wilderworks

Playing Doctor MAGGIE There are better ways to play doctor. Ways that might actually make me feel better. JON Oh. You mean like Dr. Feel-Good. MAGGIE Yeah. JON I love that song. MAGGIE Yeah. And that “Sexual Healing” song is pretty good too. JON Is that Barry White? Barry White’s music makes me feel sexually inadequate. MAGGIE No, I think it’s Marvin Gaye. JON Oh. Well that’s not a very intimidating name.

Inspired by True Events: The Poo Flinger EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD STREET - DAY Maggie trudges along, walking the dog. She's got a coat over her robe, boots on, plus her ear-flap knit-cap. She carries a bright plastic baggy, full of dog doo. MAGGIE Bat-Man! The Bat-Man! Quit it. No! For no apparent reason, the dog keeps darting toward the street. She tugs on his leash, and he darts back. MAGGIE (CONT'D) C'mon! Get out of the street! An SUV stops at the stop-sign, just as Maggie reaches it. The dog darts out again, and Maggie yanks him back. MAGGIE (CONT'D) What is the matter with you today? The DRIVER of the SUV rolls her window down. It's a middle-aged woman with a massive superiority complex. DRIVER Why don't you quit yanking on that goddamn dog, you asshole? Maggie stops. Dumbfounded. Can't believe the gall. DRIVER (CONT'D) You're gonna break his neck! The SUV starts away. Maggie's brain slowly processes. MAGGIE ...

We're All Sherman Oaks Adjacent, Now Last night, I waited much longer than usual to walk the dog. When I finally went out, it was dark. I don't generally care about that sort of thing. I lived happily in Harlem, and now I live in the similarly regarded Van Nuys. Luckily, I don't believe the local news represents the world, and neither do cop shows, so I've never acquired any appreciable fear of city streets or dark alleyways. Instead, I've found for myself that “bad” neighborhoods are full of nice people. No, it's the well-off places that you gotta worry about. Those people are monsters. My particular sliver of Van Nuys is a little, densely-populated cityscape hemmed in by post-industrial-wasteland sprawl to the north, and suburbanized-hipster-family sprawl to the south. I'm right on the border of Sherman Oaks, which used to be the southern part of Van Nuys, until the brown people started moving in, which encouraged the white people to flee. They hi...

Irrational Anxieties Well, the blog visits are down 65% for the last two-week period; which means I'm averaging about zero visitors a day. Why do I look at these things? I know that it can only frustrate me, and clearly the size of an audience has nothing to do with the quality of the work! Clearly! To quote Bullets Over Broadway : SHELDON FLENDER Hey, look who's here! The big Broadway success. I don't write hits. My plays are art! They're written specifically to go unproduced. The decline in readership is discouraging not because it's unexpected, and certainly not because readership was the aim of the blog, but because the decline coincides with the premiere of the real aim of the blog: screenplay pages. Here it is, the main event. A new screenplay by J Wilder Konschak. *crickets* *crickets* *tumbleweed* *creepy religious militia settles in area* Sometimes, a fellow can't help but wonder whether he should be taking a hint. From Bullets O...

Horror Movie Viewing I'm thinking of changing the doctor's name again. In honor of The Abbott & Costello Show, I may name him Dr. Bacciagalupe. Or maybe just Dr. Galoup. INT. LIVING ROOM - SHORTLY LATER The four sit together in the dark, sipping drinks, watching a HORROR MOVIE on the big TV. DISSONANT MUSIC builds. Jon, Ollie, and Finch are tense, attention rapt - but Maggie is a zombie, eyes glazed, body slouched, barely upright. She looks like she's about to drool, she's so pale and spacey. LOUD MUSIC STING! The others JUMP. Finch lets loose a little shout. Ollie and Jon LAUGH at the great scare. But Maggie still glares glassy-eyed. She doesn't move at all. MAGGIE Why did he do that? I thought he was in love with her. Everyone freezes. The air is gone from the room. JON Honey, that wasn't her boyfriend. Maggie scowls at the screen, befuddled. MAGGIE But... Who was it? JON It was the Octopus Man. MAGGIE Ooooh. Righ...

