Writerling

I'm gonna update this blog someday.

2009-08-31T10:58:00.000-07:00

The last time I updated, I had just got my first movie job. Now the job is over, and the movie is gonna come out in two weeks. I'm seeing billboards for it all over the place, and it's the most surreal thing ever.

Now I'm working as a script coordinator on another animated movie for the same company. I'm way busier, doing the work of three people, but the production has less hours allotted for overtime, so I'm making less money overall. I'm pretty happy where I am, however. There's cool people, a fun environment, and I'm actually helping to make a movie.

Of course I have no idea what to blog about. I finished writing a Chuck spec, and sent that off to the Disney fellowship/NBC workshop. So while I'm waiting to see if anything comes from that (nothing will), I'm delving into various other projects. Including: actually reading a book for once, plodding through my netflix queue, watching DVR'd episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, going to see The Hurt Locker alone because it was popular several months ago and no-one wants to see it anymore, rediscovering my love for Star Wars CCG and consequently how bad I am at it, and re-analyzing what exactly I hated so much about my Homeschooled pilot (and trying to make it better, somehow).

Hmm. So maybe I can blog about 1) a book review 2)Thoughts about Wonderfalls/Solaris/The Hurt Locker 3)How amazed I am at how much I remember about season 5 of The Next Generation, considering it was 18 YEARS AGO, and I was SIX YEARS OLD!! 4) What decks I'm making to play at the SWCCG Cali states, and why I won't win any games with them at all, and 4)How hard writing is.

As usual, lest you have forgotten...I am a huge nerd.

Walk the line

2009-01-06T09:49:00.000-08:00

Hi internet. It's been a while.

Since we last spoke, I've eaten unspeakable amounts of turkey and holiday ham, conquered countless nations in CivIII, undergone several major repairs to my car, stopped working at starbucks, and (drumroll) got my first real industry job.

Yes, in a strange twist of fate, I seem to have been the only person in the country to have actually GAINED employment in the month of december. I'm now working for Unnamed Big Animation Studio--which coincidentally enough is under the same umbrella company as the Unnamed Big Studio of my summer internship days. In fact, I'm only about 5 blocks away from my old stomping grounds at UBS.

I'm a PA on the feature, and it's a pretty great gig so far. Cool people all around, a great working environment, and already lots of stories to tell--which I'm not sure if I'll end up telling to you, internet.

I'm not sure about the whole "blogging from work" thing--it's good on the one hand that it gives me something concrete to blog about, something that changes every day constantly providing new material. But it's bad on the other hand that if I say too much, and the right (or wrong!) person discovers said blog, I'll no longer have a job to blog about. Or to be paid for.

It's a fine line, one I'm not yet sure if I can walk.

Worf '08

2008-12-16T10:19:00.001-08:00

Woah, apparently my Vote Worf campaign finally succeeded. But in the worst way possible.

Gah! I’ve been memed!

2008-09-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

So it seems that Josh and Adam have prodded me out of my apathetic oblivion, and forced me post again. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The meme in question:…Why do I write TV?

Let me start by answering a different question: why do I love TV?

Watching TV was something I always did. Usually it was a family thing; every Sunday night, we would always gather around the television for the latest episode of Alias, tense with excitement at every commercial break. The commercial break was one of the most important times for us; we’d use the time to process the events of the episode so far, and trade theories for what would happen next. My mom was usually right.

As an aside, this is why I’ve never bought the argument that television is bad for you. I certainly think it has the potential to be bad, but it all depends on how it’s used. We never vegged out on the couch and channel surfed—TV was something that was always scheduled, and always done together. Some families have game night. Some families go out to sports games. But for my family, we watched TV together—whether it was the Cosby Show and Full House, Alias and the West Wing, or the big granddaddy of them all: Star Trek.

Some of my best Childhood memories were spent on the couch—and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I know for a fact that I’m much closer to my mother especially because of television. Even now, every time we talk on the phone, after we get past the part about my siblings and old friends, the conversation always turns to the latest episode of Battlestar or Lost, and we do the same thing that we did long ago: trade theories…except now I’m usually right.

Even though I’d always loved TV, but it wasn’t until college that I realized I wanted to pursue it as a career. I had come in to college with some sort of nebulous ambition to be a director or writer or something—just so long as it was in film. And so I spent almost two years watching and making films, and even went through a short-lived pretentious film student phase. If you’d heard of it, I didn’t like it. But after a while I wised up and began watching television again, on the wondrous invention known as DVD.

There are two particular TV-watching moments in college that were specifically defining. The first came while watching “firefly” during my freshman year. Like everyone else, I didn’t hear about the show until it was already cancelled and on DVD, and also like everyone else, once I sat down and started watching it, I couldn’t think about anything else. It was smart, it was funny, it was exciting—I hadn’t loved anything this much since I’d been at college, even though I was being exposed to mind-blowing movies every week in film class. It was the point when I decided to watch another episode rather than work on a film paper due the next morning that I realized: I liked TV more than movies.

Which begged the obvious question: if I liked TV more than movies, then why was I going to school for film? Well, strictly speaking, I wasn’t. My school didn’t (and still doesn’t) have a film major—the degree I am patiently waiting for even now is a B.A. in Communication, with a concentration in film studies. But regardless, why wasn’t I learning about television? I eventually finished the film paper, but that question continued to bug me for a while. Until I reached the other defining TV-watching moment. I’ll give you a hint: it involves single-malt scotch and high-class cigarettes.

