Well, Zucker is el completo. Just finished a nice polish of it, thanks to some killer notes from Mr. Scott The Reader. 109 Pages of pure comedy genius. now I'll send it over the Mr. Manager and see what he thinks about it. I loved writing it, and I think it kicks all sorts of ass. Took a while to do it, about 8 months, but I took off about 4-5 months in the middle of Zucker to work on the Cricket Hill TV pilot and Food Fight.
Right now, Food Fight is out to producers (we're hitting a biggie this week, not a producer per se, they're more considered a studio). Fingers crossed! And Cricket Hill is out to agents.
So, Zucker is officially my 43rd feature-length script ever written. Yeah, it's a lot. But those first several are simply unreadable. Some of the others have their moments, but are structurally unsound. The scripts I've written since 1999 are pretty damn good I'd say, with the last 3 years being pretty solid. Some highlights:
**Lost & Found (1997) - First script ever written.....Worst script ever written.
**Stain (1997) - Pretty gritty, it's about street hustlers. I directed & co-produced. My research? Nada. We turned it into an okay low-budgeet shot-on-crap-DV movie.
**Good People (1998) - My 1st option, story by my wife.
**The Adventures Of Riley - My first script to win/place at some competitions. Always loved riley, might go back to it one day.
**The Go Getters (1998) Basically Freaks & Geeks, although mine came first, dammit! My longest script ever, this high school drama came in at a hefty 145 pages. And I didn't cut any! Not a one!
**The Money Shot (1999) - Porn + college = 2nd Option!
**A Couple Of Joes (1999) 3rd Option.
**Better Days (2001) - Basically The Last Kiss. Self-produced & directed.
**West River Drive (2002) - Another self-produced (and directed) low budget epic.
**Cricket Hill (2nd Place Comedy, Austin, 2003) - Great things have come from this script. Praying that even grater things will come soon. In development as a TV Pilot/series.
Out of 43, how many are worthy? Hmm. I'd say 15 would be ready to read at this moment, with another 10 needing a hard polish. Throw in another 10 that would need real work. Another 10 are likely train wrecks.
6 comments:
wow patrick. 43 scripts? that's friggin' amazing. looks like your hard work is paying off tho.
whew. i don't know if i'll even write 43 scripts in my life!
43? Dammit. I won't say how many I've written, but let's just say trees like me better than you.
Well, there was a time when writing was pretty much ALL I DID. No job, nada. I had one year where I wrote 13 screenplays in 1 year(finished the last (and my best ever) on that New Year's Eve.
But hey, many of those from that time are the ones that I'd look at now and say they need major re-writes, etc, and that's what I've done to some of my older ones from that era, gone back and re-written the crap out of them.
But one thing for sure is, I don't stay on one script for too long after it's done. I have to many ideas and need to move on to the next. That doesn't mean I won't come back to a particular script 6 months down the road and do a nice re-write on it, or ship it off to Scott The Reader so he can tear it a new asshole, which I would highly recommended! That's what I did with Zucker and he really gave me some killer notes.
Hi Pat, I'd love to read one of your scripts (any one you want to toss at me?). The more I read the better I'll be as they say, and I'd love to read something from my peer )OMG, you are one of my peers!) heh
43 scripts is pretty incredible. I'm in total awe of prolofic types. There's something to be said about putting out quantity-- even if all of it isn't professional quality.
Nice work, Patrick!
And since you're the Master of Productivity, maybe you can give us some tips on how we can be more speedy in our writing!
~LR
LR,
I just write. That's it. And after I'm done, I move on. Not to say I won't re-visit the script for some re-writes, but I'm not going to sit and stare at the same script for a year, re-writing & re-writing. I move on (but come back later). Too many ideas!
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