On Location with the Red Wolves

Me, influencing the youth of today, teaching video production at Indiana University East. This is a field set-up at the Graf Recreation Center for the "Red Wolves Roundup" TV show.

An Overfed, Long-Haired, Leaping Gnome

This week I celebrated my 21st wedding anniversary, happily married for half of my sweet short life. If you want to check out how I kicked it old school 1987 style, peep here.

Trying to finish some script coverage this weekend on a project for a guy I worked with before. I have become notoriously bad this year about giving coverage and viewing screeners that people send me but I am vowing to mend my errant ways in 2009. Meanwhile, how can you not enjoy a script that has these two scene headings back to back:

EXT. SPACE

EXT. HELL

B-movies are fun.

My wife gave me a Books A Million gift certificate and I bought Naomi Novik's THRONE OF JADE, Steve Fisher's NO HOUSE LIMIT, that Hard Case Crime Double of two Robert Bloch novels, and the first Jim Butcher Dresden Files book (as recommended by my pal The Caveman). Winter reading ahead.

Astoundingly, my pal Dr. Squid is vowing to post every day in October to celebrate Halloween. Check him out here.

Kind of thinking about this again, although much of my career has been conducted in this fashion.

Speaking of scary stuff, we emptied out our bedroom to have new carpet put down this week and I found a file tucked under my bed of some items I thought long-lost, including the 2000 issue of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER that listed my first screenplay sale, PLAYER IN THE GAME, and the 2003 issue of that same august magazine that listed AMONG US; some old SUPER 8 FILMMAKER magazines; some old D&D characters; and some hand-written original drafts of Polonia Brothers movies I worked on, some that saw the light of day and some that didn't, including PETER ROTTENTAIL, GIZZARD GUTS, and FRONTIER EXECUTIONER.

I also found the journal I kept of books I had read as part of my vow to read 1,000 books between 1987 and 2012; astoundingly, I kept this list until June 1998 and had read 380 books by then, from Raymond Chandler's FAREWELL MY LOVELY to Karl Edward Wagner's CONAN: THE ROAD OF KINGS. For my young readers, nerds did exist before the internet, we just didn't know about each other as much then.

I got the idea from pre-scandal columnist Bob Greene and, even though I don't think I will make it at this point, there are plenty of interesting things to peruse there. If you want to see how I'm doing in the internet age, I vowed to read 50 books in 2008 and am blogging about it here.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Two Pumpkinheads

We squeezed in one more weekend of camping before the crazy run to the end of 08; lots of day job stuff for me and my wife and daughter's second half of the semester. A last battery recharge before the push to clang shut the lid on another year. Pretty and relaxing but, as they say, the frost was on the pumpkin and we used double sleeping bags at night. Too cold for 24 Hour Comics Day, but there's always a next year.

Close the Window, Calm the Light

When I wasn't paying attention 24 Hour Comics Day got moved to the fall, and through poking around on the interwebs home on a half-day from work when I should be doing something contructive I learned that it starts Saturday. I have survived this Nerd Extreme Sports challenge twice, once on my 35th birthday and once at Readers Copies Comics in Anderson, Indiana, with my brother, my pal Tom, and some other more talented people. I am going to see if I can get it rockin' this weekend, but if I don't, you can see THE LIBERATOR, my poorly-rendered take on the public-domain Nedor heroes starting here, and my first sketchy 24 Hour Comic, BAD EGGS, starting here.

In other geekly news, several of the old gang are trying to get together and try out this newfangled D&D 4E in the next few weeks. Though my brother wants to reboot a few of his old characters I think I shall retire the dwarven bard Farrah Brokefoot and start a new character; I'm contemplating a sardonic human rogue called Broken-Necked Jack, which came to me in a dream. Naturally, updates will be provided here.

Though I've only a third through it, I highly recommend HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON by Naomi Novik to my blog pals. Until later, catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Fall Straycationing

I kind of wondered if the dog thought we had fallen on hard times. Bonnie checking out her little tent, and our big ones, at Versailles State Park this weekend.

Camping Chow

Checking out the very nice night shot function on my new camera. Seeing how nice this camera is, my wife finally forgave me dropping our last one on the concrete at the company picnic this summer. I never thought I would put my dog in one of these little shirt things, and yet here she is enjoying dinner. I also never thought I would wipe her butt or brush her teeth, but there you go.

Three Eyes on the Grub

Meanwhile, here I am checking out an incredible meal of rare New York strips, butternut squash, fried apples, mulled wine, and some other stuff that makes my mouth water to think about. Yes that is a headlight on my head. We ate like kings all weekend, the best part of camping.

Around The Fire

Wife, dog, campfire. Songs have been written about such nights.

Morning Has Broken

Waking up first in the tent after a restful night at Versailles State Park. Feeling a good tired tonight while typing this.

One Tin Soldier Rides Away

Naturally, I was felled with illness after writing that last hopeful post.

But not all was bad. I didn't get to Mid Ohio Con, but I was able to get a several-page treatment fired off to a producer in a timely fashion. I did enjoy a pancake breakfast and some good chili at a local cook-off. I saw a musical, "Violet," performed at Ball State University that I had never seen or heard of and found pretty pleasant. My Colts escaped certain death at the hands of the lowly Texans.

Last year the Polonia Brothers Fan Club president Tim Shrum made an AMONG US birthday cake to celebrate the b-auteur's shared birthday. This year Tim took on SPLATTER BEACH, a newer movie the Polonia Brothers made with some girls in bikinis and without their favorite scribe. That's okay, it probably saved my marriage. I'm sure the cake still tastes sweet, Tim!

