80 Pages, Facebook Group Rant

80 pages refers to the page count we're at in the screenplay. Ze Frank once said that his favorite part of the creative process was when he was about 2/3rds of the way through a project. The older I get the more I realize I'm different from Ze in this regard. When I get to the 2/3rds point I'm usually about ready to be done with whatever I'm working on. Except I'm not quite sure what the next thing is going to be at this point. There will be a next thing but right now I don't know what it's going to be.

Just came across this Facebook group called "When Fred Phelps dies I'm going to picket his funeral." It's weird, because it's something I've thought about before. Whenever I read an article about a protest going on at a soldier's funeral, I always wonder if the same thing is going to happen when Phelps dies. And then I feel a little uncomfortable, because the thought of a person doing something like that strikes me as a little hypocritical.

So here's my two cents worth. When Fred Pheps dies, and if you're among the many who decide they want to picket at his funeral, I ask that you do this: instead of succumbing to the hate and hostility that Phelps and company express on a regular basis, be silent. Hold a sign that says "GOD LOVES ALL."

There is enough hate in this world. When Phelps dies it would be nice if there was some way we could let the world know there's a little less of it.

But all in all I think it would be a damn shame for a person who detested Phelps to inadvertently continue preaching his gospel.

Nerdy Writing Post

Script Frenzy ends at the end of this month, which means I have six days - including this one - to hit the 100 page mark of the screenplay. I came to accept not too long ago that this screenplay is probably going to be a little over a hundred pages, so I'm not too distraught about the prospect of not actually finishing it come April 30th.

I realize that's breaking the rules of this whole Script Frenzy thing. The rules are, of course, that you begin April 1st and finish April 30th. But I haven't exactly been following the rules. I started a little early - during one of the last few days of March - because I had a very strong urge to start writing something. I was afraid that if I started on something else, I'd either abandon what I was working on or be delayed from actually starting on the screenplay. So I just jumped right to it. Cheating, I know, but for me this isn't so much about following the rules. It's more about getting a screenplay of at least 100 pages written and finished.

I'm about 64 pages in, which means that I've got six days to hammer out at least another thirty six pages. That's about six pages a day, if I can keep on a daily schedule. This in itself seems a little unlikely - chances are I'll do a little bit of writing every day and a heck of a lot of writing come my day off and Friday - but I think I can pull this off.

Shimer College and The Future

Am I allowed to call Shimer my alma mater? Even though I didn't graduate from there? And even though I was only there for a semester? And even though I'm going to attend and graduate from another college?

The reason I ask is because even though I wasn't there for long, I still care deeply about the folks there. The students. The facilitators.

But I left. There were reasons that I'm sure you're fully aware of, which include (but are not limited to) copious amounts of introspection, deep contemplation with regard to the question what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my-life, a realization that the world of academia wasn't for me, a mental breakdown, and last but not least a re-partial-hospitalization.

And another big stressor that was on the pile: serious struggles between Shimer's management - the board and its president - and its constituency - its alumni, students, and faculty. Over the past few months things just got worse and worse. The board, which the president stacked in his favor, voted to change the school's mission statement to something written by him - a statement that no faculty member or student supported. There were rumors about changing the structure of how classes at Shimer worked. And then rumors about trying to get rid of certain faculty members and students. Faculty is bad enough, but students?

So about a week ago the faculty released an announcement. They said that they'd unanimously voted no confidence in the ability of Tom Lindsay to run Shimer college. That was followed by a similar vote by the Alumni Association. And then the Assembly, Shimer's leadership body-cum-minature Congress, placed a vote of no confidence against Tom Lindsay.

Three strikes. A day later - today - and the National Association of Scholars announced that Shimer's board of trustees has voted to remove Tom Lindsay from his office as president.

That's huge. That's fucking huge.

