Hey cool, Electric Chainsaw Massacre was featured on Treehugger

Check it out – pretty cool because that is a blog I read on my own. Always a nice surprise to be mentioned on it.

Not that they mentioned me by name. It seems they think the film was actually made by Funny or Die. Now considering that Funny or Die is Will Ferrel, Judd Apatow, and Adam McKay – I’m going to take that as a compliment.

620+ views and still over 92% funny. That’s not too shabby.

Tracking the numbers

There is something very odd about me. Okay, more than one thing. But I’m going to be talking about one thing right now. And that is how I really do love to track numbers as they relate to things that I’ve worked on.

As I’ve mentioned, The Electric Chainsaw Massacre debuted online earlier this week. It’s on Funny or Die, and I’m borderline obsessed with seeing how it’s doing there. (In case you’re wondering, just passed 500 views and it has 98 funny votes and 8 die votes.) I seriously check about 10-15 times per day. It’s strange, but I do it. (By they way, if you haven’t already, go there and vote “funny,” please!)

Now if this were the only thing I tracked, you’d probably think I was making a big deal out of nothing.

But it isn’t.

• I’ll track the stats to this very blog.
• Along with the lethal blog that I maintain.
• And the website for my band that currently lays dormant, ready to strike in power when the moment presents itself. (The band lays dormant, not the website. Well, the website does too. But I’m referring to the band. And I don’t know if it should be lays dormant or lies dormant.)
• Plus the stats on the other 20 websites that we host.
• I’ll check the sales for the iphone app LETHAL that we developed.
• I’ll check the sales for the Boy Sets Fire DVD that I edited.
• I’ll see what kind of ratings and views my youtube channel has gotten.
• And now that I’ve also uploaded Electric Chainsaw to vimeo, well, I’ll check out how many “plays” and “likes” it’s gotten there.
• And since we’re experimenting with how much money we can make from adding Google ads to our lethal blog, I’ll check our ad revenue, too.
• And when I’m done with all that, I’ll normally check to see how the different movies are doing at the box office. how the video games are selling (by the way, the numbers on that site are largely extrapolated to the point of being made up, but I’ll look at them anyway!), how TV shows are doing in the Neilsons, and even how much different albums are selling.

Not all of those every day. But some of them every day. Of some of them more than once a day. I kind of love the charts, the numbers, the making sense of stuff that pure stats sometimes provide. I mean, I’m weird about it. I’ve even gone into my screenplays and seen how many words different screenplays had, and what percentage of those words were dialogue versus action. Why? I don’t know. Because it’s cool. I’ve made charts about how many screenplays I’ve written per year. It’s part of the reason I love the tag clouds so much. Part of the reason I love sports so much.

I know I am surely the only person who tracks so many things, but does anyone out there track anything even somewhat religiously?

Nice little shout out for Electric Chainsaw Massacre

Came across this blog post from someone who saw it at a film festival.

I must admit, horror is my least favorite genre, but this movie was so quirky, so delightfully depraved that it was clearly created with tongue firmly in cheek. Other similar charmers included The Electric Chainsaw Massacre, The Family, and Sexual Tension – the Super Adventures of Steve and Stephen. For a laugh-out-loud experience, I encourage you to leave your delicate sensibilities behind and visit these worthy films on-line.

(Note the first sentence is about another movie, but since he called my short a “similar charmer” I thought I’d leave it in for context.)

I hate napping

Oh my I hate it. Just makes me feel like someone drugged me. It doesn’t make me feel refreshed at all. In fact, the complete opposite. Unfreshed, or antifreshed. Or rottened.

And tonight I had big plans for those hours between 11 and 2, and then I was hanging out with Darby as she fell asleep and I fell asleep too. So a nap at 11 at night shouldn’t really count as a nap at all, right? More like… getting to bed early. But I wanted to stay ahead of the game. But I think I just have to admit that I fought the game and the game won this time and take my contacts out and go back to sleep.

But while I’m still somewhat awake, if groggy, let me make a list of other things that normal people love while I despise.

Coffee. That’s a really big one. Everyone loves coffee. It’s like a religion and I’m this stubborn athiest.