My SEX MACHINE pal Christopher Sharpe is smarter than me.

Hungry for some new zines from these folks.

Enjoying this read.

Much respect to my friend Joe Sherlock for posting this picture.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Jenny Was Sweet

I was just thinking, if I end up doing this new project I am talking to a producer about, it will be my third mockbuster, after THE DA VINCI CURSE and NEW JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. Take that, William Goldman! Though I'm wondering, if you do a knock-off of a movie that doesn't do that well (re: Brendan Frasier's JOURNEY ETC.) is that mock office poison?

Today was a good day, as I took a half-day and going out the door found a $1 a bag book sale and picked up several dozen collections of Greek lit and plays for my wife, as well as an old David Lindsey thriller for myself. I caught the Ramones documentary END OF THE CENTURY while doing chores around the house and thought back to my high school days, and my own punk band The Johnnies, whose version of "Blitzkrieg Bop" was unjustly kept out of the line-up of the Muncie Northside High School Variety Show of 1984.

I finished the last chapter of a very good read, Martin Limon's THE WANDERING GHOST, and I'm wondering if I can finish Joe Hill's HEART SHAPED BOX before it gets too dark and I become too scared to keep reading.

Tomorrow is a pancake breakfast and chili cook-off in my small midwestern town and the weather should be good. I am smiling and tucking in my napkin yet tonight.

It is fall, and the world is still ripe with promise.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Crazy Music Playing in the Morning Light

As you might suspect, writing b-movies can be a lot of fun. Today I got an email from a producer with a script breakdown in it that included the following: France is blown up around pg 45.

Speaking of B-movies, tomorrow, the Polonia Brothers Fan Club is celebrating the cult-movie director twins' birthday, dampened this year to be sure by John Polonia's passing. Rent Monster Movie on DVD and watch the tribute to John as part of the extras, which I have a small part. Of course I am partial to Among Us and The Da Vinci Curse/Dead Knight, but my faves that I had nothing to do with include Dweller, The House That Screamed 2, and the original cult classic Feeders.

I went to a book sale on campus this morning and found the V For Vendetta TPB for 50 cents, and Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys for the same go away price. Almost as exciting as discovering "Weird Tales Magazine" again.

In that vein, it looks like I'm going to go check out Mid Ohio Con this Sunday in Columbus, Ohio. Anybody want a hitch over?

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Got To Have A Jones For This, Jones For That

Last night I was happy to send off the second draft of a sci-fi script I did under a nondisclosure last year that's bubbling back to the surface. To celebrate I took my wife and my Little Brother Harold to a good Mexican restaurant in my hometown of Muncie, Indiana. This local honky-tonk way on the other side of town is notorious for being the site of one of the great culinary mishaps that I am known for; the time I tried to chew through some Tamales without realizing you had to take off the corn husks until a horrified waitress rescued me.

This time I ordered the enchiladas.

My spirits were only slightly dampened by seeing my lead-footed Colts let another slip away.

My next project has to be building those cornhole boards for my kids like I promised.

Thinking about taking a peek at this.

Here's what my pal Christopher Sharpe is up to.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Slanted "Monster"

I got my copy of the Polonia Brothers' MONSTER MOVIE in the mail yesterday. Of course I am a bit biased, but here are my thoughts.

As usual I watched all the extras first. There is a funny little "Making Of," a couple of deleted scenes, and the John Polonia tribute which is very touching and a bit hard to watch. I was happy to see that I have a small clip in there, and that some of my still photographs from AMONG US and THE DA VINCI CURSE were used.

The movie itself is pretty light, with a loose improv feel, and the monster is fun. A lot of familiar faces and places for fans.

The commentary track is one of the best parts, as usual. There are no funnier critics of the Polonia Brothers' work than the brothers themselves.

John Polonia's last movie is the exact kind he liked to make, which is nice. I have a feeling HALLOWEEN NIGHT, which Mark Polonia has been shooting from some of John's earlier writing, will be in much the same vein. You can get updates here.

Until later, catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

"Monster" To Hit Streets

Tomorrow the Polonia Brothers' latest horror feature MONSTER MOVIE streets. Although I was not involved in this one it is notable as the last project prolific b-movie filmmaker John Polonia worked on before his untimely death. It is a great shame as I know for a fact he left behind a lot of scripts and a lot more ideas still percolating. There is a tribute video as an extra on the DVD that (I think) I am a part of, so I am eager to grab a copy. You can start here to see what I was thinking about John at the time of his passing, but this tribute by Bill Gibron is probably my favorite.

Though I wish it weren't true, after my own name, John's name comes up second in search engines leading to my site. I try to keep news about his projects updated here when I know about them.

Until later, catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Sheriff John Brown Always Hated Me

Nothing makes me happier in life than to find good paperback book sales. Over the last week or so, I have gathered up--for the price of a shiny quarter apiece--a couple of Ace Double Westerns, a Merle Constiner western paperback, a Donald Hamilton (creator of Matt Helm) western paperback I didn't know existed, a thick anthology of 50s sci-fi and "Moneyball," which I always wanted to read sometime. With everything being a google away these days true finds are--well, harder to find. Gone are the days where one might debate away a few evenings on whether the Beatles were actually Klaatu or not, and trying to remember the complex origins of various members of the Justice League.

Perhaps something in me isn't wired up right, but that is how I always envisioned my success; being discovered for the first time, at the throwaway price of a quarter, on a dusty shelf in the middle of nowhere by a dreaming kid.