Battlestar Galactica seemed like a show made specifically for me, and only me. While there were other people who watched it, I knew that it wasn’t really their show. It was mine. It had everything that a show should have: all of the complex character-centered storylines that my film-concentration-educated brain wanted to see, while miraculously joining that with all the spaceships, robots, and military campaigns that my 12-year-old brain desperately needed to see.

I devoured the first season—only to find that it was over after 13 episodes. I had to wait over 2 months before new episodes aired, and that simply wouldn’t do. So, partly as an excuse to re-watch the episodes, I downloaded this new-fangled thing called a “pod-cast”.

And it quite literally changed my life.

I don’t say that to be overly dramatic, although it does come off that way. I just mean that I would most likely not be doing what I’m doing right now were it not for that podcast. Listening to Ron Moore’s frank discussion of the actual business of making a show— discarded story elements that didn’t make the final cut, the proper placement of this act break or that plot revelation, and most of all the act of “breaking a story” in “the room”—is what made me decide to write for TV. And the more I read about the process of television writing (especially from Jane, Alex, and Lisa), the more I realized that it was what I needed to do.

So basically, I blame it all on my mom, Joss Whedon, and Ron Moore. When I’m penniless and sleeping on the street, with only a “House” spec to keep me warm, I’ll lay three equal portions of blame at their feet. Until then, I’ll keep writing, I’ll keep blogging (no really, I will!), and I’ll keep living the dream.

And now for the tagging.
1. Carlo Conda
2. Peter Rowley
3. Jill Golick
4. Jane Espenson

And last, but not least:

5. Ron Moore. I know he doesn’t read my blog, but on the off chance that he does, it could get him to update some time this year.

....politics?

2008-09-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

How did I not notice this before?

p.s. yes, the meme-answering post is coming. As is general life update, and UBS wrap-up. Today's my last day at the seemingly neverending internship. I like it a lot, but it's definitely time to move on to something else. Now I just need something else to move on to...

In which too many nerds descend on an ill-fitting back room

2008-07-18T08:07:00.001-07:00

The writers meetup was a great success--if you gauge success by how many people you can cram into a hot, sweaty back room of a pub. Which I do.

Probably the most surreal part of the night was being recognized by people who read this blog. I'm using the word "read" very liberally, since this blog is not updated nearly enough to garner regular readers. Also nice was meeting people who I know through their blogs, which made me realize that the internet is now at the point where the people you meet in real life are more or less like their online personas. Which means Amanda is actually a twenty-something college graduate that looks like the picture on her blog, and not a 40-year-old pervert who enjoys pretending to be one.

That's all I can really blog right now. Between my UBS internship (which is going swimmingly), apartment hunting, the inevitable crushing sense of failure and despair that apartment hunting brings, Spanish homework, working at Starbucks, and finding time to write my infamous Chuck spec, blogging has sort of fallen by the wayside recently. Hopefully things will settle down soon.

For every action there is a vague and underwhelming reaction.

2008-06-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

KIRK reacts.

At my internship, I’ve been reading a lot of scripts (mostly TV pilots), and writing lots of coverage. In just three weeks at UBS, I’ve written about 36 pages worth of coverage—I’ve been writing at a rate of about one end-of-the-semester film analysis paper per week. Needless to say, some scripts were good, some were shit, and most were somewhere in-between (or as we like to say at UBS: CONSIDER, PASS, and CONSIDER WITH REVISIONS).

And in my short time of reading spec pilots, I’ve found one word that I have now sworn to never use in a script ever again. Ever. And if any of you catch yourselves using it, you need to get down on bended knee and pray to the Cylon God to forgive you of your sin. And then burn the script.

What is this most hated of words, you might ask?

The word is “react”.

Perhaps an example is in order:

INT. FORENSICS LAB - NIGHT

MIKEY

We finished analyzing the blood sample.

GRETCH

And…anything interesting?

MIKEY

It’s AB Positive, and whoever it belongs to

(dramatic pause)

…has AIDS.

As Gretch REACTS…

END OF ACT

Why is this bad? Because it tells us exactly nothing. We don’t know if what Mikey said surprises Gretch or if he saw it coming. We don't even know if it makes him angry, sad, perplexed or jubilant. Literally all it tells us is that one character (Gretch) understood another (Mikey).

Part of why this annoys me is that it really isn’t that hard to make the description a little more specific (or a little more descriptive, maybe?). I'd much rather see something with a little more flavor, like Gretch reels. His entire case is crumbling before him. or even Gretch smiles. Looks like he was right all along. I mean, obviously not that, that’s the bad version. But give it something to liven up the description, and make it not so vague and ambiguous.

I know some people hate wordy description like this—usually saying something to the effect that it isn’t “actable”. But for my money, description like that makes the script much more enjoyable to read. And if the person reading your script is enjoying it, then you’ve already won half the battle.

What about you? Is there ever a word that you just can’t stand in a script? (or fiction, or poetry, or whatever is your particular cup of tea) Something that you find yourself writing, and then immediately taking out?

