Wednesday, January 04, 2006

The New Year

Been tough getting going this year with writing. I wrote the shit out of last year, I wrote The Rave At Danny Carter's House, The Scenic Route, Tourniquet, and Headshot and did some big re-writes of some older scripts. I think I was fried by the end of the year, so I've been going back, tweaking a few older scripts here and there over the last week or two. I love a good tweak.

But the surge is returning. I've got a few on my plate that I'm going to get going, the already posted The Nine Lives Of Dalt Stickle, and a few more comedies - One is called Retail Messiahs, and the other, which I will post the brief opening scene of below, is called Kill Whitey. Again, it's brief, but it gives you a good idea of the tone...............

FADE IN:
EXT. LAKE - DAY
The sun shines. The sky blues. The day is perfect...except for a rusted, pale green beast of a car forged in the 70s that sits partially submerged in the lake.

ZAK (V.O.)
It was hot as balls the day Whitey Gimmler was found dead in his piece of shit car half-sunk in Silver Lake.

A JET SKIER speeds along and nails the car, zooming up and over it, and landing many yards away with a small splash.

JET SKIER
YAHOOO!!!!

The Jet Skier zooms across the lake.

4 comments:

Robert Hogan said...

Nothing personal, but why the need for VO? It's a pet peeve of mine (even though I've got a script where the character breaks the forth wall). I'm just curious what is motivating it, why did you choose a VO?

Rob

Patrick J. Rodio said...

I like VO. I use it not as a crutch but more for humor. But certainly not always, the last 5 scripts I wrote DID NOT have it, and if you break down how many times I've used VO in my scripts, it's only once in a while.

And actually this is a story about a small town detective, so I wanted to have that kind of feeling that he's taking us through this (like those old cheesy detective stories).

VO certainly isn't always welcome, I'd say I've used it 15% of the time, but likfe I said I'll use it for humor.

Adam Renfro said...

I always dig your character names. You have a great knack for finding an interesting name.

Also the phrase "forged in the 70s" is an awesome image.

I might start making character names from WORD VERIFICATION words.

Yupjo enters the room.

Patrick J. Rodio said...

Haha, yeah, there are some good ones sometimes through the word verifications.

Fqsxp! Okay, maybe not this time...........