It seemed as if last weekend shut the door on summer. We had a big cookout for my father-in-law's 70th birthday which I celebrated by being quiet and concentrating on beating the other team in cornhole as he told me. If only the Colts had done the same the night would have ended nicely for him.

And now Fall is falling quicker than ever. I started teaching a new class in video production at Indiana University East, and the day job is also quite busy. I am determined to finish a rewrite on a sci-fi screenplay (that I wrote under a nondisclosure last year) before the end of the weekend.

Speaking of screenwriting, I have added a new proverb to my short list of life lessons. First, I believe you should never use a psuedonym. Secondly, and in relation to the first proverb, you should always be proud of everything that leaves your keyboard. Third, you should never open your mouth while pouring salt into the water softener. And my newest proverb: If you go to a new barber, and he is watching Fox News, you are probably going to get a High and Tight.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid

I have always said to be a good writer you have to read a lot. To prove that point, I write a column called Book Beat for the Pomp and Circumstantial Evidence magazine, associated with the Magna Cum Murder Mystery Conference. Here is my latest installment:

THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION by Michael Chabon
Excellent genre-bender from Michael Chabon (whose The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay remains one of my modern-era favorites), about a washed-up cop who takes umbrage at a junkie's murder in the very flophouse he resides in. With his reluctant partner, and his ex-wife/commanding officer breathing down his neck, he unearths a wider conspiracy.Against this background, with its noir conventions tracing a direct line back to Raymond Chandler, is an alternate future based on a real WWII-era plan to create a Jewish homeland in Sitka, Alaska. Chabon does some intricate and compelling world-building that again recalls Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.
An excellent read, whether one is a fan of mystery, sci-fi, or contemporary lit.

THE WHEAT FIELD by Steve Thayer
A small-town deputy in rural Wisconsin finds himself the main suspect in a double homicide that leads him to become an unwilling accomplice to a larger conspiracy in Steve Thayer's riveting thriller The Wheat Field.I picked this up on a whim found myself an instant fan of Thayer, an author I had not heard of before. Deputy Pliny Pennington is a resonant character, a dark angel with sexual hang-ups and killing urges but his own moral code. The early 60s locale is strongly rendered as well. There are plenty of shocks in the storytelling, both pleasant and unpleasant. I enjoyed Thayer's writing style, probably most reminding me of Jim Thompson or James M. Cain.I would strongly recommend The Wheat Field to thriller fans and will be nosing around for more of Thayer's writing.

LIMITATIONS by Scott Turow
Drowsy legal thriller from Scott Turow, whose Presumed Innocent was an early, and perhaps best-known, work. Turow has been hammering out solid mysteries featuring lawyer protagonists ever since, including this one, which was serialized for a magazine and then expanded into a novel.A judge is hearing arguments in a brutal gang rape, and soon begins to recall some repressed memories of an incident he was involved with himself in college. Meanwhile, his wife is fighting cancer and a mysterious stalker is sending the judge threatening emails.Despite the description, the storytelling doesn't retain a lot of dramatic tension, though is certainly interesting (and, for fans, features characters and situations from earlier Turow novels). Probably more for followers of Turow (which I have been one, more or less) and of passing interest to others.

BANGKOK 8 by John Burdett
An incorruptible Thai cop, following his own rather bent Buddhist code, goes on a quest for vengeance through the ultra-seedy underbelly of Bangkok after the death of his partner.John Burdett's edgy police thriller Bangkok 8 is an uneasy mix of philosophy and cold-hearted violence, veined with dark whimsy (if there is such a thing) and brought to an absolutely chilling denouement. I found the milieu Burdett created fascinating and his lead character's outlook unique. Although obviously not Thai, Burdett has spent time there and I felt (having traveled some in Asia myself) that he seemed to have a good eye for the details. I will look for more in this series.

MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust
A former porn star stumbles into a secret, illegal side of the sex trade and winds up--after a murder attempt--seeking revenge against those responsible.
Christa Faust's Money Shot is a contemporary tale in the Hard Case Crime series, a pulpy paperback line which, for the most part, features lost noir classics with retro covers. Faust's storytelling stands up well alongside her peers and is even more hard-nosed than some; and in the Hard Case Crime line, that's saying something. Like most of the line, Money Shot is not for the faint-hearted, but is well worth reading.

ZERO COOL by John Lange
A doctor at a European conference is forced to perform a mysterious autopsy, then spends the rest of his trip outrunning a bevy of bloodthirsty pursuers in John Lange's Zero Cool, part of the superior Hard Case Crime series of pulp reprints.John Lange is Michael Crichton’s pseudonym from the late 60s. Zero Cool is a surprising departure, not nearly as dense or intense as his later, more well-known work.
Our physician protagonist is as quippy as any PI of the time, is accompanied by several mysterious women and a strange, colorful supporting cast of baddies, and jetsets around several exotic locales. The combination reminds me of the James Bond movies of the era more than any sort of medical thriller. A pretty fun read overall.

Four Decades Plus Two

I had a nice birthday yesterday. I woke up to a puppy licking my face and my wife handing me D&D 4th Edition. We had coffee and donuts from Farmland and then went to the Farmer's Pike Festival nearby where I found some cool old Ace Doubles Westerns and had good BBQ. I watched a cute movie last night, MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY, and slept the sleep of the contended.

I always use my birthday to take stock of my freelance career, ever since the year 2000 when I decided, with the birth of a new century, to give myself one year to get my freelance screenwriting career off the ground. Longtime readers know that I have worked steadily in the eight years since, and though some think it's ridiculous to pick a particular day to decide whether to go another year I still do.

