counseling/ should I continue into TV production? (Part 1)

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Aug. 7 Counseling: I finally went to a counseling session the other day.  I haven’t been to counseling since around the end of 2012.  I called up Counselor #1 again whom I have seen about 4 times that year.  She said she wasn’t taking any new clients anymore and that she was ending it.  I was fine and was going to start looking for another counselor.

I had seen Counselor #2 once in 2012, but she was more expensive and didn’t help as much.  At that time, I had benefits and my work paid for it.

I had gotten this information sheet from Counselor #2 about subsidized and affordable counseling.  I called them up and they were all about a sliding fee scale based on how much money you make.

This time I saw Counselor #3.  She was affordable.  I knew I had to start over again with her, as in give her my family information and my life situation up to that point.  There was a questionnaire I had to fill out and asked what you wanted to get out of this counseling.

Writer interviews: When I was talking to the Counselor #3, I felt like I was in my fictional writer interviews.  That’s because the fictional host and the real Counselor #3 were discussing about my writing.

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2013/01/writer-interview-contract-lesson-bobbi.html

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2013/12/writer-interview-part-2-screenwriting.html

The Years: I had to tell Counselor about the years and gave a timeline.

2008 The Year of the Soup Place: I was working full-time at the Soup place and pitching my script constantly.

2009 The Year of The Vertex Fighter:  I was working full-time at the Soup place and pitching my script constantly.

2010 The Year of Unemployment: I was laid off in Mar. and then I was so busy looking for a regular job and an office job, that I stopped pitching my script.

2011 The Year of the Office Job Search: I was working at my restaurant job in the morning and constantly looking for an office job on the internet and going all over town to go to job interviews.  I probably did on average 5 interviews a month.

2012 The Year of New Directions: I was working at my restaurant job and constantly looking for an office job on the internet and going all over town to go to job interviews. 

This time it’s different because I did a lot of temporary jobs like Telemarketer #1, Telemarketer #2 and job shadows at a dental lab and selling newspapers door-to-door. 

I did career counseling and regular counseling.

I also looked for a job in TV production.  It lasted about a month because there aren’t that many TV production companies in Edmonton and that are hiring.  I made lots of contacts.

2013 The Year of the Office Job: I worked at the Office Job for 5 months at the beginning of the year.  I worked at the restaurant on the weekends.  In the last half of the year, I worked at the restaurant and looked for an office job.

The experience at the Office Job, I can put on my resume.

2014: The first half of the year, I was working at the restaurant job and constantly looking for an office job on the internet.

Aug. 8 Should I continue into TV production?: I had written this list last month, and I shared it with the Counselor.  Now I will put it on my blog.

Continue into TV production:

1. The producer John Kerr believes in me.
2. Lots of TV producers have read my script and shown interest (over the years.)
3. There are lots of TV production companies in Alberta, Canada.
4. There are lots of TV writers and TV producers in Canada, so I can achieve it too.
5. There are lots of Canadian shows that are successful like The Listener.
6. A few weeks ago there was an office assistant position at a TV production company.  I got excited and applied to it.  I was genuinely excited.
7. I was deleting Screenwriting Goldmine emails, and I still feel like I should take note of all the TV production companies listed so I can pitch to them.
8. My goal of getting The Vertex Fighter is realistic and achievable as a TV movie/ back door pilot.  I’m not trying to get it into theatres.

Don’t continue into TV production:

1. It takes years to produce one project.  (For example, the movie Tammy took 6 years in development.)  
2. I have always said: “If I was to die unexpectedly, produce my TV script.”  Now, it’s more like: “Continue my blog.  I have cut out a bunch of news articles.  You can find the articles on the internet.  I had highlighted excerpts of it.  You can bold the text of the parts I highlighted.”

I wouldn’t ask my friends and family to try to get my TV script produced because it’s so hard.

Another question is: If I were to die unexpectedly, “Would you regret that your script didn’t get produced in your lifetime?”

Tracy: I wouldn’t.  Because I gave my 100% effort into getting my script produced in 2008-2009 (2 yrs).  Also 4 months in 2010.

Your opinions: I’m asking this to my friends and family, (and my blog readers) the above question: “Should I continue into TV production?”  If not, then what I should I go into?

