A few friends who attended my recent wedding suggested I post my wife and I's personal vows. Here they are....
Kat, we read in Genesis, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife," and in Proverbs "Who so findeth a wife findeth a good thing." In you, I have found the best thing, a strong, independent woman who loves me unconditionally, supports my ambitions and dreams and knows me in way no one can pretend to. For nearly eight years, I have had the pleasure of growing up with you, loving you more still each day. You have been my solace, my strength, my source of joy and laughter. You are truly the best thing about me. When I think of us, I think of Johnny Cash and June Carter, a love unchanged by time and built on a trust that knows no limits. As we stand here, surrounded by people we love, family and our dear friends, I am so honored to take you as my wife...and so thrilled that we get to take this journey together. I love you.
Max, On this April afternoon , I am reminded of the verse James 1:17 which says, "Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." With a gift such as you, I believe that with all my heart and soul. I was sixteen when I fell in love with you. You changed how I thought, how I dreamed. You made me feel such hope. Your love and dedication to me have never faltered. There is no one I trust in and care for more than you. For close to eight years, I have laughed with you, cried with you and all the while felt at home in your arms. I am so very excited to take you as my husband and so very ready for the next chapter in our lives. I love you.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Writing A Screenplay
There's nothing more or less rewarding than screenwriting. It's a constant "how does this sound" vs "how will this transfer to screen" debate. There's the never ending self esteem issues that come with writing alone, as in you never know how good or bad something is until you let people take a gander.
I've been blessed thus far with good reviews on the occasion when someone sits down and takes it in. That gives me the courage and where with all to keep going, keep bettering my style and pace. I love it. I hate it. It has become as natural as rain. I miss it when I take a day or five off. I loathe it when I write for too long. There's no comparison to the feeling when it all comes together, when your characters stop being characters and take on their own personalities. That's the sweet spot every writer craves. There's no other rage like when you remember you're writing and everything comes out contrived. It's a great contrast of emotions.
I think with independent screenplays, with any script really, the idea is to convey a group of ideas that may or may not be your own. That's where a lot of patience, some imagination and the will to go out of ones comfort zone play a huge role. You have to lose all sense of self in order to construct a fictional world full of fictional people. Distance is key to that sort of process, distance from your own opinions, distance from your convictions and ideals. It's imperative that your story become an entirely separate life force, complete with a heart beat and a mindset all its own. At the core of your message, there must, I think, exist a universal element central to all humanity, something each person can take and make their own.
From there, its this emotional process of investing some aspect of who you are into the characters, maybe just something simple. You have to relate to their guilt, their decision in some manner. If you can't, you won't be able to make them come off the page and into focus. That last ingredient of self is vital to the final product. When that piece is added to the puzzle, all things unclear become transparent.
My original attempt at screenwriting was awful, a fifty page mountain of cliches and overwrought monologues. To this day, I cringe when I pull it out. The characters talk too much and they have no real arch's. It's all flat and pretentious and overlong. But I keep it, as a reminder that we all start somewhere. It helps me keep my head up, knowing I'm able to grow as a writer, that stagnation has not yet kept me back.
The highs make up for the lows, though, and I'm fairly confident in my ability to deliver. My first full length project was a script for one of my last college classes, an advanced writing course. I had no idea what to expect going in. I was nervous as I could be. I wound up reading the script, which had some rough language based on it being a long conversation between two Army vets, with my professor, who was a woman. Hearing her lady like voice reading such harsh dialogue made me feel sort of honored, like she let her guard down to play the character I created. When it was all said and done, I got a standing ovation. That was my first clue I wasn't delusional. One of the tougher hombres in my class took me aside and told me "you need to do this for the rest of your life". He was a veteran himself and he felt I'd nailed the dialects and the verbage well. He also liked the rather morbid ending.
The truth is, you have to find a voice you can call your own. You can read scripts you like, watch movies you dig and quote people you like all day...in the end, its up to you to make a difference, take some chances and get it done. That's where I'm at...and its an interesting place to be.
I've been blessed thus far with good reviews on the occasion when someone sits down and takes it in. That gives me the courage and where with all to keep going, keep bettering my style and pace. I love it. I hate it. It has become as natural as rain. I miss it when I take a day or five off. I loathe it when I write for too long. There's no comparison to the feeling when it all comes together, when your characters stop being characters and take on their own personalities. That's the sweet spot every writer craves. There's no other rage like when you remember you're writing and everything comes out contrived. It's a great contrast of emotions.
