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.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

This Week He's Mopping Floors, Next Week It's The Fries

2008 is in the history books. On the day job front I was extremely busy, empty nesting on the home front (until we got the puppy) and steadily working on the freelance front. I had taken 2006 off from screenwriting because of changing jobs and challenges at home but came back in 2007 with a record (for me) seven freelance projects (after thinking I was probably out of the loop and nobody would hire me anymore), hopefully a few of which will be on screens or shelves in 2009.

This year I did rewrites on the horror film Mental Scars for Richard Myles, a second pass on a sci-fi script I did in 2007 under a nondisclosure, and finished the year working on another sci-fi project under nondisclosure with the same producer (nondisclosures make for boring blogs, though). Which, with a few fits and starts on some other things, was just busy enough.

Instead of writing a spec script this summer I started schooling myself on New Media to sort of figure out what that Next-Gen model is going to be. Having gone to college with an electric typewriter in 1984 I still have a lot to learn. But I did pass five years and one thousand posts on this humble blog. I got very interested in Creative Commons and released some of my work under those licenses.

I got to go to the San Diego Comic Con and Columbus Ohio's Small Press and Comics Expo and Bloomington's Cinephile Film Fest and did a lot of other straycationing, but my beloved Microcinema Fest skipped a year.

I gave myself another Ultimate Nerd Challenge, this time to read 50 books in 2008 (and succeeded), along the way discovering Samuel R. Delany and re-discovering Philip K. Dick. I got to play the new D&D 4E. After five good years a website I helped launch, Microcinema Scene, folded with ReWind Video into a new site, Common Film.

John Polonia, a legendary b-filmmaker who I collaborated on with many projects, unfortunately died suddenly in February. A nice tribute to him, featuring a few of my humble words, appears on the Monster Movie DVD which came out that year.

This year my goals are about the same; lose (more) weight, guide my kids through their lives, teach my puppy more, work smarter, write better.

Until later, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.