ScriptShadow: Congratulations to Buried and Chris Sparling

Film Classes

Writer's Bootcamp
The best screenwriting course there is. One night a week for two months. The first step for any aspiring filmmaker.

New York Film Academy
Attend the one month Acting Workshop, followed by the two month Directing Workshop. Both courses are full-time committments, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. Recommended only after completion of Writer's Bootcamp.

Hollywood Film Institute
A two day Producing Workshop. Recommended only after completion of the Acting and Directing Workshops at the New York Film Academy. Congratulations, you're now ready to make a feature film.

Higher Consciousness Classes

The Monroe Institute
A one week course, at the end of which you will leave, regardless of your belief system going in, with the absolute knowledge that your consciousness will survive physical body death. A life changing experience.

Landmark Education
Fifteen years of psychotherapy in 3 days. Reconciliation with the past. Also highly recommended.

The Pathwork Foundation
Transpersonal psychology with spiritualist leanings. Discovering the nature and source of one's own shadow. One-on-one work with a Helper over a number of years. Recommended only for those ready to make a substantial committment.

EFT: Emotional Freedom Technique
Remarkable, often seemingly miraculous healing technique, performed by simply tapping on various points throughout the body. Acupuncture without the needles. Instruction offered for free on web site.

The Omega Institute

New York Open Center

The CG Jung Foundation

Higher Consciousness Resources

Sacred Text Archive
A comprehensive archive of the world's great metaphysical texts.

Nirvikalpa
Selections from various channeled works.

Seth Center
The phenomenon that give birth to the New Age movement.

A Course in Miracles
The single most beautiful work I've encountered in my life thus far.

Congratulations to Buried and Chris Sparling

Wanted to give a congratulations to everyone associated with Buried, the risk-taking trapped-in-a-coffin project that had a big night this weekend, becoming the first film sold at Sundance, when Lionsgate picked it up (for between 3-4 million). I always saw this as something that could light up the independent circuit, but the strong word of mouth from the festival as well as the Lionsgate pick-up means this project could have much more ambitious goals. Check out some of the reviews from Aint-It-Cool and Firstshowing, as well as Slash-Film. You can also go back and read my original review of the script back in June, as well as my interview with its writer, Chris Sparling. To this day it remains the second most downloaded script from the site (the first is Source Code) and I truly believe you guys helped build the pre-buzz that made sure a lot of eyes were on the film when it debuted this weekend. I'm telling you, this is the new way to get buzz for your film. Get your script out there. :)

via scriptshadow.blogspot.com

Have had this one sitting on my desktop for quite some time now, seems I'll finally have to get to it soon after all. Our good friend Mark Mitchell will be attending Sundance as of tomorrow afternoon, will see if he can't score a few tickets to this one (certainly it's going to be one of the more difficult screenings to get into, and just might require the pulling of a rabbit out of a hat...), and, if he does manage to catch it, we'll absolutely get a full review up for everyone in short order.

Bio

In 1999 I was the founder and CEO of Fragments of a Hologram Rose Inc., pioneering live video on the Internet, as well as the creator, producer, and director of the "Here and Now" webcast, the first ever live, uncut broadcast of real life to the Internet, full motion video and audio, 24/7.

I am now the CEO of the production company Academy Leader / Tears in Rain Inc., and am a writer and director of film. My work has been featured in print, online, and on radio and television throughout the world. I live in New York City.

(And yes, Gore Vidal is my uncle--though certainly our choice of writing subjects differs widely: he's the historical novelist, I'm the blockbuster sci-fi screenwriter.) Those who'd like to write can contact me at the e-mail link above.

Current

Writing Outside the Home
Thank God, I say, that spring has finally arrived here in NYC, and I can now wake up at a reasonably early hour without it being dark out at the same time. More daylight hours equals more writing hours for this working writer--an interesting switch for me to be sure, considering, not long ago, I tended to write from the early evening on into the wee hours of the night, falling into bed shortly thereafter...

