RHIFF makes me happy!

--msg

Starring Emma Caulfield (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Barbara Niven (Cold Case), A Valentine Carol is a re-imagining of Dickens' classic Christmas fable in which radio-show "Love Expert" Ally Sims is about to marry the perfect man. But is it really for the right reasons? On the eve of her Valentine's Day wedding, Ally is visited by the ghost of her old mentor who shows her Valentine's Days Past, Present, and Future in an effort to remind her what true love is all about.

(Yeah, yeah, I know, but it's basically the copy Lifetime wrote!)

Anyhow, I'm pleased with the movie though it bares no resemblance to the original script we initially set out to make because our job, of course, is to satisfy the network's needs. What we made for Lifetime, however (its only rom-com on their slate), is a delightful little romp that everybody attached can take pride in being a part of. It premiers on Lifetime this coming Sunday, Feb. 11, with repeats on the 14th and 17th. Here's the SCHEDULE.

Enjoy!

Airing on Lifetime starting Sunday, Feb. 11, A Valentine Carol is a reimagining of the Dickens Christmas classic set on -- you guessed it -- Valentine’s Day. In it, as cynical radio talk-show “love expert” Ally Simm prepares to marry the perfect man she is visited by the ghost of her mentor in effort to remind her of what true love is all about. The TV movie was co-executive produced by Gregory and directed by Mark Jean.

Produced and directed by Gregory, We, The Screenwriter, featuring writers whose credits include Air Bud, Any Given Sunday, A Valentine Carol, Battlestar Galactica, Carnivàle, Cleopatra, Constantine, Hill Street Blues, House, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, Land of Oz, Lethal Weapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Last Boy Scout, Mission Impossible: 2, Moby Dick, Pacific Heights, Perfect Romance, Resurrecting the Champ, Roswell, The Role of a Lifetime, Silver Surfer, Spawn, Spider-Man Unlimited, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Sum of All Fears, Tales from the Crypt, Timeline and more, will debut on Cinequest Online’s Viewers’ Voice Competition, beginning Feb. 1 at www.CinequestOnline.org.

Running Feb. 1–20, the Viewers’ Voice Competition permits visitors to freely download and watch We, The Screenwriter, then vote on it. The winning title will receive the final theatrical screening spot at Cinequest 17, among the most competitive film festivals in the nation for indie filmmakers.

Michael Steven Gregory is an independent filmmaker and WGA screenwriter of material ranging from mainstream drama and bio-pics to animated action-adventure and videogames. He has scripted series for Fox, UPN and HBO, directed television and features in a variety of genres, and been involved as a writer, producer or director in over 150 short films. He is also executive director of the Southern California Writers’ Conference, president of the American Academy of Arts and director of the Indie Filmmaker’s Bootcamp, all based in San Diego, CA.

WHAT: A Valentine Carol
WHEN: February 11, 14 and 18 on Lifetime Television

WHAT: We, The Screenwriter (www.WeTheScreenwriter.com)
WHEN: February 1 thru 20 on Cinequest Online (www.CinequestOnline.org)

Beginning February 1 at http://www.cinequestonline.org/ and running through February 20, the Viewers’ Voice Competition permits visitors to download and watch the movie in its entirety for free, then vote on it. The winning film will receive the final theatrical screening spot at Cinequest 17, pretty much the coolest indie film festival in the country. Yes, even cooler than Sundance (though not colder)!

I encourage all those interested in screenwriting to take advantage of this opportunity to watch We, The Screenwriter and help support our efforts, so pass this notice on to your screenwriterly friends. Only downside is you cannot watch the movie on an Apple computer. (I know. Sucks.)

Step-by-step instructions for how to dowload and vote on We, The Screenwriter from Feb. 1-20, 2007 are available at http://www.RandomCove.com/production/wts/viewersvoice.html.

For more information about the movie, please visit http://www.WeTheScreenwriter.com where you can watch the trailers, check out the WTS blog, latest news, etc.

I do hope you’ll jump in, enjoy, and support the movie. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly via Random.com or WeTheScreenwriter.com.

Marking the return of Gregory to documentary - or “doculogue” as he calls it - form, We, The Screenwriter is the follow-up to his critically lauded 1996 film We, The Writer. Like its predecessor, in it there are no on-screen questions. The film unfolds as a highly stylized, rapid-fire, cross-cutting compendium of insider perspectives geared to inform, enlighten and inspire its audience.

