Descendants update…

If you read the blog earlier today, I posted an update on the status of the DESCENDANTS project.

The short version, as I said in that post, is that the version of the project I worked on for two years is dead. I then continued in that post with my perspective and experience of how the project fell apart. It was a bit of frustration venting, of course.

And it was up for a bit, and then I got a message from our guy over at Dark Horse. And now the post is down.

I wasn’t asked to take it down. In fact, when I spoke with him on the phone I offered to take it down and he said it wasn’t necessary. He, in fact, wanted to apologize for the way the project had panned out and that he was still hoping we could do something together. So while I don’t think I said anything libelous in the post, and made sure not to name names even with that in mind, I feel it would be ingracious of me to leave any dirty laundry out there after our conversation. I don’t like how this project turned out, but I liked working with them when it was going well, and that’s not a bridge I want to burn.

Getting a movie going is a bit like catching lightning in a bottle, really. All the right elements have to come together, and in this case they just didn’t. Some of that was within our control and judgement errors were made (on my part as much as anyone else’s, if not more), some was outside our control. But the upshot is that DESCENDANTS isn’t going to happen, at least not the version with which I was involved.

I also probably won’t post the scripts after all, at least not before discussing it with Joey. That’s also not a bridge I’m out to burn. So I’ll just have to find something else to post about.

Meanwhile, it’s full steam ahead on KUNG FU RED. In fact I think I’ll post about that one next…

The Descendants — the Story So Far

I keep saying that I want to use this blog to talk about my experiences in the serious-business Hollywood machine. But so far what few I have had, I’ve kept to myself — mainly because they’re deals-in-progress and there’s nothing solid to announce yet. And I’m afraid I’ll jinx it by announcing it ahead of time.

But there’s one project that, with the beginning of a new year, I think it’s safe to talk about, and especially since it’s likely to be indicative of how things are going to be from here on — The Descendants. I’ve made oblique references to the project, and people following my YouTube page have probably seen the trailer. But I want to talk about the story of the project thus far.

Touching base

Sorry I haven’t updated this week. I’ve had other duties to attend to.

Anyone following my Twitter feed knows some of this already, but I’ll go for it anyway.

Firstly, I’ve officially wire-transferred the money to pay for the RED camera and all the accessories. In my previous post on the tripod I meant to mention this, but if you live in California and your main source of income is TV or film production/postproduction, the California State Board of Equalization is your friend. Specifically, Regulation 1532, and most specifically, Section 6378.

What is Section 6378? It is a form you fill out and present when making a purchase of any equipment that you will use more than 50% of the time for “teleproduction”. It is a sales tax exemption of 5.25% — meaning that instead of 8.25%, you pay 3% in sales tax for said equipment/products. Tripods, computers, cameras, accessories…aaaalllll gooooood.

Considering the size of the purchases I’ve been making, that one little form has saved me nearly $3000 in sales tax. Which means I have a cushion for making payments AND a little extra for accessories I didn’t know about before.

The wire transfer takes a few days, they’ll probably ship by the end of next week and it’ll probably be in a week or so after that. Then we play.

Next bit of news. I finished and submitted my latest draft of The Descendants. Everyone liked the script in general and hated Act 2 in particular.

I don’t blame them. Act 2 is fucked. Act 2 is always fucked. It’s probably the hardest part of any script — at least for me. Usually I’ll generally know the beginning, generally know where I want to get to at the end, and it’s bridging the middle bit that’s the nightmare.

But I think it’s almost there. I give the middle section a bit more purpose and we’re ready to take it to the next step. I got some really great notes from the producers and some readers and I think this next draft might really be the one.

I’ve read for a few friends in return, one script and one treatment. Luckily both by good writers. Both stories have potential, and I like wrestling with other peoples’ ideas, seeing what I can do to make them more interesting to me. Giving notes is always a subjective thing, so I just focus on what I think would fascinate me and get me talking after a film.

Good stuff all around but a lot of writing (especially the giving notes part; I try to be thorough), so my writing muscles needed a rest from the blog.

I’ll probably go light this weekend, but I’ve got a few YouTube vids to share so that should make up for my silence this week.

One Year of RvD2, Five Years of RvD

One year ago, on March 1, 2007, Ryan and I released RvD2: Ryan vs. Dorkman 2 on YouTube. As of this writing YouTube counts 2,618,867 views of the film, and new people continue to find and comment on it on a daily basis.

Five years ago, March 1 2003, Ryan and I released the original Ryan vs Dorkman, having no idea what it would get us, besides bragging rights on a message board. From its sudden YouTube popularity in March/April 2006, we got industry contacts — including my manager — worldwide attention, and the kick in the pants we needed to go make RvD2, which set off a brand new round of fun and attention.

So, with the anniversary of both films — a year of RvD2, and a full half-decade of RvD — I thought it was a good opportunity to chat about what we’ve been up to this year.

And now for something completely different.

There’s some good news to go along with the bad.

