The Pangs of Withdrawal and the Agony of Defeat

The other day I just realized I had not done any writing for the past two months. That's a bad thing. The feeling I had started as kind of an empty feeling, deep down in the pit of my stomach, then it kind of worked its way into my extremities and finally settled into my brain. I felt sort of... off. It's somewhat hard to describe but it is kind of a jittery, not finished feeling. As if there is something to do and I cannot remember what it is - but it's driving me mad.

That's what I put two and two together and sat down to do some writing. I knocked out fifteen pages of my comedy script (which I'm debating whether to start over on) and came up with two new ideas. Another horror film, this time not a slasher, and a romantic comedy of all things. the romantic comedy sort of stems from my own screenwriting issues so I can draw from a lot of real life instances with that.

The more I thought about writing and the more I wrote things and came up with ideas the more settled I seemed to feel. Of course now I need to keep up with it. I woke up today in a rather melancholy mood, bordering on severely blah. It being Monday certainly cannot be helping but I feel an underlying dissatisfaction with the way things have been going lately.

Behind Suburbia has not placed in any screenplay contests even though it has gotten unanimously positive feedback - in fact - all of the feedback thus far has said to make no story or dialogue changes whatsoever (I'm still "off" on my visual/descriptive action lines though, not bad, could be better). So what's the problem?

I'm thinking the slasher genre is not something that wins screenplay awards. Even horror screenplay contest awards. Mind you I'm not copping out on this one, but reading the log lines and summaries of the winners it's apparent that I did not create a screenplay that was innovative enough to merit an award. It's a solid story, the dialogue is great, it stays within the genre but promises to go above and beyond story wise (which I've been told it does) - but when it comes down to it, it's a slasher movie. I think it's good, reviewers think it's good, it's just doesn't have that genre-breaking completely innovative never-been-done-ever feel that they want to showcase as winners.

Maybe I'll throw in an M. Night Shaymalan ending and have the kids be already dead. Oh! Or the kids are being killed because THEY are the monsters. Yeah! Cop-out! No! No! The kids are dead monsters that-

If this were the 80's perhaps I'd have a leg up on the competition but then again I was 8 years old in 1990, so that may have been rough. Maybe I can invent a time machine, go back, and reinvent the slasher genre when it was more popular - thus making it so the future me wouldn't write the screenplay because it was already finishing making it so I don't invent the time machine and and and *explodes*

I am getting a lot of views on inktip, so that's something. I have a good log line but so far there have been no contact from anyone that has downloaded the screenplay. After Dark films has looked at my synopsis and log line four times. FOUR TIMES! If a low budget slasher isn't perfect for that horror fest, I don't know what is. I went to that festival last year, I liked Bordertown (Borderland?), Tooth & Nail and The Many Deaths of Ian Stone was interesting but the rest were pretty bleah. I think Behind Suburbia would be a good fit simply because you can low ball the budget and not come out with special effects that look like something Troma would put out. Nothing against Troma, they put that stuff out on purpose, that's all. All I need is gore, in fact, go buy a bucket of entrails from a butcher and mission accomplished!

AT ANY RATE - I'm sprucing up the visual descriptions (again) with more adverbs. I'm gingerly adding adverbs. Or furtively. All that science in college did not leave much room for visual descriptions aside from "it turned red" so this is really something I have to work on. Maybe I can saunter to the bookstore and nonchalantly skim a few books before hunkering down to sadistically tap away at my keyboard. I think.

Once I do that I'm going to resubmit it for Script P.I.M.P. development to see if I can bump it up a notch. Maybe I can have some more people look at the script and garner some more interest from people that want a slasher movie. Heck, I'll give the thing away if it means it will actually get filmed - because once you have a credit to you, you have it, darn it.

Oh! In other news, my film (well, my short film) Finding David is nearly complete. I took some seminars on editing, got a sound editor, did a lot of work and the craptacular piece of garbage Snubbing David Cross has been transformed into something I'm actually kind of happy with. Maybe I'll be able to get it into a festival and someone will say, "hey, this guy should get a budget to make a real movie" and I will squeal with delight.

As long as I'm dreaming I'd like to also hit the lottery - but we'll see.

Now that business school has started (I'm working on my MBA to see about making more money to fund my screenwriting/film endeavours) I'll be looking for ways to avoid homework so expect some more updates, well, relatively speaking.