One step closer

PRELIMINARY investment trailer of "Beyond the Mat".

http://www.myspace.com/beyondthemat

Highly Recommended Viewing

Kingdom of Heaven: The Director's Cut
From my review...The misfire that was the theatrical cut of “Kingdom of Heaven” has been meticulously corrected and refined here to create a more complete and rousing epic film. Scott has created an inspiring work of allegory; one of his best films to date, which is now smarter, richer, and bigger.

Still no word

Haven't heard anything from the producer interested in Los Coyotes, which means we're hitting up a few other interested production companies.

Financing for Beyond the Mat is taking its sweet ass time, but it seems we will have the first 1/4 of the budget sometime this summer.

Californio has hit an impasse, so Nick and I are going on the hunt to attach a producer. With the release of Brad Pitt's Jesse James movie later this year and Ed Norton coming out with a modern day western (Down in the Valley), plus the success of Deadwood - the genre seems to be on a slow up swing. Now, if we can beat the other Murrieta project out of the gates there just might be hope. So if any of ya'll no anyone who might be interested in producing a Mexican-American Braveheart in the old west, shoot me a line.

In the mean time enjoy some reviews:

Bee Season
Tristan & Isolde
The Family Stone
American Dad: Vol. One

Like molasses

...this is how things move in this town. That's what my friend from undergrad/temporary manager told me over the phone on Monday. I've known Mark (not Amazing Joy Buzzards Mark, but Treasure Entertainment Mark) since my first year at UCSB, 1998. The first short film I ever worked on was a crappy western we co-wrote, he produced and other assorted friends helped put together.

Back in December, Mark called me with a potential job offer. He asked me to come up with a few pitches that fell into the criteria of being "Latino" themed, music driven, urban stories. Once I had something rough we'd meet in January, I'd pitch him my ideas and we'd take those ideas, develop a treatment and then pitch to a legit producer (i.e. with money) who wanted stories/scripts/ideas in the "Latin" arena. I pitched Mark and his partner my human trafficking idea. They loved it. A Mexican-American Goodfellas - their words.

Roughly two months and 18 pages later, the treatment was ready to go. We set up a conference call with the producer who was in Spain and about and hour later, he asked how quickly I could get the script written, given the treatment I said 6-8 weeks. To say the meeting went well, would be an understatement. He loved the idea, wanted to get right on it. Getting him to pay for me to write, just take a look at the blog title.

Mark is trying to work out the details for me, get me an upfront/option on the treatment, a nice payday for the first draft, rewrites and polishes - a decent step deal. So, right now I'm just playing the waiting game to see how serious this producer is. He wants this script, he's going to have to pay me to write it.

But if this falls through Mark is setting up meetings with two very interested producers, one who works at one of the major studios.

I need an agent.

Little by little

Rumblings happening, slowly but surely. If everything works out, I'll have some really great news very soon.

DVDtown.com

In addition to my illustrious up and coming career as a scribe for the screen I have been known to dabble in the occasional movie/DVD review department. Five years off and on as a freelance critic/columnist for the Bakersfield Californian and now, nearly ten years after I started with them, I have spent nearly a year with DVDtown.com. Free DVDs for a consistent thousand word plus write up, yeah it was hard for me to say yes to this one.

And for the heck of it some of my reviews.

A History of Violence
Smallville: Season Four
Domino
High Tension
Veronica Mars: Season One
Ultimate Avengers: The Movie

In the mean time

My good friend Ingrid and I went to the Creative Screenwriting screening of "Brick," which was a pretty good overall, considering it was the writer/director's first film. It took a while for me to become invested in the film, especially during the first act, but after that I was hooked into the world - which was great, clever fun. It had moments of greatness and moments of not-so-greatness, but all in all I was pleased. The first time I heard anything about the film was a few months ago at the first screenwriting gathering, with Fun Joel, Warren and Bill over at DISContent.

Heading to Wizard World Los Angeles this Saturday with my hermano, should be a fun time.

Writing is what it is at the moment. Still working on the Coyotes treatment. Working on a revision and the third act now. I'll hopefully have something finished early next week. Once that's in the bag, I'll be pitching shortly after.

Working on issue 2 of WTSW with Mark Smith. Taking a little longer than I wanted but, a combination of things (having a tooth pulled and a little bit of slacking) have put me behind. I'm aiming to have something to shoot back over to Mark by next week.