I don't know what's going to happen next. God knows it's not going to be all easy going from here for Shimer. They still need an interim president.* They need to do something about the inevitable drop in admissions and reputation that Shimer's suffered after all this craziness. And maybe most importantly, steps need to be taken to ensure that this sort of thing will never happen again.

I may have no idea what's going to happen next, but I do know this: I'm terribly proud of everyone there who's worked hard to keep Shimer from changing into a different sort of beast. I wish I could be there to party with them tonight. And even though this appears to be a happy ending (beginning?), I still wish there was more that I could have done to help out.

So if any of you Shimer people are reading this: good work. And congratulations.

*Edit: It turns out there is already an interim president in place. One less thing to worry about, right?

Iowa, Columbia

Today so far is a weird mix of lazy and productive. Getting around to sorting through gigantic piles of laundry, waking up late, being unshowered, and getting around to doing a blog post.

Somehow lately I've moved from writing posts of a more critical nature - that is to say posts about stuff I've read/watched/played/listened to - to posts of a more autobiographical, mundane, bloggy nature. That's interesting. I'm usually not terribly conscious about these sort of shifts in writing that I go through when writing for this blog, since I tend to avoid reading the archives. So realizing that has caused a little lightbulb to go off somewhere in the back of my brain.

I think I mentioned a while back that I was going to do a tour of Iowa as well as Columbia. It was kind of a mini-tour. I've got a pretty decent amount of experience with the Iowa campus, so a full fledged "look at our buildings!" tour seemed a little unnecessary. Instead I just went with a meeting with one of the Cinema department heads. That went okay. The thing is, though, I decided not long after that visit that Iowa is not the place for me. I'm really interested in the writing component of the film creation process, and it didn't seem like Iowa's department was really focused on that. I got the vibe that they were more about combining the critical theory aspect of it all with the production aspect. That was particularly apparent when the department head said that students can only take one production class a semester. That was a dealbreaker for me. See, I want to be able to get as much experience as possible in the actual process of making things. And I think Columbia'd be a better place for that than Iowa.

Plus, I love Chicago. Not only is the city wonderful, but there are so many more opportunities for exploring stuff I'm interested in outside of the classroom.

It seems like I'm going to be going to Columbia this summer. I haven't recieved an acceptance letter, but I did get an email that said, "Hey, we're really excited you're going to be joining us for classes this summer! We hope to see you at summer orientation!" So although it's not a big envelope in the mail, it does seem like on in an implicit sense at least.

I'm excited about it. Now would be a wonderful opportunity for me to be all full of doubt, but this seems right. I like making stuff. I think I'll be able to do that a lot at Columbia.

Peter Hedges

Jordan and I went to see Peter Hedges give a talk at Hoyt Sherman yesterday. For the uninitiated, Hedges is a Valley alum and writer responsible for the novel What's Eating Gilbert Grape, the screen adaptation of Nick Hornby's About a Boy, the film Pieces of April, and more recently, a book called The Heights which I haven't had the chance to take a look at yet.

All that's really cool, but the real kicker is this: Hedges was a member of the Baker's Dozen Mime Troupe. Two words. Hell. Yes.

His talk was great. The guy's really charming, passionate about writing, and got a great sense of humor. He talked about his recent book, growing up in Iowa, and what led to getting his first book, Gilbert Grape, published.

And he talked a lot about being a mime. A lot about being a mime.

He spent about fifteen minutes standing at a podium, where he gave a little speech and read a portion from his book. But that didn't last long. "Alright," he said, "let's just jump right into the questions. And if your questions aren't any good, I'm going to have to do some miming."

Of course I couldn't resist asking a question about mimes. "How did the Baker's Dozen affect you as a creative person?"

Before answering, Hedges took a moment to give a brief history of the troupe. "Basically, if you weren't on the football team and you wanted to be popular, you prayed you were a mime. We were mimes," he said, "but we talked. We were talking mimes." He mentioned how attempting to explain this to his friends in New York doesn't tend to go over so well. One of his friends - I believe it was the director of Wicked - was positively livid with his description. "Mimes don't talk! You weren't mimes!"

