In The Town They're Searching For Us Everywhere

This is what I did last week; camped, hiked, cooked over a fire, chilled the eff out.   It was the first time my wife and I had gone on a straight vacation in four years.  I read four pulp paperbacks I nabbed from a flea market; they had names like Ambush Basin and Wyoming Manhunt.  On stormy nights, which was half the week, I stayed in the popup camper and worked on a new screenplay. The screenplay has a very claustrophobic setting and somehow with the thunder, lightning, and rain constantly drumming on the canvas, and the thought of eminent escape to the van for safety, I was able to channel some pretty claustrophobic scenes.  Hopefully I can talk more about this screenplay shortly.

In the meantime Scarewaves is wrapping up in what has been a very productive screenwriting time for me.  In the last eighteen months I have seen two movies out--Meateaters and Haunted House on Sorority Row--and two more in production--one under a nondisclosure and Scarewaves.  I completed Doctor Zombie for director Mark Polonia which should go into production this fall.  I finished a vampire movie and did an action movie rewrite.  I am finishing a sci-fi movie and may be doing another horror rewrite in the coming weeks.

I thought with the collapse of the video store industry and a streaming solution (for the b-movie market) still not fully realized it was all over.  But it's not.  In some ways the SyFy Channel has filled that space, and it's something we all talk about writing for.  There are some inroads for VOD in the b-market (notably Amazon Instant and just a splash of Netflix) but for whatever reason, and nobody can explain it to me, people are still buying DVDs.  I think Blu-Ray is more like a collector's market (like Laser Disc was once upon a time), so it has not replaced DVD like some thought.  I just don't know, but for now people want scripts so I think I'll poke along for a bit.

Until later I'm at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

In My Mind And In My Car

Over in Ohio on the set of "Scarewaves," the horror anthology I wrote a segment in for director Henrique Couto.  My part starts a little "Double Indemnity" and ends a little "Dawn of the Dead" and I'm happy with how it looked on the set.  Shot in a nice couple's house who didn't seem to be worried about the police getting called when we threw a sheet-rapped dummy into their farm pond.  Thanks to Christopher Page for the middle photo, which looks like I'm bossing Henrique around.