Black History Lunch

This is fun. The Wild Cards writers room celebrates Black History month.

Good peeps. Good food. And gonna be great shows!

2015 Dreams #2

Toward the end of the year, I mentioned that I was looking forward to a few things for 2015. One of them was a possible Gabriel's Story movie. Yay for that! It's about time I mention another thing I'm hoping for.

As it's super early days and I haven't been given the green light to announce this, I won't say the words myself. I will, however, point you to a very bare-bones IMDb page - since somebody other than me created it! Take a look.

 Who knows? Maybe it'll happen...

Click HERE to see what I'm talking about.

2015 Dreams #1

Here I am, post Christmas, counting down the days to the end of the year. It's rather pleasant. There are a number of things I'm personally hopeful about for the coming year. In a lot of ways I've felt creatively on hold for the past couple of years. Not that I wasn't creating. I was. Always. Writing and writing. It's just that some projects never flew, some have been on hold, and some just took ages! I'll speak to each of these over the next few days, but here let me mention one.

For the past 12 years my first novel, Gabriel's Story, has been optioned for film by Redwave Films. They do independent films, small, intimate movies that they believe in and work hard to get made. One of them, The Full Monty, was a huge hit, but all of them are interesting films in their own right. The producer, Uberto Pasolini, has graciously renewed the option each December, hoping that the next year was the one the would see our movie go into production. Hasn't happened yet, but, having just renewed the option again, he promises me the chances are better than ever for this to be the year!

What's changed? A couple of things. One is that for the first time in years, both Uberto and the attached director, Alan Taylor, are anticipating a break in their busy schedules that Gabriel's Story might fit into. Alan has been attached since the beginning, but he's been busy with a career that's taken off. In addition to early independent films, he's done a ton of serious tv dramas - Game of Thrones, The Wire, The Sopranos, Rome, Homicide: Life on the Streets (just to name a few), and more recently he's become a blockbuster epic film director: the two Thor movies and the forthcoming Terminator Genisys.

Did I just write that? Thor... Thor... Terminator... Gabriel's Story? Really? Well, it's not as crazy as it seems. Alan's a terrific, diverse director that clearly likes making different kinds of films. He's also a terrific writer. I know this because I recently read the screenplay adaption of Gabriel's Story that he wrote! It's really quite good. I've read some other screenplay adaptions of my fiction before, but this one was the best. It's my story, and it's different, and the ways it's different all make sense to me, and all tell my story in an efficient way that also makes it Alan's story. What more could I ask?

So, the word is that Uberto is ready to go on this, and that Alan may just be ready to go once he's finished with Terminator post-production stuff. So... maybe 2015 is the year we get to work?

More things I'm feeling good about 2015 to come...

How Cool Is This?

I have to start this with my customary cautions. Roll internal monologue in a menagerie of accents... Terribly long shot, old chap. Quite unlikely. Odds against it, don't you know? Are you kidding me? Fat chance! Why should you be so lucky? Hollywood will gut ya, man. Rob you blind, leave you artistically debauched, make you into a cheap one night... Etc.

I could go on, but now that I've again verified that I'm a realist let's get to the wonderfully delusion part...

I recently received a thin printed and bound document that had the words you see to the left her on its simple cover. Michael De Luca. Producer of lots o movies. (Here's his IMDb page.)

What's behind the cover, you might ask? Well, I might flip the page and show you this...

And then I would cackle with glee. Yes, that's the first draft of the screenplay for ACACIA: THE FILM! It's pretty cool to have it in hand, to read through and discover... Oh, you know, I probably shouldn't talk about what's in the pages. Top secret stuff. You may think you know because you read the book, but... Again, I should stop. Let me just say that I found reading it very entertaining and even surprising. This is as it should be, though.

That's about all I can say at the moment. A screenplay exists. High-power producer type folks are calling people, doing lunch and stuff. Relativity Media is overseeing the whole thing. (Here's their IMDb page.) You never know. Maybe, one day...

More About This Movie Stuff

I do know that it's very hard to get films made, and that we're still in the very early stages of the process with Acacia, but I am pretty excited about this one. What I find most encouraging is not just that the book has been optioned and announced; it's that the players involved so far are top notch.

My first contact was Zach Schiff-Abrams at Michael De Luca Productions. I remember the first time we talked. I was in Tahoe at a friend's house and he was home with his new baby. He said all the right things about the book, of course, but many of those right things showed that he got it with specificity. He wasn't just interested because the Entertainment Weekly review had been so good and studios were looking for another Lord of the Rings. Zach gave me the time and talked things through thoroughly. He's clearly a good businessman, but I read him as sincere also.

