Well, yes I am here finally and back to finding stories that brought me into all the pieces of everything that brought me finally back for that almost one year damn that is getting in the way of stories and hopes. If course there will be new stories to play around with old stuff as new stuff that I found in boxes and dozens of ideas that I didn't consider. Maybe good and maybe better, or no good at all. Well, maybe.

I'm writing a new story that could be a new screenplay. It's about whom I've liked and loved. Remembering the women in my life, some lost, some found. It's a collection of these women whom I stayed with, found other and I still think of all. I hope to be honest and write what me and them will see in their own words in some places, or usually lost but not exactly near or far from me.

And I will be honest because some of them might have other methods. But none of them were angry nor I. These would consist from my first 11-year old from to know. I'm not trying to show off, rather I want to go back until I hope I  find them,  or at least and heard of them and remember I hope.

The Okay Ones

Well, it's still nothing for the world and for all of us although some people I know are flying. A'aint flying for me, well I don't need to go anywhere right now. I'm working over a batch of screenplays that I have been hanging along that I sort of always wanted to rewrite them. So I figure I'd  work them over. I have about not bad scripts that I still have some stories that were looked over. I also have some okay scripts that could be better that could be better and sell to someone. My full box of unsold screenplays are about "Okay"ones. And that could give the good ones a little more "stuff" to it, as someone said to me once.

As for made movies, I have about 20 features and TV movies where I wrote them myself and co-wrote and rewrite from other writers. I always loved to rewrite someone else's scripts but I also saw some of them were all right for other reasons. So I'm going to rework some of the ones I did myself and others with rewrites other writers work. Of course I'll play a little more here or there. I don't know how exactly these things from here and there and also play with postings along the way.

Stories From The Dead

 Sorry again in building a lot of more stuff from 10 years of stories to do both the past and the present and the future, or at least enough of it to keep and maybe even into another chunk of stories and ideas and some stories pull out of the batch. 

Hey. what do you think, lots of stories and for those who haven't seen many of the stories that take you one heck of a bunch of people that are funny, weird, straight, no

Here's a story of me working in Canada on a TV show for Canada and how we work from how it starts, One just one main writer and then a guy from nowhere who has someone's rich dad and me, the only good working writer between those two working in Canada and was living in Sherman Oaks in California and now am going to on a TV from winter to June. How it works, the big writer who drank all day, the mystery writer has written some short stories.

Anyway, I'll tell you the story, the fights and the great Canadian Mountains and where those of you could read about two months or so. And a lot of people we made friends, lost them, almost got beat-up in a bar in town by an actual mountain man until a real-life movie star saved me and an actor from Germany and she managed to get us out.

I'll tell you where to find it in a day or two. Or you can find it amongst the others or I'll find it soon. When I find the place I'll post the posts for you. 

I'll post as soon as I find it. Most of the blog are single things but I have a few others. One of them is about how I was not paid for a movie I wrote and a friend of mine told me that it was going to be on tv.

How's that happened?

Still alive 2020, Oct.7.

 

Yes there is a place waiting for something to wait for, or at least it can arrive. This is not it as if it.  It's still having problems with several things along with all the stuff to move forward that is if there is one. The big bunt is that I have lost my old laptop to some of the dogs of life. And my new one, well actually,  and my guy isn't all there, had some bad  dizzy works that makes him unable to keep neither of us.

So where's the stories, Jim, well I'm figuring our some sort of thing came along wherein I met a new screenwriter who lives in Canada and has just finished writing a brilliant screenplay. She comes from Canada and managed to get into the DGC and me, in that she needs WGC's approval for her to have her screenplay read like me?

Well, I got DGC to send her screenplay to me. We talked a little bit of our lives and I decided that since I just sat her, I would take her script to read. DGC is a version of DGA being that DGC is Canadian. I sat down and read it and realized that this screenplay is a hell of a script, I couldn't believe it. I read it over a week and said she had something there.

I read it again. Yes! Brilliant. I was supposed to read her script over a period of 3 months but I had it down less than again. So I had this going for her and I think I don't have to use 3 months.

I wasn't sure if I had to rewrite a new screenplay, fix it, not sure or anything. I would have the other version or her new one, although the screenplay was fantastic.

How's that? I've had five screenplays like that, of which two took them but eventually had taken one. and nothing happen.

Mostly is that the world for us  are not exactly correct.  We and the rest are wondering if we ever make it. But I do have to wait to see the maybe the James Bond last movie... for us or some?

Bummer?

Where is Jim

 

Well, where is Jim?

For now, I'm slowly trying to get my stuff together as all of us have are having trouble. And one big "trouble" is the past. The past and the future and somewhere there in maybe we all will be able to find out what's going on for the past and the future.