Running Long, or Short on Gags? I'm running a page over again. I hope I can cut a page from the next segment to compensate, but I have my doubts. As usual, there will be a long phase of painful trimming at the end of this road. Here's the hard thing about writing a comedy alone: there is nothing more nerve-wracking and doubt-inducing than trying to guess which jokes to cut, having almost no feedback from an audience (and apparently, it's very hard to force detailed, joke-by-joke feedback from one's readership). Nobody, no writer, no one, can ever guess what joke will play - only readers and viewers - only the sharp reality of an audience - can say for sure. But you have to make a thousand Sophie's choices all the same, without a shred of useful input from experience or fact or any sort of guidelines. It's a time when self-delusion can be beneficial. You call it instinct, and you go with it. But it's a sickening sensation all the same. You may be...

Posting Has Been Slight These are the times when one hour a morning simply isn't even in the ballpark of sufficient time to be a writer. Problem scenes take vast amounts of trial and error, and the next scenes have been big fat problems. I found them painfully boring and, for lack of a better word, domesticated . I don't want to watch nice, friendly people being nice and friendly to one another. Where is the drama in that? The comedy? In the end, this ALL went out the window. The Engaged Couple INT. KITCHEN - EVENING Jon is at the range, cutting vegetables, when Maggie enters, still in her work clothes. MAGGIE Hey. I didn't know you were gonna cook. I was gonna make the salmon. JON I started the salmon, but I chickened out... and made chicken! MAGGIE Oh, yummy. We're having puns. JON You think the guests will like it? MAGGIE Oh. Good question... You probably could've prepared a slightly higher class of joke. For example, you could hav...

Yeah, coffee shops, I'm talking to you. Particularly coffee shops in the vicinity of Century City. It's swell that so many of you are open at 7AM. It's fantastic that you have nice furniture with comfortable workspaces and free wifi. But this is Los Angeles. If you put a sign in your tiny parking lot that says parking is limited to, say, 20 minutes, or hell, even 45 minutes, then I can't spend my morning there, working and buying your coffee and snacks, now can I? And thus, I end up at Norm's. Where the spoon is a different length every day. You'd think they'd have bought the spoons in bulk.

Here's how I spent my morning - writing another scene that will never make it into the screenplay, another scene that I find quite charming. I simply have no reason to spend this long introducing a character we don't need to meet at all. At present, we'll never see him again. Regular States INT. DOCTOR'S OFFICE - BREAK ROOM - DAY Maggie sits on the counter by the sink, eating a yogurt. Her employer, DR. PUGLISI, has his foot up on a chair, putting a penny in his penny loafer. He's an older man, short, balding, powerful. PUGLISI So, it's his parents' house you're moving into? You'll be living on his turf? MAGGIE Nah, they bought it when he was in high school. He never lived there. When they retired to North Carolina, they transferred the remaining mortgage to him. PUGLISI Ridiculous! Why would anyone retire to NORTH Carolina? If you're gonna pick a state to live in, you should pick one of the regular ones. MAGGIE Regular? ...

First A certain someone gave me an unelaborated nasty look when she read one of the first lines in my first scene of Sick Day , a line describing the hero as someone that should be featured in a Playboy spread called "Girls of the Big Earthquake." Now I'm barely five pages into this thing and I'm already doubting my early favorite line. I can't avoid the truth: there's something about the phrase that I like. I like both the verbal turn (trading "Big Ten" for "Big Earthquake"), especially since it comes right at the end of the phrase, and I also love the image of a Playboy spread of smiling woman covered in white dust, with cuts and bruises, standing outside of rubble. But, I can't avoid this truth either: it's suicide to take unnecessary risks on the first five or ten pages; an early stinker can kill the whole mood. Second The third act suddenly strikes me as not nearly crazy enough. Perhaps it's because I've been ...

