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.