So where I am, past, future, frozen and desperately trying to find out what is going to go on. There is one thing for some of you, that's the past and for most it's ten years of past with lots of reading by the beginning or no future or nothing at all. Bummer.

And I'm not sure I'll be able to get the future. But the past is still interesting and in fact, has what the past as already done.

2021

And there is a future, at least I'm still alive, that old guy standing in the corner telling you how I and my partner copped a short Canadian film called Cooperage and we won over all the other Canadian short films that beat all of the others in the contest. But we also was in a bigger contest, the oscars. We didn't win but were in one in five.

1976 Canadian Film Awards and winning.

1976 Athens International Film Festival

1977 Sydney International Festival

1977 Yorkon International Film Festival

1976 Chicago International Film Festival

1976 Academy Awards 

1977 American Film Festival (New York)

So this is what we managed to do with our own money and lead us to both were able to write another few bunch short films... and each of use made our own movies, and we managed to keep going.

And yes, that short film, about making barrels for whiskey. It's called Cooperage.

So that's where it all started. Will try to find photo of Cooperage.

 

Sorry to be gone so long, not actually gone, just fixing up a lot of things within some new things to learn. I probably get it going next week. All this for all the damn stuff that's going on with our planet and other stuff to push things either in or out. 

Farm Boy

 

My previous blog (actually same one) has made some differences, actually almost the same. It will be cleaner and have a few others that will make me crazy. Also I'll read you better with my stories from my blog which, of course started in 2009. "all the way to today 2009, August 9".

I'll send some of my best work or some of the not great ones, but their all interesting about more of my land whatever keeps giving something about this great thing about writing and directing or anything still in my business.

My story began in a small town in Canada, a farm and I lived there until moving to the big city and even yet bigger city, Detroit, with family by sides.

I remember how my mother would read comic books to me, and I loved them. But the big thing was coming when my mom and dad took me to a movie in the 50's, I was about four. The movie was a Disney family movie and I was amazed. TV never came to my home until the end of the 60's. But it also scared me to hell when the giant screen showed a giant snake. Actually on the big screen of course.

I screemed and was not happy and my mom took me to the projector booth above and I sat there when I started to watch the man up there was winding the film and slowly I began to like the sound and the chatty whim of the projector. Somehow, I really think that's when I began to learn more about movies and how they brought them to me for 12 years, until we left to Ontario in Windsor, a small city based across the river from the biggest city I believed. I had cousins across the river which made it companions. From early. And my city had 5 movies. And it was heaven.

I'll let you know more about how I moved from my prairie friends and my favorite school teach and how I still know her and talk to her still.

Long not so lonely road...

Long not so lonely road...

Some time ago I was talking old TV shows from the 60's and the theme they all seemed to have as compared to the present. A lot of my friends in their 50's and 60's complain about how bad the shows are now and  in some ways, they are bad.

I seem to be in between in that discussion, there certainly were bad TV shows (My Mother the Car?) but there was a middle ground of discovery that seems to be lost now. Of course we didn't have dvds or internet where we could watch and rewatch and rewatch TV series or movies on out TV or iPhone.

For us every episode was a 1-of as they say in TV language, meaning that episode you would watch one night would be gone forever, it might replay once but that was it. That episode was gone.

But something else changed, not for the better particularly.

Most of the TV shows even up to the 70's had one story editor and a producer and most of the scripts were assigned to freelance writers, with exceptions like Rod Serling who wrote many Twilight Zone scripts  himself. Sterling Silliphant wrote a lot of Route 66 scripts as well. There were a few others also.

But it changed in the late 70's when writing staffs became more popular. There were writing staffs on sitcoms even in the 50's, but maybe two or three. Variety shows like Sid Caesar's Show of Shows had a bigger staff including Woody Allen and  Mel Brooks.  Those shows needed a lot of laughs and so had big staffs.

By the late 80's dramatic TV shows began to get larger staffs and today you can see head credits, wherein you see a dozen or more names with titles like producer, executive producer, co-executive producer, co-producer and a few more names.

But they're all writers, with the exception of a real producer, the guy who actually makes up a budget, hires crew and cast and worries about over-spending. Some drama shows have 10 to 15 writers.

So what's my problem?

I worked on several TV series where there were, at the most, 4 writers but the best show I worked on had 2 and 1/2. Let me explain, there was the showrunner, myself and an assistant director who was being tested as a potential writer. It was a good show because the show runner was good. I've been on series where the showrunner isn't good and it becomes a contest over who has power over who.

On that one show, we did 13 episodes, I had 2, the showrunner had 4 and 1 for the new guy. We also farmed out a handful of episodes to freelance writers. 

If you wonder what 3 writers, or for that matter 15 writers, do in the writing room? Mostly argue. But with 3 we settle it quickly, with 15 I can't imagine anything getting settled. It's like having 15 opinions on a movie, with lots of yelling. It isn't all yelling but there is a lot of ego, depending on who has more history and awards.