Today is the big day. I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Westwood. It's called It's A Grind Coffee House . This is not a "shop" that serves coffee, this is a "house" where coffee lives. Which makes it disturbing that I should burst in and devour it in its home. In any case, the parking situation is less than ideal. There was a metered spot immediately in front, and it was a dollar an hour, so I fed it an hour's worth of quarters. The coffee was about $4. Which still puts me at a significant advantage, financially, over Norm's. I see there is also a parking garage; I'll have to explore the parking options when my hour is up. In any case, today is the big day. I have my outline. I'm not going to persist with the treatment. I'm going to start writing the screenplay. It opens with my main character, Maggie, sitting in an ER waiting room, looking like a wreck. I've taken some notes for the description of her. I'm trying to find ...

I got sick last Friday and stayed home from work. I don't know if I was authentically infected with something, or just suffering from extremely bad allergies, general exhaustion, and a profound lack of will power. But there was no rousing me from bed all that day. That night, I stayed up late working on a "steam punk" costume for Alli, for a wedding she would attend Saturday morning. The awful truth is, I don't absolutely love these super-cute themed social activities. It sometimes seems like a lot of childless folks treating their existential ennui with tossed-off arts-n-crafts. Worse, they often strike me as somewhat self-congratulatory. Like, " Look how clever and creative we are! Take another picture. Facebook will love this! " Like, folks proudly taking the path less traveled by walking continuously one foot to the left of the more traveled path. Like, everyone making boat-rocking gestures while staying as stone-still as possible. " But i...

In LA, we have no weather. It's sunny and warm almost all of the time. For the most part, the weather is predictable and reliable. It's so agreeable, I've mostly forgotten that weather is a thing that happens. And thus, having been denied that outlet to deliver its reminders, here, it is instead through the traffic that the Universe makes its indifferent and chaotic nature known. The weather is almost always nice, so the Universe orchestrates the traffic to shout: "I'm still capricious and cruel, folks - and don't you forget about it!"  What a lousy drive. How much longer can I tolerate a life that it this bare-faced random, this boldly arbitrary? A person deserves the illusion of meaning and sense! If the traffic can't even bother to put on a show of making sense, well, then ... I'll do something, I tell you. I will do one hell of a something.

It took two months longer than scheduled, but it is finally done. I have a full outline for my next feature screenplay, Sick Day. The trick was simple, as always:  I used some scrap paper and scribbled all day at work, moving and tinkering. Adding page-counts helped me focus and judge importance. I realized that a spreadsheet would be the best way to transfer it to digital form, and it works perfectly, flexible but crisp. So, there it is, my answer to the grouped movements that I analyzed in Groundhog Day and War of the Roses ... Speaking of which, I should probably publish that War of the Roses break-down that I did...

What's Up With the Finger? Yesterday evening, when I arrived home, the power was out in my building. I walked Baker and checked out the neighborhood. I took some pictures of LADWP cones and broken electrical pipes, but there were no trucks or crew-persons to photograph. When I returned to building, many of the neighbors were out in the hall, because they were desperately bored, having already been deprived of their television and internet for an eternity lasting upwards of forty minutes. The halls were very dark. It's a bit of a walk in my building, from the entrance to my door. And on my floor, there lives a gigantic mammal. She appears to be part Dalmatian, part Great Dane, part Prehistoric Hippopotamus. She is energetic and nosy and, as best I can tell, entirely unspoiled by human discipline. This is probably the hippo in her. She is also spotted, which is the Dalmation, and has floppy jowls and big pointy ears, which is Great Dane. I believe her name is Bella....

Fake Real Problems Easter weekend found me performing the role of Charlie Kaufman in a presentation of the voice-over monologues from Adaptation , brilliantly delivered, full of the self-loathing and crippling doubt that made it famous, three shows a day. Click on those links up there. I'm not sure I'll be posting what I wrote while in that role. Yes, I started this blog to record the process of screenwriting. And yes, those carefully constructed rants of despair are certainly an aspect of it - at least for me, and apparently for Charlie Kaufman, too. But no, I don't think I'll be sharing them just now. Not without some sort of framing device or additional perspective to add. They require something more to make them less... redundant. One thing is for sure: I'm going to start keeping track of these profoundly angry times. I have two on record now. I'm curious whether they are periodic, and if so, whether I can predict them. I'd like to know when th...