And then he talked a little bit about the process of putting shows together. And what was really wonderful about that was that his words rang true. The process for putting shows together hasn't changed a whole lot over the years; Hedges characterized it as a very last second affair that always manages to come together come Thursday night at 7:30.

Unfortunately I've got to resort to paraphrasing, but his answer to the question went something like this: don't worry about working at the last second. Jump and the safety net will come later. Put in the work and things will come together.

Oh, and his mime name? Fetus. Except apparently, back in the day, he misspelled Fetus.

Work and Script Frenzy

Sorry the blog post well has been a little dry as of late. Two things keep me from posting. The first is work. The second is Script Frenzy.

Work's pretty self-explanatory. I don't know if I've gone into a lot of details about it, but it goes a little something like this:

I go to my cubicle and I make phone calls. Phone calls to businesses. I ask the business if people who say they work there do indeed work there. The fancy name for this process is a Verbal Verification of Employment. It's monotonous, but it pays pretty well and I get a heck of a lot of hours. Plus I have the opportunity to read in between calls, which has caused my bookstack to shrink pretty drastically over the past couple of weeks.

The thing that probably amuses me the most about my job is the abbreviations that our computer system comes up with. It takes it upon itself to shorten certain businesses or job titles. Yesterday I had to call the New York Presbyterian Hospital, which showed up as NEW YORK PRESBYTERIAN HOS. On a similar note, every now and then someone's job title is something like "nurse assistant" or "numbers analyst," which may show up as "NURSE ASS" or "NUMBERS ANAL." So anyway I think our computer system has some sort of fixation with things scatological.

The second thing is a little less self explanatory. Script Frenzy. Over the month of people a bunch of people hunker down and pledge to write a 100 page script - may it be for a TV show, film, play or graphic novel - in a month's time. That's about three pages a day, which isn't so bad. Plus, I've never attempted to write a feature before, so hey, why not give it a shot?

My script is called Plymouth. It's about a guy who was attempting to break a world record for sailing and arrived on the shores of the Atlantic to find that humanity has seemingly disappeared. I'm about 30 pages in.

I'm really bad at finishing projects. That means I'm pretty awful at writing long things. (I can be bad at finishing short things, for that matter.) Most of the time I got bored or disillusioned with my projects. I go "this is no good" and banish them to some corner of my hard drive. My body of unfinished work greatly exceeds that of pieces I've finished.

I've been trying to change that. Script Frenzy's been helping me with that. It's reinforced two things: that I can indeed write even when I'm not in the mood, and that I can finish something like this when I set my mind to it.

I'm not saying that what I've got so far is great. But I'm putting words on the page. If I work hard enough I'll have a whole screenplay. I'll have completed something pretty damn long. I think that's pretty good at least.

Irish Slime People

I tend to have my weirdest dreams the moment before my alarm clock goes off. I'm convinced that this one took place between the minutes of 7:58 AM and 8:00 AM.

What happened was I was on Fullerton not too far away from DePaul. In the distance were big Russian cathedrals, onion domes and all. Walking past me was a big group of Irish street punks. Maybe that's not the right term for them. Anyway, they were a bunch of Irish guys of various age and size. They were shouting things like "We have a permit to kill anyone in our path!"

Bizarre enough as is, but then a certain hour passed and they all began to melt. They turned into green slime, not unlike the stuff from the heyday of Nickelodeon. The transformation went slowly. First they were like 90% person and 10% slime. Then they were big slime figures. At this point they could still walk around a little bit. Some of them took this venture to sink into grates in the street; others scrawled words on car windows with their disintegrating bodies. Then they were just slime. And somehow I knew that they were going to transform back into Irish street punks again.

Freaky stuff, but as I watched it, I was an emotionless observer. I just accepted it. But when I woke up I had this cloud of eeriness floating over me.