That’s why I talked to a Counselor, somebody who brings a new perspective.  Because sometimes when you are too close to something, you don’t see it.  It’s like that time my friend Leslie told me that I get so angry watching Dr. Phil because I take it too personal.

Poke holes through logic: Here are some examples of outsider’s perspectives on things and they poke holes through logic.

Teen pregnancy: Here’s the Tyra Banks teen pregnancy episode.  I have written about this before where this black girl Jessica at the beginning of the episode talks about wanting to have a baby with her ex- boyfriend.  This is a paraphrase:

Jessica: I want to have a baby with my ex-boyfriend.  He doesn’t want to have a baby now or in the future, but I feel like when the baby does come, he’s going to want to be with me and we’re going to be a family and raise it together.

Tyra: So you want to have a baby with a guy you’re not even with?

Jessica did come back on the show months later to say: “After I saw myself on TV, I realized how stupid and ridiculous I sounded and looked and that I’m not ready to have a baby."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_huMNaUQ8Q

Christal Khalil: I wrote about her playing Lily on the TV show The Young and the Restless and there was an interview with her leaving the show to go to college.

Twop person: So you don’t want to play Lily anymore, yet you don’t want anyone else to play that role either?

Aug. 12: I am inviting you guys to either tell me to continue or not continue into TV production.

Aug. 20: I know I ask a lot of questions in my email, and no one really answers it often.  I get comments here and there.  This is an important question regarding my life direction and career path so your input would be helpful, even if it’s something small like “Keep going into TV production.”

Heather Conway/ E-Town shows/ Out with Dad

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Aug. 4 Heather Conway:  In the Globe and Mail on “Does Heather Conway have what it takes to save the CBC?” by Simon Houpt.  Conway is the new executive vice-president of CBC’s English services and has been there for 7 months.  I’m sure all of you heard CBC is struggling.

“It might be my economics background, but I tend to look at problems and challenges and say: ‘What is fixed, and what is variable?’ ” she says. “To put your calories against the stuff you can actually have an impact on, the

variables, is so much better use of your time, your energy, your intellect, your creativity, than to spend all of your time focusing on what’s fixed.”

“Who else, she asks, will program the “risky” programs? She points to The Boys of St. Vincent, an acclaimed two-part mini-series produced by the National Film Board about sexual abuse by priests at a St. John’s orphanage. Produced by the National Film Board, the film was slated to air on CBC in December 1992, when it was hit with an injunction brought by four priests then at trial for sexual abuse. CBC fought the injunction, and the film aired in some areas of the country – accompanied by emergency help-line information for victims of abuse or those who just needed to talk about what they’d seen. But it wasn’t until a year later that viewers in Ontario and parts of Quebec were finally able to watch it. “That was a national conversation that we needed to have. And very few nations had it,” says Conway. But a skeptic might point out that her example is 22 years old.”

My opinion: That first paragraph sounds good and I will put it in my inspirational quotes.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/does-heather-conway-have-what-it-takes-to-save-the-cbc/article19775833/?page=all

A tale of Two E-Town shows: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article by Fish Griwkowsky and Elizabeth Withey on Mar. 8, 2014.  Blackstone and Tiny Plastic Men are nominated for Canadian Screen Awards.

Blackstone: “Blackstone is an unmuted exploration of community, power and politics on a First Nation reserve”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1699207/

Tiny Plastic Men: This show is a comedy set in an office.  It stars Chris Craddock, this Edmonton Public Library Writer in Residence in 2010 who read my scripts.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2388250/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=046db781-9f15-4c4e-b91b-36c1de686e8b

Out with Dad: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article "Out with Dad has worldwide reach" by Eric Volmers on Mar. 8, 2014.  Here are some excerpts:

At any given time, people from around the world could be watching Calgarian Caitlynne Medrek on the web series Out with Dad.

It's a fairly mind-boggling scenario for any actress, but particularly impressive when you consider the series has a message that would not go over well in certain corners of the world.
Out with Dad is about closeted teenage lesbian, Rose, who deals with the trials and tribulations of coming out with the help of her single father.

Because the World Wide Web has no borders, the series has become particularly popular in areas where the struggle has considerably higher stakes.