Mashed Potatoes or its cousins like potatoes au gratin or hash browns or any of those variants. Can’t even stomach a bite.

Napping. Like I said. People talk about wanting a nap and I think why in the world would anyone do that to themselves?

Alcohol. Ugh. Yuck. Bleck. Gag. Let’s see. It tastes bitter and awful, like poison. It’s terrible for you in terms of weight gain. It’s super expensive. And it could make you do really stupid things. What am I missing here, exactly?

Long drawn out public prayers. I know they really do the trick for other people, but the only trick they do for me is that one that forces me to wonder, “How much longer is this person going to pray and I don’t care I’m going to open my eyes and look around.”

Businesses where you get your friends to buy stuff by inviting them to parties and stuff like that. No. Please don’t do this to me. I have a rule, and it goes like this. Darby and I don’t go to these parties. No candles. No tupperware. No cooking equipment. And no health food or drink. Because while they say it’s no problem if you come to the party without buying anything that’s not really true – because if everyone did that then the party would lose money and it’d be a bummer for the person who threw it. It’s such high stakes peer pressure wrapped up in years of friendship and unspoken obligations which apparently have a price tag. No. No. No. I don’t like being a part of it.

Lasagna. This is a pretty big one actually, because I’ve found that for many people the answer to the question, “Now what’s a food that everybody likes?” is LASAGNA. When actually I hate it. It’s the lumpy weird cheese that does it for me. Ricotta cheese? And so whenever I’m in a communal setting where large numbers of people are being fed I can count on going hungry because 4 out of 5 times they will be serving lasagna.

Mayonnaise. Really, people. Why? It’s room temperature eggs, right? I mean… why?

Mustard. Why do you have to ruin a perfectly good burger or pretzel like that?

So that’s a partial list. And as you can see, many of them are food related. I have food issues. It’s true. And I can’t just grin and bear it either. If I try to force myself to eat any of these things, I’ll normally gag. Now that’s not exactly a welcome addition to a dinner party, is it?

Oh well, I know the problem is mine, not yours.

Tag clouds and how I like to read them.

You may not even notice them. They’re in the side columns of most blogs, and they’re known as “tag clouds.” What they’re meant to do is give you a basic idea of what the blog author writes about. Each post has tags assigned to it. And in the cloud, the tags get bigger or smaller depending on how often they’re used. Many tags won’t make the cloud at all. (For instance, this blog as over 1200 tags, but only 45 make it into my cloud.)

Sometimes I like to just take a look at the tag cloud of people I know who maintain blogs and see how good of a representation it is of the person I know.

Let’s take a look at mine, first.

It’s not bad in terms of giving you a basic idea of what I’m up to. Lyric mentioned today that her name is too small – she doesn’t like how Ollie’s and Darby’s are larger. We have california and the east coast represented, along with the things that do seem to weigh on my mind like my career, my struggle (and it’s twin brother “struggles”), my finances, and representation. Screenwriting is the largest word, because I do end up writing about that a lot. UCLA is also large, which makes sense because I greatly appreciated my experience in that fine film school. Topanga makes a large experience because – good or bad – the place definitely makes an impression. There’s the little trio of frustrating, funny, and god – which oddly I believe belong together, honestly. Then we have wisdom, which I strive to have and listen to, and family, which is also very important to me. Along with time, which I’m always trying to find more of. I’m happy to see hiking make an appearance, too. And since I develop iPhone apps, it makes sense that it shows up as well. I’d say it’s a pretty good snapshot. I think I wish maybe some sports got in there, and probably more family and friends by name – but honestly many times when I’m talking about family or friends I don’t mention them by name because I’m not always sure what people want me to say about them online. So I’m more generalized much of the time.

Oh, and some day it would be great to add a tag called “Oscar-winning.” But that can wait.

Let’s move onto my daughter’s tag cloud.