With their credits spanning the gamut of genres, including Air Bud, Any Given Sunday, Battlestar Galactica, Carnivàle, Cleopatra, Constantine, Hill Street Blues, House, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, Land of Oz, Lethal Weapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Last Boy Scout, Mission Impossible: 2, Moby Dick, Pacific Heights, Perfect Romance, Resurrecting the Champ, Roswell, The Role of a Lifetime, Silver Surfer, Spawn, Spider-Man Unlimited, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Sum of All Fears, Tales from the Crypt, Timeline and more, those appearing in the film are Erich Anderson, Shane Black, Allison Burnett, Larry Brody, Frank Cappello, Sharon Y. Cobb, Anton Diether, Dana Fox, Anna Gilson, John Mankiewicz, Aaron Mendelsohn, Ronald D. Moore, Gary Phllips, Daniel Pyne, Deborah Serra and Robert Ward.

The topics they address are equally eclectic, ranging from breaking into the business and what validates the screenwriter, to the profession's impact on personal relationships, responsibilities, writing for TV versus features, writing on assignment versus on spec, pitching, outlining, adaptation, rewriting, agents, young executives, ageism, studio notes, gender bias, writing for market, being pigeon-holed, and others. Ultimately, however, Gregory believes the film's aim is to answer one simple question: Why?

Why do the roughly 13,000 members of the Writers Guild of America - only one-third of which actually make a living writing screenplays - and all the other aspiring screenwriters who collectively registered some 50,000 screenplays, treatments and general ideas for movies and TV shows with the Guild last year, for an American industry that pumps out only around 300 movies annually, desire to be part of a medium that systematically sabotages their ideals and efforts, and which too often clearly regards their contributions with such disdain?

“Faith,” said Gregory. “Screenwriters are the Special Forces of the creative writing world in that they're highly skilled at executing a very specific objective in often extreme circumstances. Most make their living in excruciating anonymity and in the face of incalculable odds against their work being successfully realized as initially envisioned. But faith in the possibility, the belief that it might actually just this once transcend the commercial collaborative process and engage, even touch, a stranger who watches their story, that is what warrants the effort. To hell with the money.”

Financed by Random Cove, ie, Gregory's production company, We, The Screenwriter was over four years in the making as a result of other projects taking precedence over its completion, and a car accident in which the then-nearly completed film was all but destroyed. As with the first film, We, The Screenwriter will ultimately be made available to MFA and creative writing programs nationwide.

For more information www.WeTheScreenwriter.com.

"We, The Screenwriter trailer 3 ('Afraid')" addresses the challenge of dealing with producers and studio execs. It features Deborah Serra (Snow White: A Tale of Terror), Shane Black (Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang), Anton Diether (Moby Dick) and Frank Cappello (Constantine).

Am working to resolve the crappy compression. Be sure to checkout the teaser and other trailer below.

My feeling about this has been that the medium screenwriters work in is so varied and vastly different from that of other writers -- novelists, nonfictionalists, etc. -- it would be easy to shoot slick and leave it at that. But my thinking from the get-go has been that everything from grain to sprocket slips, scratches, camera jerks, etc., all these variables that typically remain totally out of the hands of screenwriters are, in fact, the very fabric and texture of our art & craft. Consequently, my decision was to greatly manipulate the images of the sixteen interviews to serve, at least what I believe, the realm of the professional screenwriter on a visually tactile level. (I know, it's a bit esoteric.)

After the loss of a lot of original footage due to the car acciendent (see blog way down below), matching before and after frames is a bit challenging. However, I've posted some shots that do show what radical changes have been made to original, properly white-balanced footage and that seen in the final movie.

Good and valid question. Here's my reasoning...

Too often writers in search of advice and insight on their own material dismiss the perspective of writers who don't necessarily work in their genre, regardless how successful they may be in their own. For example, if a screenwriter writes romantic comedy, what could somebody like Shane Black, who writes buddy-crime-thriller-comedies such as Lethal Weapon and Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang possibly have to say that will address romantic-comedy issues? Consequently, the emerging romantic-comedy screenwriter turns a deaf ear to whatever Shane says in the firm belief of ridiculous absolutes routinely hocked by the legion of how-to-write-screenplay gurus who tend to make their living "teaching" others supposedly how to write for market when they themselves are unable to make a living writing successfully for market.

Folks, there is no single right way to write a commercial screenplay, only an infinite number of wrong ways. No number of how-to books or weekend seminars or asinine 15-minute pitch session conferences might reveal the single most important thing that can make all the difference in your writing a successfully communicative script. But the off-handed aside by an accomplished writer over a drink at the bar, or a cup of coffee -- that in my experience has time and again proven to be the very thing that made the difference between personal success and failure.

So, yeah, as with We, The Writer I again elected to not reveal the identities of those appearing in WTS until the very end. Why? Cuz I want you to pay attention and profit from having done so. So when the ID finally comes up you go, "Damn, I would never have believed that what the guy who did the TV show House or the movie Constantine said actually applies directly to me and my sock-puppet zombie musical!"

At the end of the day, writers are writers, whatever you write.

--msg

And on the MySpace film support community front, don't forget to check out MySpace.com/YesMSG to extend a hand.

