This Savage Art

Okay, I lied. I’m back.

Here’s a widget for all your screenplay progress needs. Look familiar? Dave Anaxagoras, the author of the now defunct screenwriting blog Man Bytes Hollywood and the current Screenwriting Manifesto developed it by hard coding it into his blog many years ago. It caught on in a big way. So now he’s gone legit and made an official widget that you can download here. Note: This is currently only for WordPress.

It’s great to make you feel guilty when there’s no progress in your progress bar.

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You may or may not have noticed, depending on if all three of my readers are present and accounted for, that the posting on This Savage Art has been a little thin. Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve had some things in the works. Life doesn’t slow down when you want it to and when you add a child into the mix, well, it’s just a free-for-all.

Since I spoke of my brush with producer X I have gotten a full rewrite of Dyre Avenue out to his agent at CAA. It actually went out to that producer and a production company that is the shingle of a pretty well established and admired director. With that new draft I also got my screenplay into the Nicholl Fellowship, The Sundance Screenwriters Lab and the Austin Screenplay Competition. Crap shoots, all of ‘em but ya gotta be in it to win it, right?

So now we wait. Not really. We write and make stuff. That’s what I’m trying to do. As far as the site goes I don’t anticipate much unless there’s some incredible, mind-blowing news that I think you all need to know about. The spare time I have just isn’t what it used to be so I need to figure out where that leaves us, you and I. Until then the site will sit right where it is and might actually shut down for a period of time until I figure out what exactly I want to do with it. I’m thinking of updating it and making it some sort of hub. Until then, read the archives, go nuts. And thanks for hanging in there.

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That’s me.

When I started this whole weblog thing back in May 2005 I was an film blogging animal. Three, sometimes four posts a day but here I am posting a measly one or two a month if I’m lucky. What can I say? The dynamics of my life have changed. You never realize how little time you have until you cut what you had in half. Now literally every moment of my life is more or less planned out. Everything from meals to writing to everything.

I used to read a lot of weblogs too. Post on them voraciously. That dropped off well before my son though. Now I find myself just lurking. Not posting. Just lurking. It’s not that there aren’t great sites out there. The problem is there are too many and I know I’m not the only one. The film writing is so astute it’s intimidating and inspiring at the same time. Take for instance this one post from Glenn Kenny’s site. Now, I like his site very much and have opinions about the new Raging Bull Blu-ray disc. Many opinions. It was a film that informed so much of what I do creatively and yet I can’t opinionate. I would love to give a well thought out breakdown of why this film is important for so many reasons. The key there is well thought out. That is time consuming and brain power is in demand. I feel like I’m just getting my brain back after close to one year after my son was born, a rough move from Manhattan to Brooklyn and an assault of all sorts of stresses that I won’t bore anyone with. You know, life and shit. So now it’s down to business. I have my creative time in the afternoons so it’s balls to the wall plotting, planning and writing. I still get my daily dose of film news and info on the interweb but now it’s different. Now the window is smaller and I mean that in every way. This week I get reacquainted with many past projects enough to make a decision about what I want to work on. Hopefully next week I can dive in. So wish me luck. I’m back to zero again.

And don’t think I missed the irony that I’m taking all this time writing this post when I could be commenting on the Raging Bull post.

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This is a test of John August’s newly designed screenplay format plug-in for WordPress, Scrippets. It converts your post text into a industry standard screenplay format. If you have a WordPress blog you should try it out and do some testing yourself.

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I would fight and fight hard to stay up. I had my Saturday night ritual. Start watching Saturday Night Live at 11:30 then wrestling at midnight, switch back and forth between commercials and if my plans worked out, watch a late night horror film like the original, silent Phantom of the Opera on PBS or channel 57. So much for plans. My seven year old body ached for sleep so I rarely made it. I missed the great George Carlin kick off the first SNL back in 1975. I never got to see his irreverent brand of humor set the tone for what would be one of the longest running sketch comedy shows on television. Well, set the DVR because in memory of this great loss to comedy and in my opinion humanity, NBC will be airing a rebroadcast of that first show.