What often happens is that the loudest people get heard more, although the politics after the meetings can usurp previous agreements wherein the star actors can access the showrunner, who often is the creator of the show, to fix their lines of dialog without having to deal with other actors. And their egos are even bigger.

So you can have a dozen writers and a handful of actors who all think they're right. And the question is; is the show better for it?

I think no. One of the executives who helped create 100 TV channels (now more than 400) said that when they created all those channels they envisioned bold new dramas and other shows for every niche audience there is.

But he admitted, what they created was mediocrity.  

A few shows work with a large writing staff, shows like Breaking Bad, Madmen and a few others but today the Emmy Awards were announced and none of the major networks were up for best shows. Even with all those writers they have.

What's that old expression? Too many cooks spoil the soup? 

Is my screenplay good?

Is my screenplay good?

I was going to write a blog about the fear that consumes writers when they face the rewrite but got distracted by something else.


I was persuaded some time ago to join Linkedin, which professes to be a networking website where you can interact with other professionals in the hopes of accomplishing your goals. Linkedin has many different forums for probably every business there is from flower shops to film, law, accounting and so on.

Having started way back in 1992 on the internet I became wary of forums for one major reason; I would end up arguing with some kid in Indiana about the movie business. I realized it was a waste of my time having to deal with someone who didn't know anything about the movie business but felt he/she was my peer.

Last week, someone on the Those in Film forum offered to read screenplays and offer his comments and advice. All for$150. The person said he worked for some major agencies and knows how to improve a screenplay to sell. All for $150.

Thus ensued a continuing discussion, sometimes heated, as to the value of these kind of "consultants".

My take is simple; if you gotta pay for someone to read your script you probably don't have a good script. And I know of what I speak; I taught screenwriting extension classes at UCLA for a little over 2 years and learned two things;

First, the university encourages the instructors to get students to take more semesters. My first class was writing the first draft screenplay; later the course was dissected into 3 courses, the first act, the second act and the third act.

Why? More money.

In this way, the student would complete a screenplay in 30 weeks. Over six months.

Now while some writers take years to write their screenplays, most first draft screenplays can be written in 4 to 6 weeks and maybe even 10 weeks (the length of the semester). By stretching it to six months you almost forget what you learned in the first semester.

I'm not considering the really talented writers;  they do what they do well and can take 1 week (Dalton Trumbo) or years (Terrence Malik) but they as F. Scott said, are not like you or I.

There are dozens of websites now offering to read your screenplay in exchange for money as well as screenplay sites like Ink-tip, who charge $60 for you to post your screenplay on their site for 6 months. Along with a few hundred of your fellow writers.

You have better chances winning the lottery.

Yet aspiring writers, many of whom feel that purchasing Screenwriter 6 or Final Draft means that yes, they are writers, will fill these websites with their screenplays. After all, anybody can write a screenplay if they have the software. Why it practically writes itself. I had Screenwriter because it is real, but FD is just a copy of "Word". 

Secondly the truth is this; very few of those aspiring writers are really good, in fact very few are real writers. Of the over 200 students I had, and I've mentioned this before, only 4 of my students could, if they really worked and made some important connections, were capable of writing a real screenplay.

Only 4.

And yes, that's my opinion, but again, not everyone is a brilliant painter, or actor or insurance salesman or whatever. The plain truth is that all of us are just mostly average. I claim no talent, even after writing and/or rewriting 18 feature length produced screenplays as well as at least 70 unproduced screenplays.

What I am is downright stubborn, it took me a long time to learn how to write well. And I even slip now and then.

The impact of all these people who want to write screenplays has encouraged new cottage industries including screenwriting gurus, almost 300 books on screenwriting (go to Amazon sometimes), screenwriting classes at almost every university, week-end workshops with failed actors who shout down at their audience, 3-day filmmaking classes, probably hundreds of websites with courses, software for screenwriting, production, budgets, storyboarding.

The list goes on and on and one is tempted to ask;

So where are all the great screenplays?

With all of these screenplay gurus soliciting and recommending screenplays, there are fewer good movies now than ever before in our history of film. With so much access to experts and so-called experts and books and movies, there just doesn't seem to be a whole bunch of great, memorable movies.

But for now, I have to deal with my own demons; the rewrite of Casualties Of Love, which I'm holding back, in typical writer procrastination, until the new year, and a "fresh look" at COL that I'm sure will result in a brilliant screenplay...

Well, maybe not brilliant, maybe it's gonna be even worse than the first draft.

I need to go shopping.

Who do you love?

I got a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind,
I lived long enough and I ain't scared of dying.
Who do you love...
                       - Bo Diddley

Relationships. What we all fall into at one time or another. It's what makes us and what breaks us. And in the film industry it's as essential as water is to earth. 

