Gettin' Stuff Done

Thats right. Learnt. Sure, it hasnt made me rich yet, and probably wont, but Ive managed to hammer out two short scripts this weekend. Four and eight pages, respectively. Both a little darker than my usual work, but both I feel are respectable efforts. Will they get produced? Hopefully. At the very worst Ill produce/direct/star in them myself. Does that make me an auteur? I doubt it. In other news, Ive spent the rest of my weekend researching recent feature spec script sales. What Ive learned is that much of what Im writing is too indie for Hollywood. Im not saying Im a horrible writer (though I could be&) but Im beginning to realize that I need to think bigger in my writing. Instead of the $1 million film, I need to start thinking about the $20 million film. Of the four features Ive completed, plus the most recent one I started, they all take place in one to three days. I think this is okay, but the problem lies in the fact that they could all probably be filmed in real time. Thats probably not okay. Maybe Im exaggerating a little bit, but still. For comedy specs, here are the two biggest things I noticed in my research: 1) They had a catchy/zany title, like, The Many Deaths of Barnaby James, a 2008 Black List finalist, written by Brian Nathanson. Id bet this is a name to remember. 2) They had an equally catchy/zany logline, like, “A teenage apprentice in a macabre circus for the dead yearns to bring his true love back to life, but not before encountering the many dangerous and mysterious gothic characters that stand in his way.” Both catchy and both zany. I now know this is what I need to do. Im a comedy writer. I should be able to come up with something equally catchy and equally zany. Also, I need to stop using the word zany before I punch myself in the face. Love, The Unemployed Screenwriter