Of course, I knew of his boss, Michael De Luca, who has been involved in tons of movies. You can see his IMDb page: HERE. He's helped bring to the screen movies like...

21, A Man Apart, John Q, Blow, Thirteen Days, Magnolia, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, American History X, Pleasantville, Blade (I & II) and Boogie Nights.

His credits also include The Love Guru and Ghost Rider, but so it goes... None of those sound exactly like Acacia? Well, good, that means it's about time for a bit of epic fantasy on his list!

Zach and Michael took the idea to Relativity Media, though, because - as you may have heard - these film things cost a lot of money to make. Relativity is a financing and production company. I think that means they do a lot of things, and that some of what they do crosses the normal barriers for these things. They produce movies, yes, but they also finance them. They have deep pockets and are willing to take on all or some of the financial risks to make films happen. That's good news, and I think it increases the chances Acacia will move forward. They've certainly made a lot of films in a pretty short few years. You can see a list of all of them on their IMDb page, but they've been involved in some capacity with films like...

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Hancock, Wanted, Baby Mama, The Forbidden Kingdom, Charlie Wilson's War, American Gangster, Atonement, 3:10 to Yuma, The Pursuit of Happyness…

They also had a hand in Evan Almighty and Ghost Rider, but so it goes… Coming up they have Mary Queen of Scots, The Tale of Despereaux, Brothers, and many more. No doubt. These folks make movies! They make some good ones. Some not so good ones. Big ones. Smaller ones. Purely commercial ones and Academy Award contenders. It's all of this together that has me excited.

Here's their IMDb page.

Their deal with Universal Pictures.

Relativity Holdings.

This actually happened a while back, but before announcing it Relativity wanted to have another piece in place: a writer. Enter Andrew Grant. I can't say a lot about Andrew Grant's films because I don't know that a big credit has reached the cinemas yet for him. I do know that he's sold a script to Tom Cruise, and that he's very well regarded in the business. Zach was interested in him early on. I believe they worked together on something else. Anyway, part of what's cool about Andrew signing on is that he also didn't jump at the chance just because it was a epic fantasy project. He read the book when Zach asked him to. He liked it, thought about it, and... then got excited about making it into a screenplay. (That, at least, is the way I understand it. Correct me if I'm mistaken, Andrew.) That sounds like the way it should be, but perhaps isn't always.

So that's the basic info. There might not be much more news on this front for a while. And it is possible that this will be the highpoint of the entire endeavor. I'm hoping, though, that things will go a lot higher yet...

Wanna get involved? How about putting in your two cents re casting the movie? There's been a thread up about it at my Forum for a while. It's been quiet for a while over there, but maybe now is a good time to take up the subject again. Check it out: HERE.

Peter Jackson to produce "The Hobbit"

I'll keep this brief, but hey, it finally seems official. Jackson is on - not to direct, it seems - but to produce The Hobbit. Cool. Another couple (hmmm...) of fabulous movies coming our way? Let's hope so. Our dvds of LOTRs are worn thin already. You can read all about it at the official Hobbit blog.

I'm pretty sure fans worldwide will be applauding this, while at the same time wondering about that second movie. It looks like the plan is to do The Hobbit in one film and then to do a sequel that covers the material up to the beginning of LOTRs. I can see the attraction for the filmmakers, but the problem is that Tolkein never wrote a Hobbit "sequel". Hmmm...

More on Daemons

I'm so glad Constance reminded me of the Meet Your Daemon feature on the Golden Compass website. We did it as a family, with interesting results on all counts.

First up was my daughter, Maya (8 years in this world). She answered the twenty questions with honest precision. The thing you have to know is that Maya already knew what her daemon was. She is a fan of all things feline. She documents this quite often on her blog, Maya Calypso Durham Talks. But she particularly loves snow leopards. She studies them, draws them, writes poems about them, plays with figures of them, and has even visited with one at the Cat Haven. So, she said ahead of time that her daemon was clearly a snow leopard. But... then she had to answer all these random questions. I was worried. What creature would show up? Would Maya accept it?

Well, duh, yeah she would. Because what strolled on to the page was Brynn, the Snow Leopard! I was flabbergast. Mystified. Just generally surprised. But I'm over it. I'll not doubt Maya's feline knowledge again!

Next up was my son, Sage (walking the earth in all his wisdom for six years). His answers to the twenty questions were somewhat dubious, I thought. But he seemed quite happy to end up with a gibbon monkey.