Simply put, you won't get anywhere in the film business without relationships, it just don't work that way. I have accumulated dozens of relationships, some of which last the duration of a movie shoot ("we must stay in touch"), some that lasted 35 years and some that dissipate when my services are no longer required. Meaning that either they've got a shooting script or I've been replaced by another writer eager to show how much better he or she is than I was.

I've been lucky, I've only been rewritten once by another writer. But on the other hand I've rewritten a half dozen or more scripts, called in by producers to polish or fix up or change a script that was written by someone else. Sometimes I got credit, sometimes I didn't. But it was always about a relationship.

In 1998 I wrote two screenplays that were produced by Paramount and rewritten 4 others, in most cases from Page 1, which essentially means a whole new script while keeping the story. If that sounds contradictory, it really isn't, keeping the story but changing 70% of the dialog or action is still possible.

And it all came about through relationships. It started with Steve White, a producer who read one screenplay of mine and wanted to do a movie with me. We got along well, he was accomplished enough that he didn't have any insecurities nor fears, and we got along just great.  I pitched an idea, a remake of a movie I did in Canada years ago but different enough that it didn't conflict and he gave me the go-ahead.

Then he and John Levoff weren't satisfied with a screenplay written by someone else on Roswell, the New Mexico town where aliens supposedly crashed in 1947. Well, it happened that I had been to Roswell with my brother and examined the alien mythology quite well.  So Steve asked me to write a completely new screenplay.

Relationships.

This led to meeting with Levoff, then head of drama for UPN network, a network arm of Paramount. That led to me going to Luxembourg to rewrite two screenplays of other writers in the dubious capacity of "creative consultant". But I was there for more than just writing. I've laid out this story in a previous blog but will repeat the basics; Levoff wanted me to be his eyes and ears to an extent as he was an ocean and continent away and knew he could trust me.

Once I finished the job, I returned to L.A. to find that Steve now had set up my two movies and another one in Winnipeg and I immediately went there to rewrite my own scripts and the other one.

Again, relationships. One thing leads to another. No stranger has ever hired me, only people who were introduced to me or knew me. Relationships lead to referrals and possible jobs. And on that note, relationships won't necessarily get you a job if for some reason nobody wants to hire you.

And there's usually two reasons for a writer, actor or director not getting work.

Either they're not very good or they're hard to work with.

Publicists come up with a lot of reasons when an actor or writer or director suddenly leaves the project, often before it starts. They will usually say "creative differences" which means that the two parties differ on some aspect of the movie, script, actor, etc.  How do they decide who leaves?

Simple, the one who has the best relationship with the studio or producer. They also call it clout, but it remains the same thing.

On a movie I rewrote called Lost in the Bermuda Triangle which was filmed in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, I had a falling out with the director. To be honest, I do not suffer fools easily, I know what I can do and what I can't, or won't do.

The director, Mario from NYC told me to make some changes in the script that the producer and network had signed off on. The script was ready to shoot. I asked "what kind of changes"? His answer; "you know, changes".  No I didn't know, and I asked him to be more specific. His answer; "you're the writer, write anything". To which I answered that he was the director and if he wanted a change, he had to tell me what to change and why and to clear it with the producer.

It led to a shouting match and I left to go to the bar and find the dirtiest tequila they had. The director called the producer requesting I be fired, the producer said no. Jim stays.

Was that just because I was being bratty or high maintenance? No, the script was ready to go, sure there were minor dialog changes as he filmed, but otherwise, unless he came up with specific ideas, I wasn't going to do anything. But that's not why I wasn't fired.

Why? Because Bob, the producer, whom everybody on the crew hated (and I still think some of the Mexican drivers would easily have dropped him off in the jungle), liked me.  And I thought he was tough, but good and knew his job. I left before the film was finished, after nearly 6 months of travel I wanted to go home and they really didn't need me anymore. Last time I spoke to Bob which was about a year ago, he said Mario messed up the movie anyways.

Relationships.

Lesson here is if you work on a film crew, on any job, writer, grip, driver, anyone, make relationships. Most will fade 20 minutes after the wrap party, but at least for the filming schedule, you can be a little more secure in your job.

When I worked on a series in Vancouver, I made friends with the teamster drivers. I usually make friends with everyone I can, you get more rumors and gossip that way if they trust you. I had let it be known that I had difficulty finding a new fender for my 1977 Camaro. One day a slightly used fender showed up in the parking lot. 

The driver walked by and said simply, "Hey Jim, someone left that for you." No questions asked.

How an idea comes and goes

Having written for around 40 years or so (who counts after that many years?) I seem to be getting more ideas than ever for a screenplay.  My latest one came when I watched consumers storming big box stores and malls for Black Friday sales. I had to return a suitcase to Macy's and thought I'd drive by the Fashion Square Mall near me to return it.

