09

Jun

Script MashUp- Denzel Washington & Carly Rae Jepsen

Establishing Shot: Run Down City- Cape Town- Africa

CARLY RAE JEPSEN, 18, is dancing on a hot pink tin roof, swaying her hips.

Sketchy PASSERBYS walk by below.

Carly throws a dime into a muddy pond on the street.

Carly

I threw a wish in the well

A GANGBANGER (28) looks up at her on the roof and starts to pull out his gun.

Carly

Don’t ask me I’ll never tell. I looked to you as it fell, and now you’re in my way.

His 300lb MOTHER, 50, motions for him to give it a rest and follow her down the street.

Carly

I trade my soul for a wish, pennies and dimes for a kiss.

Suddenly, DENZEL WASHINGTON (60) is jumping over roofs towards Carly. He’s being shot at by more GANGBANGERS. A gunshot rips a hole in his jeans.

Carly

Ripped jeans, skin was showing. Where do you think you’re going baby?

Denzel turns around and gives her a weird stare.

Carly continues to run after him while singing and proclaiming her undying lust for Denzel.

Carly

Hey, I just met you. And this is crazy. But here’s my number, so call me maybe.

Gunshots erupt near Carly’s feet. She barely notices.

Int. Safe House- Cape Town- Next Day

Carly is standing in the interrogation room singing and dancing.

Denzel is pained, strapped to his chair, forced to listen to this. He winces each time she winks at him.

Denzel

You think you got me, but you don’t got me. No.

Carly

You took your time with the call, I took my time with the fall.

Denzel

Damn straight I took my time with the m@#$# f&@#@#ing call.

Carly

Now you’re in my way.

Denzel

Well then give me the money and we can all go home. No one’s gonna call no one here. You got me? You gotta just let it go.

Carly

You gave me nothing at all and now you’re in my way.

Carly bends over the long table and looks into Denzel’s eyes.

Carly

Your stare was holding, ripped jeans, skin was showing, where do you think you’re going??

Denzel

I aint going out with a 15 year old.

EXT-Run Down City- Cape Town- Africa- ROOF- Same

Carly is dancing again on the hot pink roof.

Carly

Hot night wind was blowing. Where you think you’re going baby?

Denzel is diving off the roof into a huge pit of mud to try and escape Carly.

Carly

Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, so here’s my number. You’ll need me baby. And all the other boys, they try to chase me, but here’s my………..

A bunch of GANGBANGERS run up and try to chase Carly off of the roof.

WE SEE Carly writing her number with mud on the side of a shanty town house. She’s in pain and sitting there holding her stomach.

Carly starts to fall out of consciousness and is kissing a pretend person; her head falls to the ground.

Denzel stands up and shrugs his shoulders.

Denzel

Ha. I wasn’t fooling you. I never said I would call. Why you thinking I was going to call?

347 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

Featured/Script Mashups/Scripties

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15

Apr

Ironic Placement

I stumbled upon the website: http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/ and was fascinated by Nina’s brain. She had multiple art projects detailed on her website and she uses photography,  sound, video and sculpture to prove her points. She’s the queen of pointing out the irony in our surroundings.

Take for example a car alarm. She did an art show that used real bird calls as car alarms. She pops popcorn and then uses Morse code to detail out what the kernels are telling us. This makes me think that I want to put a Morse code button outside on the roof and see if anything starts typing back! (Creepy, but I can’t help myself).

She has another project where she makes a statement by the titles of books found next to each other. Here’s the project: http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/languagetranslation/sortedbooks.php

I decided to go around my place and find my ironic placements:

Here you can see that Finding Private Ryan was rife with difficulties!

402 days ago Short URL 3 Comments

Existential Moments/Featured

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31

Mar

Things You Hear At A Pitch Fest

My writing partner and I took three of our scripts and went to a pitch networking summit. We’ve pitched many times before, but two of our projects are fairly new and we wanted to get more experience pitching them. We’ve had interest from studios but I was just curious what bites we’d get here because we haven’t signed a deal yet.

The main companies that go here are basically producers with money. You don’t see a lot of studios. Even so, it’s great to hear what people are looking for and practice your pitch!

You have to stand in line (100 lines in the ballroom hallway) and when they open the doors everyone in the first spot in line can run in and they have 5 minutes to find the corresponding table of executives/producers and pitch. You have to leave at the end of 5 minutes and if you didn’t get a “yes” —too bad! It’s really intense. If the table said yes you’ll usually get their business cards to send scripts to. If it’s a no, they just basically stare at you as you leave.