Lyric’s tag cloud is simpler, which I think is right, considering she’s 10. I actually love that she has a fairly uncomplicated life. Things can and will get much more complicated later, so let’s keep it simple now. And honestly, her tag cloud makes me glad because it reads like a list of people who love her very much interspersed with words like “Christmas” and “fun”! She was surprised to see that the word “Ollie” was so large. That guy just really makes an impression, I guess. And I would like to point out that while “mommy” is larger than either “dad” or “daddy” – if she would settle on one title for me the combined power of that one title might even supersede mommy all together.

How about my sister, Jessica?

As I’ve mentioned before, my sister is currently navigating her own personal hell with both strength and grace, so her tags are especially interesting as HUMOR and GOD still dominate the landscape along with theater/tour and thoughts/life. And if you read her posts, you see that she does rely heavily on both humor and God to make it through the day, so it’s nic to see that in her cloud. And then there’s the tag that at one time was so simple and easy, but now it’s not so. I’m not going to write it, I’ll just let you figure it out. (And no, it’s not JAPAN.) But really it always seems odd to me that this tag isn’t somehow split into two tags. The “before summer of 09″ and “after summer of 09″ tag. Because that tag used to be associated with head over heals commitment and affection, love and lovely writings that Jessica would write weekly if not daily. And now it’s a tag attached to such pain and heartache. Just one small word. And yet, I know that as Jessica continues to live this new life that’s been given to (forced upon) her, she’ll continue to write about new things – wonderful, unforeseen things, and slowly that tag will get smaller and smaller – just like many of the other tags that are still in her cloud but not much of her everyday life anymore. Like Japan. That one is getting smaller. And even “A Chorus Line,” because she’s not in that show anymore. Eventually all those tags will shrink and shrink and probably fall out of the tag cloud all together. But the fun thing to think of is…. what new tags will come and replace them? (By the way, I had to lobby long and hard to get mentioned by name enough to actually make it into Jessica’s tag cloud. And now that I’m there, I really don’t want to lose my place! Still annoys me that “toyko” and “Christian” are larger than me!)

Let’s take a gander at my writing partner’s…
Hey everyone, meet Doc Pedrolie. He’s my writing partner on all television endeavors, all graphic novels, and most features. He’s an all around awesome guy, and the first UCLA classmate I met out here in California. one of the nicest people I’ve ever known, and now a dear friend to our whole family. He hasn’t been keeping his blog for long, so the tags aren’t completely representative of all his many varied interests. (Seriously, Doc is one of those guys who you mention something like, “You know, I’ve been kind of getting into Bluegrass lately,” and he can then carry on an informed discussion for an hour about the nuances of Bluegrass, sharing recommendations, anecdotes and little known facts. You can throw just about anything at him and he’ll know stuff. And he doesn’t make it up, either, like I do.

Now first off, I have to commend Doc because his tag cloud actually mentioned my blog by name. Huzzah for that. And thank you. Past that, you can see that Imagination and Inspiration are begging to be seen, and that’s only right because Doc works on those things. He doesn’t wait for them to walk into the room. He hunts them down and captures them nightly. Los Angeles, this city of dreams, is well represented, along with UCLA and Bruin Scribes. Doc is nothing if not loyal. I like that “Unexpected Gift” shows up as a fairly large tag, because isn’t that what we’re all hoping for – and aren’t all the best things in life normally the unexpected gifts. The expected gifts, yes, they’re nice…. but you expected them. It’s the unexpected ones that will blow you away and exceed even your wildest imagination. Doc’s a big baseball fan, so that explains all the baseball related tags. And he’s from Chicago – and while he’ll probably never go back, there’s a part of his heart that is still there now.

And lastly, my good friend since childhood, Christian.
Christian is aptly named. He’s one of those great guys that – in a world where so many people make you ashamed to share the “Christian” label along with them – makes you proud to apply it if it applies to him too. Seriously, he’s a good guy. One of those touchstones kind of guys who would probably really shake you and your belief that there can be good in this messed up world if he went off the deep end (no pressure, Christian!)