But it was not to be, the streets were blocked off as though a hurricane was coming and traffic cops were everywhere. And it was all for the mall traffic. Needless to say I turned around and went home.

But on the way back, I started thinking about Black Friday. I'm always looking for a holiday movie for Hallmark or Lifetime, and I thought that maybe a movie called Black Friday could work. It would be about four or five people who have adventures in a shopping mall on that big day.

But then Black Friday was a great title for a horror movie too. Maybe even better than a family movie for Hallmark.

I thought it over for the rest of the day, bouncing each idea around and trying to imagine what kind of story I could write, and for which idea.

By Saturday, I was focused on the mall idea, and with green screen and CGI, it could be made for those mini-budgets that Hallmark deals with. You wouldn't need a thousand extras, you could create them on computers.

But the dark side of me was also pushing the horror film. My first movie, Ghostkeeper, was a horror movie, although it could be labeled as a "supernatural thriller". There wasn't really a lot of horror in it because I'm not the kind of person who wants to see people being cut up.

And that brought me back to the nice Black Friday. A friend suggested I see that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Jingle All The Way (remember that one?) where Arnold fights for a special toy for his son.  Maybe I could still make the family version.

But by Sunday both ideas started to look lame, the horror movie definitely not what I wanted to write and the family one was too much about money and buying stuff, and I didn't think that was particularly inspiring either. 

By the end of the day I dropped both ideas and this morning put them into my files for projects that might be resurrected, or maybe not.

But then there was that mall cop movie with Kevin James, but it didn't do much business.

But then I remembered a screenplay I read that was written by Sam Peckinpah, the great screenwriter and director whose movie The Wild Bunch, is a classic. He had written a screenplay about someone locked in a department store all night and was being terrorized by an unknown presence that seemed to be hunting him. 

Well, that's not a horror film completely, it's more "Hitchcockian" as they say. Suspense. I could write a suspense movie. 

I'll see how I feel Tuesday.

King of the Gypsies

Beware of anyone calling himself the King of the Gypsies who phones you and says he's decided you will write his true story and "Not that bullshit story that Peter Maas wrote". You will write the true story of Steve Bimbo Tene, whose life was first translated into a book by author Peter Maas and later made into a feature film with Eric Roberts and Susan Sarandon.

I knew about as much of gypsies as any average person, that they wear bandanas and tell fortunes but Steve would change all of that.

It seems a lawyer suggested me to him and he decided I would be the one to tell the real story of his quite incredible life. And that as a consequence, Steve would drop in and out of my life for at least ten years. The book, based loosely on his life but with added drama and fiction by Maas told the story of an American King of the Gypsies back in the 70's and was a best seller. Maas also wrote Serpico, later a movie with Al Pacino and Valachi Papers, a Mafia expose that also was a best seller and movie.

I agreed to meet Steve in a public place as I had no real idea who or what he was, or for that matter, if he was the real Steve Tene. I had seen the movie but that was my experience with gypsies. He showed up, as he always did later, with his "peeps", usually a nephew and a tall, gaunt man named Richard. After seeing stacks of articles and letters he carried in an office box, I realized he was the real thing.

I spend 6 weeks taping Steve as he told me his life story, which seemed to change significantly depending on the mood he was in. It paralleled the book but the book took more dramatic twists, in it Steve fought and killed his father for the throne.  In reality there was no real King of the Gypsies, at least in America and his father was very much alive. There were a few in Europe who claimed it, but author Maas felt that if there wasn't one in America there should be. Yet, what fascinated me was this enigma of Gypsies, of which little is known.

The book and the movie became a curse to Steve, sort of like being the fasted gun in town, other gypsies were usually gunning for him. Needless to say this was not a comforting thought to me. But there was a fascination with this character who, when he needed money, would go to Vegas for a few days, tell some fortunes in bars, and come back with cold hard cash.

I wrote an article for a local magazine and Steve disappeared soon after that. But he would return, calling me from Palm Springs or Riverside or Orange County and ask me to visit and consider writing a screenplay or a musical play. Or maybe lending him some money.

His life was always turbulent, someone was always out to get him, his sister was trying to send him to jail and he was always near death. At least that's what he said. But, as I learned, he was a Gypsy, and I learned not to trust them too much, they are amazingly like they are portrayed.  Steve said the Gypsies had a curse put on them because they made the nails that were used in the crucifixion of Jesus. But that God had also given them the gift of scamming so that they could earn a living.

Steve also taught me a lot about Gypsy culture, that they originally came from India, and settled in eastern Europe where they managed to make a living by working metal into swords as well as their well-known fortune telling which continues to this day. Even now, I can usually spot Gypsies in every venue from classic fortune telling to repairing driveways and hundreds of other scams.