In and out

2008-06-19T22:40:00.000-07:00

I think this about every girl I ever meet.

In other news, a real post is forthcoming, I just thought I'd take a break from the four coverages I need to finish for tomorrow. Yeah, and I was afraid I'd be stuck just getting coffee.

This is me, keeping my job and not getting sued.

2008-06-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

This could have been me. What with UBS's super-advanced circa-2015 technology.

Josh brought to my attention that mentioning the Unnamed Big Studio that I'm interning at may not be the best idea, even when I have nothing but great things to say about it. So, after careful consideration lasting no more than 30 seconds, I deleted every reference to the actual name of Unnamed Big Studio, and replaced it with the more benign "Unnamed Big Studio" (Or UBS, which is cool for other reasons).

But regardless, my internship at UBS has been pretty great thus far, if a little taxing at times. I had three TV pilots to read and write coverage on last weekend, and then three more for this weekend. Add to that my initial Barista training, the online Spanish class I have to finish, and the great quantities of people that have been visiting me in California, you have no free time for Matt. Poor Matt.

Which is why I don't have that much more to say. I have two more scripts to read before I go to bed tonight. So sorry, this space may stay boring for a little while longer now. I'll try to blargh sometime next week.

I'm just happy to be a corporate whore.

2008-06-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

I now officially love my internship.

Yesterday was my second day at Unnamed Big Studio, and much to my glee, we had our first development meeting. Sure, it we were supposed to meet at 11:30, and it didn't actually start until 6, but I was having so much fun in the meeting I didn't notice that it ended well past 8 o'clock at night. Am I weird because I describe meetings as "fun"?

No, I'm weird because I play Dungeons and Dragons, and babble on about the Star Wars: CCG when I'm drunk.

Anyway.

We had 2 pitches for Russian shows that, as it turns out, were both take-offs of a certain mid-nineties show. I had joked about the similarities in my coverage, but my supervisor informed me that in reality they were both attempts to make an updated version of the show that would work for Russian audiences. Hey, so long as they can find an adequate Russian version of Kyle Chandler, I'm game for anything.

Anyway, we spent about an hour or so doing exactly what I love to do: talking about TV. Sure, it was about translated russian pitches, and not actual shows. But as I sat there, talking about how to strengthen the episodic conflicts, ramp up interpersonal tension, and set up season-long story arcs for the shows, I realized that I was loving it. And it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

I'd like to think that it's what a writers room feels like at its best. Arguing about character motivations, complicated plot holes, and even squeezing in a discussion of the most recent LOST finale.

And on top of that, Starbucks called me back on my lunch break. Yes, my caffiene-laden dreams have risen from the ashes, and as of next Thursday, I will sell my newly christened Barista-Soul™ to the corporate hegenomy that is Starbucks Coffee.

Of course my soul is already part-owned by the corporate hegenomy that is Unnamed Big Studio, so they'll have to work out between the two of them which one is my primary corporate pimp.

I cannot confirm or deny this post

2008-06-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

My first day at Unnamed Big Studio went pretty well, thank you very much. I got there early, so I had to wait around in the lobby for about a half-hour. This was fine with me, since the lobby was filled with movie memorabilia, which I have chosen to not name in order to not reveal the identity of Unnamed Big Studio.

Then it was off to the exciting world of Human Resources, where I got to sign my very first non-disclosure agreement. Which probably means I'll be fired for blogging about this. Well, not really, but I'm gonna play it safe, just in case.

From now on, I'm going to leave out any thought or opinion that could possibly be construed as a derogatory or disparaging statement about the company, its parent companies, or any of its products. Which means that if I don't like the [redacted] I got for my birthday, or if I have less than glowing thoughts about [big summer movie from Unnamed Big Studio], or if I ever see these scenes in context [left in because it's just too funny], then none of these things will ever make it into this blog.

So in a general sense, leaving out anything remotely confidential, it was a pretty good first day. I wrote my first coverage, which I'm sure will get much less exciting as the summer goes on.

Also, Starbucks never called me back, so I'm assuming that's dead in the water. I guess I'll just have to apply to any of the other THREE Starbucks that are within walking distance from my house.

My three jobs (hopefully)

2008-06-01T05:42:00.001-07:00

I have my first LA job today.

One of my dad's friends called me up a few days ago, asking if I'd like to be a camera assistant for a day. I gave him the nice-Christian-man version of "hell yes, sign me the fuck up.", and here I am. It's $150 for the day, which is a bit less than the going rate, but I'm happy with whatever I can get at this point.

There's an old steam engine that's going from Los Angeles to San Diego and back, which it apparently hasn't done for over half a century. We're the official video team for the trip, with one crew on the train, and the other following it down the freeway, getting exterior shots. Thankfully, I'll be on the train, helping the cameraman, and also passing out cards to the passengers. It's also a very beautiful view from what I'm told.

So that's exciting.

Also, it's just occured to me that I haven't said really anything about my internship at all. And since it starts on Monday (oh God, tomorrow, I guess I'll just fill you guys in.

For those who don't know, I'm going to be interning at an Unnamed Big Studio, in the International Development department. It's an exciting opportunity, even though it's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking to make my mark on domestic television rather than international television, but hey at least it's TV, right? The basic principles should be essentially the same. And I'll be doing the same thing anyway: writing coverage, making copies, filing, and just in general being everyone's bitch.