Bored It drizzled on the drive down, but not even enough to wash away the dry white smear on my windshield. It's another overcast day, but this one has less charm than the first one, somehow. Perhaps this is all becoming routine, and the small daily variations are losing their power to excite. On that theme,I had pancakes today. They're always fantastic. But the coffee is a little weak, and the crowd is a little noisy. For a couple days, I've been constructing the movie in outline form on a website called checkvist . And now, having worked on it for another morning, I can say for confidently: it is tedious, and not helpful. I'm losing information, and I'm wasting time encoding the story into an outline form. I'm too methodical to make a sloppy outline, and I'm too bored to finish a thorough one. The only realization I've come to while doing it? I probably don't need Jon to go to work on the first day. And that means Maggie's poo-fli...

I worked all weekend on the treatment for Sick Day , but I only made it slightly into the second act. Starting yesterday afternoon, after I made dinner, the exhaustive detail of the thing started to weigh on me. I took a nap and felt exhausted by the size of it. It will be a thirty-page scriptment at this rate, and I simply don't know whether that is for the best or not. Moving backward through time, Unpredictable had a full treatment, but it was so overlong, plot-wise, that it was vastly and explosively revised as I wrote the screenplay. By the end, the script and the treatment has diverged in very serious ways. That was okay. The only problem was, the script was also okay. Nothing more. I can't afford to do that again. With Gravedigger's Son , I'd written and re-written that treatment a hundred times, several times from scratch. I'd tried writing it as a novel. I'd started on the script as many as three times before realizing that I'd missed the boat ...

Left 7:13 AM | Arrived 7:38 AM This morning the 405 flew, and I arrived about the same time I always do. I can't explain either part of that statement. The ease of travel may have been due to a six-car pile-up, just north of my entrance, that choked back the usual overflow passing through the Galleria corridor. It may have been due to increasing amounts of spring break being observed by colleges in the area. It may have been because Passover begins tonight at sundown, according to my calendar, but not according to my Jewish friends. I'm not sure. As to how I arrived at the same time, despite traffic being non-existent? I can't even begin to guess. Like advanced branches of quantum theory, Los Angeles traffic will never make intuitive sense to the human mind. Our species simply wasn't evolved to interact with systems this foreign and complex. Even with mathematics and metaphors, we can barely bridge the gap. We can't predict it. We can't explain...

I am back at Grounded Cafe . It is 10:15 AM, and I just dropped my dog Bacon off at a new groomer, not too far from my apartment. It's called Mr. & Mrs. Dog . The woman there seemed very nice, but her accent was a rare form that I absolutely could not place or penetrate. I followed her almost entirely by making guesses about the meanings of her gestures and by constructing my replies such that they could have sprung entirely from personal inspiration, not strict response. When she said "vaccinations?" I asked her to repeat it three times, the third time by softly saying, "I don't understand what you're saying," because "vaccinations" started with an "O," and only had three syllables. "Ossendens" is the best transcription I can make. I'm not making fun; I'm simply describing how hopeless I felt. In any case, Bacon won't notice, and she seemed optimistic despite my warning: he won't let me clip ...

Left 7:09 | Arrived 7:39 It's overcast and silver-lit outside. It's the first time that the sun hasn't been rising, blazing in my window as I drove in, peering over my shoulder as I sit here. I rather like it. It brings a timeless quality to the morning. It could be anytime on a cloudy day. A slick-haired Hispanic businessman, wearing a goatee, a pink shirt, and a neck brace, just asked me if I was sitting here yesterday. I told him "Close. I was right up there. But yeah." He nodded silently and stepped away. I ordered only fruit and coffee. As usual, the fruit is cantaloupe and some sort of greenish-yellowish melon. I cut them into little pieces. This will cost me about $4 or $5, but I will tip at least $3. I want to establish the point that the staff gets the same, no matter what I order.