Here’s what you need to know:

Saturday Night Live – Host George Carlin with Janis Ian and Billy Preston, Saturday, June 28th 11:30 EST

This post can also be seen at Big Screen Little Screen where I’m guest blogging.

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While some sites are dicking around with reviews of Kung Fu Panda [I kid, I kid] there’s an avalanche of good stuff on the interweb today:

• A massive film resource database is here for all to enjoy. The Moving Image Source. Well…enjoy! [via The Reeler.]
• Writer/director/one of the reasons I pray to the film gods Paul Schrader and cinematographer extraordinaire Ed Lachman speak at BAM. [Video clips.]
• More Schrader. Notes from Kevin B. Lee on the underappreciated Light Sleeper.
• Steven Boone crashes Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn block party.
• How dare you disrespect Abel Ferrara!!!

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I’m running a little late on this but here it is. Been tagged recently by Dave Anaxagoras for a list of my Top 15 Favorite Movie Quotes. There are way too many to list as my favorite but here are a variety of some of my tastes wrapped up into a 15 quote collection.

Here are the rules:

Look up 15 of your favorite films on IMDB and take a quote from each. List them below. When someone guesses the quote correctly, cross it off the list. NO CHEATING.

Leave a comment with your answer.

Some of these may be obvious, some not so obvious. Just a caveat, not every quote here is listed on IMDb. A highlighted quote denotes a correct answer with film and commenter to follow. Here they are:

Correct so far: 7 out of 15

1. “Lee Harvey, you are a madman. When you stole that cow, and your friend tried to make it with the cow. I want to party with you, cowboy.” – Stripes [Phil]

2. “The cats in the bag and the bag’s in the river.”

3. “I don’t wanna badmouth the kid, but he’s a horrible, dishonest, immoral louse. And I say that with all due respect.”

4. “I should get one of those signs that says “One of these days I’m gonna get organezized.” – Taxi Driver [J.Ott]

5. “You let a WOMAN beat ya, huh?”

6. “You don’t yell at a sleepwalker. He may fall and break his neck.”

7. “I gotta tell you, the life of the mind… There’s no roadmap for that territory… And exploring it can be painful.” – Barton Fink [Tavis]

8. “What the fuck are you? A drug counselor… or a drug dealer? If you don’t deal your own product, what kind of businessman are you?”

9. “This is this. This isn’t something else. This is this.”

10. “Heinekin. Fuck that shit. Pabst Blue Ribbon!” – Blue Velvet [Tavis]

11. “When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can’t do that, you’re like some animal, you’re finished. We’re finished. All of us.”

12. “I’ll be honest with you, I love his music, I do, I’m a Michael Bolton fan. For my money, I don’t know if it gets any better than when he sings “When a Man Loves a Woman.” – Office Space [Phil]

13. “You wanna boycott someone? You ought to start with the goddamn barber that fucked up your head.”- Do The Right Thing [Phil]

14. “You can’t come back with a comeback after eight seconds. You got three seconds. Five, tops. It’s called a quip, not a sloooowwwwp.” – Shallow Hal [mGm]

15. “Okay. You look like a… BarrrRuuu – BellllLuuuu – Lllll – Carolllll – Taaaa-Sharrr – - SusaaannnEmmmmilllly – - Marr – laaarr – Maax… ine – M-M-M – Maxine?” – Being John Malkovich [Pacheco]

* I added a visual extra credit quote courtesy of Ray Pride at Movie City Indie:

I tag: Steve, Eddie, Ted, J.Ott, Tully

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I’m trying to figure out a feed problem I’m having with the blog. I want to offer an easy subscription via a RSS feed on the sidebar with FeedBurner but it doesn’t seem to be cooperating. Hopefully I’ll figure it out soon.

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7.13.07 Update: The feeds are live. Just click the RSS “chicklets” on the sidebar to subscribe.

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