--msg

The lad whose super-fuzzy face (because of YouTube, not us) you see below is Aaron Mendelsohn. A fun, top-notch screenwriter who wrote, among other things Air Bud. (Yeah, I know he really appreciates the Michael Jackson nose-job!)

[begin copy]

BRODY: Because of the collaborative process the kernel of truth that you brought in to start with can very easily get lost because of things other people throw into the mix.

I did a thing when I was producing THE FALL GUY. We had a writer for ESQUIRE who sat in the office with me for like eight weeks, the fly on the wall watching how one episode would go from beginning to end; from an idea to the night that it was actually shown on the air. He was watching Larry Brody, who had had this idea, this theme he wanted to incorporate into an episode of THE FALL GUY -- which is not a show known for it's truth -- and watching me fight to get that theme in.

The theme was something about friendship. I had a personal belief that when it came down to the choice between principle and humanity, you should pick humanity; you should love your friend enough to violate your principles to help your friend. So this was about the Lee Majors character doing something for a friend.

The (TV) process is so long and is so involved with network approvals and notes every step of the way, that I was constantly watching the various places where I had strategically located the scenes or the dialogue that reflected this theme getting ripped out. They would just be changed for practical considerations of the actual filmmaking process, or they would be changed because somebody said, “I have a funnier line of dialogue.” And the funny line didn't have the meaning the not-so-funny line had, but they got changed.

We're now down to a place where it's the last day of shooting and the last scene begins shooting. Unusually, the last scene being shot is the last shot of the episode, and it was the one place left where it still had my theme where, at the end -- the tagline of the entire episode -- Colt Stevens says something about what he would do for his buddy, Ozzie, played by Buddy Hacket.

I go down to the set with the reporter to watch this, very excited. Alright, we're going to slip it by! It's almost like a guerilla fight, I gotta chance to say something that means something to me and it's going to be there.

We do Ozzie's close-up because he's a big star -- Buddy Hacket at the time, whom Lee Majors admired. They don't do a master shot because we're behind schedule and are just gonna use the close-ups anyway, so it starts right off with Buddy. He does the scene and it's great, now it's Lee.

They do the entire scene with Lee up to the last line. He's about to say the line, which is the reason I wrote the episode, and Lee stops, puts his hand in front of the camera and goes, “Nah, that's enough. We should end on Buddy's line.” And walks off the set.

There's truth in television.

[end copy]

--msg

I haven’t done a definitive count yet, but WTS has close to that many. And we’re talking just talking heads here!

Anyway, the following is a bit long but for Ronald D. Moore fans (Battlestar Galactica, Carnivale, Roswell, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Mission Impossible 2), or anybody just looking at the weird ways folks get into the screenwriting business, here’s a bit that was cut completely from the finished movie. It’s a long bit, obviously, which is why it was cut. Still one of my favorites, however. Hope you find it interesting....

[begin copy]

MOORE: Before STAR TREK I was working at a company called New World Pictures which specialized in independent films. And I was working in the international servicing department shipping prints and tapes 'round the world to people who would buy their films for their territories. My boss at the time started dating a man named Toby Halicki, or H.B. Halicki, as his credit would read. He was the man responsible for the original movie, GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS, back in I think 1974. Toby was a car thief -- stole cars, financed the movie himself for like a hundred and change, hundred and fifty thousand or something like that in '74. He was a maniac. He was like an uber guerilla filmmaker who would literally take some cones and some cars and then go down to Long Beach and block off the road and do a stunt and then pick up all the cones and get away before the police showed up. And he did this whole movie, distributed himself, financed it himself, put it out there in the days when you could really do that as an independent filmmaker, and it made millions.

Years later he decides he wants to do a sequel. He's dating my boss, he's looking for a writer and my boss knows I want to be a writer and haven't got a break yet, so she hooks us up and I agree to come on and help him write the script and also be a co-producer on the script, and this was going to be my big break.

Toby was completely out of his mind. He'd would sue people at the drop of a hat. He didn't use a lawyer. He would file all the papers himself. If you couldn't park his car at the Marriott hotel where he wanted to park it, he would then sue the Marriott corporation and send them letter after letter after letter until finally they would send him some money to shut him up and make him go away. And I was like helping him do this, because that was part of my duties, since I'm helping him writing the script. And some point we flew back to upstate New York, which is where Toby is originally from, and we're like scouting locations. And there was an abandoned factory complex that he wanted to do a stunt at.

It was a big, old factory complex and outside of it, or in the parking lot, was this one hundred, hundred and fifty foot water tower -- four legs, built in the Teens, much like the Paramount tower out here. And the idea was Toby wanted to do a stunt where a tractor-trailer, in the middle of a chase, of course, cuz the whole movie's a chase, would come flying into this parking lot and slam into this water tower and the water tower would come down and crash into a parking lot full of cars and big explosion, flames, and dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. And we’re talking about how we’re going to do this and Toby says, “Well, my friends down at the welding shop, they'll bring it down.”

