Doin’ Work
My credit card just got a $30 hit from the Austin Film Festival so that must mean they received my 30 Rock script. And now the waiting.
I worked hard on this script. I probably did ten outlines and a couple of treatments, though only the final treatment came close to coherent.
Sitting frustrated at my desk at work I decided to imagine that Tina Fey– whoa, you usually don’t want to finish reading sentences that start like that– called me up and asked me to pitch my episode in as much detail as possible. So with a cramping hand I scrawled four pages. There it was, a complete episode with A, B, and C stories.
The next day I made this:
Over the next week post-its gathered like moss while I banged out a couple of pages per day. Then one afternoon, without premeditation, I sat down and didn’t get up until I had written the last 20 pages or so. My ass was numb, it was completely dark, and my dog was annoyed.
For a while I thought it was my best work yet, but now I’m not so sure. I keep thinking that it could have been funnier. Jokes keep popping up that I could have used, but oh well. My work is over now.
I sent it out to three contests: Script PIMP, Scriptapalooza, and Austin Film Festival.
It’s going to be a long summer.
03.31.09Screenwriting Competitions: My Two Cents
There’s been a lot of chatter on the screenwriting blogs about the value of competitions. Most recently there was some scandal about the Fade In competition here, which prompted a response from them here, and then it got uglier here. Threatening lawsuits, harassment, accusations, lame rhetoric–exciting!
I’ve entered a few competitions: TVWriter.com Spec Scriptacular (Finalist), Script PIMP (Grand Prize, TV), Austin Film Festival (Winner, Sitcom), and ScriptapaloozaTV (absolute loser).
Yeah, that last one pissed me off. Here’s the story, I first entered the Spec Scriptacular, made it to the final round so I made a bunch of revisions. Then I sent that revised script to the other three competitions. I was ecstatic when I won the first two, but I didn’t even make the quarterfinals of Scriptapalooza.
I felt betrayed. Surely they had made a mistake. I emailed just about all the other writers I knew. Okay, I sounded like a big baby. And they all replied with something like, “Contests are subjective.” But to this day I believe my script was just thrown in the trash and never scored. Wah wah wah!
So am I going to enter Scriptapalooza this year? Yep. I’m a sucker.
This post will be continued with more about my good experiences with competitions.
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