I can't wait.

As a final note on my employment situation, I had an interview for a part-time job at my local Starbucks yesterday. And when I say local, I literally mean a block and a half from my apartment. It takes me two minutes to walk to it, and less than two minutes to walk to the one a block and a half from that one. I never realized that the "Starbucks on every block" cliche was based on something real (of course, I never realized until I moved out here that Weinerlicious from Chuck was based on something real). Go figure.

Anyway, the interview went well, and I'll find out what happens tomorrow.

I've got a big couple days ahead of me.

The Foot Fist Way

2008-05-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

In the one-and-a-half weeks that I've spent in LA, one question has been asked more than any other. Not "How's the weather?" or, "When is your internship actually going to start" or even "How are you going to pay your rent?" No, what seems to be on everyone's minds is "Met any celebrities yet?"

Which is good, because unlike the other questions, I actually have an answer for this one. The answer is "yes, but you probably wouldn't be impressed".

My definition of "celebrity" may not match most people's. I watch a lot of TV, and a lot of movies, and furthermore spend hours trolling on IMDB. I think I'd be able to recognize more C-list celebrites than the run of the mill boy hot off the bus from Virginia. Specifically Keith Powell (aka Toofer from "30 Rock"), and Sam Witwer ("The Mist", Crashdown from BSG), whom I saw trolling the cheese aisle at Pavilions and chatting up a lady friend at the midnight showing of Indy at the Arclight, respectively.

But neither of these should really count. The question was "met any celebrities yet?" not, "casually passed by any celebrities yet?".

Well, yesterday, I attended my first-ever Creative Screenwriting Q&A, for the Foot Fist Way, featuring the cast/screenwriters of the film. The film was hilarious, and shot for about $70,000 on Super 16. It goes to show that movies do NOT need to be multi-billion dollar adventures to be entertaining. This was Super-cheap, and super-funny. And the guys who made it were really funny as well, both in the film and the post-film Q&A. Turns out they all met at school (and lived next door to David Gordon Green), and none of them had any interest in acting, but just put each other in their films because the film kids and the theater kids at their school didn't really get along. Imagine that.

Afterwards, Brian and I went up front and talked to them about the film, about David Gordon Green (who apparently made it through college by cutting hair), and about moving out to LA and getting shit P.A. jobs (Jody Hill described it as the most depressing part of their lives). We then got a picture with them.

To be honest, it was actually more exciting to me that I was actually at a Creative Screenwriting Q&A than that I got to meet the cast. Not to diss those guys at all, they were awesome, but me and my friends have been listening to the podcast since our freshman year of college. And as my friend Brian likes to say, we learned more about film from the podcast than we did in school.

In other words, I was more excited about this picture than the last one.

I am such a tool.

My 6 word (non-spoiler) Indy review

2008-05-23T00:22:00.001-07:00

I feel eight years old again.

EDIT: And anyone who disagrees, I direct you to The Rule of Cool

Raiders of the Lost Childhood

2008-05-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

The exciting one-day-a-week internship didn't work out (it was with Peter Berg's company, if you care), but it looks like I'll have an internship on the Sony lot three days a week. That is, provided that I pass the background check. I just hope that they don't find out about that one time that I blew up the orphanage full of blind amputees. Or that my dad works for Pat Robertson.

So I've got that, I'm moving into my apartment tomorrow, I've got to find a part-time job so that I don't starve when the summer's over, and I've got to straighten out tuition at messiah, so they don't think I have to pay $6,000 more than I do.

And yet, all I can think about is 12:31 at the Arclight on Sunset.

There's something in my brain that just cannot process the fact that there is a NEW INDIANA JONES MOVIE. Much less that I'm SEEING it Wednesday night. See, the Indy movies are the movies that I associate the most with my childhood, more than Star Wars Back to the Future, and the Muppet Movie combined (although all of those would probably be up there as well). I feel like seeing a new installment will literally make me feel 8 years old again, watching the old VHS copy of The Last Crusade that my Dad taped off of television.

And it seems that at least Roger Ebert agrees with me.

I'm here

2008-05-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

Right now, I'm sitting in my Uncle's living room in Thousand Oaks. My cross-country trip is now essentially over, but I'm far from finished.

Looks like I will be getting a room in Santa Monica for the summer, at about half what I really should be paying. I have an internship in Culver City that's all but official, and a really exciting one-day-a-week internship that may also end up happening.

Wow. Real life. This is what it's like.

Writing what you know

2008-05-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

I was starting to write a comment on Amanda’s site, and it turned into a blog post. Amanda’s post was about “writing what you know”, and how that may or may not be a great idea.

But I do think that writing what you know can be a good place to start. The whole reason I started writing a pilot about a college radio station is that for my last TV writing class in college I wrote a pilot about law interns - basically Grey's Anatomy, but law. And I still think it's a good idea...but I quickly realized that I'm not David E Kelley, and I know nothing about law. It became a tortuous semester of research and the discovery that law interns do not have the same juicy involvement in cases the way medical interns do. So my structure of serial personal relationship dramas set against episodic cases did not work. I ended up writing 60 pages of well-developed characters doing very little.