Interestingly enough, Steve was illiterate, he said Gypsies never sent their kids to schools because they didn't want to be known about, they preferred to roam the country without social security numbers or addresses. It has changed a little now, with internet and cell phones, but they still manage to keep hidden.

It is estimated that there are 2 million of them in the U.S. and the amazing part is that they exist without most of us "Gadji's" (a Gypsy name for everyone else) even realizing it. Honor and revenge play a big part in their lives, even as their young attempt to break away from centuries of hidden existence. I remember once when Steve had a dog training business (shortly before the Palm Springs cafe business) I had arrived and told him there was a Ford F150 driving by. He glanced at a man who clearly was there to protect him, who reached in his jacket for a gun, walked outside, and came back to say it wasn't anyone.

I kept thinking that nobody wanted to kill the writer, they just wanted him to write a story.

When he wasn't dying or being targeted or lied to or threatened, he was planning a big musical and I was to write it, in spite of the fact I've never written one before... nor aspired to. Steve was full of ideas and for a man who couldn't read or write, managed to survive amazingly well. He remembered house addresses from the 1960's, his music teacher's phone number when he was 16. I began to realize his life was full of inaccuracies and contradictions. Some stories had different endings, others were changed completely to suit his mood.

And he had moods. Steve was a tragic figure, and I guess, as a writer, I was fascinated with it, wondering where it would lead to. Then there were the late night calls when he yelled and cried and wondered why his life was so full of hell, and sometimes I just hung up because I was not of his world and somehow, the only one he could trust.

I asked him once what he would like on his grave, and he said he would like to be compared to Mighty Joe Young, a giant gorilla in a 1949  movie by the same name, and a copy of King Kong. That he gave life his best.

In a way, I compared Steve and his people to the wild horses I filmed a few years ago in the remote deserts of Nevada, both lived their lives by their own rules, asking no one to feed or help them. And somehow both man and horse managed to survive by their own rules and once you see that, you somehow feel an appreciation and admiration for them as they fight a losing battle. Because eventually, society will swallow them up and we'll lose another independent species, man and horse.

I never did write "the true story" as Steve had always wanted. One of the problems was that he changed his story now and then.  But he also did have real interest in it, as I had met two credible literary agents who were offering a good amount of money for Steve's story. But whenever a deal was offered, Steve always turned it down.  And after awhile, the offers stopped coming.

It's been a lot of years years since I got a call from Steve, the last one was to tell me his Gypsy food cafe folded, he lost his condo in Palm Springs, but that he had a new idea for the play. But something did happen to Steve, I received a note from his brother, I never met. He had a message -- Steve had passed away December 2019. Since I left California I never heard of his passing. But I'm sure he had a great funeral, I would have been like to have been there.

I rarely look at my questions or other things but this one was sad -- my colorful friend was gone and I would miss him and was sorry I would not see him again. Once he said I could make a good one but nobody could make the one that this things  but I didn't think I could.  He was the King for many years and I would miss all of his stories and his many things he started and fell and cook great Gypsy food,  wonderful and colorful. 

I miss him calling me in the middle of a night where he said I should write a place all about that theater we could make again and again. Maybe it will be in some times ahead of us.

What the hell wanted us to know...

Sorry to come back with all this mess, some more backworks and a some help from other people to help. So after all the messing around with all the damn things in our world, I finally got to you guys below. They were the first sentences at 2009.

To begin with, I was pretty apprehensive about starting a blog on how I plan to make a movie. Samuel French has dozens of books just on this subject (right next to the hundreds of books on screenwriting) and what could I possibly add.?

But I wanted to share the ups and downs of looking for money for a movie and figured that this might be the best place to do that. Some people might get a kick out of it, some might not care, others might find a little encouragement.I’m not an Academy winner or flavor of the month (although a short I filmed and co-produced made it to the Academy finalist list) rather, I’m a working writer, producer and director like so many others.

The blood of this industry.

The reason for this blog comes from several places and all are connected to one, the world of movie-making. I invite you to follow the process from screenplay to the development and funding and, hopefully, to the production itself. I wanted to call the blog Making Movies the Hard Way because, put simply, there is no easy way. Ever.

Along with the business, technical and artistic sides, I will also talk about the people; the talented, the untalented, the crazy ones and the rare angels and saints. And since I have been in this process more than once in my 30-plus years in the business, my friends assured me I could keep you entertained.

Easy to say for them, they get to watch me run and fall and get up and fall again in one of the worst recessions in a long time. I will post new blogs Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and anytime if something good comes up like someone writes me a check for $400,000, or maybe $50.

So hopefully you’ll stick with me until the end, wherein I actually get it made. If I get it made. And that’s a hell of a big “IF”.

You know the odds.

The Bear and me...

The Bear and me...