I've recently joined The Writers Room on Broadway and 8th--a perfect 20 min walk from my place in Tribeca if the weather's nice, or an easy 2 subway stops on the R or the 6 if it isn't. A big open loft on the top floor of a beautiful old building, the WR has already proven to be a Godsend in just the few weeks I've been working here: before, I'd dread waking up in the morning, knowing that, after I showered up and downed my coffee, my commute was all of several feet to my workspace. Like: there it was, right there, there was no escaping it, and it would never, ever leave...

There's something about writing a few feet from where you eat, live, and sleep that can, over time, be subtly soul crushing, as if you're never off the clock, never truly free from it. (Many might argue that this is just the curse of being a writer: like having so many homework assignments that are never really finished, with more being added to the pile all the time...) But I'm finding now that a big part of this mindset was in fact simply because I had no separation between my writing life and "everything else"--now that I have some place to go every day, some excuse to get out of the house, I'm finding more and more that writing CAN be something to look forward to, provided it takes place at a different location altogether, you pre-schedule a set number of hours that you'll be working at said location each and every day, and when you leave, you're done. That's it. Anything else writing-wise that comes to mind for the rest of the day, it gets bumped to the next.

Professional athletes don't work out at home, they join a gym--and I'm now of the mind that writers should adopt the same attitude. As a result of my joining and commuting to the WR each day, I'm now enjoying perhaps the most disciplined writing schedule I've ever had: several unbroken hours a day, 7 days a week. Of course, being single and sober certainly helps--a year ago my evenings and weekends would've been obligated to a girlfriend, or to my drinking buddies, or what have you--now it's just the work and nothing else. (As Nietzsche put it: "Give my art and a little bread, I need nothing more.") Still, one has to live a little bit (even us writers!)--here's thinking I'll be getting back into reading the Tarot, learning rock guitar, and finally getting my motorcycle license, all in the months to come. More soon... (Spring 2011)

Now Working On

Videopolis
A down-on-his-luck video journalist accidently shoots a sadistic murder, then finds himself on the run in near-future New York City. Neo-noir cyberpunk thriller: "Blade Runner" meets "Chinatown". Winner QUARTERFINALIST in the Nicholl and SECOND PLACE OVERALL in Script magazine's "Open Door" script competition. A top writer at Dreamworks referred to it as "The best script we've read so far this year."

Champion
The inspiring true story of Paralympic athlete Joe Perez. Diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy at 6 months of age, Joe spends his entire life at the grueling task of simply learning to use his body. Overcoming every obstacle along the way, Joe repeatedly does the impossible: becoming the first person with CP to ever learn how to swim, the first to ever run a marathon, and ultimately, going on to become one of the world’s great powerlifting champions. “Rocky” meets “My Left Foot”.

The Godgame
Six strangers summoned to the home of an eccentric billionaire who, lying on his deathbed, has one thing to bestow upon each of them before he goes. Classic Hitchcockian tragedy in one room and in real-time, think: story by Agatha Christie, adapted for the screen by Ingmar Bergman, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Now my writerly and feature directorial debut, with fundraising in progress and shooting expected to commence soon.

I am Lost in Oceans of Light
The director of a world-famous live 24/7 glamour-opera falls in love with his star actress, yet can't reveal his feelings lest he jeopardize his masterpiece. Postmodern retelling of the classic Greek myth "Orpheus and Eurydice", told from the POV of Hades, God of the Underworld. Winner SEMIFINALIST in Creative Screenwriting magazine's "AAA" script competition. Originally slated to be my directorial debut, at a $2M budget "Oceans of Light" has since been pushed back to my second feature, with "The Godgame", at $200K, to be completed first.

Star Maker
A young orphan with seemingly magical abilities searches for his biological family in the far future. Epic fantasy space opera: "Star Wars"--as Stanley Kubrick would have done it. More on this one soon.

As always, those in the industry and/or who know me and would like to request material, simply use the contact e-mail above.