John Oak Dalton

"Not 'Hollywood Independent' - writer John Oak Dalton is the real Real Thing." --Cinema Minima."Very weird and unpopular b-movies and comics."--Blogalicious. "After watching the film I am left to wonder if he had some childhood trauma he is not telling us about."--IMDB user review. "Screenwriter John Oak Dalton wanted to be in Hollywood. Instead, he's in the rustic kitchen above the Germania General Store, stirring a pot of boiling hot dogs." --The Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Moonlight and Stars in your Strawberry Wine

Yesterday marked the 41st year I have spent on the earth. It has been seven years since I decided, after a long layoff, to get back into freelancing.

I would have to sit down and count but I think I have written somewhere between 15-20 screenplays on assignment since then and maybe two or three specs. I have about a half-dozen or so you can go out and get on the shelves with a few more in the chute. But every year on my birthday and evaluate where I am and whether I want to go one more year.

In 2006 I took a year off from writing. I had just changed jobs/careers and coupled that with some family issues. Last December I decided to pick up the pen again and was surprised to find that there were still people wanting to work with me after my self-imposed exile. Since December I have done SPLINTERHEAD and NEW JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH for Polonia Brothers Entertainment, PRIMAL for director Michael Su (which has since come out, minus my rewrite, but that's how it goes sometimes), MENTAL SCARS for producer Richard Myles, and am working on URAMESHIYA/GHOST SCREAM for director Amit Tripuraneni, with another secret project in the offing. I have worked pretty steadily since I started back up, pretty much picking up right where I left off.

This year I want to expand my base a little bit and look harder at other elements of the writing world I have been interested in. To that end I started keeping a new blog, THE HOMEMADE WORLD REVIEW, which you can check out here. Hopefully you will see more efforts in the coming months.

I had a nice birthday. I got some after shave and a new wallet and some clothes, and a gift certificate to "Books A Million" from my daughter. We had pizza with my parents and then went to the home opening football game of my alma mater in their shining new stadium. But they broke my heart, losing by one in the waning seconds.

Until next year, give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.