austin film festival 2010 -- Day 0 (Wednesday)

I wasn't even supposed to be here....

That thought kept coming back to me over and over throughout this year's Screenwriter's Conference at the Austin Film Festival ("the festival"). For reasons which don't rate discussion on a public forum, I'd decided that for the first time in six years I'd simply not be able to justify the effort and expense and time required to make this yearly pilgrimage. No, I was not entirely happy about the decision, but sometimes the right decision is not the happy decision, and this seemed one of those damnable cases.

But a funny thing happened. As has been the case more than a few times throughout this ongoing pursuit of screenwriting glory, something totally unexpected and wonderful falls from the sky to change the specifics of some critical moment. This time, it was a bit of unexpected generosity and encouragement arriving at precisely the critical moment. "Oh, you're going. That's not open for discussion." Again, the specifics are not the stuff for a blog like this, but I'll say this much: if you're very very lucky, you'll have good friends around you who refuse to let you make certain mistakes.

So there I am rolling hard down Highway 71 towards Austin, with some tunes cranking on the stereo, and in another of those improbably perfect moments which reminds me that God might make a decent director if he ever feels an itch to try that game, at precisely the moment when I crest the last major hill south of Austin and see the Capitol Dome haze into view, I find I am singing along to a certain lyric:

"Hey, amigo -- don't just play the part.
Wherever you go -- go with all your heart."
-- "Tucson", L.L. Cooper

One of the things about Austin which has become second nature to me is the way that I refuse to allow myself to feel tired or exhausted, no matter how badly run-down I might be due to the long days and short nights and copious flow of beverages. If the scene demands my presence and involvement until 5am, then that's where I'll be, and I'll be back in the Driskill Lounge by 8:30am the next day no matter what -- showered and awake and ready to charge once more into the breach. I no longer even notice this behavior: it's just The Way Things Are. But others seem to remark on it and marvel.

"Dude, how can you do that? I'd be a wreck."

I explained again this year how I just can't allow myself the lazy luxury of feeling tired and acting exhausted. It's cost too much to get here. Too much effort and sacrifice was required to get me onto this field for me to not give every last bit of effort come game time. Ten or twenty years from now I do not want to look into a mirror and know in my heart of hearts that there was something more I might have done to maybe have made that screenwriting dream happen.

Because regardless of what the t-shirt slogans might say, failure is always an option. If you doubt that, just look around and see how many failed dreamers stand eternally willing to give you their sad personal story full of explanations and excuses and justifications and rationalizations.

Simple choice: go hard or go home.

-=-=-

So I sang along with Coop, swung off to Austin-Bergstrom Airport and picked up Zoe, who'd flown in from Australia just to see if this circus I've sung about for years was really as wildly wonderful as I've been making it out to be. Actually, she'd driven ten hours from the bush to get to Sydney in order to catch a 14 hour flight to LA to then layover for a few hours to then fly another 3 hours to Austin to then spend a whole bunch of money hanging out with strangers, so again I am reminded of just how much I feel riding on me to make this event and this career chase work out.

We cruise into Austin and down Sixth to the Driskill and I stow the car and wander in to find my badges and registration info, and I'm struck as always by the weird sense of ownership: this is my space -- this is where I do the work.

I hook up with Tom, my hotel roommate for the week, and we find Zoe stumbling along with an Olympian case of jet lag, and we head off to grab some dinner at Threadgill's (chicken fried steak, gravy on the side, with mashed potatoes and San Antonio squash casserole).

Halfway through the meal, I see a woman standing at the hostess station, scanning the room, and I run to see Lori, an old high school friend of mine I've not seen in something like 26 years. We'd reconnected via FaceBook this past year, and when she moved to Austin over the summer, we'd agreed to grab a beer when next I came to town.

She joins us for the rest of the evening, and I'm suddenly left feeling an even stronger sense of urgency and commitment for this stupid writing pursuit: if it was that easy to lose touch with a really good friend for a quarter-century, how easy would it be to lose sight of this often-frustrating career chase?