Left 7:06 AM | Arrived 7:37 AM The angle of the sun is changing. Earlier everyday, the sun blazes through the windows of Norm's, laying itself across the whole restaurant. If I sit with my back to it, I can block its glare from my screen with my body, but it is orange-gold and blinding. Today I will have two eggs, over easy, with sourdough toast and a side of fruit rather than hashbrowns. Let's see how that makes me feel. Then again, I really prefer scrambled to over easy. . . EOE or ES. I'm wondering if the immense increase in morning coffee consumption is adding to the inflamed taste buds in my mouth, or to the sore growing on the inside of my cheek. Meanwhile, allergy season has amped up to 9 or 10 out of 12 on the daily pollen reports, and the inside of my nose is dry and bloody, stinging and burning. Pressing the tip of my nose can squeeze a tear from my eye, like a tear dispenser. Daily running and walking is making my legs, knees, and upper-ass ache. I'...

Left 7:06 AM | Arrived 7:42 AM I was stupid and lazy last night and neglected to plug in my Asus Linux netbook, and so I'm on this vastly over-sized Apple laptop, which reduces my focus and - still, after almost a year of using it almost daily - feels like I'm typing with my thumbs tied to my wrist. Let's be honest here, folks, Apple spaces their keyboard keys too far apart, and their text navigation hot-keys are insufficient for intense writing and revision. There's no question that their keyboards look good. The question is, why don't they type good? Why must I suffer? My roommate has a new Apple laptop, and the keys are spaced so far apart that I can't rest my fingers comfortably on all the home-keys at once - and I have relatively longish fingers. I have similar feelings about the operating system itself. I find it clumsy in many complicated multitasking situations, particular with any software that utilizes multiple windows. In particular, it is vastly ove...

It's Sunday. It's almost 1 PM, and I'm out at Grounded Cafe , a coffee shop and internet cafe on Ventura Blvd. I found it with the Yelp application on my cell-a-ma-phone , and I decided to give it a try. There is another place with free wifi and pay coffee recommended by the program: it's called Crave . I drove past it. It looks very busy and bohemian, and there wasn't any street parking within five blocks. So, maybe next weekend. Maybe never. I am trying to reduce the cost of these writing expeditions by making them coffee-only, or snack-only, instead of full-meal. Perhaps I could do that at Norm's, but it feels wrong. It feels like I'm taking up a profitable booth. This is likely ridiculous, since the booths are rarely even close to filled. But coffee shops are places where you are supposed to do this sort of work. I guess this is who I've become. My binary opposite. Someone who writes in public. Necessity makes for strange bedfellows, even when we...

The term "space madness" keeps coming up while I'm working on  Sick day . It first appeared because, at 8 AM, I couldn't remember the phrase "cabin fever." And then I remembered the episode of Ren & Stimpy . And that's why I capitalized it. Space Madness . I don't know how universal an experience Ren & Stimpy was. I remember vividly watching the first seasons as they aired, sometimes with groups other boys at a friend's house. I was 11 or 12. A few years later, they were off the air. People younger than I was may have missed them entirely. Research , and the memory of a friend who was a few years older in 1991, and thus more savvy to how these things worked, reveals that Nickelodeon fired the creator John K after the second season. By coincidence, reviewing the episode summaries, I only recall episodes from seasons one and two, which are where all the classics reside. Anyone who saw seasons after those would've had a completely dif...

I am at the Lamplighter on Van Nuys blvd, about two or three miles from my house. It is Saturday, and it  is 11AM. That's about two hours before I usually get up on weekends, and 2 hours after my alarm clock started going off. In any case, I am here, and my laptop is open. I have one hour before I need to pick up Beezie at the airport. Then, I suspect I will be taking her to her place to take care of the cats, and then taking her to various dealerships to look at used cars, since hers was destroyed in an accident about two weeks ago. I'm not feeling nearly as motivated at this hour of the day. Perhaps I'm just feeling less mentally sharp. Perhaps it's because the text messages and emails and conversations with my people, my mother, my roommate, my girlfriend, have already begun, and my mind is unable to focus on fiction and storytelling. Once again, I have this nagging emotional tug telling me that people are needing my attention. Perhaps, on the weekends, this ...

