“Ricordati che è un film comico.”* – Frederico Fellini

To say that the last year has been a weird one would be a huge understatement. On the creative front, I’m keeping up where I can. If I can carve out some time to write, I will.

I’ve always talked about making a movie, and in the last couple of weeks I’ve taken the legitimate first steps toward doing it. As part of my USC M.F.A. application I had to submit a 10-page sample of work. It didn’t have to be in any particular form, but because I applied to their School of Cinematic Arts, I wanted to push myself and write a screenplay, something which I had never done before.

I took fragments of writing that I’ve been working on for some time, and through some process that seemed like divination, conjured up a story. FUTURE PERFECT, an idea that was meant to be a book, has now become the first 10-pages of a screenplay.

You can download it by clicking any of the links below.

What’s next? First, write more of course, but more important would be to see what I could do with these short scenes in a 3-dimensional way. The whole process has been very informative.

So, here’s throwing it out to the Universe. Let’s make a movie.

DOWNLOAD | 10-page-Writing-Sample

DOWNLOAD | 10-page-Writing-Sample

DOWNLOAD | 10-page-Writing-Sample

DOWNLOAD | 10-page-Writing-Sample

*“Remember, this is a comedy.”

“Dis moi qui tu hantes et je te dirai qui tu es”* – André Breton

Any Color You Like (GLFICTION), with all of its imperfections, was submitted during August of 2018 for a contest put together by Goldline Press. The skeleton of the story was first sketched out in the following BLOG posts:

• The Museum
• Brother
• Modern Logic
• Grandma

Over a couple of months, it came together to be something different than what I had originally started, however, I’m happy with the end result. You can download it by clicking any of the links below.

DOWNLOAD | GLFICTION

DOWNLOAD | GLFICTION

DOWNLOAD | GLFICTION

DOWNLOAD | GLFICTION

*“Tell me who you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are”

“The Universe ends every day …” – Paige

UPDATED on 11/21/2018

This work, like many of the pieces that I have written, is interconnected with others. I’ll give a brief description of the parts below, and add PDF’s for each chapter as I complete them.

The name came from the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, from the mouth of Lynch himself, talking about a vision that he had for his work. Most of the ideas for DARK FANTASTIC DREAMS, however, came to me while visiting Japan during the Fall of 2018. I wanted to write about Los Angeles, but I wanted interconnected stories, similar to what was going in in ANY COLOR YOU LIKE.

The scnes came to me in fragments and slowly I started piecing together a story. The line, “the Universe ends every day,” popped into my mind while visiting a temple in Tokyo. The other lines followed in no particular order, and close to the end of the trip, in a Hotel Room in Osaka at 4 A.M., the last line came to me in a dream – “I was alone in the cold dry sea.”

I was reading East of Eden at the time, so I took to heart what Steinbeck said about knowing the end point, the goal, and then forgetting it and focusing on the journey. So, I woke up in the darkness of the room and wrote a long note on my phone. I arbitrarily decided on roughly 10 twenty-page chapters, picked out their names, and started writing.

It’s an L.A. story, but Japan taught me how to use the tools that I needed.

The first scene for DARK FANTASTIC DREAMS has since been re-worked into a screenplay for the Writing Sample portion of my M.F.A. application.

DARK FANTASTIC DREAMS:

B: “The Universe end every day.”

1.  ACYL
2. Tomorrow Never Knows
3. Searching for Order (Stay Behind Yellow Lines)
4. Nada
5. Exodus
6. Sometimes We Need Our Demons (How Soon Is Now?/Love IV Ever)
7. Ven Aqui
8. Osaka Station City
9. I Never Want to Say Goodbye
10. Grandparents

E: “I was alone in the cold dry sea.”

Los Angeles