Christian’s a pastor, so it should maybe come as no surprise to see God and Jesus and Bible and youth ministry so largely represented. But then again, the reason he’s a very good pastor is because he doesn’t care about these things because it’s his career, it’s his career because he cares about these things. But one thing I love about Christian’s tag cloud is that KIDS is huge. And fighting it for prominence (along with God) is GRIEF. Now I’d say in a fight, I’d put my money on God and KIDS to ultimately win out versus Grief, and that’s exactly what Christian has lived. Remember how I said that love hurts so much sometimes? Well, Christian knows. He’s earned a certain amount of wisdom in that whole area that, quite frankly, I hope to never have to earn myself. It’s his story to tell, so I’ll let you go to his blog to read it, but let’s just say that when Christian talks about suffering and love and all that, you’d be wise to listen.

I love that “creek” shows up in his tag cloud. I wish creek would show up in mine, or waterfalls, or woods, or something like that. But I do have to wonder what’s wrong with him that “dentist” shows up too. Is he just obsessed with his teeth or something? And, of course, as is the general theme these days for many of us, money holds a pretty big spot. But here’s another one I want in my tag cloud – MUSIC. I need more music.

I am NOT so happy to see that the ONLY non family member who shows up by name is Joe. That just doesn’t seem fair to me.

But soccer being that large, well that just seems right. Because the one place Christian is allowed to not act like his name all the time is on the soccer field.

So there you have it. The blogs I read regularly, and my take on their tag cloud. Probably weren’t expecting that, huh?

(And Tiffany, if you had a tag cloud, I would have read it for you!)

Wow, that was much longer than expected.

Loving the Bonus

I try to maintain a certain number of disciplines. I’m by no means perfect at this, but I’m better than I used to be. But one thing I love is when I’m able to put in more work, more good, than was called for by my disciplined plan.

For instance, I try to write 5 pages a day. But sometimes I finish those 5 pages and find that I still have more in me, so I’ll go ahead and write another 5, 10, maybe even 15 pages. And then at the end of that day, I know that I’ve put in 4 days worth of work and bought myself a freebie if I need it. I love that. It’s like all the pressure is off, and I can just fly. And sometimes those no-pressure pages are better. (Sometimes they’re not, honestly.)

Today, I got a totally unexpected bonus. Normally on the weekend, we go out and try to have some kind of adventure as a family. But today, things were pretty chill. People wanted to do quiet things with paper, like draw.

So, okay, I joined everyone with my own notebook and pencil. And I was able to sketch out – the entire outline of my next feature, which had been hanging over my head for quite some time now! I was going to give it all my attention tomorrow, but now it’s like some magical elves wrote it overnight and delivered it to my doorstep. The thoughts and characters just really started flowing, and even though I kept telling myself, “Well, let’s see if I can get Act 1, and then I’ll stop” or “Act 2 and that’s it” pretty soon I found that I had roughed in the total structure of my film. Pretty cool.

And then, my representation wants some spec episodes from me and my writing partner to help them get us TV staff jobs. Again, with no real pressure, I got some emotional landscape for two different spec shows that really appealed to me – immediately they were very inspirational in terms of creating a full script. And so I was able to write that down too.

So on a day where I thought I’d still have 3 pretty big things looming over my head, I was able to really knock out a lot of it.

Bonus time.

Which is only right, because I have a 8 AM meeting tomorrow morning.

Waking up early still feels like a death sentence.

Love hurts so much sometimes

We have some excellent friends out here in California – wonderful people, their daughter one of my daughter’s best friends. They let us housesit for them for a week while we tried to find a place to live at the end of the summer, and I really bonded with their great dog. A half australian sheepdog, half golden retriever, Aussie is a truly sweet creature. This entire family adores Aussie, for good reason.

And this family just found out that Aussie has a tumor in her nose – and probably 4-6 months to live. Aussie is only 2 and a half years old. It’s a tragedy. We visited them a little on Friday, and Aussie is on medication and groggy and slow – completely different than her normal, perky, active self. The husband in the family, especially, is incredibly sad. I noticed him just staring at Aussie while the dog rested on the floor, trying to will to reality his hopes. It was so sad to see.

So sad, in fact, that – while we were inching closer to maybe getting a dog for ourselves – now Lyric’s decided she doesn’t want one. And given the way we worry and stress over every up and down that our geckos experience, I’m kind of relieved if we don’t.

