Category: screenplay

Fish and Shrimp Radio Waves

The good folks at The Star Chamber were having an open lines night. I was just following along with a few lines to their Chat Room when they foolishly wandered onto a topic I found relatable. After all these months, I would have thought that the host would know to recognize at least my Area Code and block all numbers from there, but no… once again they wagered their reputations on letting go live. The triumph of hope over experience.

I wander in almost exactly at the 1:15:00 mark and babble for about eight minutes. Once off, the hosts try to recover from my verbal Molotov Cocktails. It was fun.

The Second Bridge, pt.1

After last night I knew I had to get back to writing or I’d die.  Considered various ideas throughout the workday.  Just after 1700, when I was cleaning the isolation hood, the roar of its motor must have mixed with the chemicals in the Cavicide wipes to let me see something.  Not a lot of detail but certainly a week’s or more worth of story.  I’d been thinking about Faustina, however by lunch I’d come to know I didn’t know her well enough to tell her story.

For Gary and Henge, though, I’d already laid down two big markers:  one in “Echoes of Family Lost” and another in ‘Worlds Without End.’  I’ll be picking them up now.  This is, I think, going to be a great deal of fun!

This may seem shorter than usual, but when you only need to write dialog, as in a play, it tends to keep your word count down.

PS  I came up with the title after writing all this.  It derives from something Ai said late in “The Fourth Law.”  In doing so, I may have been given a glimpse of Faustina’s story.  Apologies to Cornelius Ryan in advance.

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Shelves and Tables

This past weekend, I marathoned the series “Man in the High Castle.”  It was everything I expected from a PKD-Ridley Scott combination.  I was pleased to see Rufus Sewell again, even if he is playing a Nazi.  One of my favorite movies is “Dark City,” and he did superlative work in that.

Anyway.  At the end of Ep10, I sat and thought a bit and came to the conclusion that  – at this point of my life – I simply do not have what it takes to write political-espionage.  I am shelving “Crosses and Doublecrosses,” for now.  So… what now?  I stared at the empty formal dining table, wondering when my wife would come home from her radiation treatments and what the Hell I was to do with my life.

Dated it may be, but my all-time favorite anime is “Haibane Renmei.”  A brief review can be found here.  A huge, spoiler-laden takedown can be found here.  It’s very difficult for me to say what it’s about without ruining it; I could do it with a single word.  It’s an extremely complex moral and theological story; amazing that a non-Christian Japanese writer seems to have a better feel for my faith than many of my co-religionists.

Some years back, a chap took the character models from HR and made a 30s video, based on a trailer for “Constantine,” a good, but very erratic movie.  You can see the video here.  While there are icebergs of story just below the surface of HR proper, just to look at it, it appears to be cute-girls doing cute-things.  Guristantine is not that at all.  Just as with the two ideas that were the genesis of “The Fourth Law,” the series and the video curled up in my unconscious, and waited.

Going back to our collaboration of 3-AR Studios LLC for our visual novels, my friend and colleague, Will, and I, had long thought of a live-action Haibane Renmei.  We talked scenes, locations, actors… but nothing came of it.  A few days after deciding to abandon “C&DC,” it came to me (how?  how does this stuff just come to me??) to make a live-action series, based on HR; not just an adaptation….

One set in hard-edged Abandoned Factory, not the safety of Old home.  One with deeply flawed characters, desperate to understand themselves and where they are.  One where violence and sex are – if not out in the open – not pretended to not exist.  One where the abandonment of either wing of the human soul (faith and reason) leads quickly to madness.  One where… okay; you get it:  I saw quite a lot, quickly.

Below the fold is a pretty raw treatment of what you could call a trailer for a six-episode series of 30-minute shows.  I’m bricked in to swim meets for my girls all this weekend, and will be writing as much as I see, which, so far, is quite a bit.  If any of this tickles your forebrain, leave a comment.  I’m planning on throwing a couple of grand of my money at this, at least for the trailer.  We’ll see what happens beyond that.

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