Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Eating Chocolate Cake In A Bag

This post first appeared in my secret e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP which you can subscribe to in the sidebar of this blog.

This week, I'm driving out to visit the set of the movie I have called TWICE SHY in my secret email newsletter. I should be there for the first couple of days, and my loyal newsletter fans will get first dibs on news from there.

I have pitched about a dozen titles, and the one that seems to be sticking is the one that, as it happens, I like the least.  I have called it TWICE SHY after the fashion of great newsletter scribe and author/comic book writer Warren Ellis, who gives code names to all of his projects under nondisclosure.  I wouldn't say this was under a nondisclosure, but more like it's never good to reveal to much until the cameras are rolling, and sometimes not even then.

Now that we are getting so close, I will reveal that I called this project TWICE SHY because it is the second official Bigfoot movie I wrote that is going to be produced.  I have wanted, for a long time, to be the only screenwriter to write two Bigfoot movies and I'm not sure how I could coax IMDB to back me up on it but I think it is true.

I say official because some years ago I was involved in another Bigfoot project that I should have known better about, but I got involved because I wanted to be that guy that wrote two Bigfoot movies.  Some producers had made a sixty-minute movie as sometimes happens and I was hired to write about twenty pages to wrap around it as part of a new shoot with new cast and crew.  Some search and rescue people go into the woods to find some lost hikers and instead find a notebook, and that notebook of course contains the plot of the 60-minute movie, and then my people come back into it and have their own little encounter.  Easy peasy, something I did over a weekend, except that I never got paid and never got a credit and I have never spoken to these people again.

The movie came out, but I haven't had the heart to watch it.  I suspect it is just as likely they put it out at 60 minutes after all.  The good thing is that the DP on this film I ended up making internet friends with, and we always talk about working together one day, but the bad thing is that is was part of a slew of problems that happen to everyone in the business but happened to me all at once and drove me away from screenwriting for a couple of years.

The first Bigfoot movie I wrote, AMONG US, is still knocking around the world.  If you see it, that's me playing the kid Bigfoot in the exciting denouement of the film. Not sure if I will be asked to suit up this time.

Stay tuned for updates from the set next weekend.

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