Sometimes loves just doesn’t seem worth the pain. Sometimes that Paul Simon song, where you are a rock, you are an island – and a rock feels no pain and an island never cries – really makes a ton of sense. My heart and my head both know 99% of the time that it is worth it, but that doesn’t make the pain hurt any less, or the risk any less dangerous.

The Electric Chainsaw Massacre, in its entirety.

I’ve been excited about the time I can finally post this short film in its entirety. Now that it’s finished a successful run through the film festivals, here we go! Enjoy.

If you’d like to help me out (and I’d love it if you would!), here are things you can do:

1) Click through to Funny or Die and vote “Funny” – that would mean the world to me.

2) From that same page, post it to your facebook or twitter or digg accounts.

3) If you have a blog, post it!

4) Tell your friends to vote “funny” for it, too.

5) Leave friendly comments here and elsewhere.

6) Thanks, and enjoy!

A rewrite that was a long time coming

I rewrote pretty much the first play I ever wrote this week. I mean, if you don’t count the adaptation of Pete’s Dragon that I put on when I was in the 3rd grade – or the christmas play I pulled together for our class that same year, whose performance was halted prematurely by a teacher who just wasn’t ready for our vividly realistic portrayal of the actual birth of Jesus. All that screaming and groaning really seemed to upset her. And looking back, maybe structurally it wasn’t the best choice to have the first 8 of 10 minutes dominated by this kind of dramatic action.

But much of my dramatic muscles laid fairly dormant until I wrote a play for the summer camp I was running – “The Story of Esther.” I wrote a number of smallish one act plays for the drama week of my camp, and they were a smash hit with the parents.

And since my brother Jonathan is now a pastor who is hungry for material for his drama teams, I’m often asked to mine these old gems and polish them up. Most of them end up working quite well, like the David and Goliath comedy that my own daughter Lyric starred in as the ferocious yet somewhat lovable Goliath. It was a mind-blowing experience to see your own flesh-n-blood take a role you penned long before she was even a twinkle in anyones’ eye.

And now he’s gotten to the very first one I wrote, so after having to do some datamining tricks on my computer (since I wrote it about 4 machines ago, in a program I no longer hve, for a platform I no longer have) I was able to produce it for him. Many times I’m so busy that I just have to send it to him saying “Haven’t looked at it in 10 years. It seemed to work back then. No promises.”

But now, since I’ve recently come up with the bright idea of getting all 7 of these plays together and offering them for sale on a website, I thought I better take a look and see if it’s up to the level of quality I’d like associated with my name on the internet.

Esther wasn’t.

Upon reading my play, there waas something that bothered me immediately about the story of Esther. Not in terms of history – it is what it is, and you can’t really complain about a true recollection of events as they occurred. But as a play, as as story, as something worth enveloping an audience in for a half hour.

And this is it: I think Esther has some strange unintended messages for girls. As in:

1) The only reason men will listen to girls in the first place is if they find them attractive. And,

2) The only thing girls can do to change a bad situation is convince men to do something.

You have a king who had gotten rid of his first wife – Queen Vashti – because she didn’t want to just be ogled for her looks by the king and his drunken friends. Then the king replaces her with Esther – without knowing Esther at all – based on Esther’s looks alone.

Then Esther finds out about a terrible plot against the Jewish people. And the only option open to her is facing death and asking the king for mercy (for approaching the king unbidden – even by a wife – was punishable by death.) And she faces her fear, gets all gussied up in beautiful robes, approaches him, and when he looks at her he finds favor with her and grants her wishes – to stop this plot against her people.

So, in terms of potential lessons here? Don’t stand up for your own self-respect like Vashti did, or you get thrown out of the palace. Be pretty, like Esther. Hope you can be pretty enough to win some powerful guy’s favor, so you can get your wishes granted.

As a father of a daughter I adore, I don’t like these messages.

(And again, I’m not saying that the actual scriptural story of Esther has these messages, because it’s a history of an event. But when it’s made into a play, messages are sent – and when I read through my draft from years ago these are the messages I hated to admit I saw.)