I think with independent screenplays, with any script really, the idea is to convey a group of ideas that may or may not be your own. That's where a lot of patience, some imagination and the will to go out of ones comfort zone play a huge role. You have to lose all sense of self in order to construct a fictional world full of fictional people. Distance is key to that sort of process, distance from your own opinions, distance from your convictions and ideals. It's imperative that your story become an entirely separate life force, complete with a heart beat and a mindset all its own. At the core of your message, there must, I think, exist a universal element central to all humanity, something each person can take and make their own.
From there, its this emotional process of investing some aspect of who you are into the characters, maybe just something simple. You have to relate to their guilt, their decision in some manner. If you can't, you won't be able to make them come off the page and into focus. That last ingredient of self is vital to the final product. When that piece is added to the puzzle, all things unclear become transparent.
My original attempt at screenwriting was awful, a fifty page mountain of cliches and overwrought monologues. To this day, I cringe when I pull it out. The characters talk too much and they have no real arch's. It's all flat and pretentious and overlong. But I keep it, as a reminder that we all start somewhere. It helps me keep my head up, knowing I'm able to grow as a writer, that stagnation has not yet kept me back.
The highs make up for the lows, though, and I'm fairly confident in my ability to deliver. My first full length project was a script for one of my last college classes, an advanced writing course. I had no idea what to expect going in. I was nervous as I could be. I wound up reading the script, which had some rough language based on it being a long conversation between two Army vets, with my professor, who was a woman. Hearing her lady like voice reading such harsh dialogue made me feel sort of honored, like she let her guard down to play the character I created. When it was all said and done, I got a standing ovation. That was my first clue I wasn't delusional. One of the tougher hombres in my class took me aside and told me "you need to do this for the rest of your life". He was a veteran himself and he felt I'd nailed the dialects and the verbage well. He also liked the rather morbid ending.
The truth is, you have to find a voice you can call your own. You can read scripts you like, watch movies you dig and quote people you like all day...in the end, its up to you to make a difference, take some chances and get it done. That's where I'm at...and its an interesting place to be.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Titanic 3D: My Thoughts
My pretentious nature with film is probably extremely annoying to the average Joe. My angst and vitriol for the Transformers films alone is worth at least ten volumes of written dissection. I hated them, not as much as George Lucas god awful prequels to the best fantasy film trilogy ever created. I reserve a sort of otherworldly hate for Episodes 1-3, not unlike that of Hitler for the Jews (please, no hate mail...take a joke). The point is, I'm serious about what I like and what I don't. And sometimes I'm the only guy defending what I like (Waterworld anyone?). Sometimes I'm the only guy downing films I hate (Avatar). I am a polarizing critic. I'm the guy who trashes your favorite movie so well that you might end up hating it by the time I'm done. I take pride in that.
I say that to say this...I have always enjoyed and defended James Cameron's Titanic. For all its shortcomings, cheesy dialogue, actors finding their way, virtually no character development beyond the two leads..and a very underused Cathy Bates, I found the film to be on par stylistically and thematically with other bloated epics (Gone With The Wind, Ben Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra). By bloated, I don't many any disrespect. Big stories require a grand scale, lush visions of the grandiose, dramatic lighting, etc. That's what Cameron set out to do, make a sweeping dramatic love story with the Titanic as the back ground. Don't kid yourself, because that's what the movie is.
Titanic is not a biopic about the ships maiden/final voyage. It's really just a throwback early 1900's love story, written with the same sensibility that any Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart film of yore would have been, cheesy dialogue included. Cameron was smart enough to realize that the only way you get both chicks and dudes crammed into a movie theater is to cross breed ideas. Guys want to see a movie about a ship that crashes into an iceberg and kills thousands of people. Women want to see a forbidden love story that winds up tragically unfulfilled. Cameron divided the movie up nicely, with the first and second half equally giving the opposite sexes their desired experience.
