In which I try my hand at daily blogging.

Hi, kids!

Now, don't get too excited. We all know I can be a terrible liar when it comes to blogs. But I think I may try and update this thing like a normal person for once... just to see what it's like.

So, what have I been up to in the past, oh... six months or however long it's been?

Well. I watched Angel for the first time and it became one of my favorite things, ever. I was elected director of the BORG play-- we're going to do selections from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio plays, and I'm cutting them now. I've read a few books.

But two or three days ago, I figured out how to turn Keeping Faith from the novel that's always been a part of my soul into the movie in my head and my heart and my hands. Which is amazing and feels like fate and I just...

I've never thought that I had the ability to write a full novel. I think in terms of characters, and not in terms of plots-- I've never been the kind of person who can start a story from a premise.

But film, I think, provides a fantastic cure for that: the clear-cut three-act structure. One valuable thing I learned from taking Screenplay with a rule-abiding Hollywood school writer at the same time as I took American Independent film is that... I hate independent film. I don't like experiments, I don't like vagueness, I don't like surreality. I like clean setup and payoff, and snarky banter, and happy endings.

Perhaps you're less surprised by this revelation than I was.

In any case. Keeping Faith, close as it was to me, has always been about my deep knowledge and love for Faith and David as characters... I've never really had a plot to go with them. I know certain circumstances of their lives, but events alone do not a plot make.

But thank you Syd Field, thank you Marc Weinberg, thank you Joseph Campbell-- I have a beginning and an end, now, and they came to me when I was least looking for them. I haven't even thought about Faith or David in months. So all I need is a middle and a few thousand dollars, and the movie's practically done already.

Oh, yeah, that's something that's... happening. This story is my baby. And I'll be damned if it never gets produced. I'm too much of a crazy control freak about them not to write/direct/cast the thing myself, so I guess it doesn't matter how little regard I have for traditional indie film: looks like I'm gonna be a part of it. It will take me years, but... this feels right. I can't not do it.

And hey. There are plenty of people who make three-act indies that subscribe to formulas. I'm not breaking new ground here. Just look at Imagine Me & You.

No, seriously. Go look at it. It's a good movie.

So... how'd I do? Crazy and random enough for you? I can't imagine why you'd want a daily dose of this, but it promises to be interesting, if nothing else.