So what do I do? It’s the Story of Esther. These are the facts of what happened. How can I change it?

And what’s cool – I could see how my training and pure storytelling discipline over the past decade helped me solve these problems with “instincts” that I wouldn’t have had without all the pages I’ve written between then and now.

I concentrated on the character of Esther to solve this problem – and knew I needed to add conflict. Now the king’s attitude – that of wanting beautiful women around just to look at and enjoy – can still be in a script, but the message sent about that attitude will really depend on other characters’ reaction to that attitude. If everyone is okay with it and the king suffers no consequences, it looks like that attitude is cool.

So Esther is not cool with it anymore. In fact, now I’ve set it up that when she finds out the king has chosen her as a wife, she’s a total romantic. She thinks he’ll want to talk to her, get to know her, enjoy her company as two people who love each other do. But when she first meets him and all he wants is her beauty – and in fact tells her to stop talking so much because her moving mouth makes it hard for him to enjoy her pretty little face, she’s traumatized. So, by focusing on a character and exploring what her true reaction to such a sad situation would be, I’ve solved the whole Vashti goes and Esther replaces her troubling message. And now I’ve added so much more character conflict. Esther thought things would be great, and instead they’re horrible. What should she do?

I also added more scenes for Vashti, so she could verbalize the “girls are only as good as they are pretty, honey” message that Vashti has now come to believe, based on her own terrible experience. And you see Esther develop to the point where she says this isn’t true. Again, it adds more conflict, but it also shows the two responses to a sad reality – giving up and accepting it, like Vashti, or being courageous and refusing to succumb to it, like Esther.

These are messages I am comfortable sending.

For the last bit – that girls are only powerful to the extent that they can influence a powerful man – I amped up the drama of that last scene to change that whole dynamic. Originally, I had Esther enter and the king find favor with her. That’s a big dramatic let-down to the build up of “oh my goodness you can die for visiting him unbidden”! Kind of like writing JAWS with no shark. That’s a problem.

So this time when she enters, the king is furious. His friends are there! She’s embarrassed him! So he gives her one last warning, saying she must leave or she will be executed. Esther stands strong: “I need to talk to you.” He tries to give her another warning, and she cuts him off – stating she’s exhausted her last warning, and at this point he needs to kill her or listen to what she feels so strongly about that she’d face death.

And this courageous display changes the king- challenges him. For this part, focusing on the character of the king helped me. He’s never had anyone challenge him on anything, except Vashti, and he acts like a baby when people do. But now seeing someone who is willing to call his bluff and face the ultimate punishment for the sake of others, he sees that he doesn’t hold all the power. In fact, he sees that this woman that he choose for her beauty alone is actually more powerful than her. And he feels empathy for the first time – a desire to help her despite it costing him.

So now, instead of simply having a beautiful woman ask some dude a favor because she wasn’t powerful enough to do it herself – I have a courageous woman who’s willing to sacrifice her own life to stand up and demand that the right thing be done. And this display changes a king who’s never seen anything like this before, and it’s making him feel things he’s never had to feel before.

And again, that’s a message I enjoy in this play.

So now, I’m proud to say I’m extremely comfortable with this script. I was able to make it send the right messages, along with really increasing the drama and being truer to the characters as real people.

That’s a good rewrite.

Well this was quite a great birthday

Any day that includes these three.

And an impossibly beautiful series of one waterfall after another as you ascend the mountain.

And impossibly huge boulders that seem placed both randomly and perfectly at the same time.

And the quest for the perfect walking sticks fulfilled.

And such an incredible, amazing hike that your daughter says, “There’s no word to describe how this place makes me feel!”

And did I mention these three?

And a panorama that you could sit in for hours and still notice new things.

And more waterfalls.

And an old stone wall of mysterious origins that you decide had to have been built by fairies or some kind of mythical woods creatures….

Just has to be an amazingly awesome birthday.

(Solstice Canyon in Malibu is truly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life. We climbed higher up the series of waterfalls and pools today than we ever had and found one wonder after another. It was one of those perfect times that makes you want to sing and run and laugh all at the same time.)