Time Crunch

I don't know about the other bloggers out there but it can take me two to three hours to compose a post.

What? That's ridiculous!

Yeah, I know I'm slow. But you have to consider my posts generally require scanning and finding things that may never be found - even though I put 100% effort into the search. And, I also put a lot of thought into what I put up here, even if it doesn't show.

Today, for example, I planned a post titled "A Day At The Races." It's about my trip to Del Mar yesterday to shoot another day of stills on that indie movie. It's a post that will definitely require a full three hours to create because it also delves far into my past and will expose things about me that most of you don't know. (Wow, that sounds like a build-up that will certainly fall flat in the execution.) And I was prepared to do that today. Take three hours out of my screenwriting time to share how a past and a present can collide (in a nice way).

But then I got the phone call. The phone call had to do with one of the opportunites I alluded to in a recent post. One of the things I don't want to write about because if I do it will immediately be jinxed. Note: This is where this post should end. Right here, right now. If you do not want to be responsible for jinxing me, stop reading now.

Guess what? I've decided I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in jinxes. (Fuck, I hope I'm not wrong about that.) A week and a half ago I got a call asking if I happened to have a suspense thriller script in my bag of tricks. Well, it just so happens I do. Can you send it to me...I have a couple of companies that are looking for suspense thrillers. (BTW, the caller happens to be with a company that made a couple of films that have won the ultimate award.)

No, I can't send it to you. It needs a page 1 rewrite. Can you give me a couple of weeks? OK. (Now you know why you haven't heard much from me) A week ago, I sent the caller the first fifteen of the rewrite, just to see if the concept was something they might be interested in. The caller emailed back with something that amounted to, "your script rocks." During this time, I'm still writing like a maniac, trying to meet my self-imposed deadline of this Monday. (Understand I'm making a lot of changes so it's not that easy.)

Then I get an email yesterday morning. "Get me a logline on this IMMEDIATELY. As in BEFORE you leave for del mar. I have to send out the logline on THURSDAY." Thursday being the same Thursday as yesterday and the same Thursday I have to leave for Del Mar by 9:15AM. Okay, no problem. I throw together three potential loglines and send them off with a note saying "do with them as you please."

Fast forward to today. I 'm driving to rent-a-wreck to pick up my screenwriter houseguest friend and drop him at his friend's place who is lending him a car (obviously a convoluted off-topic story) when I get the call. "Out of the four (could have been five) loglines I sent out, yours is the only one they are interested in. They want to see a 1 pager." For me that's a good news/bad news scenario. Awesome!/Fuck, I have to write a 1 pager? (For my rock'n'roll readers, a 1 pager is a summary of the story that is so amazing it entices them to ask for the script. I've never met a screenwriter that likes to do a 1 pager.)

The result of this? I'm in a time crunch. Not only do I have to steal a bunch of my script writing time to write the 1 pager, but if (I mean when) they like the 1 pager, they're going to say, "send over the script." That means the script has to be ready too. Ha, ha...it's not. And for all of you? You have to wait a little longer for A Day At The Races.