We pitched about 15 tables and it felt like we pitched about 50.  Some of the conversations I overheard while in line were pretty funny. Here are some tidbits:

They are half human, half iguana.

If you’re asking for my advice, I’d call that guy, who never got back to you, again.

You’ve seen Glee, right? Well this is similar only it has to do with pandas.

Lifetime is now taking pitches for miserable true life stories in line 67.

Raise your hand if you can’t hear me.

I know your film is about mass suicide, but I was actually looking for something more gory. You know, like blood splattering on every page, not just in the middle.

Yea, we wrote it with minimal CGI except for the dancing mutated alien sequence that takes place on Jupiter while the Sun explodes.

Going Nowhere Productions?

Puff away, might as well enjoy the only conference where we aren’t complete outcasts.

(Use pirate voice) That was a baptism by fire!

I’ll e-mail you if I don’t throw this paper out or rub a few boogers on it later.

You can try to top Twilight, but…. we might as well get real here.

I can’t feel my toes anymore.

I got 5 read requests and a toothbrush. Go to table 50; they have the big candy bars.

It’s a cross between Caddy Shack and Legends of the Fall …….and we think Mickey Rourke is interested.

My old neighbor’s son is now the janitor’s father’s uncle who now works at Paradigm.

What would they do if we just Leroy Jenkins’d it into the ballroom?

417 days ago Short URL Comments

Featured/Top Ten Lists

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13

Jan

How Did I Miss Ryan Adams?

I remember Ryan Adams coming onto the scene a few years ago. I never really listened to his albums because I was probably busy having Chris Martin’s baby. 

Ryan married Mandy Moore and we never saw that coming! The two of them have been pretty low key.

I spent an hour the other day looking up pictures on Google so I can actually SEE his face behind that died crunchy hair. He’s actually a pretty attractive guy. Well, the photo below isn’t the best!

I was downloading music for my trip during the holidays and ran into “Lucky Now” and loved the song. I have never sat and listened to his entire album. I also love “To Be Young”. He’s got an old soul and knows how to create a good enough hook to keep the audience involved.

I know not everyone is into the slower paced alternative/folk rock music like me (HUGE David Gray fan here) but it’s worth a listen if you get a chance. His music fits really well with a screenplay I’m writing right now which I feel will have some Tom Petty BG music as well.

495 days ago Short URL Comments

Featured

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06

Jun

Tsunami Dreams

I woke up around 5am this morning and ran to go get a pad of sticky notes and a pen from the living room. I had just experienced a very lucid dream; the kind that creates an entire story.  I have these dreams about once a week and the other nights seem to fade with unremarkable splices of my day.

There is a definite difference when you are experiencing a “message” or lucid dream.  I’m not saying that I receive messages from beyond; I’m not really sure what to call it. All I do know is that it’s usually intelligent, foretelling and oddly complete at every angle. What’s even stranger is I have had several instances where my dreams really do come true (awwww) but its not what you think. I tend to have a lot of pre-disaster dreams. Yes, at least 4 have actually happened exactly where I dreamed that it would.

A lot of people claimed to have dreams about 9-11 before it actually happened, and after my experiences, I think that’s probably true. I actually didn’t have 9-11 dreams but I had them for other earthquakes we have had in California.

I don’t always remember my dreams but I’ ve been trying to pay attention to them more because when I do remember them they provide extremely vivid imagery for my writing.

I had a series of dreams about an alien invasion that was so detailed and intense that I’ve decided to write an entire film out of it.

For about a week I was dreaming that there was a fire on my balcony. I would dart out of bed around 3am (the witching hour…gives me the creeps) and go out and look. I couldn’t go back to bed until I knew that the coast was clear. On the 6th day, I woke up as usual and walked out into the living room only to find my balcony up in flames. Well it wasn’t technically in flames but a flame orb was burning above my rod iron balcony fence.

Because I was up in time, I was able to close the sliding door and make sure the white wispy linen blinds didn’t catch on fire. Turns out, a car exploded right below my balcony.  I had told a bunch of my friends about this series of dreams because I was so tired of waking up every night for no reason. Needless to say when I texted them the photos they were freaked out!

One dream I had a couple years ago is still etched into my memory because of how vivid and scary it was.  To be brief, I was battling a supreme enemy (Ha!) and just when I thought I had beaten everyone, the enemy releases these metallic, robotic dogs into the ocean.  Hundreds of them run up the beach with a goal of attacking Los Angeles and killing everyone on site.

