Act One: First Draft [Sick Day]

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 Over Broadway
SHELDON FLENDER
(with massive pride)
I have never had a play produced! That's right. And I've written one play a year for the past 20 years.
DAVID SHAYNE
Yes, but that's because you're a genius. And the proof is that both common people and intellectuals find your work completely incoherent.
The Weekend Review
Barb was away this weekend, and so, aside from spending seven hours waiting for the cable-guy to install my two new DVD-Rs (one for the living-room, and one to store under my bed, to occupy the space that might otherwise be filled by deadly ninjas), I spent the weekend recharging my spirits and smoothing the first act of the script.

From Deconstructing Harry
HARRY BLOCK
I think you're the opposite of a paranoid. I think you go around with the insane delusion that people like you!
I recharged my spirits by watching Bullets Over Broadway and Deconstructing Harry, several episodes of The Abbott & Costello Show, and the entirety of Season 2 of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

From Deconstructing Harry
HARRY BLOCK
All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.
The smoothing was frustrating. I'm always relentlessly dissatisfied with the flow of paragraphs and the phrasing of sentences. I can rewrite a simple action-line two hundred times without thinking a thing of it. I fully expect to rework the opening description of Maggie at the hospital at least another hundred times, if not far more.


From Curb Your Enthusiasm - 209: The Baptism
LARRY
Why do Christians take everything so personally with Christ, you know? Not only do you have to worship him, you want everybody to. I like lobster. Do I go around pushing lobster on people? Do I say you must like lobster? "Eat lobster, it's good, it's good!" It's not only where you live, you go to Africa, you travel all over the world, "Eat lobster! Have some more lobster, it's good!"
CHERYL
I don't really think it's the same...
LARRY
"WE WANT YOU TO HAVE THE LOBSTER!"
CHERYL
Lobster and religion, I really don't see the similarities.
Act One - For Your Review
The link has been removed because the screenplay is now completed and being shopped for sale...

Comments

  1. Phoenix5/11/2010 10:54 AM

    You're a tease. I was all ready and willing to read the first act because I'm here at work by myself and then the link to the gmail doc takes me nowhere.

    Sad face.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wilder5/11/2010 10:57 AM

    Updated to a non-google doc link. Not sure why it wouldn't work, though... Supposed to be shared with all.

    http://misplacedplanet.com/wilderworks/coldwar_act1.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  3. Phoenix5/11/2010 11:03 AM

    Got it, thanks Wilder!

    (PS, my captcha word was "womon". Hah!)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wilder5/11/2010 11:10 AM

    Thanks for pointing out the problem-o.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Alli5/11/2010 11:45 AM

    Sweet! I really like the description of the food as 'tawdry' I don't know why-it just tickled me. I don't know about the microwave business... Should she be as clever as she usually is when she can't even stand? Or is this a burst of manic energy?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wilder5/11/2010 11:48 AM

    I'm pretty confident about the microwave bit, and Gwynne has already backed my confidence in it, in an earlier post.

    After all, (1) microwaves AREN'T HEAVY, and (2) everyone isn't instantly and totally incapacitated by a cold, like you are. ;-)

    ReplyDelete

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