About a month weeks ago I received one of those green envelopes from the Writer's Guild of America. It's the envelope every writer loves to see because of it's contents.

Commonly called "Residuals", it comes down to this; money we get for not doing anything.

A lot of writers at this point will say "No, Jim, we've earned that money."

But a lot of others will say "it's free money." Even my director friends, who also receive residuals agree. It's kind of like you're walking down the street and someone hands you $100 or $2000 just like that.

What are residuals? It's a payment for every time one of my shows, either feature film or TV series, is played somewhere in the U.S. and Canada and all over the world, sort of. I'll explain the world later.

These residuals usually add up in formulas I never quite understand, sometimes annually and sometimes bi-annually. The amounts vary from $2000 to as low as $1. An actor friend of mine actually received a residual for $00.00. It cost 47 cents to mail it.

And the bear?

Well, that's Gentle Ben, a movie I wrote in 2000 and that plays or sells all over the world. The residual check I got recently was for $2000 so that bear is working for me. I get a complicated list of where it played and how much it earned but the bottom line is that it's essentially "free money."

Why do I say that? Well, I was paid Writer's Guild Minimum for writing the screenplay. They paid me when I handed the screenplay over. Done. The cameraman gets paid and they're done. The editor is paid and they're done.  The lighting person is paid and they're done.

Only writers and actors and directors get residuals. But there is a catch with writers, naturally, in which we lose a little of that free money. And this ties in with foreign "royalities" ( another word for residuals).

It goes back to copyrights. When I write a screenplay I own the copyright in much the same as someone can copyright an invention. It belongs to them no matter what and forever. 

Except in America.

Studios, notorious for cooking their books (aka stealing from us) learned long ago to "buy the rights". But how can they when international law says the copyright stays with the writer? Well, they figured out that if they hire the writer under the category "Work For Hire". What this means is that they have bought the copyright and you don't own it anymore. Regardless of international law. And guess who shares your residuals? 

Yes, once again the big guys figure out how to get back some of that money they paid you.

However, Europe and Canada  and other countries collect and pay writers a royalty (also called a "foreign levy) that is based on usage, how often the program/movie is played. And the writer gets all of this money. So even if Gentle Ben is paying US residuals I also get the foreign money once a year and it's for several of my movies and totals around $2000 a year.

So that's why I see it as free money. I didn't work for it, I didn't write a word or even ask them for money, they just send it to me. And the bear has been feeding me for 12 years so far.

My last residual to came to $112. And this was from 1990. 
And I'll still see more, even past my life.

With this damn  coronavirus gang hanging around us. 

Damn near can spell it.

Me and my friends

Well, I am certainly okay with this disease thing as they say, something that might hit someone of any ages. So, I am still certainly healthy and looking fine and a chance at working for Ghostkeeper 11,

Facebook
So I'm having some laptop problems as well as trying to try to find new stories to keep you hanging around. Twenty years has a lot of stuff that you can read through it can be a rough ride. And which has two different parts.

Ghostkeeper: The two parts are both dealing again about film and TV and are part of FB. The first one is all about my first movie, made in 1980 and went dead but after about 20 years became somewhat of a lost movie and now has really created more into by Code Red DV and now with Ronin Flix who is the distributor. So far.

The Working Writer's Screen Play. The second part is about screenwriting. of which I wrote a book on screenwriting and has been going for a long time. I went to UCLA in Los Angeles and took writing classes and to actually teach screenwriting and of it, my book is still going still. I am thinking of writing screenwriting again because it's a lot of fun and also you might want to take a course.

How Not To Get Beat Up In A Small Town Bar. And I also wrote a travel writing book about a lot of people I've met including actors, small towns, looking for aliens and much more.  Here's this title:

Emperor Of Mars. And finally, I wrote a children's book. It's a story about a small boy in a small town and thinks this little town will see a Martian came to the town and the 12-yr old. It's a story that is partial nothing and partial what happens when strange things begin to happen around a the 12-yr old begins to see aliens and connects to another strange people, an older soldier from a war who comes home with strangle ideas.

All of these are still out, the books and the movie still sells.

You can find my works are still running, as mentioned and I hope they stay more. It's hard now in this world of Covid worlds to deals with and nobody knows anything.


So, that's where I am.

Hey dad, why do only liberals make movies?

Hey dad, why do only liberals make movies?

 

First answer is - they're the only ones who write stories.

Second answer is - because conservatives don't have stories.

Okay, so some of you are probably crying unfair. But for the most part it is true. There are some writers who write screenplays, but I truly don't know one. My ex whom I hadn't seen in 26 years or so asked the question. Seems she turned conservative.

Easy answer: One day I was walking with a conservative real estate friend here in Sherman Oaks and he was talking about his sales and I suddenly looked up at the sky and pointed five criss-crossing con trails from passenger jets 35,000 feet or more above.

