James, Where You Been, Dude?

My blog has fallen by the wayside in favor of other writing.  It’s hard to keep up on so many different places.  I’ll give you a little rundown of two of the projects I’ve been working on and my March Blog Project.

Because I can’t do anything halfway, I have to make it a project, I’m going to update my blog every day in March to kick off my return to steady bloggery.

And since I’m awful at updating my family on what’s going on, I should probably put it somewhere.  But let me introduce you to a couple things I’ve been working on.  I'll tell you about my job another time.

PROJECTS

HOMEBOUND

Some of you know I’ve been working on a television pilot.  It was an idea from a list of ideas I pitched to my agent and manager almost a year ago.  It’s gone through a lot of changes.  It went from sitcom pilot to hour dramedy.  It’s gained characters, lost characters, switched main characters, ditched hundreds of jokes, and gone through twenty solid drafts. 

This latest draft had me rewrite the whole thing from scratch. (Val’s brilliant yet painful idea. But ultimately for the best.)  There’s not a lot left from earlier drafts. Characters and basic plot are the same.  Here’s a small excerpt from the wake Alice has turned into a party.

An Old Lady walks up to Alice and grabs her hands tenderly.

OLD LADY

(starts off sweetly)

I heard you’re responsible for this service.

(pause)

I just want you to know it’s a travesty.

ALICE

Thank you. I heard that already. Get a new word, old people.

OLD LADY

Your family is a travesty.

ALICE

Hey, do you know what the Greatest Generation is greatest at? Interrupting.

LOSING IT

This is a web series that I’m working on with some old friends.  It stars Christian Busath as the main character, Hal, a guy who has a weight related heart attack and checks into a weight loss camp.  At the camp he meets a lot of different characters and has to figure out what he believes in and how he’s going to change his life.  It has some serious themes underneath some outrageous banter.  It starts filming in March.  Here’s an excerpt from when Hal first meets Dominic, his roommate.

HAL

Yeah. I actually left my body and then I was heading down a tunnel towards a for real bright light.

DOMINIC

Whoa, cliche. What was the light? Was it heaven?

HAL

I don’t know. I was too fat for the tunnel.

DOMINIC

That story is a lady melter! We are going rule this camp. Get dressed. First weigh-in’s in 15 minutes.

HAL

I can’t just be your fun buddy. I don’t want to die again. Or have my heart started again by a Wendy’s manager fainting onto my chest.

How I Lost the Ability to Talk

Somewhere I found a work habit. It seemed all I needed was a schedule. And Valerie. And once I had both those things, I was able to sit down and write. Everyday. I now sit down and write whenever I can. Any free moment.

I've always had my fingers in too many honey pots. Always trying to tackle more than I can. Poetry, plays, songs, film, essays, children's lit. I find myself always wanting the thing I'm not writing currently. When I'm writing poetry, I'm thinking of comedy. When I'm writing laughs, I'm dreaming of metaphor.

It's not an unhappy thing. It's just the way I'm wired. Comedy and poetry are a lot closer than you think. I'll explain sometime.

But now that I spend so much time writing, and filming, I have nothing else on my mind. I fixate on the ephemeral, on the unwritten, the undone. My mind is a constant problem solving machine for my current writing projects.

This is my head on any given day:
"How do I write the story of Kevin's accident without being oversentimental?"
"How are math and death the same?"
"If I want this character to sound more noir, how do I keep this modern joke?"
"Why do I hate topical humor so much?"

And somewhere along the way, I've lost the ability to speak. About normal things. About things that are not my projects.

People ask me how I'm doing and I tell them WHAT I'm doing. People ask me banal questions like, "How was your weekend?" (Like someone just did three minutes ago.) And I answer, "Good. I met with this friend to direct a project and had this other screening thing to go to." (Like I just did two and a half minutes ago.) Not: "It was a good weekend. Kind of busy." Like normal people.

It's become bad. Valerie and I have talked about it. I'm so far inside my head that I really have to consciously make myself step out. I practiced at a party this saturday. Not talking about anything I'm doing. Chatting up random people about anything besides my projects.

Now I'm going to go edit this new web series I'm working on. And I'm planning to finish my 30 days project. Or start anew. Because I've started it twice and never finished. (Here's the funny thing. Even as I started writing this paragraph I realized that I'm essentially doing the same thing. But I wrote it anyway. Because this is what I am.)

Maybe I'll just go home and watch a movie. Tell someone what I liked about it. Like normal sauce.

Army Husbands Ep. 3

So this one was a weird one. I had an episode written and then we decided to scrap it. About four days before we started shooting. We came up with a new episode. Disagreed on that. Kept it. Worked it. And ended up with this. There's some fun stuff. Ken Beck who plays Landon Langdon was awesome to work with. He's an actor and comedian here in New York. Hope you dig.

Other Things, A Break

So I'm shooting Army Husbands Ep. 3 this weekend and it's going to take a lot of time and less sleep. I'm going to not kill myself and just put my project on hiatus until Sunday.

Also, here's this.

Army Husbands Ep. 2

We finished it. We premiered it at Channel 101. It was well received and we're pleased. This episode was fun because we had so many more people involved. We brought on Evan Cohen as DP and he brought his fabulous camera. Which is why this one looks so much better than the first. Enjoy. Hopefully I can get the video embedded.

Here's Episode 1 for those of you who haven't seen it.