Hi Folks…
I’ve been bad. It’s true, I’ve shirked my responsibilities here at Script Gods. The forces of excess triviality had carved me up. Thus– and I’m dead sure you’ve noticed– no posts in the last two months. I’ve been halfway around the world and back. That beach up top is Manuel Antonio, Pacific coast, Costa Rica. Not a bad view, eh? This is where your humble narrator didn’t ONCE think about screenplays for weeks and weeks. Pure joy.
But the key word is back. I am back and energized and ready to roll.
I’ve increased the clips-and-scripts posts the Best Blog, Best Scene, Best Speeches posts; the Links stuff. I’ve just spent the better part of two full weeks working eight hours a day organizing blog posts for the remainder of the year and a bunch of that writing wasn’t even mine! Time, chewed upon.
Embrace The New Entertainment Landscape or Die
“People like YouTube. They like interactivity. They like games. They like multi-tasking. They like short bursts of six second Vines and they like thirteen hour Netflix seasons.
It’s not that nobody likes movies anymore, it’s just that they don’t shape or inform our society like they used to. The marketers pretend that ‘Gone Girl’ is a cultural phenomenon, but it doesn’t even make a dent…
…teenagers coming up now, they have an instinct me and my peers just don’t have. They’re plugged right into the social media paradigm and they have millions of subscribers. They know what they’re doing.
And the ones in the middle only make it when they admit to themselves that the game has changed! There’s new rules now. You can’t be static. But technology is only half the battle.
Hollywood became an industry that champions the dollar. Sure, it was always a business, but somehow art still crept through. But now you find that even an upcoming independent director in LA is more than likely to want to make a film by committee, to give ‘notes’ and to try to develop something ‘marketable’. And when everyone is chasing marketable, art dies…
The best writers bled to TV…And for those who stood their ground and stayed with the two hour movies, they’re beginning to wake up and realize, there’s no-one here. The audiences upped and left and so did most of the creative talent. There is more innovation in some kid from Detroit’s 6 second Vine than there is on our movie screens.
My domain was always feature films. But in recent years, I’ve felt my passion dwindling. Not my passion to create, it’s always been there and I hope always will be. But instead of looking around and embracing the great opportunities that technology bring, I’ve been clinging on to that me that hid away as a kid, watching movie after movie in my room.
Well that kid needs to go outside and learn how to Vine, otherwise I’ll be forever left behind.”
Seven years is a big accomplishment, Paul. Kudos! Looking forward to The Tunnel.
thank you!