We wind up back at the Driskill, and Lori and I natter and chatter as if 26 years never actually happened... well, except for a whole bunch of kids and some marriages and several relocations and blah blah blah. More festival folks wander through, waving and high-fiving as they pass. At some point we get joined briefly by Franklin Leonard, the dude who started the now mighty Black List. He turns out to be a totally likable self-effacing guy with great attitude about the unexpected prominence and power of the Black List, and again I am reminded of how weird and wonderful these random meetings in Austin can be.

Zoe collapses early (apparently 26 hours of air travel plays havoc on some folks...), Tom wanders off in exhaustion as well, and eventually everyone is being ushed from the room after last call, so I see Lori to her car and we laugh "let's do this again sometime without such a long break in between."

I stroll back to the Stephen F Austin hotel, taking a few extra scenic turns to let things percolate a little longer in my brain, and by 3am I'm back in the room. Tom's sleeping, so I take the laptop into the bathroom and spend a half hour typing up my daily notes and thoughts as I do every day when on the road. It's a weird tradition, I guess -- the nightly recap into .TXT form -- but it helps remind me that this is not a vacation. This is work, dammit -- I have big things I need to accomplish, and dreaming don't get them done.

(to be continued)

Austin: notice of safe return

Oy.

Well, the Austin Film Festival -- or, more properly, the Screenwriter's Conference portion of the AFF -- has again come and gone, and I am back at home on the real world.

The conference was, as it has always been, a bizarre and surprisingly affecting experience. I know some folks -- even some of my friends who were there and experiencing the very same moments -- will scrunch their eyebrows and wonder "what the hell is he on about THIS time...", but for me, the AFF conference truly is a miraculous ride. It's never so much about the technical learning as it is about the revelation and self-discovery and re-dedication that goes on during and as a result. To hear people whose work and career and dedication you respect and admire and envy and stand in slack-jawed awe for... and realize that they are nothing at all very different than you are, and that they have many of the very same demons and dreams as you do... is a wildly affirming and inspiring thing.

At least it is for me.

I'll not launch into an overlong review and babble-fest of all the arcane minutiae and miscellania of this year's conference -- that will come soon enough -- but I will say this: I love that event, and I will keep coming back so long as there is any possibility for me to make such happen.
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the new stuff is coming soon

I promise.

But for now I am scrambling to get caught up on hundreds of emails and calls from various folks, all contacts stemming from the ongoing Nicholl Fellowships Nonsense. I keep hoping that I'll soon have some truly amazing news to report, but for now it all remains just a great heaving pile of encouraging and interesting news.

Might be's... maybe's ...

Also, I have a great many thoughts on the Austin Film Festival, but who knows if/when I'll have clear chance to address those notions.

Oy.
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when the bullet hits the bone

So it's been three weeks since last I posted here.

Sue me.

Life has remained an insane cascade of competing events and obligations. Kid events, kid illness, dentists, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, end of year parties and school functions, dance recitals, yard work, birthday parties, prepping for birthday parties, cleaning up after birthday parties, plus the incredible time and energy spent on little league coaching... oy. I'm ready for some sort of break, but now I look up and realize that I have something like 9 days left in which to tie up the half-written bundle of words and ideas that is my current script project if I am to have ANY hope of getting it in to the contest for the Austin Film Festival.

Speaking of baseball, last night my guys got eliminated from the playoffs. I've always sworn I'll not whine and whimper in public about something as inconsequential as the results of a little league game, but it's been an incredibly frustrating season in many regards. On the one hand I was blessed with the most talented team I've ever had—might ever have—but on the other hand this team has also been subjected to some of the worst weather luck and a slew of the dumbest/laziest decisions by clumsy league officials... my guys hung tough throughout it, but eventually I knew there woiuld come a time when patience, endurance, and luck would all abandon us at the same time, and last night was that moment. In a game we should never have been scheduled to play, my guys played just badly enough at key moments to lose to a team that they outplayed and should have beaten easily.

Bottom line: season over, load lifted, life goes on.