"If we were just on a regular TV channel, we wouldn't be reaching all the places in the world where Out with Dad is helping people," says Medrek, on the phone from Toronto. "The majority of countries that we're big in are places in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, places where it's still very illegal and you can't even talk about being gay. That's where we're finding most of our views come from. If we were just on a regular TV channel, they would have no access to that. " The 24-year-old got her start doing stage work in Calgary. But recently, it's been the relatively new medium of web series where she is becoming well known. On Out With Dad, she plays openly gay teenager Claire, who was introduced in the second season as the "Girl in the Washroom" before becoming more prevalent as Rose's supportive friend and later romantic interest.

"I love how confident she is and totally optimistic and just OK with being herself," says Medrek about her character. "I feel Claire is a bit of an old soul in that she kind of got over those humps, those emotional breakthroughs, a little bit earlier which is why she's there to help Rose and her coming-out story as well. " For 14 years, Medrek was a Ukrainian dancer in Calgary before her mother suggested she audition for a role in a production of The Wizard of Oz.

My opinion: I find this article inspirational that is helping people who are gay. 

Also I should create a web series.  I know The Listener has their own web series on ctv.ca.  I know Rookie Blue has their own web series on globaltv.ca.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=ecdc6351-bec5-4805-8958-89c2e33e2363

Sherlock Holmes: On Jan. 13 2012, I was reading a Screenwriting Goldmine newsletter that said this:

“The other night I saw Sherlock Holmes (the 2009 version, credited to Michael Robert Johnson) and a few other writers. I thought it was funny, smart, ultra-enjoyable, with some great set pieces. 

Even if the story lacked a little muscle, and even if it had a number of tremendously hammy lines, and even if the antagonist kept vanishing, and even if it all felt rather coincidence driven, and even if there were actually a couple too many stand alone set

pieces that didn't carry the story forward, and even if it was all a little bit of an exposition nightmare at the end.... well, I'll be honest, I absolutely loved it. I was actually sad when it finished because I wanted to go on watching it.”

My opinion: I haven’t seen the movie, but I will when it comes on TV.

Tammy: I was reading about Melissa McCarthy's movie Tammy.  In this article “McCarthy’s cred gets film made.”  It said it took 6 years in development to get made:

Melissa McCarthy needed the following on her curriculum vitae to get Tammy made at a Hollywood studio - one: a hit show (Mike & Molly) and an Emmy, and two: a hit movie (Bridesmaids) and an Academy Awards nomination.

After six years of development, Tammy is finally in theatres.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=765def38-9094-4f48-a8e2-90af21e6fa11

Bell Media: In the Globe and Mail on Jun. 23, 2014, “Bell Media cuts up to 120 people at it’s TV operations.” They are going to lay off 120 people in Toronto.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bell-media-cuts-up-to-120-employees-at-its-tv-operations/article19300411/

Aug. 7 The Golden Vanguard: I used to write my movie reviews and they put it up on their website.  I emailed them and they said they are closing down the website because they’re too busy to run it.  I have thought to ask: “How many page views does my movie reviews get read?” 

I guess I’ll never know, but that’s fine because I have my blog.  I can see how many page views I get.

Aug. 12 Focus Features: I was reading the Metro and learned that Focus Features made the movie Dallas Buyers Club.  I was looking it up so I can pitch my TV movie script to it, but they produce movies released in the theatres.

However, the website looks pretty good.  Check it out:

http://www.focusfeatures.com/

Afflicted movie/ old scripts/ The Listener

 This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Aug. 12 Afflicted movie: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article “Behind Afflicted” where Jay Stone interviews the actors/writers/ directors of the movie.  It was on Apr. 4, 2014.  Here is the article:

The Canadian horror movie Afflicted was written and directed by Clif Prowse and Derek Lee, two 35-year-old filmmakers from Vancouver who had never made a feature before. It also stars Clif Prowse and Derek Lee as two guys named Clif Prowse and Derek Lee who plan an around-the-world trip but get stopped in Paris by ... well, it's kind of a secret, but it is a horror movie.

The friends have been making movies together since they were 16: shorts that won awards but didn't get seen much. Afflicted, however, was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival and is going into wide release. The mock travel blog told in documentary style cost just $318,000 to make.
Postmedia caught up with the filmmakers by phone.

Q: How did you come to this movie?

Derek: It came to the point where we needed to make feature films but the first script we wrote was a $20-million sprawling international action film, and no one was going to fund that for two unknowns.

