Jeremy Wadzinski Journal Entry

2\19\06-2\20\06

DAY 1

Not that it much matters, but getting here was a major pain in the ass.  Flying anywhere in this country it seems has become more of a hassle and chore than anything else.  After my first flight out Friday night was cancelled, I had to wait 'til Sunday to make the trip- and only then after an hour long delay in Minneapolis due to chilly weather- then an almost two hour delay in Austin. 

It all turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though because Dawn and I only managed to slug two brewskis down before Terry and Ben showed up...  Well, truth be told, I was the brewski drinker, Dawn played it safe sipping on what appeared to be coffee.

Once united we piled into our mini-van.  That's right mini-van- what?  You got a problem with mini-vans?  And we went down to some Tex Mex place and gorged on Flautas and salsa and Margaritas while Barbara went over hopes, goals and expectations.  After the long day's journey it was a very nice little moment.  Then- away, traveling down the dark damp highways of a moonless Texas night.  Playing dodge-deer with all the animals and creatures.

Arriving at the ranch, we were exceptionally excited.  But we immediately had to put our excitement aside and prep our lodgings for human occupation.  The place is absolutely beautiful.  All the walls are rough hewn stone, and the floor is as well.  The entire building split in half with one of these rock walls creating almost two separate living spaces.  As beautiful as it was, however, the culmination of stone and thirty-two degrees is not a kind one.  The place was cold and damp.  How appropriate for three budding writers and their mother hen.

We settled in well enough, and after building a fire and getting the lay of the land, we all went our separate ways and settled in for a fitful night of sleep.

Morning.

And a fire was the first order of business.  And Dawn cooked us breakfast, and we all wandered around like slippered zombies anxiously awaiting Jim's arrival.

And then he came.  And it was like a rocket going off.  From the moment he arrived 'til the time we toasted our wine fireside, Jim took control and delivered an eloquent, moving and useful oratory on the style and craft of screenwriting.  Peppering us with questions- both rhetorical and otherwise, we were at times confused, exhilarated and exhausted.  He went through and in turns asked us his three questions.  Going over each main character in turn and only after exhausting the writer did he move on to the next script and next victim.  I will include a copy of those notes as reference.  He was sprinkling so many little gems of wisdom on us it was difficult to get them all down in any logical order.  Hopefully after a little time has passed I'll be able to go back and put them together in some logical manner.  After lunch we finished up on our character questions- the three questions that are actually five...and we moved on to Jim's Hart chart.  A paradigm for writing he's working on that consists of hitting certain "signposts" and holding your screenplay up to this model to see where the story lags.  I will include the notes for this as well.

And then we were exhausted.  Spent.  Our brains functioning at a second grader's capacity.  Burnt out, overwhelmed and completely content-  and a little confused...but mostly just plain happy.

We ended the day with a toast of wine-  Jim's selection- a Kenwood Cabernet.  And then he regaled us with a story about a man that climbed a mountain his whole life.  Guiding people up the far side of a hill.  A life filled with struggling and misery.  And then half-way up the mountain- a body.  Fell.  Plummeting to his certain death...and then, a ploom of red.  A parachute.  And an epiphany.  As the old rock-climber guide watched that free-jumper sail down the valley he realized something.  His whole life he'd been fighting gravity.  Struggling futiley against it...when all he had to do was embrace it.  To be one with those things he fought so hard against...his mantra-  "Go with gravity."  When Jim heard this story it changed his life.  His career turned around and his attitude was embraced.   Go with gravity.

Beautiful.  And now, the start of a new day.

2/21/06 - Austin Writer’s Ranch  DAY 2

And then there was day two.  After a fitful night of sleep, peeing off the balcony off the far side of the house…because I am a creature of the loft.  I stumbled around and tried to wash the fog of rough sleep off.  The shower felt good.  And then Dawn’s industrial strength coffee got me the rest of the way there.  Small talk and e-mail checking as we all embraced a new day.

And then Jim arrived.  And again.  A rocket of energy.  Forcing us to put up or shut up.  After the success of the day before, we immediately turned our attentions to a new method…working on the “Hart Chart”  We adjourned to the larger of the two rooms…because we needed the space to work on large sheets of post-it paper.  We went to work on attacking the structure of each of our screenplays using Hart’s signposts.

