By now you probably know a LITTLE about the WGA (Writer’s Guild of America) strike that has stopped production of your favorite television shows. What you may NOT know is all of the various ins and outs of what’s been going on between the WGA and the AMPTP (American Motion Picture and Television Producers).

Basically, the Writers would like to be better compensated for the sales of DVDs, and would like a fair share of revenue from internet content (iPod downloads, streaming media, etc). There are other concerns as well, but these two are the major sticking points, as the AMPTP claims that they make no money from online content, and that the demands of the WGA will ultimately cost too much money.

Here is an update on the last 30 days of activity. Chiefly interesting is the continued announcements about newly formed online content storefronts (designed to make no money? I think not) and the incredible contracts offered to studio executives. Keep in mind that this link is not ALL of the news… it’s news written from the WGA perspective.

So, apparently comments haven’t been working on the blog since sometime in April. Which is awesome, as I’m sure I’ve lost some readers now. AWESOME.

I wondered why I suddenly had zero people leaving happy little messages from time to time. I figured those folks who were reading just didn’t see anything worth talking about.

It wasn’t until Trevor emailed me today that I even knew there was a problem.

Whoops! Sorry about that!

So if you tried to leave a comment recently, and couldn’t, I’m sorry… I broke the Internet, but I fixed it now, I promise. Leave a note if you have a second, as I would like to know if this is working now for everyone else…

And check out my Flickr! page. I got a new camera and have been playing around a lot lately. I LOVE photography, but with the cost of film, I haven’t been taking as many photos as I used to take. So, I switched to digital. And WOW am I glad I did. Here’s an example of what I’ve been up to…

Scotland is beautiful#–castles, cultre, art, music… it’s been a blast. Tonight I will be seeing Shakespeare at the Lyceum Theatre (As You Like It) and I am very excited. So far, my favorite thing has been touring Edinburgh Castle. I’ll have a lot of photos for Flickr when I get back, and I can’t wait to see how they turned out. It seems everywhere I look there is something to snap!

It hasn’t been all play though#–I finished up a pitch idea I’ve been tooling around in my mind for while (horror movie/vampire flick) that I was prompted to finish by an invite from Tim Cox of Plinyminor to send for production consideration. It seems they are looking for a vampire movie in the same mold as the one I’d been considering… I spent some time working out the step outline and structuring the bits I hadn’t already been mulling over, and emailed it out this morning. The review is on Monday, so keep your fingers crossed for me. It’s a concept that I like, so even if it’s not picked up I’ll probably still write the spec script.

For anyone who wants a quick read… here’s the first act of Ozark Mile, plus a little bit. I’m only going to leave this live for a few days…

[update: I’ve deleted the html file… sorry! Contact me if you want to have a read] 

This week I watched When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail. I’m not going to get into the semantics of how similar they are, structure, blah, blah, blah… but how great is the dialogue? That’s the part that’s the hardest to nail#–characters speaking in an original voice, and saying something you not only identify with, but care about. It’s always "bad" to speak in monologues and tell stories through your characters (or so screenwriting books and classes will tell you) but somehow Nora Ephron pulls it off in a way that makes you just love the character even more.

For example… the scene in You’ve Got Mail where Meg Ryan talks about her childhood and her mother. That’s a death knell in most movies… things would just come to a screeching halt. But the way Nora Ephron handles the language, it works. Now why is it different for her? How does she do it?

After a marathon of action/description editing (including a detour into ellipses removal) from 6:30AM until right now… 12:38PM, Ozark Mile (the rewrite) is finished. Finito. Put a fork in it cause it’s DONE.

Woo hoo!

Now there are a lucky few out there who I will be contacting, begging to read and give me criticism… constructive, well thought, taking into account I might kill myself if it’s not good criticism (I’m just kidding#–I won’t harm myself).

Progress bar… updated!

The page-one rewrite of Ozark Mile is finished.

This is now the "new" first draft. It’s rewrite time! On the second draft, I’ll be adjusting scene lengths, balancing dialogue, and checking for character consistency.