Left 7:03 AM | Arrived 7:34 AM Can I pause here to mention how deeply I wish I could just stay here at Norm's, hour after hour, writing, researching on the internet, and being a writer - rather than scurrying off to the vortex of distraction that is my paid employment? Can I pause here to mention how much this strange, difficult, and expensive exercise has reminded me that I actually enjoy coming up with stories? As it turns out, I just don't enjoy doing so in competition with the demands of the world, with everything vying for my attention.

Left 7:03 AM | Arrived 7:39 AM I'm not a morning person. I'm not even an afternoon person. Getting up at 6 AM these last three days has slowly replaced my blood with thick, bitter syrup. The problem is, being a night owl, even if I've been up since 6 AM, I can't find my way to Sleepytown until well after midnight. And Sleepytown is a dump now, full of industrial pollution, strip malls, and like three Applebee's. And, you know what, everyone? Strip malls? They'd be much less reviled if they actually had strippers. Last night, as I drifted off, I could feel how terribly tired I'd be today, and some part of my brain floated the idea of skipping a day of writing to sleep in. I'll call the part of my brain who floated that idea "Tommy." Tommy was promptly taunted, tackled, and beaten within an inch of his life by every other part of my brain. The rest of my brain is composed of a 20-man team of really angry mixed martial artists. I don...

I like to imagine that people read this blog, and I like to imagine that they have two different reasons for doing so. Screenwriting Journal One group is interested in watching stories take shape. They're interested in the creative process. They want to contribute, offer support, provide thoughtful criticism. Unfortunately, these readers have not figured out how to use the comment function yet, and instead, are speaking directly to their computer screens. Nonetheless, I have faith that they exist, and that they will eventually overcome this confusion, and we will all be enriched by it. Personal Blog Another group wants to keep up with me, Wilder. They want to read anecdotes, personal reflections, and the odd flotsam of opinion that constitutes the majority party in the Blogosphere Congress. These people are sick of picking through mountains of impenetrable screenwriting stone to find a few personal gems. For a while, I've been cross-posting the traditional-blog eleme...

Left 7:11 AM | Arrived 7:54 AM Heavy traffic today on the 405 south; taking the Burbank on-ramp was a mistake. In any case, even leaving an hour earlier, it's still the same dreary picture out there. My mind spins imagining 3+ hours of this same endless gridlock, lane after lane, packed solid and crawling, every morning, every evening, day after day after day. How can it be permitted? I'm frustrated this morning because my laptop battery is about to die. This is not a metaphor, dammit. Somehow, after plugging this sucker in at my bedside last night, the plug managed to pull completely out of the socket again. I would like to blame the earthquake, but had come unplugged at 4AM, it would have some life in it, instead of the 7% it charged while I got ready this morning. I am disappointed. As I mentioned, there was an earthquake last night at around 4AM, around 4.5 on the relevent scale. It set off the usual rolling wave of posts on Facebook, but I slept right through...

Left home: 7:05 AM | Arrived at Norm's: 7:40 AM My first day at Norm's, writing before work. I just screwed up my waitress by taking my eggs over-easy, despite having ordered them scrambled. These were someone else's eggs. I'm eating the eggs of a girl with curly damp hair. The short-order cook and the waitress are bickering loudly, now, and it's all my fault. I may not be able to follow my scheme and stay here a full hour... They pressured me into getting the full bargain breakfast, which is two of everything, and is like seven bucks, all said. That was not the plan. I'm gonna nibble on my hash-browns. They are my wall against needing to vacate this booth. They're my ASTRO-SMASH energy-shield, and I'm slowly shooting it from the underside. For this metaphor to play out, the staff of NORM'S would need to be periodically eating my hash-browns from the other side. The sign says they have free wifi here, but it appears to be password loc...