Off I go.

There goes crazy

Quickly.

I'm knee deep in writing, finishing up my new Coyotes treatment and pitching it to a producer in less than two weeks.

The 11th Draft of Beyond the Mat is done; heading up to Bakersfield for the state wrestling tournament for research/promotion/investors, etc.

Still no word on Californio.

Blood Bond is now being looked at over at Touchstone.

WTSW (comic) is being chipped away at, plus a marvelous opportunity might present itself if the planets align themselves just right.

I'm off to go bang my head against a wall.

Breaking it down

My year got off to a shitty start. I'll admit it, it blew. It sucked in so many ways, I won't go into the boorish details. I will, admit, however, that I let it happen. I let things slip through my fingers when I should have focused on work and dove right in. Maybe one of these days I'll actually listen to my friends and my own advice.

But I'm back on track. No damage has been done to the career track. Though I was afraid that if I let things continue on the way they were any longer, there would be hell to pay - my ass on a lovely little platter.

Here's how everything is breaking down:

Beyond the Mat. Mine again. After meeting with the other writer, the director decided that the other writer couldn't really bring anything new to the script and that working with me was in his best interest. I made myself a damn good commodity to the project. Not to mention, when you get advice from a professional screenwriter (working on a high profile sequel) that says your writer is doing damn good work and that the script itself is pretty good, too, you tend to listen.

And they're thinking about filming in my hometown. Draft 11 is in the works.

Blood Bond. The script is at Hyde Park, doing what, I don't know. I think it's fermenting on a shelf in their offices. Kirk is in Taiwan. That's all I really know about that subject.

Californio: The Ballad of Joaquin Murrieta. No news yet. After a little trouble getting things in order with the release form they finally received it about a week and half after the script. We're crossing our fingers, waiting to hear something. If worse comes to worse, we're considering trying to get it off the ground ourselves.

Coyotes. The new treatment is about halfway finished, roughly eight pages. I should be getting notes back from Mark at Treasure to see what our next couple of moves are.

When the Sleeper Wakes. A comic book I've been fiddling around with as a collaboration with Mark Andrew Smith, who writes The Amazing Joy Buzzards over at Image Comics. First issue is in the can, working on the second right now, next three issues are in a rough outline form. We'll be finding an artist soon.

Linda. She's a bad ass assassin/bounty hunter; pure pulpy, Hong Kong style fun. Two features in the can, I'm brainstorming a new idea for a comic book. My meeting with Mark Smith put me in the right frame of mind to get this off the ground.

Future Projects. Nick and I will be cooking up some new screenplay projects very soon.

Dvdtown.com reviews are piling up.

Writing needs to be done... and in all honesty I'm looking for more.

It's good to be back.

Boundin' and reboundin'

I woke up ass early to take my friend/producer of Beyond the Mat to the airport. Why I wake up and do these things for people is beyond me, oh wait I have a nice guy complex. Anyhow, she really hasn't been completely up on the porject the last few weeks. Her day job is being an associate producer ona reality TV show - she's pretty kick as at her job. She fights for my work, on getting BTM as tight and as "non-cliche" as possible, hard to do when the directorwas considering working on an Asian version of "The Notebook."

Well, I get a call from the director this morning to inform me (and seek approval to a degree) that I am being replaced as the writer of the film. A swift kick in the nuts. But also something of a relief. I've written 10 drafts, which vary from being page one rewrites to polishes and verything in between. Maybe I've written more, all I know is that I'm so close to the project that I do need a break, to come back with it with a fresh set of eyes.

I'm being replaced by an Asian-American writer. The director said he'd only be comfortable with this if I was. It'll make things easier to sell to Asian investors I suppose. But there's nothing like the feeling I'm having right now of knwoing that someone else is going to be rewriting something I've invested so much time and energy into. I still get credit, I still get paid, I still get to be involved with the production, develop the script, etc. I also get to feel anomsity towards someone I've never even met.

I often work with a co-writer but this is vastly different. My work with Nick is seamless and easy, Californio is my best piece of writing and it saddens me that I can't get him inolved on certain projects (yet) because of race. It's kind of ironic, but the truth of the matter is that we work well together. Very well. I really wish he was the writer that would be handling the rewrite on this but the director really wants an Asian-American writer.