The magic was how the romantic half wound up affecting dudes. Guys suddenly found Kate Winslet reminded them of their wife or girlfriend. The script, tightly arranged, managed to pull them into this world of forbidden romance. The longer they watched this love blossom, the more they quit thinking about the big crash silently looming. They began to forget about the momentary teen idol fandom of Leo Dicaprio and started rooting for the character of Jack, who's underdog status appealed to the every mans working class nature. This movie stopped being about that damn ship.
When the time came for what they originally wanted to see, the guys in the audience suddenly didn't want it to happen. That's the sheer talent of James Cameron. Every other movie he'd ever made was a total dude movie..Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2, True Lies, etc. He took everything he knew about the male mind and applied it to the Jack and Rose love story. Somehow, with one frozen Leo Dicaprio, Kate Winslet hoarsely weeping and that door she was floating on bobbing her up and down like a red headed buoy, James Cameron made just about every heterosexual guy in America, machismo aside, shed at least one tear. And this was not the "man tear", that solitary, epic tear reserved for Gladiator or Braveheart. This was the "why, God, why" tear, the tear/tears usually cried by a woman.
For these reasons, and the fact that I don't mind crying the "why God, why" tears (you wanna call me out, I'll kick your ass), I love the movie to death. No, its not a brilliant piece of work on any esoteric level. Yes, the dialogue is about as original as the latest nu-metal rock group. No, I don't place it in my top ten. BUT, I place it on equal footing with Gone With The Wind...making it number eighteen on my list of best movies ever made.
What can I say? It's a great movie.
How did I like the 3D version? I loved it, save for the fact that I totally forgot I was watching it in 3D very early on. It still holds up after 15 YEARS. I feel old now.
I say that to say this...I have always enjoyed and defended James Cameron's Titanic. For all its shortcomings, cheesy dialogue, actors finding their way, virtually no character development beyond the two leads..and a very underused Cathy Bates, I found the film to be on par stylistically and thematically with other bloated epics (Gone With The Wind, Ben Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra). By bloated, I don't many any disrespect. Big stories require a grand scale, lush visions of the grandiose, dramatic lighting, etc. That's what Cameron set out to do, make a sweeping dramatic love story with the Titanic as the back ground. Don't kid yourself, because that's what the movie is.
Titanic is not a biopic about the ships maiden/final voyage. It's really just a throwback early 1900's love story, written with the same sensibility that any Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart film of yore would have been, cheesy dialogue included. Cameron was smart enough to realize that the only way you get both chicks and dudes crammed into a movie theater is to cross breed ideas. Guys want to see a movie about a ship that crashes into an iceberg and kills thousands of people. Women want to see a forbidden love story that winds up tragically unfulfilled. Cameron divided the movie up nicely, with the first and second half equally giving the opposite sexes their desired experience.
The magic was how the romantic half wound up affecting dudes. Guys suddenly found Kate Winslet reminded them of their wife or girlfriend. The script, tightly arranged, managed to pull them into this world of forbidden romance. The longer they watched this love blossom, the more they quit thinking about the big crash silently looming. They began to forget about the momentary teen idol fandom of Leo Dicaprio and started rooting for the character of Jack, who's underdog status appealed to the every mans working class nature. This movie stopped being about that damn ship.
When the time came for what they originally wanted to see, the guys in the audience suddenly didn't want it to happen. That's the sheer talent of James Cameron. Every other movie he'd ever made was a total dude movie..Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2, True Lies, etc. He took everything he knew about the male mind and applied it to the Jack and Rose love story. Somehow, with one frozen Leo Dicaprio, Kate Winslet hoarsely weeping and that door she was floating on bobbing her up and down like a red headed buoy, James Cameron made just about every heterosexual guy in America, machismo aside, shed at least one tear. And this was not the "man tear", that solitary, epic tear reserved for Gladiator or Braveheart. This was the "why, God, why" tear, the tear/tears usually cried by a woman.
For these reasons, and the fact that I don't mind crying the "why God, why" tears (you wanna call me out, I'll kick your ass), I love the movie to death. No, its not a brilliant piece of work on any esoteric level. Yes, the dialogue is about as original as the latest nu-metal rock group. No, I don't place it in my top ten. BUT, I place it on equal footing with Gone With The Wind...making it number eighteen on my list of best movies ever made.
What can I say? It's a great movie.