I volunteered Ruby to go first and after the appropriate lines had been drawn, we began following Ruby and Buck’s journey.  I won’t pain you with the sordid details, but suffice to say, a script that I at one time had been completely done with and very proud of now had more holes in it than a rusty bucket.  Most notably, Ruby didn’t have an entry point or a great prologue.  The opening dragged a bit, so I’ll definitely have to tighten things there.  We discovered it lacked a “Top of the Mountain” moment.  And then I got the dubious honor of inventing a phrase-  “the Cinderella moment”.   A moment of triumph and hope that your hero gets to have before their entire world comes crashing down around them.  Ruby didn’t have a Cinderella moment.  She does now.

Then we changed the ending.  Giving Ruby happiness and in the process me happiness as well.  I am very content with the knowledge that over the next couple weeks, Ruby will become a beautiful film…that will be much more approachable by a general audience.

And then we did the same thing to Terry’s script…and then we started Ben’s script…but we couldn’t finish.  It got too late.  And dinner called.  So we went into the town of Bourne- pronounced Berny- and ate at a fun little Mexican place.

Returned home.  And slept.  Exhausted.  Completely exhausted.

Austin Writer's Ranch DAY 3-  2/22/06

So.  Here we go.  Did I forget to mention that our homework for Day 2 was to watch Dracula when we got home?  Well, we did.  Or rather, almost did.  We were all so exhausted that we fell asleep half-way through...

Which is why when we woke up for Day 3, our first order of business was to watch Dracula...Oh!  But first, a strange occurrence in the night.  Terry and I have been sharing the loft as our bedroom, while Ben has been sleeping just below us in the guest bedroom.  Well, somewhere in the middle of the night, we began hearing these strange moaning noises that culminated in an awful shriek.  Turns out Ben had a nightmare and woke the house up...Terry says to me, "Gosh, should we help him?"  My reply?  "Nah."  Apparently it's every writer for themselves.

So, back to the morning.  We finished watching the movie.  And then we immediately turned our attention to finishing Ben's Hart Chart.  This took us the better part of the morning.  Jim arrived but worked on his own work and gave us space to test our ability to accomplish a chart without him.  It took us 'til early afternoon, but we managed to get it done.  Jim came back in and Ben walked him through the movie and all was good.  We broke for lunch...BBQ...well, hamburgers on the grill.  But, even those didn't come easy.  We had to start the charcoal briquettes.  And of course, they weren't cooperating.  So, Dawn suggested I douse them in lighter fluid.  Well...too much lighter fluid.  When I held the match to those black little cubes...Wha-oooosh!  I was engulfed in a massive fire-ball.  Luckily I've never been a big fan of eyebrows.

The hamburgers were delicious.

Then Jim held court by the fireplace.  We all sat around and he talked for two hours about the amazing process involved in bringing Dracula to screen.  From his first meeting with Coppola, to having his children on the set as extras, to a wild rehearsal that created the "Big Bat". 

And slowly the afternoon wore on, and a bottle of wine- Kenwood Cab- was produced and we all saluted our success and a pleasant toast from our mentor...And then pictures...and then gone.  Everyone left us and we were again surrounded by the quiet expanse that is Texas hill country.  We chilled out afterwards talking and sharing stories, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.  Then Dawn brought us in and we feasted on King Chicken and Green Bean Casserole.  And then we slowly drifted off into a quiet night of contentment.

Austin Writer's Ranch-  DAY 4 2/23/06

So, here's how I remember it.  Or nearest I can tell.  I feel like that guy in “Flowers for Algernon”.  Remember him?  He goes from retarded to genius back to retarded…then he dies.  But, that’s me...getting smarter, and smarter...and then I peaked and now my brain is quickly dissolving into a shapeless gray mush.  Oh, well. 

I do find it hard keeping this level of intensity up for so many days.  But, for all it's exhaustion it is also richly rewarding.  We all woke up in our usual putter around mode and killed some morning time absorbing rays from a long lost sun.  Then Reeva Mandelbaum showed up...I'm not entirely sure about that spelling so don't google her.  She works for John Wells' prod-co. as a researcher, developer, writer and a Jack of all trades.

We spent the entire day talking about what "development" really is.  Demystifying the process and walking us through it step-by-step.  Using her experiences and past projects to highlight specific questions and confusions.  We talked about what an option is...or more specifically how we can empower ourselves as writers by optioning collateral material and taking on a greater role as a producer.  She walked us through that process and spoke a little about research and how rewarding that experience can be.  And how research can be used to flavor your writing with details, dialogue and moments that you had not perhaps seen before.

