Long Time No See

It's closing in on two weeks since my last post.

I don't really feel sorry about it because the time has been well spent. I'm gearing up for my screenplay reading at IO. It's the first major public performance of anything I've written, and I kinda wish it was something I felt a little more comfortable with.

The script in question is "Intelligent Life." In the last semester of my senior year at college, I took Sci-Fi screenwriting with Sandy Berg. With me in the class was Pat, who'd I'm met in a solo performance class. As soon as I met Pat, I knew we were going to be friends. We had similar sense of humor, we were both writers in an actor filled class, and we were both dorks. Big time dorks. So when we got in the same Sci-Fi screenwriting class, we decided to try writing together. And write we did. We finished the first draft of "Intelligent Life" in that class over the span of about four months.

Of course the script stunk. It wasn't horrible. There were a lot of great jokes in it, but it was definitely a freshman voyage.

After graduation, I moved back to Iowa. Pat stayed in LA. He still had one more year of school, and then he got a job out there. Every once in a while, one of us would e-mail the other with ideas to rewrite "Intelligent Life." Some work was done here, notes there. I'm not sure which one of us spawned the last major rewrite, but the script slowly began to morph into something of which we could be proud. Or at least more tolerable.

We worked it and reworked it until the point came where neither of us wanted to even look at it anymore. We gave out copies to our friends and got their comments. Then sent a copy to our old teacher Sandi Berg because she had always said that if her students finished anything they started in her classes, she would read it, and if she thought it was up to speed, pass it on. Her notes to us were, "Good writing, but I just didn't get it." 

So that was it. We let the script sit and started our next one.

Then, about a month ago, I decided I wanted to have a screenplay reading. I booked space at IO, and decided to do a quick rewrite before I started casting. That quick rewrite turned into an all out wrestling match with the script that didn't end until Monday.

Now, I'm just sitting and waiting, refreshing my e-mail inbox every half an hour to see if I've gotten responses from any of the actors I've asked to participate. That's been a roller coaster. Everyone I though for sure I could get has said no, and people I asked thinking they'd never be a part of it have said yes. Overall, it should be a pretty good show (if I get any women to read).

August 14th. That's the go day. I hope people find it funny. Even though it's been rewritten beyond compare (I think only two scenes remain exactly as they were in the original), it's still a freshman voyage. I'm setting myself up to fail big here, but at least I'm doing something. Something writerly, too. And unless I get torn to shreds by an angry mob after the reading, I'm sure I'll be setting another one up in two or three months.

This kind of production agony can be addicting.