Screenplayin’

I've been working on this screenplay for about three months now. Got up around page 50 or so and then realized why it was taking so long. I made a choice on around page 16 that was wrong. The whole thing just unravelled because of it, and I kept trying to spin it into something that it wasn't. So, tonight I finally sucked it up and chucked it, starting over from right before the bad choice. So, after spending the better part of the day screenwriting, I'm reminded of one of the other reasons I stopped. It's tremendously hard for me to write without wanting to direct. I have it all in my head, down to minute details, and I just... burn to direct it. I directed a feature I wrote in college, and it was... well, an experience. The final product turned out okay (Chris Arundel once told me there's a great fifteen minute movie in that hour and a half, and he's right), but, I think it was at least partly due to scripting problems. I'm semi-confident that with a tight enough script I could pull off a pretty cool movie.

But, unfortunately, that's not the track I took. Directing is a road that I hope I get to walk down at some point again, it's rewarding in a very different way than writing, although it can be comprable to comics.

I mean, that's the thing, Comics is the closest thing to a true auteur medium we have any more. Even when working with an artist, you can have the same control as a director in terms of pacing, camera placement, and narrative flow, you just end up trusting in the artist as cinematographer.

Where that analogy falls apart is that a lot of times your artist brings a LOT more than just cinematography. I find myself looking at Noel's pages and being inspired to take the story in different directions, heading down different avenues of emotion, and truly collaborating.

Still, I miss wearing a head set and baseball cap and telling people what to do.