Early this morning I tried to add up in my mind all of the projects I have been hired to write or rewrite and for some reason, like counting sheep, I fell asleep both times I tried. But I think, in order, they are PLAYER IN THE GAME (Myriad Entertainment Group), MECHANIZER (Sterling Entertainment), AMONG US (Polonia Brothers Entertainment/Intercoast), BURNING GROUNDS OF THE UNDEAD (Polonia Brothers Entertainment/Intercoast), PETER ROTTENTAIL (Polonia Brothers Entertainment), RAZORTEETH (Polonia Brothers Entertainment), GIZZARD GUTS (Polonia Brothers Entertainment), DEMONS ON A DEAD END STREET (Polonia Brothers Entertainment), DEAD LAKE (for producer Bob Dennis), SEX MACHINE (for Asphalt Planet), THE PAYBACK MAN (for producer Ivan Rogers), DEAD KNIGHT (for Cine Excel), COWBOY (for producer Terrence Muncy), SPLINTERHEAD (for Polonia Brothers Entertainment), PRIMAL (for Sterling Entertainment), NEW JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (for Polonia Brothers Entertainment), MENTAL SCARS (for producer Richard Myles), and two scripts written under a nondisclosure.

I have been telling people fifteen but when I sat down and actually added them all up, I guess it's nineteen.

You can buy or rent or see on TV or see at a film festival or buy in a dollar bin five of these. One other came out without any of my rewrite. Two are in post-production. Two started shooting but never finished. I've done fresh rewrites on two more this year. The rest...well you just never know what might happen.

Somewhere in there I found time to write a few specs, including HANDS DOWN, ONIBOCHO THE DEMON KNIFE, RING OF THE SORCERESS, ROOK, and my modern dress/original prose adaptation of Shakespeare's TIMON OF ATHENS (yes, you read that right). Three of those five have had interest at one time or another, but nothing has really happened on them to date.

I have been proud of everything that left my keyboard and I have never used a psuedonym, two things I promised myself I would hold to those years ago.

Having worked in direct-to-DVD and microcinema for a number of years now I find myself spending a lot of time in 2008 thinking about what might be coming next with delivery platforms and entertainment options. But way back at the headwaters of that entertainment river there is still a dude with a keyboard. I am still speculating on what I may be writing next.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

B-Movie.com Dark Gallery Interview Redux

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My Interview at Mondo Schlocko (Redux)

The link to my interview with Tim Shrum at Mondo Schlocko has been broken, so to make my sidebar add up (and because I liked this interview) here it is again, in all its glory, from August 2005:

When did you decide to become a screenwriter and how did you become one?
My wife and I were talking about this the other day. I don’t know if you can become a writer or if you just are one. My wife has never wanted to be anything but a writer no matter what her day job is. I started out liking cartooning, but I was ass-terrible, though that still doesn’t stop me from drawing minicomics now and then today. When my word balloons got bigger than my drawings I switched over mostly to short story writing.
I have always been interested in movies and started looking into writing screenplays. I started shooting Super-8 shorts in the late 70s and made probably around 30 shorts over the next handful of years, as well as a pair of shot-on-video features with a friend. These video cameras were the huge, heavy ones with the umbilical that ran down to a big videotape deck that this friend borrowed from his dad’s work, with credits output from an old Radio Shack computer. True old school.
I wrote a couple of plays in high school that placed in some competitions. I got to act in one at the last minute when the kid playing one of the parts quit. His name was “Mike Gross” and everyone later thought I picked that as a pseudonym. It’s the only time I’ve used one, inadvertently.
In college I made the decision to concentrate more on screenwriting and wrote a project to enter into the David Letterman Telecommunications Scholarship Competition. I wasn’t sure I had the tools at the time to do a project the way I envisioned it, but the beauty of writing is that you can build it as large as you want in your mind.
During the awards ceremony I was kind of slinking down in my chair because everyone else had clips to show, and I had nothing, just a pile of paper sitting on a table. So when I won a scholarship, instead of thanking a long list of people I stood up and thanked the Smith-Corona typewriter company and the makers of White-Out. This was in the year 1987 A.D. and thus I typed the entire 135 page project on an electric typewriter. I was the first person to win a scholarship based on writing alone.

What were some of your early screenplays?
I think my first feature-length script was a sophomoric tennis comedy called “Balls.” My only excuse is that I was an actual high school sophomore at the time. Then I wrote one called “How Not To Make A Movie,” being the sage veteran I was by my senior year in high school. In college I wrote a short about my dad’s life, and a senior thesis thriller feature-length script called “Deadlines” rather liberally splashed with my infatuation with Cornell Woolrich at the time.
I actually took a long layoff to be married, work a day job, have a family. But I did a lot of tech writing during that time, a nice solid income. I wrote about stuff like the history of the car battery and how to spot child abuse at day care facilities. Somebody has to write all of these scripts, right?
Then in the late 90s I started fooling with a couple of spec scripts again, but it wasn’t until the year 2000 that I decided to re-commit myself to freelancing. I wanted to give it until my 35th birthday. I did okay that first year and decided to give it one more year. I still judge one birthday at a time as to whether I want to keep going.

What were some of the films that inspired you or still do?
I would say “Battleship Potemkin” for editing, “The Bicycle Thief” for acting, and “Citizen Kane” for thinking up things people hadn’t thought up before. The movie I wish I made was “Dr. Strangelove.” I also love “Sunset Boulevard,” “The Bridge Over The River Kwai,” and “Manhattan,” for different reasons.

