This Savage Art

Lived with the last version but it has to be black. Just has to.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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.

Popularity: 18% [?]

After a brief hiatus, Man Bytes Hollywood is reborn as Screenwriting Manifesto.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I just upgraded to the new version and things might be running a little out of wack for a while especially with some of the plugins not upgraded for 2.5. Not all of them are 2.5 compliant like the Print This Post plugin for example.

I’m pretty impressed with this upgrade and I know a lot of work went into it to make it load faster with a lot of other built in enhancements. Thanks to the WordPress team and all the developers for creating an excellent publishing platform.

Feel free to contact me if something isn’t working correctly.

Popularity: 14% [?]

This is a big one so read up before installing or maybe just do the prudent thing and wait a week or two. The hell with that, install now.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I’ve been meme double-tagged by pachego and Edward Copeland to offer up 8 facts/habits about myself you don’t know. Hopefully one entry will suffice.

The Rules

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

[...]

1. I cannot function without my prerequisite two cups of coffee in the morning.
2. I’m a mediocre guitar player.
3. I didn’t buy an iPhone but…
4. After years of fighting the urge for fear that my productivity would be lost, I did get an XBOX 360 for my 40th birthday. So far I’ve kept myself in check.
5. My first movie going experience was The Towering Inferno.
6. I feel naked without a watch.
7. I probably say the word fuck (or some variation like mother fucker, fuckstick, dickfuck) way too much in my daily life. It’s been a problem since I was a child, well, if you consider it a problem.
8. I’m currently reading Don DeLillo.

I’ll cross the great divide and include filmmakers, editors, film journalists and the like. I’ve chosen the following to cough up 8 facts/habits about themselves:

Steven at Big Media Vandalism

J.J. at j.j. murphy on independent cinema

J. at Making The Movie

Christopher at Deep Structure

Erich at Acidemic-Film

Chris at The Rec Show

Paul at Paul Hackett

Noel at Critic After Dark

Popularity: 14% [?]

If you’re blogging and not using WordPress you really should be. Here’s a good place to start.

Popularity: 6% [?]