For my Senior project I was writing a TV pilot, this supernatural/Sci-Fi thriller, that eventually just proved to be too much. There was too much mythology, too much plot, too much intensity for my little brain to handle. So I ditched it halfway through the semester and wrote what I knew: a pilot about homeschoolers. Sorta. I was homeschooled through high school, and I attended a program two days a week that taught classes like Spanish, choir, speech & debate, etc. I knew the situation, I knew the characters (I went to school with them), I knew the conflicts. Or so I thought.

When I got to the end of it, it all seemed to fall flat for me. There was no tension, nothing at stake for the characters, and like Amanda said it was really just a lot of people sitting around doing nothing. Turns out there isn’t much conflict in a conservative Christian homeschool program, and so what made me think that there could possibly be a pilot in there…much less 5 seasons of stories?

I think that's why we have so many shows about Lawyers, Doctors, and Police: their jobs have built-in stakes. They deal with life and death, with crime and justice. And if they have relational strife on the side, it’s just icing on the cake. A show like Friday Night Lights can work only in a small Texas town, where high school football is the most important thing. The West Wing was tense and engaging because the protagonist was the leader of the free world, but Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip failed because the protagonist was a showrunner, and most people (i.e. people who aren’t me) don’t care about the lives of television writers.

But then there’s a lot of other reasons Studio 60 failed.

In the end, I think that's the problem with "writing what you know". For a lot of people, living a comfortable, middle-class life in suburban America, what they know is boring. If you work in politics, a hospital, or a courtroom, maybe not. But if you grew up playing video games and watching television, maybe you’re better off doing research on something else. Or just write Sci-fi.

Piloting

2008-05-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

So I suppose that the pilot to my L.A. spinoff just aired. Or maybe I’m in the “promotional” webisode series that only exists to fill in the gaps between where interesting things happen. Or maybe I’m just in hiatus right now, waiting for the new series to premiere. Or maybe I should just stop modifying this metaphor before it ceases to make any sense.

All I really meant to say was that I’m currently in a hotel room in Cookeville, TN, blogging while my dad watches the World Poker Tour on the Travel channel. And I must say, even after thinking about it non-stop for the past few months, it feels incredibly weird to actually be on this journey from one side of the country to another. My family wasn’t one that really moved around much: I can only remember living in three houses, all of which were within a 1-mile radius. Even college was only a few hours away, close enough to drive back the same day.

But now I’m on a week-long, one-way, cross-continental roadtrip. I packed my life into the back of my station wagon, and within a week, I’ll be LA. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks saying goodbye to my old life, and all that it entailed: friends, parents, siblings, Yeungling. And now I’m at the point where I’m ready to say hello to whatever it is that comes next.

I still don’t know where I’m going to live. I know some people who may know some people that need a roommate, but I don’t know anything for sure. I’m a little more certain about the internship, but still: nothing final. There’s so much that’s up in the air right now, so much that isn’t certain, that I really should be freaked out of my mind. I’m not the kind of person who likes uncertainty, normally this sort of stuff scares me to death.

But for some reason I feel like it’ll all be okay. Maybe because of God. Maybe because I’m just dumb.

Probably a little bit of both.

I'm also very tired right now, and I'd like to write more, but I simply do not have the energy. I know all four of you who read this blog will be sorely disappointed that I'm not explaining my adventures in more detail, but fear not: I'll sleep, and blog more tomorrow. Promise.

My series finale

2008-05-03T00:08:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Messiah, where I was saying goodbye to all my friends. It was a really strange feeling, saying "see you later" to these people when I knew in my mind that I would never see again. Some I will, some are even moving to LA with me, but the vast majority of them will never come into contact with me again. Yeah, a little wierd, and it honestly became much more emotional for me than I thought it would be.

The most interesting part though, was how everything in the past couple days felt like the last episode of a television show. Not the kind where everything's been building to one final climactic battle or (if it's NOT science fiction) conflict to be resolved. The stuff that happens AFTER that. You know what I'm talking about, the Dominion's already been defeated, the A plot is resolved, now we just want to see Worf go off to Quo'nos, O'Brien go back to teach at the Academy, and Bashir to stay with Dax on Deep Space Nine. It's the part where everyone gets sappy and sentimental, there might be a montage, some things get closure, some things are left open and ambiguous, everyone goes off in different directions, hopefully there's some thematic ties to the beginning of the series, and all of this happens while simultaneously reminding us why we loved the show to begin with.

The last night at Messiah, I saw Iron Man with almost all of my geek guys accounted for: Chad, Dan, and Andrew as well as Brian and Joel (who apparently is not cool enough to have a blog). Then we went to the union and had one final scholarly debate about superheroes (it was kind of a draw: Marvel has better ongoing storylines, whereas DC is better at standalones). It was the absolute perfect way to end my stay, because geeking out with those guys is probably what I liked most about college. In five years, I doubt I'll remember that great paper I wrote for New European Cinema, but I'm sure that I'll remember the plans Dan and I made for the impending Zombie infestation. I can only hope that I'll find something to replace the hour-long dinner conversations about Expanded Universe Star Wars novels, the constant Galaxy Quest quote contests, and of course the heated discussions over the havoc that toast wrecks on our American society (allegedly, that is. I still hold firm on my belief that every American has the right to toast their bread to their desired level of crispyness).