Then Clif threw out the idea of 'supernatural documentary.' I wasn't initially excited about the idea but ... I thought, going found-footage and documentary style to make something as surreal as a creature movie was a cool idea and rich creative ground.

Q: After Blair Witch Project and Paranormal , did you think people might be tired of the found footage genre?

Clif: We didn't come to it saying we'd like to make a found-footage movie ... And then just find some random thing and plug it in there because it's a cheap way to do it. For us it was in the context of the supernatural creature in our film. Often that's a story told in cinematic, stylized, and often melodramatic language.

The thing that was really exciting about it was, wow, if we approached this from a realistic perspective, and reimagined what this would look like if it happened in real life, what if we tried to make it feel much more biological and have this really gritty documentary-style look at it, where all of a sudden people feel they're watching real life, and see spectacular things happen within that frame? That was core to the concept.

Q: It must be challenging to be the directors and actors at the same time.

Clif: Most of the time one of us is holding the camera on the other which allows you to step back at that point and be the director. The toughest scenes were where it was the two of us on screen at the same time. At that point you have to leave your directing assessing hat at the door and just be in the scene.

Q: And you did it with a pretty small crew?

Clif: There were seven people, most of them doing the job of an entire department. The cinematographer had to light a nighttime action sequence on a street with four small lights.

Q: And yet you managed to go to Europe to shoot it.

Derek: We had the audacity to shoot a $300,000 action horror film on location in Western Europe. It's actually an idiotic concept.

Clif: The boon of doing it documentary style was there was a small crew and less gear, so we can fly to Europe. If you're shooting a $300,000 Canadian movie, that often means you're in a house, shooting in 15 days. We had 30 days in Western Europe.

Q: What's next? Derek: "We're writing our next feature film. It's an action film, in a darker horror vein, psychological and tormented. Not found footage. I miss music so much. We want to get back to aggressive, wide-angle dolly shots ... We want to create our own voice that is more true to what we've been making until now.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=50346033-6f51-4845-bb6c-6592954d1a15

My opinion: It was a very inspirational interview about 2 filmmakers having success with this movie that they created.

Movie review: Here’s the movie review I read in the Edmonton Journal that was right beside the interview.  Here are some excerpts:

Afflicted is, then, kind of an old (not to say eternal) story, but dressed up in new media and new attitudes: at one point, once they’ve figured out why Derek is so hungry all the time and why he looks so strangely pale, Clif goes onto the Internet to check up on what to expect. Derek will shortly develop power over vermin, it says, although — like a lot of stuff you read online — this turns out not to be true.

…realizes that he’s in the presence of something not only supernatural but, like, awesome. All fears are put aside as Clif films Derek’s new superheroic abilities: smashing rocks, leaping into the air, lifting a van, and outrunning a motorcycle.

“Found footage” has become a tired technique (one waits in vain for the “lost footage” genre), but Lee and Prowse, who also wrote the screenplay, give it new life.

www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Movie+review+Afflicted+delivers+clever+twist/9697422/story.html

Aug. 17 Old scripts: I was going through my disks and found this.  It’s something I wrote back in 2009/ 2010.

My idea: Aziz gets beaten up by a mob.  He owes them money since he opened the restaurant. The mob boss is the bad guy.

2014: It’s been done on the TV show Believe.  This black guy owns this tool store and got money from a mob guy.  There is 48 hrs left to pay back.  Tate has to get a white horse back to the mob guy to be even with him.

My idea: The restaurant is being threatened to close down, and Daniel and Jessica have to save it.

It’s been done before in the movie Empire Records:

“The employees of an independent music store learn about each other as they try anything to stop the store being absorbed by a large chain.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112950/

I never saw that movie.

Aug. 21 The Listener: I just finished watching The Listener series finale.  It was a really good series finale.  I love this show.  This has been on for 5 seasons and always had well- written episodes.  It was overall a good show with writing, acting, and characters.  I would say it never “jumped the shark.” 

I kind of knew season 5 was going to be the last season.  A few months ago, I remember reading an interview with the star Craig Olejnik and he says it maybe the last season because they have enough episodes for syndication.

From the beginning of the series, it wasn’t a sure thing if this show will last this long.  It came out in summer 2009.  Then there may not be a second season, and there wasn’t the show at all in 2010. 

