring.

Cheers. (I'll be back. Promise.)