Who are some of your favorite writers in books or screenplays?
When I was first learning to write screenplays I went and checked out some bound screenplays of movies I liked. The college library had a ton. I believe the first ones I tried to emulate were Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” and Steven Sonderbergh’s “sex, lies, and videotape.” For a boost I think “WWWGD”—What Would William Goldman Do?—and I read his books and screenplays for inspiration. Michael Tolkin has written some inspirational pieces. There are tons of people every day on the ‘net writing great commentary on writing.

You have dealt in horror, schlock, science fiction, and even the weird and strange. Are these the types of subject matter you prefer or is there another genre that you like or would rather work with?
I have a wide range of interests but saw a window of opportunity in this field. I would love to do more thrillers and noirish mysteries and even a good dime western. I would love to do a superhero story. But you know, horror/sci-fi/fantasy fans voraciously seek out content and will support ideas they love. It’s a good way to go.
Honestly I had a long layoff from horror; I did the whole Japanese rubber monster, Mexican wrestler, Italian strongman thing but studied film in the 80s in college and thus missed the whole slasher genre and thus don’t understand it. I had to do a lot of research to get caught up with the trends since I sort of tailed off post-George Romero.

Describe your writing process and what goes on when you are writing dialogue and character development.
I think why I have done so many rewrites is because I’ve always had an ear for dialogue and chroming out characters and backstories. You can develop this by just being interested in other people’s lives, listening to how people talk, watch people in airports and restaurants and so on and try to acculturate to local customs when you travel.

What would you say would be your style or writing trademark on a script?
I try to write what I want to see at the movies, which I’ve found isn’t always what others want to see. But if you try to write to please everyone, nobody will be satisfied. People talk about writing to an audience, but even if you write for yourself you are still writing for an audience—just an audience of one.
As far as trademarks, I’m a pretty hardcore nerd, but then so are a lot of the fans of these genres I write in—go to a comic book show, an RPG gaming show, and a sci-fi con, and you’ll see all the same dudes there. So I always try to include references to gaming, comics, and so on, because my dawgs don’t get a lot of shout-outs.

What are some of your favorite writing tools?
MovieMagic Screenwriter and Google. Google of course for research. If you are serious about screenwriting you have to get a screenwriting program, otherwise all of the time you are worrying about the math and not the writing. There’s always a big debate between MM and Final Draft, but I started on MM because the first producer I sold a script to allowed me to use his copy so we could exchange drafts. When that project was over he took it back, but I used the money I made to buy it for myself.

Tell us what a typical day of writing entails for you such as the process or the steps involved.
Since I work full-time and teach part-time my writing starts pretty late. When I am working on a project I try to commit to three to five pages a day. If I have an open Saturday I try to commit to 10 to 15 pages. If I’m not under the gun deadline-wise, I like to put the script away in the proverbial drawer when I’m done with it and come back in a few days with fresh eyes for a polish. My wife likes to sit outside with the laptop but I’m kind of old school in that I like to sit at a desk.
Everybody has their own style. I never outline or use notecards or anything. I just keep moving it around in my head until it’s ready, then I start in. I don’t like to talk it out with anyone because I am always afraid talking about it will drain the energy out of it.

What was your fastest writing gig you ever did?
I had kind of wanted to stay clear of the Polonia Brothers’ “Peter Rottentail” because, well, it was about a giant rabbit killing people. But as the shooting date closed in I softened in my resolve a bit and agreed to do a quick polish over it. When it arrived in the mail I saw it was part of an old script called “Psycho Clown” with some of the names crossed out, and a bunch of handwritten pages on lined paper stuck in here and there, all bolted together with brass screws. I turned it around in a long weekend, three days, and shot it back. I believe they started shooting as soon as they got it. Normally I can’t write that fast because I have a day job and other obligations. I have done a full script up from scratch in three weeks, but I like having about six weeks. Recently I did a polish for director Terrence Muncy on a script called “Cow Boy” and did it in about three weeks, then the day I shipped that out I started on “Black Mass” for the Polonia Brothers and finished it in three weeks. A rewrite and a new script in six weeks is pretty fast, I think.

In my opinion the work of the Polonia Brothers have greatly improved since you became a writer for them. When did you first meet them and what can you describe the writing process working with them?
I don’t know if their work has necessarily improved, it’s just different. One of my favorites of theirs is “Dweller,” and I think John Polonia has a pretty tight little script there. That being said, I think they have acknowledged that the scripts aren’t their strongest points. I think they are very solid technically. People poke fun at older features like “Feeders,” but think of what technology they had then. And, unlike my camcorder epics of the time, this one got distributed.
How I met them was that I had a student at Ball State University who was a big fan of theirs and loaned me “Blood Red Planet” because it had some Video Toaster FX, and that was what we were posting on at the university at the time. I really fell in love with their energy and excitement despite the threadbare look of the project and emailed Mark Polonia. We emailed back and forth a long time before a project came up, and then that fell through, then another, and then finally the Bigfoot movie “Among Us” came up, and we’ve been on a good clip since then.
They almost always seem to start with a good title and an outline. For instance, all I had for “Among Us” was that it was going to be in a cabin and feature two men and a woman. I built it all out from there. Other times they have had the basic scenes sketched or written out and then I rewrite those and build it out from there to a feature length.
You have to give them credit in that they are always willing to try new things. My “Among Us” script is a bit off the beaten track and I think a lot of people would have sent me back to the drawing board.
I remember one time Bob Dennis telling me that the Brothers came into the video store he ran in Pennsylvania and he started talking to them about a movie he wanted to do. They basically encouraged him to start it and that they would help him. That became “Savage Vows,” and started a long partnership with Bob acting in many of their features, including Billy in “Among Us” and Hearn in “Black Mass,” two of my scripts. They are really encouraging and supportive guys.