It came with the second season in Jan. 2011, mid-season.  Then it showed most of the episodes, and then it stopped.  It aired the remaining 3 episodes at the end of the summer.

Then it came back for the 3^rd season in summer 2012, 4^th season in summer 2013, and 5^th season in summer 2014.

There were quite a lot of changes with a couple of characters written off and new ones added in.  In the first season Toby was a paramedic and uses his telepathic powers to help people.  In the second season, he was recruited to the IIB to help people.

Here’s a really good article about the show ending: 

The Listener focuses on Toby, who can read people's minds. There was an official announcement on Aug. 6 that the fifth season would be the final season.

“Literally, we (the cast, which besides Olejnik and Esmer includes Lauren Lee Smith, Melanie Scrofano, Anthony Lemke and Rainbow Sun Francks) found out only four or five days before the announcement,” Olejnik said.

“It's still kicking in that the show is done, and it's still kicking in that I even was on a show that went for 65 episodes, and I was in 90% of it," Olejnik said. "That's insane to me. It still blows my mind. I'm just grateful.

“It comes down to eyeballs, it comes down to the network supporting it, and the producers producing it, and the people watching it. I'm still learning what it means to be an actor, and what purpose it serves society and history. But I've learned so much over these years that will be invaluable to me in my lifetime, just as a human being.

“To all the 'listeners' (viewers) out there, I want to thank them deeply from the bottom of my heart, for making a little Nova Scotia boy's dreams come true."

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/08/17/craig-olejnik-gets-ready-to-say-goodbye-to-the-listener

My opinion: I saw all 65 episodes.  I even wrote synopsis’s about the episodes on my blog, at least for the first 2 seasons.  Goodbye The Listener.

Justin Cronin/ Emma Donoghue/ D.W. Wilson

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Aug. 4 Justin Cronin: I cut out this National Post article “Gonna Get you Sucker” by Josh Visser on Oct. 18, 2012.  He writes about Justin Cronin who wrote a The Passage vampire trilogy.  Here are some excerpts:

The hype machine had rattled into fifth gear long before The Passage’s 2010 release, securing Cronin a US$3.75-million advance and another million-plus for the movie rights.

“The circumstances that produced [The Passage] were so unusual and quite startling to me that I really felt I just stumbled into this treasure,” Cronin says over the phone from his home in Houston, Tex.

Two years after hitting the literary jackpot, Cronin is back this month with The Twelve, the highly anticipated middle book in his sprawling trilogy, and he seems at ease with his new career as an über-successful novelist.
“My life hasn’t changed that much, I’ve got my friends, I’ve got my family, I live in my house and I work all day and I work alone,” Cronin says with a laugh. “Then every couple years they let me off the leash and I go out into the world.”

The Twelve will be familiar in structure and language to fans of The Passage. Cronin still maintains a Joss Whedon-like pleasure in killing off beloved characters, while jumping between so many genres that his book should be shelved under “all of the above.”

Like its predecessor, The Twelve has a split narrative, one taking place in “Year Zero,” the near-future in which the vampire apocalypse is taking place, and the other 100 years later, when humans have been hunted to near-extinction.

But Cronin says he trusts his readers aren’t looking to be spoon-fed easy thrills and chills.

“I feel like it is OK to ask the reader to stretch a little bit, I don’t want to write a completely easy book,” he says, before admitting he’s aware he’s now writing for an audience that’s as hungry as his books’ limb-ripping virals. “I used to just have readers, and now I have readers who are also fans. You want to do right by these people.”

Cronin sounds thoroughly comfortable with the additional obligations of being a successful 21st-century author — from having a social media presence to listening to his readers’ expectations and any nagging questions they may have.

“Readers really are in touch with you in ways that in the past were simply not possible, and that’s fantastic,” he says. “The abstraction of the reader has become actual people that I am in contact with in some way.”

While he says he’s still in the stage of writing that consists of “six months wandering around the house in my bathcoat muttering,” Cronin is careful to add he’s long known how the trilogy will conclude.

“I think I’ll grieve at the end,” he says. “I don’t like to stand on the pier and watch the ship of my characters sail away.”

My opinion: It sounds like a really interesting trilogy and story.  I like to know about the author and how he writes.