Also cool was having lunch with my friend Laura on Friday, who was actually the first person I met at Messiah. Senior year of high school, we were both visiting for our interviews. We talked about C.S. Lewis. And now, Senior year of college, we had breakfast, and talked about Exes and what the hell real life means. I felt like it gave such a great symmetry to my stay at Messiah, because she also turned out to be the very LAST person I saw at Messiah as well. Literally, all my stuff was packed in my car, and as soon as we were done, I drove away, never to return.

Even now, it feels incredibly weird talking about college in the past tense. I was JUST THERE. And saying all of those goodbyes, I realize now how much it all really meant to me. I think I've become somewhat callous over the past few months at home--mostly because that made it easier to deal with certain things I've been going through. But if there was anything that could bring me out of that, it was being back at school, with my best friends in the entire world.

That and Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica.

And now I'm home. In a week, I'll be moving to LA, which is still freaking me the frak out. I don't have a confirmed place to live, nor a confirmed internship at which to work. I'm still moving out, staying with my Uncle for a few days, and interviewing with the companies that have replied to my emails. But after that, after the first week, I have no idea what I'll be doing. It's hard for me to trade such security for such uncertainty, but I know it needs to be done. So I just grit my teeth and deal with the uncertainty.

Besides, LA is the spinoff. It probably needs a couple episodes to find its own feet. Hopefully it's just a few episodes, though. We don't want another Voyager, please.

Spoilers for Friday Night Lights Season 2 ensue

2008-04-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been in Pennsylvania for the past week or so, watching the second season of Friday Night Lights on DVD. I didn’t mean to buy it, really, there was just sort of a perfect storm that descended on me that led me to that end. It involved a senior communication banquet that I half-remembered to go to, a $20 Barnes & Noble giftcard from that meeting, and a trip to the local Barnes and Noble on the same day - which happened to be on the exact day that the show came out on DVD. All in all, I only paid 8 bucks and change.

I hadn’t watched it since the first episode of the second season, when I quasi-gave up on the show. The murder annoyed me to no end, and I couldn’t imagine how the show could recover from it. It didn’t seem at all to be like the show I loved so much for the first season. But I had heard from several sources that the show got better after that, and it recovered from that misstep rather well to become one of the finest shows on television once again.

Now I’m about halfway through the second season, and I have to say: the show doesn’t really need to get better, it’s still great from the moment the season starts. It’s strange: absolutely everything else seems completely unaffected in quality, it’s JUST the murder subplot that’s annoying. I’ll be watching the same sort of real-life drama that was so engrossing for 22 episodes in the first season, and then all of a sudden it’ll go over to the murder subplot, and I’ll just have to roll my eyes and press on. It’s not that it’s bad per se, just terribly out of place.

In some ways, it almost works, too. The action itself seems larger-than-life, and very much like something that would happen on just any TV show. But the way the characters react to it, and the actors performances are all so realistic, it almost succeeds in selling me on the whole idea. Almost. It’s just that the original act still seems so out of place for the show that it’s hard to swallow a lot of what comes after.

But I’ll deal with it. Landry and Tyra are great, and if you’ve got to bend the rules of the universe a bit to get them together, then so be it.

The Geek Elite and the Information Super-highway.

2008-04-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

Oops, I guess I took that week off.

I'm up at Messiah College now, seeing a lot of old friends for the last time. I've got a pretty jam-packed week-or-so, since it seems like every single day one of my friends has a senior project presentation to give. Already went to a reading of an original epic poem written by an atheist about Judas Iscariot's escape from Hell, today I've got a collection of Zombie short stories (i think?), and I'll be wrapping it all up with a screenplay reading about an aborted fetus...that lived. Yes, I have awesome friends.

But you don't come to this blog to read about my friends, or even my plans for the week. You come to this blog for endless Battlestar Galactica analysis!

...But not today.

I've just seen this article floating around, usually on much bigger and more important blogs than mine, and it makes me smile. Not just because of the mental image of Ron Moore drinking straight bourbon* with Javi, and the CSI guy (who used to be a Trek guy! who knew?). But it really does make me feel like we're living in the most exciting time for TV, and it's because of the internet.

I was gonna post this whole rant about the internet, but I just deleted it because it kind of devolved into rambling. Suffice to say, I think we take what we have for granted. Twenty years ago, if someone wanted to write for TV, they didn't have Alex, John, or (gasp! horror!) Lady Jane.

I didn't learn anything at all about TV writing from school. I did read one or two books about it, but the large bulk of what I know (which, granted, isn't all that much) was amassed from reading blogs. If I didn't have those resources, I really don't think I would have (or could have) written my first spec script.

So I guess this is a salute to all those out there in the scribosphere. Keep abiding. Taking her easy for all us sinners

* Come on, Ron. What happened to the single-malt scotch?

The best way to watch Beowulf

2008-04-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This entry is very long. But it’s also 100% true, so believe me, it’s worth it.

Stephen Colbert was a bust. Not the man himself, of course, just my attempt to get into his audience. I went at 10 to sign up for standby, and arrived at 6 only to find that they wouldn’t be able to let all the people who had REAL tickets inside. Thus, my place as number 15 on the waiting list was as futile and frivolous as The 1/2 Hour News Hour. Oh well.

