Working on the script

I've been tinkering with the script for the movie this summer. It's funny -- I've loved this script all this time, but I got insecure and have been convinced it just isn't funny enough. It's probably not insecurity... it has some stuff that is kinda funny, but not really that funny.

And the opening scene I appended to it was okay, but not exactly good, and not as good as the rest of the script. So I worked on a new opening -- it's so hard to just say, "today I will be creative" and actually come out with something good. So I took my own advice and just started trying to write, and I'll be damned if I didn't write right through the creative block and come up with something that was (a) pretty hilarious, (b) stylistically a great set up for the tone of the whole piece, and (c) thematically connected with many of the isssues in the film. And, as a bonus, (d) the final image of the scene is an echo of the final image of the film, so in many ways it feels like the (new) ending was meant to be.

I am no huge fan of George Peppard, but "I love it when a plan comes together."

Best part: I talked the co-writer today (we have written this thing mostly over the phone and via e-mail, with me taking over once I decided to direct it)... I read the scene to him and he loved it. I was hesitant because he is hard to please sometimes (which is a good thing), but he couldn't stop laughing and agreed with me on all that the scene accomplishes.

(Picture me giving myself a little congratulatory arm-jab like Anthony Michael Hall did in The Breakfast Club. Yeah, I still got it.