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/10/17/justin-cronins-gonna-get-you-sucker/

Emma Donoghue: I cut out this National Post article “Write what you imagine” by Mike Doherty on Oct. 18, 2012.  It’s about Emma Donoghue.  Here are some excerpts:

As the 33rd International Festival of Authors opens Thursday night at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, crowds will be treated to the spectacle of writers unleashed from their desks and let loose into the wild. They’ll be reading, conversing onstage and sometimes even partying — but having chosen to spend much of their lives in their own heads in the company of imaginary people, few of them are truly gregarious.

Thank goodness, then, for Emma Donoghue. “I’m an unusual writer,” she offers, in between bites of a hamburger and fries at a Distillery District restaurant on a visit to Toronto. “I’m very extroverted and I’ve no objection to meeting people.” The London, Ont.-based author has been much in demand since her novel Room, about a five-year-old who has been raised in a shed by his kidnapped mother, hit bestseller lists and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010.

It also manages to flout three traditional pieces of writing advice: Write what you know; find your own voice; and forget short stories — collections don’t sell.

Donoghue dismisses the first of these as “a stupid slogan. … Not many people have lived more than one novel, so I think there should be a wholesale change of policy — it should be, ‘Write what you can dare to imagine.’ ”

She’s particularly drawn to bizarre, even disturbing incidents, though she claims to be “so cheerful I’m practically facile. My partner, Chris” — a professor for whom she moved to Canada in 1998 — “tells me [it’s] not just brain chemistry: I get it all out in my work. … Clearly I’m getting to use my talent for cruel wit in the books, and therefore I don’t have to do it at the dinner table.”

“I love it when somebody says to me, ‘Oh, it turns out I’ve read three of your books, but I didn’t know they were all you!’ For a moment, I always think, ‘Don’t you look at the name on the cover?’ but then I think, ‘This is great, because that person had the experience of plunging into different lives.’ ”

My opinion: I have seen that book Room in the bookstore.  It sounds like a really good book, but I feel like I’m going to be really depressed when I read it.

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/10/18/write-what-you-imagine-emma-donoghue-brings-impressive-new-book-to-ifoa/

D.W. Wilson: I cut out this National Post article “How I Got Here” by D.W. Wilson about his first collection of short stories Once You Break a Knuckle on Jun. 4, 2011.  I looked it up on the internet, but I can’t find the article.  There are a lot of other articles about him.

In the one I read, it says that Penguin Canada had won the bid for the first of his two books, Once You Break a Knuckle and the novel Ballistics.  It was in Oct. when he got the call from his agent, and he freaked out about the news.  He specifically said: “’Holy S—t.”

“I’d recently polished off a Master’s degree in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, embarked on a Phd (in creative writing; I’m a tad tunnel-visioned) and attempted –and failed- to find a place in London.

“But with great insouciance comes great responsibility; directionlessness, it turns out, is freedom’s cruel bedfellow (and Success the hemlock of Art?)”

“I lacked a clear goal; I’d never dreamed to see print before the age of 30 (I’ll be 26 when the collection lands, in September), and not with a publishing house like Penguin.”

“I’ll say this: It’s an odd sensation to come so close to finishing a project I’ve worked on for more than a quarter of my life. 

I suppose it’s like waiting for exam results, or something so simple as deciding to ask a girl on a date. That pulse of fear and dread and excitement that doesn’t haunt every waking hour but sometimes make your heart thump in what would otherwise be a moment of reflection.”

“…I didn’t know what would happen next, that I was leaving a place where I’d grown comfortable.  And maybe that makes sense: maybe to move forward on a book is to simultaneously move away from it, it to acknowledge that it has to go somewhere you’re not quite comfortable with but could, luck willing, one day become so.”

Zach Braff/ The Wake book/ Dylan McDermott

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Jul.18 Zach Braff: I was reading the Metro on Jul. 17, 2014 called “Braff took your money and made a movie.”  He was the star of the sitcom Scrubs and he made a movie called Wish I Was Here.”  He tried to get his movie produced, but wasn’t very successful.  He went to Kickstarter and raised the financing in under two days through crowdfunding.

Before crowdfunding:

Braff: “The only one on the table was to make it for what was essentially half of what I budgeted, make it in Vancouver from a menu of actors I didn’t feel were right and have a final cut.  I thought I’d rather not make the movie than do that.”