I noticed that some of the scripts you have written for the Polonia Brothers range from about 60 to 80 pages is that intentional for running time or is there a different method you use outside of what some call the standard of one page equals a minute of screentime?
You can be leaner on genre scripts because sex and gore and the old staple, running through the woods, will add to the run time. It’s always better to be a shade long so you don’t have to pad, though. In the case of the Polonia Brothers they like to run very lean so that they can take it in whatever direction they want. Or, in the immortal words of John Polonia, “if it doesn’t work, we’ll shemp it.”

You have also rewritten the script for Chris Sharpe’s SEX MACHINE. I know that the whole project is somewhat shrouded in secrecy, but what can you reveal to us about that project?
Chris calls it a “metrosexual Frankenstein story.” I would say it’s a bit Universal Horror and a bit Film Noir, starring people cooler than me.

The film seems to be a bit outside of the usual b-movie subject matter and yet at the same it is not. How much did writing the script for SEX MACHINE differ from writing for other b-movies?
I’ve admired Chris for a while because of his work on “Eyeball” Magazine and some of his other efforts. Out of the blue he emailed me and asked if I would read a script for him. I did so and shot him back some coverage. He asked if I would be willing to come on board to make the changes on it. I’m glad I did because I knew it was going to be something really good. Chris had his entire world mapped out in his mind and was intent on doing everything at another level than the norm.

You also worked on COW BOY, what can you tell us about that?
It’s from a first-time director who loves “creature features” and poured his love of those movies into the project. I punched it up a bit and think it will be very interesting.

Besides doing just rewrites, you have also written some original screenplays including your own spec scripts. Describe some of them to us if you can and what the process behind working on an original script versus a rewrite? Is one easier than the other or are they both about the same?
I like doing rewrites because the basic structure is there and I can just have fun making offbeat characters and working up dialogue riffs for them. When you write your own it is all on you, including making the plot add up. I have actually had very few opportunities to do original scripts and have never sold one. In fact I think every project I have ever been hired for, which today is around a dozen features, already came with a title, even.
When I write my original scripts I do them completely for myself. I try to do one every summer. The very first one was an urban action movie that generated a lot of interest but never has sold, though it was a calling card for other work. Later I did a dark sword and sorcery script that was sort of a calling card to the Polonia Brothers. I wrote a horror movie set in the world of backyard wrestling that got shopped around for a long time. I did an alternate future nerd-fi opus that may yet get made and a modern dress/original prose Shakespeare adaptation that will probably never see the light of day. But I think to keep sane you have to do put something in your back pocket purely for yourself once in a while.

When working with filmmakers or writers while doing rewrites is there ever a butting of heads of how the direction of the flick goes?
Only in the writing stages. Once it’s done, and it’s heading for the set, you have to let it go. You have to know that you are not having a baby, you are delivering somebody else’s baby. I argue a point only so far, then you might as well cede to the director’s vision. For instance, Chris Sharpe had a main character in “Sex Machine” called Leather Girl that I thought should have a name. I believe in giving every character a name. My production background tells me somebody would rather put “Officer Mooney” on their resume than “Cop #2,” and you can get better talent that way. I suggested several but Chris insisted on going without it, and he ended up getting a good actress for the part regardless.

Returning back to the Polonia Brothers for a moment; they are right now in post-production on BLACK MASS (formerly HELLSHOCK). What can you tell us about that film and what went into writing it?
The Polonias watched to stretch their wings a bit and were batting around a lot of ideas, including a western. They finally hit on a World War II horror thriller because a lot of elements fell into place, including finding a guy who had a bunch of period costumes and weapons. I’m a big fan of that genre in novels and movies so I was really eager to do it. I named the characters after some of my favorite novels, including Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun,” Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead,” and my all-time favorite, Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” I have read a lot of Stephen Ambrose non-fiction and drew on that a bit. I researched the time period in other ways to come up with ideas for characters, including making Brice Kennedy’s character Danby a fan of Bill Maudlin’s “Willie and Joe” comics.
The other thing I tried to do with the script was apply some 21st century ideas to a 40s potboiler framework, by talking about contemporary issues such as racism, homophobia, and family dysfunctions. There’s still plenty of monster attacks, though.

Has there ever been a time when you were writing for yourself or another filmmaker and you said to yourself that you were going to far with a scene or thought what a filmmaker wanted was too extreme for you? If so how did you deal with it?
Everyone has to set their limits early on about what you feel comfortable with. Once I said I didn’t want to write anything my grandma couldn’t see but had to abandon that pretty quickly. My dislikes run towards rape and child abuse. There was a scene in “Peter Rottentail” where Peter basically raped a girl, and I called the Polonias up and said, “Guys, you have some bestiality rape stuff in here, which sort of cuts the comedy a bit if you know what I mean.” So I changed it to be consensual, meaning the worst case of beer goggles ever. But if that’s the only part where you have to suspend disbelief you’re doing okay.
Mark Polonia shot Leslie Culton covered in blood and writhing nude in his actual bed in “House That Screamed 2” but was really squeamish about cussing in a church during “Black Mass.” Everybody has their limits.
If you are working in b-movies the porn question is always kind of out there too, I think.