Now I have to kick serious ass in teh writing department in order to realize some goals I set for myself at the start of the year, and after THAT series of goals is met I already have ANOTHER set lined up on the runway, idling and cleared for immediate takeoff. It's a tremendously exciting time, as I suddenly have something like a half dozen ideas and projects rumbling which all seem to have serious potential and interest and viability. The key issue will be time.

Austin Film Festival contest entry and festival reservations are due soon, and I'm already starting to get wound up by that. Old friends are making the return, and some friends are this year going to be in an unusual position: rather than in teh civilian audience, some will likely be badged as working pros, and I am already threatening them with the embarrassingly naive and inane and stupid questions I intend to subject them to.

Current project list and status:

LILYA — I still love this impossible project, as do most folks who've read it. I wish I could make some money off the number of times I've heard "love it, and wish I had 100 million to produce it." But I can't. Nor can I yet find an effective way to get the damned thing to the sorts of players who might be able to prove useful in pushing this beast a few feet closer to consideration for production.

AMAZON — after a year of no real action, this project has some minor spark of new life as we (the co-writers) reached an agreement whereby we're both now cleared to independently develop and submit our own versions of the story we came up with. I have little doubt that the two "competing" stories will soon be so different as to make comparisons moot, but I volunteered some solutions which should help preclude any overly easy comparisons and intereference between the eventual two versions. Bottom line, it seems a fair and amicable separation of property, and leaves us both free to do what we each feel is right and proper by the story. "We shall see."

[SPAGHETTI WESTERN THING] — An odd project which continues to haunt me. One day I love the strange forced mixing of two disparate genres, and other days I look at it and think "I'm building a project doomed on two fronts." What parts I have written I love, and what I deas I intened to roll in I also love, but for various reasons it might wind up again stored until I get a clearer sense of the "do-ability" of the thing.

[COMEDY HORROR THING] — yes, it has a title (and a good one, at that), and a tagline (and a fucking great one, at that), but still I keep this one shrouded in mystery as those elements are so much fun that to share them at all spoils the fun of the eventual reveal when the script is done. This is teh current #1 priority, and the one I am most eager to get ready to read as it has lots of those commercial sorts of elements that give a newbie spec work the best fighting chance for production. A few producers have sparked when pitched the premise, and I hope they enjoy the finished product in a few weeks.

[EPIC HISTORICAL POPCORN FLICK] — this one is on hold while the stink of a damnably semi-similar turd fades from memory. I still love the premise, the characters, and many many of teh cool moments I've imagined and outlined, and some great scenes have already been written, but given that this is another of those projects that would be too expensive for a newbie to seriously suggest be filmed, this one stays in the Dream Locker for that magical happy day when I have Credibility and Experience and Bankability and such. Yeah, sounds funny when I say it, too.

[BIZARRE FROM LEFT FIELD IDEA] — still no details to share other than "there is an intriguing opportunity requiring my participation" and "if it works, it could be instant entreé into the pro ranks." For various reasons the expected rush of creative work on this has been postponed for a few weeks (until other various components are free to be brought to bear... and yes that is cryptic but intentionally so), but work has been done, folks seem interested and ready to receive, and this will be a major issue of attention this summer.

[OTHER NEW OFFER] — a longtime pal suggested the kernel of a story to me which is, in a stretch, loosely inspired by some comments and experiences I've shared. It's not autobiographical in any sense, but more like "extrapolating upon a fanciful impossibly farfetched fairy tale of an idea" but one which could—if done well—have tremendous commercial appeal and bankability. Again, the two issues to watch are TIME and MY ABILITY TO WORK AND PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS. I have been known, on occasion, to have a "strong personality" of the sort that sometimes proves difficult for some folks to live with for extended periods of time. I'm not a bastard, per se, but I can be moody and cantankerous and bombastic and perhaps even a touch arrogant and off-putting, so we'll see how this goes.

Roll in a alf dozen other oddball ideas and dreams that always seem to drift through the scene and that pretty much brings you up to speed.

I'd say more, but I really oughta be working.
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