After crowdfunding:

Braff: “Once all that nonsense was gone and I was the CEO of this corporation making this movie, I was picking Mandy Patinkin, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, I was firing all the shots.” 

Braff got a lot of criticism because he is a wealthy actor and he’s asking for money for his film:

Braff: “There’s so much misinformation about this, I had to wage so many debates and really explain film financing to Earth.  One question that does need to be debated is where this money is going to come from for personal indie projects because it’s certainly dried up.  Studios don’t make these movies; they buy them at festivals if they like them.  I think that’s the bigger question.”

Jul. 27 The Wake book: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article “Booker Prize names crowdfunded The Wake to long list” on Jul. 25, 2014.  Here’s the beginning: 

“A debut novel that was "crowdfunded" by members of the public has made it on to the long list for the Man Booker Prize.

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth is set in 1066 and written in what the author calls "shadow tongue," a mix of modern and Anglo-Saxon English.

Believing that the language would turn off mainstream publishers, Kingsnorth turned to Unbound, a relative newcomer on the literary scene. It offers authors the chance to advertise their ideas on its website and solicit money from readers, in sums from about $10 to $600.

When the required total is reached - around $28,000 in the case of The Wake - Unbound uses the money to publish, market and distribute the book. The profits are then split 50/50 with the author.”

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=12db4a69-ecf1-487c-87f1-343aeb7de70c

My opinion: Interesting about crowdfunding a book.  Here’s the website:

Unbound: http://unbound.co.uk/

Dylan McDermott: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article “McDermott a cool customer” on Jan. 25, 2013  He was on the TV show Hostages and he’s filming this action movie in Edmonton called Freezer.

It’s filmed “inside Film Alberta Studios on Allard Way, and relies on the great outdoors for its sub-zero temperatures on set.”

“It was the script that won over the American actor. "I just thought it was really smart. Usually when you read something you're two steps ahead of it. I was never ahead of this script. Every time I read it, I still love it."

“His role as Robert in Freezer is "a character piece for me. I get to be funny and romantic and I get to be dramatic and I get to be beaten up and cold and miserable. All those things are something that appeal to me."”

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=4e7de506-f82e-4851-83d4-8941d7482144&p=1

On imdb.com: “Robert is an ordinary man who is faced with extraordinary circumstances. He is locked in a meat freezer by Russian thugs who believe that he owes them 8 million dollars. Robert, who is in every frame of the film soon discovers that he is not alone in the freezer. Sam, a stranger, is also locked in with him, and it becomes a struggle to survive the cold and the forces that are against them.”- Written by K. Tobin

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2325002/

The Strain: I cut out this Metro article “Del Toro infects TV with The Strain” on Jul. 11, 2014.  The filmmaker Guillermo del Toro “originally pitched The Strain to Fox back in 2006, but things didn’t work out.  So he and co-writer Chuck Hogan wrote it as a trilogy of books.  While writing, they never imagined it becoming a TV show, nor a movie.”

On imdb.com: “A thriller that tells the story of Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, the head of the Center for Disease Control Canary Team in New York City. He and his team are called upon to investigate a mysterious viral outbreak with hallmarks of an ancient and evil strain of vampirism. As the strain spreads, Eph, his team, and an assembly of everyday New Yorkers, wage war for the fate of humanity itself.” - Written by FX

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2654620/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Boyhood: I cut out this Metro article “A film a dozen years in the making” on Jul. 11, 2014. 

“Director Richard Linklater’s new film Boyhood, is a unique, 12-years-in-the-making experiment, shot in short bursts over a long span of time to follow one young man (Ellar Coltrane) as he develops.”

Linklater says he planned it that it will end when the kid goes off to college.  The dialogue wasn’t really written, but he knew the notes it was to hit.

My opinion: That’s interesting, because no other filmmaker has ever done something where they make a film here and there.  Some filmmakers do, because they have to stop production to get more money and then continue filming, and then stop to get more money.

Oscar movies: I was reading the Metro “Odd movies out rise to Oscar bait” on Feb. 26, 2014.

“The development process of any film can be lengthy and arduous, full of challenges in obtaining financing or a studio executive’s stamp of approval.”

Warner Brothers did pick up The Wolf on Wall Street and then later stopped in 2008.   It “came together, with independent film company Red Granite Pictures financing the film’s $100 million budget and Paramount Pictures distributing.” 