I told a few friends about this dream but had a hard time describing what these animals looked like.  Well, 2 years later (1 week ago) I was sitting on the couch watching a movie and saw the exact same scene take place in “Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen“.  Here’s a photo of one of the dogs/animals:

For the past couple months I have had dreams of a pending major flood in California. My dreams go up and down the coast so it’s clear that it’s a statewide disaster of some sort that takes place. I feel that its either late 2010 or in first half of 2011. I definitely feel that it’s a very large tsunami triggered by an earthquake.

My first dream took place in San Diego at the Hotel Coronado. An entire story played out right before the waves receeded. I was the first one who noticed this and I could barely yell because I was so scared. I was running up the sand yelling and pulling people to get up out of their chairs.  Suddenly a huge wave comes crashing into the shore (about 20-30 feet of water deep) as I run up the stairs.

-The week after that,  I have a dream where I am located in Morro Bay area. The water comes in and we all scramble for higher ground. This time I’m able to get a jeep and beat the water and drive all the way to the top of a mountain where a small church sits. About 10 of us are alive while the entire city is under water for what seems like an eternity. In fact, this dream was incredibly devastating and I woke up crying.  I felt like it was out of some movie and Tommy Lee Jones was going to round us all up to defeat the volcano. We stood there holding hands and looking out over the water logged city; grime and sweat across our faces.

Insert Twilight Zone Music Here…..

These dreams continue ….I had one in Hollywood where the water went into the Burbank area!!

Update: I think the Japan 2011 Tsunami was a warning; I still think we have one coming soon in CA.

1080 days ago Short URL 4 Comments

Existential Moments

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06

May

Lord Of War Is A Must See

lord-of-war-poster-2

The first and most important rule of gun-running is: never get shot with your own merchandise.

“After the Cold War, the AK-47 became Russia’s biggest export. After that came vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists.”…This DVD was sitting on the table at a friend’s house. I heard about this movie for about 3 seconds before it vanished into thin air. I’m sure some of you saw it, but most people didn’t. Let me tell you that you MUST see this film. Ask most people who have seen it (If you can find a person)..they will all say it was a surprisingly great film.

Nic’s character doesn’t know anything but a crappy family owned restaurant and a desire for something bigger and better- something necessary…something challenging…something that will make him a ton of money. He decides to sell weapons and soon finds out his personality, quick wit, ability to sniff out deals, and international connections, come in handy for the job- in fact he pisses off the best in the business.

Nic Cage doesn’t really focus on the morality, rather the money and success he is reaping. It’s those around him that point out fear, possible death, rejection and loss .  What if he lost his prized wife and son?  Is it all worth this only to have an empty, huge, downtown apartment?

One of his re-occurring clients is in Africa in the depths of hell where AIDS and murder is as common as a dirt road.  Africa really becomes a main focus because of the stark contrasts in factions, wars and violence.

Being chased by an Interpol agent, played by Ethan Hawke, does not phase Nic’s character because he has more than a million ways to trick and con the governments & embargo laws, etc.  Of course, it’s as simple as establishing relationships with key people;  key people that can be helpful and dangerous.  His brother Jared Leto decides to help him out on a few international sales calls although most of the time he’s got his head in a bag of coke. Leto becomes the mirror reflection of the deterioration happening on the inside of the violent countries – while being right in front of Cage’s face.

Money, greed, AIDS, violence- Nic Cage has found himself involved and responsible for the worst crimes in the world.  The film questions the necessity that the weapons represent, while at the same time, Nic is being called the LORD OF WAR. Is he? Is he really responsible for all the murder throughout the world because he sells guns? Does he pick sides? Can he continue to sell these weapons to developing countries and exploiting death, murder, rape and abduction? You know at some point Nic is going to see a reduction sauce forming out of his original ingredients…..and it’s going to change his life forever. “You know who’s going to inherit the world? Arms dealers. Because everyone else is too busy killing each other.”

What I really enjoyed about the film was the twisted ending (AWESOME) and the script is so good. This film teaches you the inside life of a weapons dealer, and who, what, when, why and how this is all happening across the world. Secondly, this film asks important questions that I had difficulty answering once I watched this film because of the benefits and losses the weapons create. Third, the acting was great and the cinematography, casting and plot was spot on. You’ll be surprised at what happens when Nic Cage simmers in his morality.

One of my favorite quotes:

“The reason I’ll be released is the same reason you think I’ll be convicted. I *do* rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of these men are the enemies of *your* enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss – the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year – sometimes it’s embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can’t be seen supplying. So. You call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I’m a necessary evil.”

 

Here is the script:

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/l/lord-of-war-script-transcript.html

1477 days ago Short URL 6 Comments

Film Reviews

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