I was like, “What, are you kiddin? You're kiddin', right?” I mean, I had no experience making movies, I knew you needed like engineers, you need like a whole safety crew, that this was like a major thing to bring this water down. And Toby, being Toby, started yelling, “You don't know what you're talking about. I've been making movies since you were a kid. I've never had an accident on any of my sets, and how dare you!”

We fly back to California, coupla weeks go by. Now we're like fighting all the time, various issues and it's getting crazy, so finally Toby fires me. I was sort of grateful at this point and we parted ways and our relationship was such that I was even able to come to him and ask him for a loan to help me get another apartment, because I was getting kicked out of my apartment and I needed to get a deposit for a new one. “Toby, will you lend me the money?” I knew I had to pay him back or he would sue me. So he was like, that was okay.

So time passes, it was three or four months later that I sold my first professional script to STAR TREK and so my career is taking off and it's like, I put the craziness off GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS TWO behind me, and suddenly I get this call one night from Toby's brother: “Toby is dead.”

“Oh, my god. What happened?”

“Well, we were doing the water tower gag.”

“Oh, no.”

He said, “Yep.”

What happened was they do the water tower stunt, and the plan is to cut this leg all the way through, put a fake one in it. Tractor-trailer comes flying in, hits the fake leg, and at that moment -- they had these big cables tied to the top of the water tower running to a bulldozer over here and a bulldozer over there -- and at that moment the bulldozers would jump forward and pull the whole water tower over.

Okay, “Action!” Tractor-trailer comes in, leg goes out, nothing. Doesn't happen. Toby and his buddies from the welding shop go out and look. “Hmm, what should we do?” So they get the cutting torches and they start cutting the leg. And at this very moment news crew from local station comes to do an interview with Toby, and they're interviewing him, like a shot, tight shot on him but right behind him is the water tower and you see sparks coming off the leg as the boys are cutting away.

And Toby's looking into the camera and saying, “When this is all over, I'm going to sue the city of Dunkirk ‘cause they made me take a ten million dollar insurance policy to indemnify the city and I have never had an accident on any of my sets!” And you just feel like the hand of God starting to move somewhere in the heavens.

In front of the water tower were these two telephone poles on either side that didn't have any wire on them,’cause they'd taken it all down when the factory was abandoned. But Toby, always striving for authenticity in every way, decided to string wire between the telephone poles so it would look, like, real. So what happened was, the water tower collapses prematurely and it came down, it catches the telephone wire, and the wire pulls over a telephone pole which landed on Toby's head. And he was the only guy even injured in the entire production.

It was an unbelievable case of Karma in some weird way that just came back around and that was the end of this strange tale of Toby Halicki.

[end copy]

--msg

S/he wants to believe that it'll all turn out good. Even great. Possibly even better than expected.

And with that belief the professional screenwriter perseveres to buck the odds and surmount the obstacles in effort to fulfill that awe-inspiring vision that first propels us forward, that compels us to aspire for that, vesus settle for this. That's what we do.

But, to be "relieved of ambition" is not necessarily a bad thing for many. In fact, for some it's the best thing. Without it there is acceptance with one's self, devoid of doubt, bewilderment and envy. Some days it's easy to think that might not be such a bad goal.

--msg

While not my first film, it has been my longest in the making production-wise. Over four years. My fault, but it makes for a good story

See, we started shooting in Los Angeles in 2002, two days after literally nearly poking out my right eyeball while playing disc golf (what’s called “Frisbee golf” by many). Find out a week later that I’d scratched my cornea ‘bout as badly as a cornea can be scratched without going permanently blind. Meanwhile, my camera operator’s saying, “MSG, what do you think of this shot?” I’m in unimaginably excruciating pain, unable to see, on major painkillers -- is it in focus, outta focus, who knows? But, thankfully, it worked out.

Two years later the movie was supposed to premier at the Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe. That didn’t happen. What happened instead was this: Monday before the Wednesday premier, the just-finished film was contained on a computer hard drive enroute from Palm Springs to San Diego, CA. There was a car accident. All that we had of the finished film was a VHS workprint weighing in a full 32 minutes longer than the done movie. So, between other projects, I got to start cutting all over again.

Which brings us to today, mere days after the movie got finally, totally, completely done. Again. Now begins its life beyond the editing room.

For those interested in professional screenwriting or screenwriters, WTS is for you. Script Magazine did a fine profile of my rather unusual approach to making the movie that you can read online at www.WeTheScreenwriter.com. In the meantime, as we begin seeking limited festival exhibition and ultimate distribution, we actively wait!

It’s been a long road, but one well driven (absent that freeway thing, of course). I look forward to reporting back on our future travels, and hope some of us can hook up along the way.

--msg