You also have had to face certain restrictions as far as the budget of the filmmaker is concerned. As a writer how do you restrain yourself from going overboard with certain sequences or number of characters in a script in order to keep the film script within the budget of the project?
You start to realize there are ways to structure it to limit locations and people after you have done it a few times. I think there are probably thirty speaking parts in “Among Us” but many of those scenes are shot individually, and the bulk of it is only four people. If you break out your “kill” scenes in a horror movie, for instance, you can shoot those at your own pace and then shoot the biggest part of it all at once with your principal actors. I think it has helped that I have a background in television production and have had a chance to visit the set of a couple of my features. It helps you think about workarounds and ways to cut corners and yet still make the feature look “bigger.”

Have you ever faced writer’s block and what were some of the ways you overcame it?
I think everybody gets writer’s block. The trick is to make the lows shorter and the highs longer. It’s the long, dark valleys that are the killers. For me, it helps to change up my routines; listen to different music, read different magazines, check out manga or foreign films to see people thinking differently than I do.

Would you say the market of getting into writing low budget films such as direct-to-dvd is extremely difficult or easy?
A lot of people think it’s easy to just “bang something out.” Nothing is really easy; it’s always your butt in the chair when the sun is shining and there’s no way to get around that. Just like with low budget filmmaking; no movie costs nothing. Outside of equipment, people’s time is worth something. That’s why I think as long as you are doing it you should try to make it as good as you can. Mark Polonia has said that if someone thinks it is so easy they should try it themselves, and I’m a bit of the same mindset. There are so many dreamers and talkers and very few doers. And of those that do, there are so many movies that never go anywhere and get released. To have something out there that can be found on the shelf is lightning in a bottle.


Were there some projects that you have worked on that you found too difficult or challenging for you and what were some of the techniques you did to help you keep yourself to continue on?
I think everybody hits the wall at a certain page count. Sometimes you can jump ahead and write a scene later on that you’ve already figured out. Sometimes you just have to keep typing until the rusted gears start turning again. A lot of times what you wrote is crap and has to be junked but at least you kept moving forward.

Are there any tricks of the trade that you are willing to share with others who are also interested in writing their first screenplay?
I think you have to read a lot to be able to write well, to fill your mind with ideas. I recommend reading other people’s screenplays to see how things are done, especially with professional formats. I think you have to nurture networks and friendships. I think people try to guard themselves too closely. I believe in helping out others as much as I can. Jon McBride once told me that you can’t really push anyone’s career ahead of your own, but if you move forward you can pull others in your wake. And of course others can pull you along too. I think that’s an important distinction because it frees you from being so competitive with other people in the industry and you can try to look out more for one another. The history of b-movies shows that some people are going to catch fire, and it would be nice to be standing close to the heat when it happens to somebody in your circle of acquaintances.

What are some of the cliches of other writers or filmmakers that you cringe at as a writer? And as a writer how would you recommend others to stray away from cliches?
There’s too many clichés to name them all here. I think the main problem is that if you are going to draw on what has happened before you need to go all the way back to the source material, not just copy what you just saw. Tarantino took ideas from pulp novels and Hong Kong fare and then filtered it through a 70s backbeat. Then a whole generation of people just copied Tarantino, spawning a wave of smart-assed movies where dudes walked around in sunglasses. People need to do their research, as well as develop a curiosity for exploring their own ideas.

Out of all of the many screenplays that you have done which are you the most proud of?
I spent last summer working up a modern dress, original prose version of an obscure Shakespeare play that I set in the dotcom boom and bust. It is such a flawed play that it is rarely performed, and there are questions as to whether it was a draft, or written by somebody else, and so on. When I heard about it I thought, hell, I’ve started with worse, and I always wanted to adapt a Shakespeare play. But I could literally not get anyone to finish reading it. I think it has an audience, somewhere.

As a final question if you were to write a book what would be three golden rules that you think aspiring writers should always follow?
The only rule I think you have to follow is to be proud of everything that leaves your keyboard.

Bigfoot Stole My Six-Pack (Part Two)

It appears to be Monster Week here at the blog, as my hometown of Muncie, Indiana gets dragged into the latest Bigfoot hoax. Naturally, I am getting some stray google hits because of my Bigfoot movie AMONG US, currently enjoying a run on the Canadian cable channel SPACE-TV (thanks, my northern brothers). For the record, that movie actually takes place in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, where the Polonia Brothers are from, though I did put in a little shout-out for my wife's family in Tell City, Indiana. For old times' sake, here is a link to "Bigfoot Stole My Sixpack," a video made from the song that runs under the closing credits.

I finally found a picture of me from BlogIndiana 2008 that wasn't of the back of my head. I suspect they actually wanted a picture of my stylin' friend Scooby and I was just standing next to him.

It seems like Twittering was all the rage at the conference, so I'm going to check it out for a few weeks. You can see fresh stuff from me in the sidebar.

In other tech news, some smarter people than me have been weighing in on my comments about grassroots DV on the Microcinema Scene message board here.

I was down with a migraine yesterday and feeling the aftershocks today. Curiously, I almost always have a burst of creativity after. Which is good, as I am knuckling down on a rewrite of a sci-fi script I wrote under a non-disclosure last year, which should soak up this weekend.

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

From Montauk with Love

Not suprisingly, it looks like the Montauk Monster stuff turned out to be fake (I thought it was a de-shelled turtle, myself). Somewhat surprisingly, it seems to be tied into a movie in production called Splinterheads, which I learned about when I started getting a lot of Google hits on my site from surfers looking for "Splinterhead Movie." Splinterheads is apparently a comedy about carnival life, whereas my Splinterhead, for Polonia Brothers Entertainment and I think in post-production right now, is naturally, about a killer ventriloquist dummy. To really complete the Circle of Life, Polonia Brothers Entertainment has Monster Movie coming out next month, and damn if that creature doesn't look a bit like the Montauk Monster (only more realistic).

