As the animators at Rocket House developed and improved their craft, I was doing the same thing with the writing for the short screenplay. After the first three screenplays, I wanted to recapture the thrill I had during the creation of Pastrami on Rye. To see the simplicity of PastramiContinue Reading
Resort to Ice started out as a spoof on the high society, organized crime syndicated and spy movies of the 1960s. At least that’s what I wanted to think as I sat down to write it. I sat down to write it with one line in mind: “The last manContinue Reading
The inevitable return to The Roxy has some baring here, but very little when it comes to the Go-go zombies. I wandered into the place at midday and was grateful for the silent stillness of the joint. David Bowie’s Rebel Rebel echoed from the the distant jukebox. A caseworker withContinue Reading
I left Gio at the bar. There were the multitudes of thought which always happen to me during the onset of a new project. As for my own work, I had just completed Dysphoric Notions which was an episodic novel about drought crusaders, murder victims, bookstore owners, lackeys, adulterers andContinue Reading
Introduction The attempt of Cold Fried Chicken is to one thing and one thing alone: to get you, the writer, the director or the maker of film to write. Ultimately the hope is for you to write the short screenplay, but the very act of writing, writing anything, is toContinue Reading
The Forward And again, at the risk of sounding like a barfly, my brief career as a screenwriter began in a bar. In a bar. I feel like most writers for the screen study the form in school and then tirelessly market themselves and their work with query letters andContinue Reading
The Preface I spend a great deal of time talking to my buddy Bill. Bill and I discuss books and movies and the theater over beers at the dirtbag bar near the fancy restaurant where we both work. Unfortunately, our work schedules differ; Bill works the back of the houseContinue Reading
So this is how it happens: someone in a partnership needs to do the driving. Someone needs to make the decisions. Someone must, as it happens, make things happen. There are, at moments in life when living through your days grifting and drifting, that you must trust your accomplice implicitlyContinue Reading
As spring winds down and fades into summer, I wonder how long the rains of Portland will last. Yes, if April showers bring May flowers, what will the rains of June, July and August bring? And really, what does it matter? When Janice and I moved here in November, weContinue Reading
The frogs, in chorus, croak and call and sing all night long. There is a certain level of peace to it, this is true. When I hear them, I think of Mack and the boys from John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row capturing hundreds of the cacophonous amphibians in old gunny sacks.Continue Reading