My Bumpy Road Through “Hollywood” – My 2003 Business Plan & Financial Projection for EVERYBODY SAYS GOODBYE

The indie film world was very different than it is today. This was before the near destruction of indie film caused by the triple disasters of the Writers Strike, Digital Disruption, and the Great Recession a few years later. The excitement around "cheap digital filmmaking" was centered on the Canon XL1 mini-DV standard definition camera. If you were cool in Hollywood in those days, you had to carry around an XL-1.

My bumpy road through “Hollywood” – PALLION THE YOUNG STALLION spec script for BoJack Horseman

My favorite show on Netflix is BoJack Horseman, which reveals a lot about me, since it’s a show about an emotionally dysfunctional has-been in Hollywood. So, back in January 2018, I was motivated to write a spec script for the show. I thought maybe I could replay the events decades earlier, described in “My Bumpy …

My Bumpy Road Through “Hollywood” — A VENOM IN THE BLOOD

Two decades ago, I bought a book. In producer-speak, that means I acquired the rights via option to make a movie from a book. I knew a TV news reporter, and she had made contact with a reclusive author who wrote a book she thought I might be interested in. Actually, “reclusive” is too weak …

“Story-making”

Production is morphing into ... what? Is it "filmmaking" if there's no film? Are we "taping" a program if there's no tape? Are they "films" or "movies" it they are viewed on a smartphone? Is it "Television" if it's streaming online on demand? The technology of production and the delivery methods are no longer pertinent …

Coffee joints for Writers & Filmmakers in NYC & L.A.

This is just for writers and filmmakers! =} Writers and filmmakers are often hauling their laptops to coffee houses for writing and working. In New York and Los Angeles, there are many such places, but sometimes they are difficult to find. Let’s build a list of coffee joints where we like to work. Besides, we …

How to Start Writing a Screenplay

There are a lot of screenwriting gurus. That's because there are so many people who want to write screenplays and are scared to death about doing it wrong. It seems that, for every 100 people who are afraid of the number of brads that must be in a script (two), the typeface that must be …

My Bumpy Road Through “Hollywood” — THE MOVIE THAT NEEDS TO BE MADE

After working in television, radio, and video since high school, I eventually pushed myself into the indie film biz, which suited my creative and entrepreneurial nature. That involved me acquiring scripts and novels of other writers and trying to make them into movies. [UPDATED, see end of blog posting.] For instance, I acquired a New …