But thinking about my near-contact with a celebrity reminded me of the last time I was in Philadelphia, and the celebrity encounter of legend that ensued.

Now, I’m sure something like this is downright boring in LA, where running into Bruce Campbell at Trader Joes or Martin Scorcese at the In-N-Out Burger is about as novel or exciting as seeing an old man take his dachshund for a walk. But for someone from Virginia Beach, where the closest thing we have to a celebrity is Rudy from the first season of Survivor, this was a big deal.

The year was 2007, around the time the end-of-the-year movies started to come out. My film major friends and I decided to take a weekend away from the po-dunk town of Grantham, and drive to the City of Brotherly Love to see movies that you can’t see at Messiah College. Specifically: No Country for Old Men, and Beowulf…in IMAX 3D.

And man, let me tell you, Beowulf was awesome. But it had nothing to with the IMAX, the 3D, or even the Beowulf.

The place was the huge AMC IMAX theater in King of Prussia (right outside of Philadelphia). I only say that because after going into the city to buy our tickets for No Country (the theater didn’t have online ticketing), we were running late for Beowulf (which we bought online). We made it just in time, and the three of us jumped out as my friend Mr. Wells parked the car. At the Fandango machine, I glanced over to my right and saw a slightly over-weight, disheveled looking man with glasses. My first thought was “heh, it’s Peter Jackson”, because as we all know, there are a million slightly over-weight, disheveled looking men with glasses that kinda-sorta look like Peter Jackson.

Then I saw Fran Walsh. The color drained from my face as I slowly realized that it wasn’t just any slightly over-weight, disheveled looking man with glasses…it was the director of King Kong and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Suddenly stories I’d read online about how he was shooting the Lovely Bones outside of Philadelphia with Mark Wahlberg came rushing into my head. We watched in a trance as he and Fran walked inside with the kids. Wells came, and we frantically tried to tell him what happened. He too thought we were talking about just another slightly over-weight, disheveled looking man with glasses until he saw the teller tearing Mr. Jackson's ticket. Then he froze and could not breathe. This experience really could not have happened to a better set of nerds.

We still hadn’t really recovered from the shock when we got in the theater and realized that the only seats available were in the front. If you’ve ever tried to watch an IMAX film from the front of the theater, you know how much front seats suck. But it didn’t matter—because PJ and company were sitting in the second row. Yes that’s right, I saw Beowulf in IMAX 3D…in front of Peter Jackson.

Don’t worry. The best part is coming up.

It really was a surreal experience. A trailer for I Am Legend came on, and we could hear Fran Walsh whisper “Oh yeah…Andrew shot that”. I’d see the amazing motion-capture imagery on screen, and realize I was sitting in front of the man who essentially pioneered performance capture to begin with. I mean, the movie I was watching probably wouldn’t even have been greenlit if it weren’t for the success of Lord of the Rings telling studios that Epic Fantasies could make money now. Forget Will Smith (and Andrew Lesnie). This guy was Legend.

Anyway, about 20 minutes into the PG-13 movie’s R-territory violence, one of the kids said he was getting scared. So the kid and Fran left, leaving poor PJ to see the film by himself.

Then a funny thing happened. I started to hear a snoring sound from behind me. I looked at my friends, to make certain they were all hearing what I was. Sure enough, they were all also restraining laughter. I turned around, and yes: Peter Jackson, director of some of the longest movies of all time, FELL ASLEEP during Beowulf in IMAX 3D.

Later, after thinking about it, I came up with a scenario I like to think is what happened. He was up all night with Mark Wahlberg, working on some very complex and emotionally draining scene. Finally, around 6 in the morning, he gets a cut he’s satisfied with, and he turns in for his 90 minutes of sleep. Fran and the kids are coming in for the weekend, and he’s gonna show them around, and take them to a movie that he’s already seen a few times (while visiting Robert Zemeckis—the man who brought his films to America).

But none of that matters, because Peter Jackson still fell asleep during Beowulf in IMAX 3D. It almost makes me wish Beowulf was a really bad movie, because that would be the perfect capsule review. “You wanna know how much Beowulf sucks? Peter Jackson makes 4 hour movies, and even HE couldn’t stay awake for it!”

It kind of helped to balance the "legendary" view I had of the man, and really of celebrity in general. This wasn't PETER JACKSON: THE MAN WHO MAGICALLY SPINS EPIC FANTASY FILMS FROM HIS FINGERTIPS, this was Peter Jackson, the slightly over-weight, disheveled looking man with glasses who falls asleep in the movie theater. He's human. There's nothing magical about what he does. He just has many, many more opportunities than I do, and—more importantly—he’s taken full advantage of all them.

I think that’s really what I took away from the whole experience: success is attainable for real people, because everyone who has success is themselves a real person. Pretty basic, I know. Even with how much I make this seem like a big huge important event, it really wasn’t. All that happened was that I sat in front of a guy who fell asleep in the theater. A guy who just happened to make awesome movies.

And, before you ask: Yes. I decided I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t take the opportunity, so yes, I did shake his hand. We kinda had to wake him up to do it, and he probably wasn’t really conscious at all, but still. I shook his hand.