My wife was not nearly so sanguine with her daemon. Much to her horror, her daemon appears to be a big, hairy spider! She was so aghast at this - please know that she kills black widows daily (or so it seems) and dreams of their revenge on her nightly - that she started over again and did the best she could to give the right ("You've got your math, I've got the math") answers. What was the result?

Big hairy spider. I do have to say that neither I nor the kids found this pairing that strange, but... Gudrun walked away, unimpressed by process.

And then myself. My daemon, it turns out, is Calista, a fox. For a second I wasn't sure what I thought of this, but then I remembered the way I'd described feeling about my unseen daemon in the previous post. Remember that? She doesn't like being inside, wants to walk, preferably in woods and meadows and windswept ridges... and when I do this with her she starts to chatter away with all sorts of cunning plot ideas... Um, well, that sounds quite a bit like a fox to me. I may not be quite as resolutely perceptive as Maya, but at some level maybe I did know my daemon after all...

Golden Compass and Daemons

I saw the The Golden Compass movie the other day. I read the complete Phillip Pullman trilogy some time ago. I quite liked them, and was excited to see it brought to film. You will have probably already seen it and/or read the mixed reviews, so I won't go in depth about it. I will say that it was visually stunning, and a must-see - in some variation, even if its as a home rental - for everyone that's interested in fantasy and fantasy films. I do wish the tempo of the movie hadn't been so rushed, one event tumbling after the other almost breathlessly. And I would have been fine with the filmmakers staying true to the intellectual complexity of the book. But so be it. I still found it entertaining, and I'll look forward to seeing it again - many times, likely - on dvd. And I won't stop hoping it earns enough to help keep Hollywood interested in fantasy adaptations. (Obvious self-interest here.)

One of the enjoyable visual aspects of the film, of course, are all those daemons running around. If you don't know, in Pullman's world daemons are spiritual companions that each person has. They are in animal form, of the opposite sex to the person, and they somehow embody some important representation of the person's inner nature. The cool thing is that everyone can see these creatures, and, indeed, you can even talk to yours. Would be kinda nice, don't you think? Never really being alone...

The thing is, I've always sort of felt I had a daemon of my own. (I was reminded of this after reading a post by my father in law, writing from the windswept wilds of Shetland.) I can't see my daemon. Can't speak to it. And I'm only really aware of it when I think of my creative process and how it works. I should say outright that it's my daemon that helps me write. Don't know where I'd be without her, actually. Many times over the years I've felt like someone outside myself whispered story ideas or plot revelations or gentle criticism into my ear. (I don't mean to sound weird. I'm not actually hearing voices. But I am... well, sorta hearing voices...) It's always mystified me, because so often my best ideas seem to arrive fully formed, with no reasonable precursor. Where do those ideas come from? Perhaps from my daemon... Perhaps it's my daemon that's really the writer, not me. That could explain why writing gifts strike such unlikely people, or explain why so often people that want desperately to write show so little aptitude for it. It's not their fault; it's their daemon that's not up to it.

Whatever kind of creature my daemon is she doesn't actually like to stay couped up in the office much. She likes to get out and walk. That's when she's happiest, and that's when she speaks the most freely to me. I'd say as well that she prefers some landscapes to others. She's not all that inspired by flat, semi-urban Fresno, I'm afraid. She shares a bit with me on my walks here, but nothing like she did when we rambled around Scottish glens or through the wooded hills of Western Massachusetts. She likes vistas. She likes wind in her face and changing seasons and cloud formations building in the sky... Yeah, that's what makes her happy.

And when she gets happy she rewards me. It's like once we're chugging along that ridgeline, watching the threat of rain in the distance, she says, "Alright, god it's good to be outside! I was going crazy pacing around in that office with that awful incense fouling the air. Now that I can think straight let me tell you this idea I had. You know how Corinn sends Dariel on the mission? Well, I was thinking, what if..."

Geez. I owe that girl so much, and she knows it. So I should treat her right, shouldn't I? And be very grateful that she's a storyteller... whatever she may be, whatever she would look like if I had the eyes to see her...

Was I feeling Optimistic?

About a resolution to the Writer's Strike? That may have been premature. As of today, it don't look good.

Producer's, Writer's negotiations Collapse.

Hollywood Insider.

WGA, AMPTP talks break down.

I really was hoping this could all be made better soon, and that all parties could get back to doing business. Silly me.

Force Majeure

Bummer. I just learned that an act of God is directly having a wee influence on my life. Over the summer, I sold the film option for one of my books. I haven't announced it yet, because the folks that bought it want to wait to make a big announcement when they have more pieces in place. I'm fine with that. As a writer you get pretty good at waiting. And waiting... Waiting...