Well, I am off for now. I have to go work on my Latino, Urban themed, music driven film treatment. Hijole.

Update: So, I spoke to the director of Beyond the Mat last night; the business plan/package still hasn't gone out. He' says Tuesday. But on a good note we've been getting a lot of good coverage from various readers. Yay.

I need a new day job.

El Gran Silencio

I handed off the 10th draft of Beyond the Mat to the producers the 2nd week of January. I hustled to get the thing done to meet a deadline they had imposed on the production. This was so they could get the script and business plan out by that weekend. We met on a Sunday, they expected the script on Friday, Saturday at the latest. They got it Weds. morning Jan. 11th. The last I heard the business package was going out this past Monday (the 30th). Nobody tells the writer anything.

There's this great void of uncertainty, waiting, and nail biting agony that I'm trying to push into the back of my mind. I need to focus on these two new projects I have going, they're very promising and could lead to great deals for myself and the production/managment comapny involved. Not to mention the anticipation over Olmos productions reading Californio (they did, however, just request that we sign a release form before anything else - why didn't they ask for that BEFORE we sent the script?). I can't help but feel a little helpless, considering I can really do nothing at this point to influence what will happen. It's something of a great silence, un gran silencio.

Whine, whine, whine. Negativity is a bitch. But I know how fortunate I am to be in this position. Three scripts in various hands, doing various things, that could kick start my career. It's scary, exciting to think about. I know plenty of people who would kill to be in my position. I am every bit a struggling writer and I'm making things happen, or so I hope. I dream. I ain't got much else.

But you know what, life is good.

Check it

The 'Bu

She never felt like home

The pre-wrtiting process has begun. Two treatments for a potential (paid) writing gig are currently brewing over in these parts. One is reworking of my human trafficking script, whcih seems to be all the rage of political discussion these days. The idea is to focus more on the main relationship in the film, a brother and sister at odds with their decisions about becoming involved in this underworld.

The second is kind of a Chicano/a "Garden State" with a rougher edge, and hopefully a female lead, that could be good. This one is a little closer to my heart considering it deals with a lot of issues and things closely related to my growing up in the community and the enviornment that I did. I had a friend, a popular white kid, who was murdered by gang bangers about 8 years ago. Some people say it was motivated by a riff between his close circle of friends and the gang bangers. Others say that it was for dating a very popular Mexican girl. Reasoning aside, someone very close to me knew details that could have led to much quicker arrests. This person never came forward and I never knew about their inolvement until after the police caught the guys almost year after the fact. Very sad.

In other news, the business plan for Beyond the Mat has gone out to financers and now we're just waiting to hear back from people. Crossing fingers.

Olmos Productions has requested to read our latest draft of Californio. The script goes out tomorrow.

Blood Bond is supposed to be making the rounds at Fox. Kirk is in Taiwan doing prep work on another project.

I'm about to start writing something new. It feels prett f'ing good. Hasta.

Up to Bat

Warren at The Screenwriting Life tagged me for the now infamous Scribosphere Meme, which I hadn’t noticed until this morning since I’ve been MIA the last few days. Argh, I hate being on the tail end of things. But thanks, Warren, much obliged.

ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:
My parents, mis padres, love the movies. Married 45 anos, their earliest dates consisted of going to el cine in their small, Texas town and when they had seen all of the films playing locally, they’d hop on a bus and head over to the nearest town to catch movies they hadn’t seen there. That said, they didn’t stop when they started having kids, movies became and important part of tiempo con el familia, family time together. My earliest memories are of Luke in the Rancor pit (sp?) in Return of the Jedi and watching Indiana Jones run away from the impending stone ball rushing after him in Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s also an early memory I have of watching Rebel Without a Cause with my dad. “You’re tearing me apart!!!” Then there's also watching and crying at La Bamba con mi familia.


TWO (2) favorite lines from movies:
“It can’t rain all the time.” – Eric Draven, The Crow
“Stay frosty.” – Cpl. Hicks, Aliens.

THREE (3) jobs you’d do if you could not work in the “biz”:
Film Studies Professor/teacher
Own a Comic Book Shop
Journalist

FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside the industry:
Graduate Assistant to a Professor of Business
English/Math tutor
Boys and Girls Club Counselor
Hardware Handyman, True Value Hardware

THREE (3) book authors I like:
Sherman Alexie
John Steakley
Luis J. Rodriguez

TWO (2) movies you’d like to remake or properties you’d like to adapt:
John Steakley’s Armor, a great, pulpy sci-fi epic... and another project which I’ve been developing off and on for a while which I will leave unnamed for now. Gotta keep one in the bag. Con Safos.

ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated:
Tom Mankiewicz, who was responsible for making Superman into the film we all know and love. He turned what was originally a completely campy script into what we now know as one of the greatest Superhero films of all time.

THREE (3) people I’m tagging to answer this meme next:
Well since almost everyone I know has been tagged already, I’ll try:
The Write Brother
Phillip Morton (as Warren stated before me, let’s see if we can get any of the big boys involved in this)

She was a poem on legs.

Reboundin'

It's always interesting to me the kind of influence the people near and dear to us have over our writing process, wether we like it or not. Certain inflections of personality, speech, their way of doing things, it all rubs off some. My process has always been informed by the people around me, they engage me and challenge me to think of things in a different light. This is also one of the blessings of having a solid writing partner. I'm fortunate to have an almost constant sounding board with Nick. My dear friend Ingrid has always been extremely helpful in this capacity as well. Other people ain't too shabby in this capacity either.

I've been stifled lately, unable to really write ANYTHING in the last few weeks - outside of the few posts here, of course. A potetnial (new and paid) writing job might break this cycle of zero output. Me hopes. Nine drafts (with a few more on the horizon) of Beyond the Mat was starting to get to me. Not to mention I also have three new DVDs to review for dvdtown.com. I needed the break.

March 1st is the tentative first day of production for Beyond the Mat.

"Un revolucionario verdadero cree en el mejor de las personas, en su valor y su listo."

It's been a while

Qucikly, a few new things on the horizon. A potential pitch meeting and paying gig, if things pan out. Beyond the Mat is moving along nicely and as long as things keep moving as they are, the film is going into production in two months.

No word on Blood Bond.

Sent Californio out to another actor, waiting to hear back.

Coyotes outline rewrite is going slow, but I'll have something new soon.

Goals: Agent, Career start, New Script, Network, Californio, Assertive

Sometimes you'll watch a movie and it'll pull just the right heart strings to get you balling like a baby. Happy New Year everyone!

A snippet

I need to revise my credo, here's a taste:

I believe that what it means to be Chicano today, as was once said, lies metaphorically in the hyphen between Mexican-American. It’s an ambiguous, at best, notion of identity. I live in two worlds, a white one and a “brown” one; where sometimes you are not “American” enough for the Americans or Mexican enough for the Mexicans. It’s a difficult path to navigate sometimes, knowing that I am of one of the smallest percentages of “my people” reaching an educational level this high. I represent “us” without ever having been asked, but such is the role of minorities in America.

But I often wonder if Chicano is a term that represents me. The term is taken a group of people who split from the Aztec nation, who fancied themselves the sons and daughters of Huitzilpochtli (god of fire, war and the sun). They called themselves the Mexica (Mechica), hence the derived Chicano. Some find it offensive, associating it with a militant ideal, others not so much. Myself, I really don’t know. Maybe I’m Spanglish, what writer Ed Morales, claims is a “metaphor for what a mixed race culture means – a hybrid language, an informal code…Spanglish is what we speak, but it is also who we Latinos are, and how we act, and how we perceive the world… it is an immediate declaration that translation is definition, that movement is status quo.” Or maybe I am just the son of a couple of Mexicans from Texas, from a family who has had roots there long before Mexico or the U.S.

Tengo un mil solo para usted

Beyond the Mat draft 9 has been completed. I finished it up late last night and did a read through earlier this morning and then sent it off to Van for his notes, thoughts. Seems like financing will go through early in Januaruy and the production is pushing along as planned. If things keep progressing as they are, my first feature film will go into production in late Feb., early March - right around the corner.

Blood Bond is in the director's hands now and I'm now playing the waiting game yet again to see if the project is given the greenlight.

Still no further word about Californio and the big three Nick and I sent it out to. We're still waiting to hear back from Sal Lopez, Julio Mechoso and others.We al recieved our first "non-connection" request to read the script from an agent named Suzanne Camejo, who produced a version of the Joaquin Murrieta story over 20 years ago for PBS.

Todo esta bien en mi mundo. Hasta.