Mysteriously, there are approximately 297 miles between where Splinterheads is being shot in Patchogue, NY, and where Splinterhead and Monster Movie were shot in Wellsboro, PA.

More as this story evolves; until later, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

1,825 Days Later

I once had the idea that when I got to my 5th anniversary on this blog I would have reached 1,000 posts and would have back-tagged all of my previous posts and have some wise words to share. Three strikes, and here I am. I have posted 964 times, which if my math isn't too shaky means I have posted an average of almost every other day for five years. I never knew I had that much to talk about. And loyal readers know I probably didn't.

But a lot of stuff has happened in five years. Both of my kids are grown and out of the house, I had a significant job change after sixteen years, my movies finally started coming out to a DVD shelf near you, and a lot more.

Five years ago AMONG US was in the can but had yet to be released, I was working in fits and starts on THE PAYBACK MAN for director Ivan Rogers, had just polished RAZORTEETH and was starting on DEMONS ON A DEAD END STREET, the fourth script in a four-feature package with Polonia Brothers Entertainment/Intercoast.

I had just got back from GenCon 03 in Indianapolis and was enthused about CrossGen Comics. I was reading WAR MEMORIALS by Clint McCown, THE SMILE ON THE FACE OF THE TIGER by Loren Estleman, and THE GANGSTER WE WERE ALL LOOKING FOR by Le Thi Diem Thuy.

I was just starting on the Microcinema Scene website with Jason Santo and Gary Lummp, which is still going today under Christopher Sharpe's tutelage, who I would one day work with on SEX MACHINE (and I think landing that rewrite job was directly correlated to Chris having read this blog). I was excited about two microcinema features I had just seen, HARDCORE POISONED EYES and HALL OF MIRRORS. Thinking on this today, these are still two of the best microcinema features ever.

My mom was freshly retired, my dad was yet to be diagnosed with cancer. The thing that strikes me the most when I read back over the old posts is that a good friend, prolific b-movie director John Polonia (who I collaborated with on several scripts), was still alive. He died suddenly this year and took a lot of good future projects with him.

I wish I could remember why I started blogging, who I read early on or who egged me on to start up. All that is lost in the dustbins of history. But it is interesting how much it all has grown and changed. I just got back from a blogging/social media conference in Indianapolis Sunday, and it doesn't seem that long ago that one of my students was showing me what email was.

Thanks to literally tens of thousands of readers (and I would have never thought I would be typing that) who have peeked in over the years; unless it was just my brother logging in from tens of thousands of IP addresses around the country, then thanks to him alone. If you'd like to stroll back in time, check me out in the Wayback Machine here.

Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Live from Silicorn Valley

I just got back from Blogindiana 2008, Indiana's first blogging and social media conference, held at IUPUI in Indianapolis. Although loyal readers know I spent a number of years in IT, I have been out for a while and since it basically moves in dog years I had some catching up to do. A lot of other dudes have blogged about this, posted photos and the like (I found one picture of my back here), but I will add a few humble words (and I would post my own pictures, but I dropped my camera on the concrete at the company picnic, the storm over which has yet to subside at home).
It was quite a good conference with many compelling speakers, a neat facility and a good lunch, with the extra benefit of bumping into some old some old pals. My wife found it funny that I came home Saturday night and spent another hour surfing the web looking at the blogs of the people I had just met, but that's how we bloggers roll.
I learned a lot about Web 2.0, web analytics, social media platforms, and a lot more that puts me at the edge of a migraine to think about, but even more importantly is figuring out how to apply some of these ideas to the next-generation distribution model for movies, TV, and the like that I have been percolating on all summer. One thing I decided to knuckle down and try for a month or so is Twitter (see sidebar), which seemed to be the tech du jour at the conference. It was funny to see people sitting around chatting amiably while a vast wave of snark was unspooling on a Twitter wall being projected onto the wall in the main conference room. For the first time in my life I had a sense what it would be like to have the mind-reading superpower and know what people were really thinking.
The other thing that struck me funny was how lo-fi the goodie bag was; all pens and pencils and notepads, not a mouse pad or thumb drive among them. It gives me hope for our humble "legacy technologies," and the lonely boy who proudly trooped off the Ball State University in 1984 with his new electric typewriter. The older and somewhat wiser version held his tongue during discussions of citizen journalism, as he knows that it has existed for many years: as public access television, his day job. But it is interesting to see the new two-way model that Web 2.0 stands for, and to follow where it may be going.
Until later, catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Or the Tropic of Sir Galahad

I feel kind of Hollywood. A lot of times lately we've woken up and heard something outside and said, "Is that Miley Cyrus?" and then we hear kids yelling out her name and we realize that it is indeed Miley Cyrus.

Of course, the neighbors who moved here from California named their puppy Miley Cyrus.

Unfortunately the great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died. I have enjoyed myself some chewy Russian literature from time to time but I would recommend One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to anyone, and is a great, and greatly accessible, work by this notable writer.

On Saturday night we drove over to Losantville with some friends to a diner called the Blue Moon. We ate meatloaf and fried fish and fried chicken and watched a 16-year-old kid named Brian Wallen belt out some old-school bluegrass. It was a fun evening and someday when this rural prodigy is down in Nashville I will remember I saw him in the waybacks.

I am currently doing a rewrite of a project I scripted last year under a nondisclosure, which makes this blog less fun. So until later, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.