Thing is, an option lasts for a set time period, say 18 months, during which time whomever has the option has the rights to try to get the funding, the talent, the green light, etc. If they don't make it happen in that time frame they either loose the option or they need to renew it - which means paying for it again - for another limited time period. Notice I said I signed the deal this summer, which actually means a few months have passed already. I'd like to think the good people working on this one will put together the package soon, but if they don't there's always that notion that before long the rights will come back to me - or need to be paid for again.

Yesterday, though, I get a letter from these mysterious financiers explaining that the option is suspended due to "Force Majeure". What act of God caused this? Flood? War? Riot? Plague of locusts? Well, no... In this case it's... the writer's strike.

Now, this doesn't mean the contract is canceled or anything like that. All it means is delay for me, a stretching of the time frame, delay, delay. Essentially, it means that for at least three months the purchasers of the option are granted a stay in the option period, so that they're not at a disadvantage because they can't do business during the strike. Nothing new, really. And who knows? Maybe it'll actually end up being a good thing. Maybe this "Force Majeure" will allow the playing pieces to shift in some way that benefits me. It's happened before...

Also, I hear that there's some progress in the negotiations. Maybe they'll be joy and happiness soon...

Speechless

The Writers' Strike continues. With time on their hands they've apparently taken to making short films, like this one on Brightcove.

There are also selections on YouTube.

Why We Fight

Hi ya. So you all know about the Writers Guild strike, I'm sure. I have to admit I have some vested interest in seeing this thing get sorted out soon. There are people from this guild that would quite like to be going to work on bringing some of my fiction to film, but at the moment that's on hold. Bummer!

I don't know what you all think of this, although I'm inclined to believe you likely support the idea that writers should get paid fairly for their work - even if you deem it to be of questionable quality. If you're interested, here's a link to a YouTube video that a colleague alerted me to. It's a sort of whimsical Guild explanation for the strike.

Also, you could check out this petition and voice your support, if you do, indeed, support them.

Man, things take forever...

A note on how long things can take... Way back in May I posted the news that Torn Sky Entertainment had optioned Walk Through Darkness. You might expect that the contracts were signed ages ago and my big fat check (joking, joking... seriously) had been cashed and spent, and that by now there would be a screenplay hanging out poolside at various actors homes, etc... You'd think I was writing here because I had NEWS! Right?...

Well, no. Not. Actually, I just signed the paperwork yesterday. Yep, just signed it. Put it in the mail and now I'll wait some more. These things are excruciatingly slow. I'm sure the guys at Torn Sky are on it, but still - patience is more than a virtue for a writer. It's an absolute necessity!

I actually "almost kinda" have another piece of news, but I've "almost kinda" had it for a few months now and I still can't say what it is! Maybe, maybe in a few months more I'll be able to shout about it... Believe me, when I can announce it you'll be the first to know!

Movie Hopes for Walk Through Darkness

Okay, still a long shot, but at least I can announce that somebody will be going to work in Hollywood to try and make Walk Through Darkness into film. Torn Sky Entertainment has optioned it. They're a new company, but the folks there have some solid plans on how to push the movie forward.

Casting ideas are welcome, by the way. They tossed around some heavyweight names, enough to get my head spinning, but those same names must get tossed around by pretty much everyone who's talking about making a good movie, so... I'll try to stop the head spinning and focus, focus! (On writing, that is...)

Acacia goes to LA

Well, I mean in a very preliminary sense. The LA offices of my agency, ICM, have asked for the book to look at in-house. This really means absolutely nothing at this point, except that people over there are going to read it. I only mention it because, as ever with these things, it throws me into a short-lived fit of dreaming Hollywood dreams. Probably not the best way to spend my time.

So, I'm going to post this and turn right to the copyedited manuscript of the book in question. I got it a couple days ago and I'm reading through it now. Copyeditor did a great job, of course. It's amazing that out of 802 pages not one of them managed to go unmarked. And to think I call myself a teacher, correct other people's errors, etc...

Gabriel's Story, the film...

...is still a working possibility. I got an email from Uberto Pasolini, the producer behind The Full Monty and others. He's had the option for Gabriel's Story for a couple years now, and he's been working with the director Alan Taylor to get a script together and make it happen. Sounds like they're now on draft number three and are preparing to carry on with it. Glad to hear it. I've enjoyed the films these two have made together, The Emperor's New Clothes and Palookaville, and I'm certainly warmed by their lasting commitment to the project. It's a long road yet, but nice to know Gabriel may yet make an appearance on the big screen.