He looked at me and at the trails and replied "So what."

Get it?

I already was thinking about a story with con trails or alien "chem trails" as some people think that they are dropping chemicals on us.  

I actually shot some photos, I'll post one later.

And yes, I am a liberal, as they say. And like I said before I don't really think I know a conservative writer. There are conservatives directors for sure, Clint Eastwood for one, and he makes good movies... on budget too. 

Another writer/director is John Milius is kind of conservative, and he wrote and directed The Wind and The Lion, one of my favorite movies. He also wrote for Apocalypse Now

for very liberal Francis Coppola. There's also David Mamet, again a really good writer.
  Last afternoon I caught "Good Night and Good Luck", a really good movie about the McCarty hearings looking for communists in the early 1950's. For those who don't know, it was after WW11 and Americans, in fear again, believed there were communists all around us.

And in an interesting way, it was very similar to Donald Trump, in fact it was exactly like Donald Trump. Instilling fear into 1950's Americans, which isn't hard.

The story is simple the "junior" senator Joe McCarthy was telling Americans that communists were everywhere. Incidentally, this fear also went through the movie industry.

You could see that movie now, it was up for an Oscar, Trumbo, for Dalton Trumbo who had passed away some years back.

Truth is, there were communists in the movie industry and a lot of actors and writers and directors were banished, some died, some kept working. You probably know the story. But being a possible communist was still better than a conservative writer. 

There's actually conservative groups who are saying that discrimination is common for conservatives. They even have a term, "political ideology." And this comes from two really old conservative writers and producers, Lionel Chetwynd and Norman Powell.

They even have a book "Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How The Left Took Over Your TV."

So what do I think?

Well, in 30 years of writing I have not ever had an argument with a conservative writer, in fact I don't even know a conservative writer. I never ask what side or religion a person is at all. There's only one thing that matters. 

The writing.

Strangely enough, there are some notable actors that are right wing, Eastwood is sort of right but not really pure. There's Kelsey Grammer, who certainly did well with left wing writers. And Tom Selleck, although he seems to waffle a little.

I have conservative friends and we rarely argue about anything political, most of the time.  But I don't really know a working right wing writer but I do know facist writers who are just funny rather than anything else, wishing for the old commie days...

Still the only thing that matters... is the writing. 

Here's your test.  

Good Night and Good Luck

And don't check your phone.

The Free Days Of Our Life

The Free Days Of Our Life

A story from Detroit

 I went way back to Detroit and my other city across the river, the Detroit River. It went back to where I grew up from age 12 and up till I was married. I had quite the time, lots of memories and my ex-wife, of which was the main reason I returned.

Right now I'm full of memories from almost every turn, some of them vague, others good, and the bad ones seem to not have shown them selves. It helps when you have close friends for well over forty years and who still talk to you. Even the sons of old friends are friends.

I grew up in Windsor, a small city across the river from Detroit, which was huge as compared to Windsor. I had families on both sides of the border and still do, which makes it more interesting.

Growing up in the Motown days was nothing else but great music and what was then, a great city in Detroit and where you could go anywhere. But that's all gone. The huge castles off Woodward Avenue are gone or burned, some of them still stand though.

It was the home of all the slick Motown artists, Supremes, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, even the Jackson 5. On Friday and Saturday nights, many of the Motown acts would travel to as many schools they could and where they would lip-sync their latest hits.

But it was also a strong influence from tough white bands like MC-5 (who influenced the British punk movement) as well as Bob Seger and Alice Cooper and tons more. 

For us it was the best place to be on the planet.

And it was my beginning a career when I got a job at a local TV station to work in the mailroom. That job ended two weeks later as I got a promotion to the editing room. That's where I learned how to edit film, although far from making a feature film.  It was only 16mm film commercials, which we taped or glued together and take to a projection unit where the commercials ran.

No digital here. Not even VHS.

Later I was transferred to radio where the station had a 50-thousand Watt broadcaster that would boom through ten states. But my hope was film and there was an opening soon (much easier than trying to find a job now) for the news film department, run by a World War 2 cameraman.

That's when I got into TV news and we did stories both on the Canadian and American side. Detroit was it's toughest then, homicide rates went up to almost a thousand murders. And we witnessed a shooting just a few yards away. 

It was exciting and I loved every minute of it.

 I was there again. We met again and 

And I met with my ex. We already had contact with each other and both of us looked forward to catch up after more than 26 years.

It worked like a movie. And we're a lot closer now.

Now the question is this; what's the movie?

I might put down some info for a hint.

Even easier, I wrote a screenplay, just finished it again and tells us about us.

I wonder what that means?

Sorry to slow down the blog, this is not the best time to think about the one

who left and the one who didn't.

And thanks for hanging with all this world thing. It slows the story down.