I should say  that none of this stuff was entirely new to any of us.  But it was nice to see it from the perspective of someone with ten plus years experience in the biz.  And an insider's perspective of how the tea leaves are read is always more useful than an article in a magazine or snippet of dated information in a book.

We ended the evening by taking Reeva to her spa resort.  A far cry from our humble surroundings.  We enjoyed a fancy dinner there in what appeared to be an abandoned five star restaurant.  We were the only people in a place built for a hundred or more.  It was slightly disconcerting.  I had the venison ka-bobs.  Which were delicious.  But I must admit, feeling slightly guilty...because the resort had tame animals walking the property, and I had just finished petting a deer...and then I ate one.

Life, like Hollywood, runs by the same rules-  One minutes somebody's petting your head, the next they're eating you on a kabob.  One moment you're alive- the next you're meat- or worse- dirt.

Austin Writer’s Ranch-  DAY 5

What day is it today?  Beginning to lose focus a bit.  Everything’s blurring together.  Now that we have our own little rhythm here at the ranch…all’s well.  We have a nice mellow groove going on.  And that’s nice.

So, the day began.  Reeva showed up and we put her in an overstuffed chair next to the fire.  She seemed to like that.  We chit-chat and a made small talk for a bit and then we picked up our conversation where we had left off.  Again, talking about research and it’s value especially in character development and dialogue.  How you can find little snippets of useful/interesting information from many varied sources and use those to better effect as little “baubles” that can color a piece.

Then, we moved around the room and talked about mission statements.  Or more specifically, how each of our unique backgrounds could help us achieve the goals we set for ourselves.  How we could target our search to a more specific set of producers and developers.  After much conversation, I learned that what sets me apart from the masses is my production background.  The goal is to take all the burden off of the person you’re talking to so that they can very clearly see how they can help you.  It helps to categorize your material in easy ideas that they can readily grasp onto.  For instance- to say that Ruby Blue is a “Coming of Age story with an edge-  It’s a lower budget film.”  Marketing the film as a project.  Maybe even doing a preliminary budget for them and include a snapshots of potential locations.  Say stuff like, “I’m pitching it around town, and trying to find the right home for this project.  Looking for the right team to help make it happen.”

Well.  The logical progression after this was to try practice pitches.  Frustration.  Terror.  Pathetic.  All very accurate ways to describe our many levels of failure.  Terry got to go first and, well, it was a sight to see.  A complete exercise in uncomfortableness.  Is that a word?  Anyway, he got to stumble through the process first, and for that both Ben and I were grateful.  I went next and I somehow managed to channel my inner used car salesman.  Needless to say this was not the way to go.  Reeva told me to, “scale it back 80 percent.”  Which means I must’ve been running at about a 170% level or more.  Note to self-  less is more.  Then I started waxing poetic about…who the hell knows what…and Reeva politely reminded me to get to the fucking point.  So that’s what I learned.  Less talky more pointy.  So the pitch model looks something like this…

Small talk…followed by a quick two sentence biography…that if possible is smoothly transitioned into your pitch…Which goes like this…define the genre…use co-relative movies to paint the picture…give a quick direct log-line…and be prepared for either what else’ve you got…or let’s here more about this…or get out of my fucking door you worthless piece of lit-shit. 

Ahhhhh, Hollywood.  Ain’t she a bitch?

And then we went to dinner in Blanco.  Wonderful little Texas town.  We went to a steakhouse and met up with a couple notables, including Jim Dauterive of King of the Hill fame,  Alex Smith the director of the Sundance flick The Slaughter Rule currently teaching at San Antonio, and Andrew Shea Director of The Corndog man.  Then Barb and Jerry showed up.  And Jerry tried to get me drunk.  Silly Jerry.  Doesn’t he know I’m from Wisconsin and can’t get drunk?  Oh!  And a couple more guests.  Anne Rapp, frequent partner and muse of Robert Altman…and a nice couple I think his name was Rigo?  A documentary filmmaker born in Mexico city.  Sadly I didn’t get to talk with them much.

But anyway…the point is.  We had a great dinner.  Good spirits and good steak.  And honestly, you just can’t ask for more outta life than that.  Well, you can, but you’ll be miserable.