-Ray Park, best known as Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace, has just been cast as Snake-Eyes in the upcoming live-action G.I. JOE movie. That is so cool. I’ve had the outstanding fortune of working with Ray on our Descendants teaser, and he’s still attached to star in the feature if the writer’s strike ever ends. Besides the fact that it’s going to put the heat back on his name, and make it easier to sell a movie with him attached, Ray is just a great guy and I’m just terribly excited for him. He deserves it.

-My good buddy Travis has at long long last released “Six in the Morning,” the sequel to the popular “Three in the Afternoon“. I’ve seen it. I liked it. We will have to podcast about it.

-RvD2 Behind the Scenes DVDs are at the replicators and should be ready around the Christmas season. They look great and I think all our fans, those who donated and those who ordered DVDs specifically, will be pleased and find them worth the wait.

-Haven’t done a YouTube find in a while. Got a Robot Chicken sketch for ya today. If you’re an RC fan you’ve probably already seen it. I had seen it before, but it’s been a while, and for those who haven’t, I thought I’d share.

The funniest part, to me, is how scandalized Mario is by the “Princess” and her proposition.

A good day…

Finished the Descendants treatment last night. The final page count was 22 pages, including cover page.

I was wild about it because, quite frankly, it rocks. I’m not going to say it’s the best thing ever written, but I think plot-wise it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, and that’s what excited the hell out of me. Inspiration struck and this great story just all fell into place. At the end of it I had written something that I would love to pay to see in a theatre, to say nothing of having the privilege of making it.

I sent it off and I bit my nails wondering what the others would think. Would Chris (the producer) think it was too expensive or complicated? Would Joey balk at the liberties I had taken with some of the material? Would Ray come back with “I already did a film like this”?

I really thought I had captured what everyone liked about the comics, what compelled them to want to make the film in the first place, but I couldn’t be sure. So you can imagine my relief when Ray — who doesn’t often respond unless he’s really moved to — e-mailed back saying “I really like it, great job guys.” I saw Chris to drop off a DVD copy of the teaser, and when I asked what he thought, he just grinned and nodded. Shortly after that, Joey called and he was really excited, saying it really captured what we were trying to achieve in our development of the project.

In other words, everyone liked it.

I’m just thrilled to death because this is a movie I would positively love to shoot, and it looks like that’s the goal. There are a few notes, which I agree with, and after I finish this other project next week, I write the script, and then we look for funding.

There’s nothing more thrilling, or rewarding, than to finish a project thinking “I nailed this” and have the people who make the calls say “yep, you nailed it.”

Also, the spaghetti sauce I made for dinner tonight was absolutely perfect. I am ON today.

When it’s good…

I love writing. I really do. When it’s good. Because when it’s good, it’s really good. You get in the rhythm and the flow and the story starts telling itself to you, and you just have to hope you can keep up.

It’s not always like that. Usually it’s awful, you have to strain and strain just to get SOMETHING on the page, and when you do, it’s crap. You know it’s crap. But you have to put more crap on the page or else you’re not going to get anywhere. You have to create the raw materials for the process. More specifically, you have to get all the bad ideas out of your head and onto the page, so you can crumple them up, toss them out, and start over.

But oh man, four or five drafts in, it just all suddenly starts to click. Ideas you had that you couldn’t make work in the first draft suddenly pair up with seemingly unrelated but equally unworkable ideas from the third draft, and then suddenly bingo, they work. They work so perfectly it’s hard to believe you didn’t plan it that way.

I had one of those experiences tonight, writing up a new treatment for The Descendants. Joey (the creator of the original comic book) and I have been banging our heads against a wall trying to come up with a story that’s true to the spirit and the premise of the comic, while injecting new life into the concept; the opportunity to blow it up the size of a building and expand it beyond the scope of the comics is too good to pass up. But we couldn’t come up with a solid storyline. We’ve done several drafts, first collaboratively and then back-and-forth individually, and with Joey’s most recent draft I started to feel like we had hit a brick wall, we just weren’t cracking this thing the way we needed to.

I had a similar problem with another concept I had, which my manager was very excited about as a concept, but I couldn’t for the life of me formulate a plot. He still wants to do it. I still want to do it. But it’s stuck in limbo without any kind of real storyline. And I couldn’t bear to think of that happening on Descendants.

So I started to despair, I freaked out a little. It was a low point on the project, for me. But then I took the new outline, and all the previous outlines, and all the other ideas we’d bandied about, and most importantly, the comics themselves. And I looked them all over, out of order. And things started to click.

I wrote 8 pages of the treatment in one sitting, which is tough to do. Writing at that pace is genuinely exhausting, but it was great to feel so excited and adrenalized by the concept again. I don’t know if the team will even like it, and it will probably need to undergo changes (there is always a better way of doing something), but I’m damn proud of this treatment.

I have to get back to writing it — I need to get the third act on paper and send it out to the team — but I was taking a break from the aforementioned marathon session, and thought I’d exult about the rare moment of total story clarity that makes writing worthwhile.

When it’s bad, there are few things I want to do less. But when it’s good…