How did I like the 3D version? I loved it, save for the fact that I totally forgot I was watching it in 3D very early on. It still holds up after 15 YEARS. I feel old now.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Watching The World Burn....From A Pontoon Boat With A Line In The Water
I think the greatest sin a person can commit is to lose ones sense of irony. There's something tangible, unifying even, about a sort of very distinct love of the ironic. Some people really dog sarcasm and dark, depth perception empowered humor. People, those especially obsessed with some utopian illusion, they like their world all wrapped in this exquisite bow. Their whole niche in the universe is to put more make up on the corpse, shove sunshine so far up your butt that you start to believe their hype yourself. That's where I think you have to put on the brakes, slap a few faces red and say "laugh at your disposition".
I can't, in good conscience, be a positive person. One look at two dysfunctional political parties, a long line of self serving world leaders and two minutes of the evening news, you start looking for a knife that'll hit the vein clean. It's dire. And if I was some dim witted, happy go lucky type, my mojo would be dying out like the AIDS crisis. I just don't feel the need to have hope for humanity. I think we're beyond hope as a people. We're just too jaded and too selfish and too out of touch with any sense of duty or humanity ourselves, it sort of seems like we're begging for a meteor to end it all.
My remedy to that is irony, pure unadulterated irony. And with that comes the dead baby jokes and the endless string of other inappropriate things I say to combat the rigors of a mentally polluted world. It's not meant to be pretty or to improve the situation, declining in quality as I type. It's meant to be a last middle finger to the tight wads, a defining stance against complacency and legislated moral culture. It's something trends can't filter into mainstream acceptance. No, its the vital enemy of all that, a machine of lacking character and growing clarity. It's all resolute with me, simple and clean and not at all arbitrary. The best part is it comes from the nebula of good will. It's there so you can laugh at the dogmatic enema that is our governmental system. It's there so you can shake your head, drink your coffee and pick up the dog shit off the sidewalk...with defiance.
'
And all it takes is the raising of an eye brow, a knowing glance....the sense to be ever present among the lemmings, the drones of televised instruction. It doesn't mean the meteor doesn't cook the skin off your bones and reduce you to dust particles not unlike those hanging mid air in your double wide. It means while every other loser on the planet is crying, screaming and cursing God for what they perceive to be an unjust ending, you'll be laughing your ass off, winking up at Him, and quietly saying "I totally understand".
"When our kids are grown
With kids of their own
They'll send us away
To a little home in Florida
We'll play checkers all day
Until we pass away"-Randy Newman
I can't, in good conscience, be a positive person. One look at two dysfunctional political parties, a long line of self serving world leaders and two minutes of the evening news, you start looking for a knife that'll hit the vein clean. It's dire. And if I was some dim witted, happy go lucky type, my mojo would be dying out like the AIDS crisis. I just don't feel the need to have hope for humanity. I think we're beyond hope as a people. We're just too jaded and too selfish and too out of touch with any sense of duty or humanity ourselves, it sort of seems like we're begging for a meteor to end it all.
My remedy to that is irony, pure unadulterated irony. And with that comes the dead baby jokes and the endless string of other inappropriate things I say to combat the rigors of a mentally polluted world. It's not meant to be pretty or to improve the situation, declining in quality as I type. It's meant to be a last middle finger to the tight wads, a defining stance against complacency and legislated moral culture. It's something trends can't filter into mainstream acceptance. No, its the vital enemy of all that, a machine of lacking character and growing clarity. It's all resolute with me, simple and clean and not at all arbitrary. The best part is it comes from the nebula of good will. It's there so you can laugh at the dogmatic enema that is our governmental system. It's there so you can shake your head, drink your coffee and pick up the dog shit off the sidewalk...with defiance.
'
And all it takes is the raising of an eye brow, a knowing glance....the sense to be ever present among the lemmings, the drones of televised instruction. It doesn't mean the meteor doesn't cook the skin off your bones and reduce you to dust particles not unlike those hanging mid air in your double wide. It means while every other loser on the planet is crying, screaming and cursing God for what they perceive to be an unjust ending, you'll be laughing your ass off, winking up at Him, and quietly saying "I totally understand".
"When our kids are grown
With kids of their own
They'll send us away
To a little home in Florida
We'll play checkers all day
Until we pass away"-Randy Newman
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