The artist formerly known as Agnax

2008-04-16T12:52:00.000-07:00

New design! Let me know what you guys think. I’d felt for a while that it was time for a change, and since I’m getting ready to move out to LA, it seems like as good a time as any. So I opened up photoshop, made a banner by using the erase tool on several layers, and boom! New design.

It also feels pretty good to get rid of my whole “Agnax” domain. It was kind of a hold-over from high-school, where I got sick of Xanga, so hence I named my new blog Agnax. Yes, I know. Very creative. Now that that's over with, one would think that I'd be able to get around to changing my painfully high-schooler Instant Messenger name…

Personally, I like the name “writerling”, and how it implies my baby-writer status. I realize it doesn’t exactly flow off of the tongue (no really, try to say it), but I figure most people won’t be saying it out loud anyway. Oh well, one day when I finally understand what I’m doing and move out of baby-writerdom (thus having a blog that people would even want to tell other people about), I can change the name again.

Anyway, I’m up in Philly for this week, ostensibly so that I could go to the mandatory meeting for the Temple University Summer Internship Program. It was incredibly boring, and I already knew virtually everything they said: you need a car. Traffic is terrible. No, you can't rent a car if you're under 21. No, there isn't any public transportation. No, biking is not particularly effective. Yes you really do need to have a car. Temple students can ask some pretty dumb questions.

The meeting didn’t really serve any purpose except for me to find out that the professor never got my application. Which is aggravating times two because it had already been lost once when I tried to send it to my Messiah prof. All could do was to fill out another application, and pay 15 bucks to overnight it to the Temple prof. When I returned with him to his office, I noticed that it was sitting on his desk, unopened. Problem solved.

But the real reason I'm in Philly this week: Stephen Colbert.

Oh yes. This will be amazing.

Excitement trumps fear.

2008-04-14T18:06:00.000-07:00

I wrote a short screenplay the other day.

It wasn’t great by any means, but it was unusual for me in that I got an idea, sketched out the basic idea, and pumped out a first draft in an hour. See, what I normally do is get an idea, get excited, throw some ideas on paper, and then… “let it simmer”. Which is really just my way of rationalizing the fact that I’m scared to death of writing. Because, as some of you may know, if you “let it simmer”…it—whatever “it” is—never gets done.

Emily Blake just blogged about something similar, when people are terrified of writing garbage, so they just don’t write.

If I never try, I can always suffer under the delusion that I am awesome, I just never had an opportunity to prove it. But if I try and fail, then I'll have to face the fact that my lifelong dream was a fantasy.

And I think my problem is essentially the same. I’ll have an idea, love the idea, sketch out the idea, maybe even make a detailed outline of the idea, but I’ll never actually make it into something more than an idea.

So what do you do to defeat the crippling fear of sucking? How do you move your idea from just being an idea to something more than that, be it book, short story, or screenplay?

Well, I think I may have finally figured it out: Get excited, and try as hard as you can to stay that way.

Most of the time, the reason why I stop working on something is because I forget what it was that made me excited about it in the first place. The fun drains out of it, and it becomes something I have to do, rather than something I’m excited that I get to do.

Excitement trumps fear.

And since excitement fades as time passes, you’ve got to get as much done on an idea while it’s still fresh in your mind. You know what it’s like when you’re making an outline. You write down the basics of the scene, and probably even hear snippets of dialogue in your head, the different beats and how they all play out. But if you’re me, you never think to write these out, because you just assume that when you sit down to write it, the ideas’ll be flowing in the same way. But then when you actually sit down to write it, all that’s gone.

This time, I decided it would be different. When I got the idea for the short and outlined the idea, I looked at the clock and realized I had an hour to kill. So I wrote it.

When I finished, I wasn’t sure if it was really great or a piece of shit. Now, having looked over it a few days later, I know that it’s somewhere in between. But now I know for sure which one it is. And I think it’s better to have a mediocre reality, especially one that I can work on to make better, than an imaginary masterpiece.

Maybe we should Dump them into the Atlantic

2008-04-13T05:06:00.000-07:00

DVICE: We dump old subway cars into the Atlantic, and it's a good thing

This article is pretty interesting, but for my money, the fun doesn't begin until the comments section:

BY MURC AT 7:13 PM ON 04/11/08
I'm assuming you just found this out and then assumed that nobody else must know. :/

they have been doing this for many years now. I've known about it for a long time, and I live in the middle of the country.

in other words...stick to tech.

BY STEVE AT 7:15 PM ON 04/11/08
How does it feel being smarter than everyone Murc?

BY MURC AT 9:31 PM ON 04/11/08
it feels good.

BY TEDINASIA AT 4:17 AM ON 04/12/08
Ahh Steve, don't give him a hard time.. anyone named "Murc" must be ... challenged...

BY TRAVELER AT 6:50 PM ON 04/12/08
Maybe sinking large ships makes sence, but it'd be much better to to crush this small stuff and recycle.

BY MRLANGUAGEGUY AT 1:33 AM ON 04/13/08
Shouldn't that be 'sinking subway cars makes cents'?

BY DANZARA AT 7:49 AM ON 04/13/08
I wanna who you people are in the world.

As do I, Danzara. As do I.