12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen won the Golden Globe award for Best Drama and he thanked producer Brad Pitt: “Without you, this film would have never got made.”

Supernatural: This TV show will be going into it’s 10^th season.  I only saw a few episodes when it first came out.  It was good, but I didn’t connect with it.

Heroes: I read in the Metro on Jul.18, 2014 “Hit show to return as miniseries.”  It will be called Heroes: Reborn with all new characters except Noah Bennett (Jack Coleman).

I would like to watch it.  I have seen Heroes when it first came out.  It was a really good show, kind of like X-Men.

12 Monkeys: In the Metro on Jul.18, 2014, there will a new TV show based on the 1995 movie 12 Monkeys.

On Imdb.com: “Follows the journey of a time traveler from the post-apocalyptic future who appears in present day on a mission to locate and eradicate the source of a deadly plague that will eventually decimate the human race.”

It stars Aaron Stanford (Pyro from X-Men movies) and Amanda Schull.  When I first read Schull’s name, I thought it sounded really familiar.  Then I was like: “Wasn’t she the lead in the movie Center Stage?

I was right.  I remember checking her profile a few years after that movie.  She wasn’t in anything.  Now I look it up, and she started getting work again in 2007.  She has been steadily working since then.

The Pen is more Intimate/ Heaven is for Real

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Jul. 9 The Pen is more Intimate: I was going through some news articles I cut out.  In the Edmonton Journal article “The pen is more intimate than the keyboard” by Noel Taylor on Jun. 30, 2011.  This is a really good article about how no one writes letters anymore, but people use email these days.  Here are some excerpts:

“We transmit our feelings through it. Once we used to feed it, a fountain pen.”

“There is a uniqueness to someone else's handwriting that is at once pleasurable, and in its familiarity, comforting. It takes time to read, something the e-mail skimmer is denied.”

“What it gains in speed, however, it loses in privacy. What was once a private mailing is no longer so. Once sent, it is an open invitation to the most contemptible of all viruses, the hacker. The personal can quite readily become public; the e-mailer is never quite sure. The letter-writer on the other hand, remains smug about his certainty that no one else but the named recipient will read his thoughts. An envelope is a trusty lock.”

“Whole volumes have been filled by the exchange of letters between writers who have something to say to each other, and by extension, the rest of the world outside.”

“Take Oliver Goldsmith: "No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.''”

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/ideas/story.html?id=b9191dc2-f88b-4afb-8cbd-abe05200111b

My opinion: Noel Taylor is right that letters are more personal, but I want to reach to all my friends, family, and blog readers about topics like news and jobs faster by email and blogging.  There are still hand-written notes like thank you notes.

Heaven is for Real: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article “Boy’s tale of trip to heaven becomes a bestseller” by Julie Bosman on Mar. 11, 2011.  I found the article and here are some excerpts:

Just two months shy of his fourth birthday, Colton Burpo, the son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix.

He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that “were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle,” Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.

Colton’s father, Todd, has turned the boy’s experience into a 163-page book, “Heaven Is for Real,” which has become a sleeper paperback hit of the winter, dominating best-seller lists and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Much of the book’s success has been fueled by word of mouth, since it did not begin with the usual best-seller channels: there has been no elaborate book tour, big-name publisher or brand-name author. But it has gained traction with a few well-placed appearances on the morning show “Fox & Friends,” “The 700 Club” and CNN.

“We all are perhaps desperate to know what is on the other side of the veil after we die,” Mr. Baugher said, adding that his initial skepticism about the Burpo family’s story was short-lived. “

Patricia Bostelman, the vice president for marketing at Barnes & Noble: “But what was unusual about this book was that it was the story of a little boy. It deactivated some of the cynicism that can go along with adults capitalizing on their experiences.”

“People say we just did this to make money, and it’s not the truth,” Mr. Burpo said, referring to anonymous online comments about the book. “We were expecting nothing. We were just hoping the publisher would break even.” (He said he planned to give away much of the royalty income and spend some of it on home improvements.)

Colton told his parents that he had met his younger sister in heaven, describing her as a dark-haired girl who resembled his older sister, Cassie. When the Burpos questioned him, he asked his mother, “You had a baby die in your tummy, didn’t you?” While his wife had suffered a miscarriage years before, Mr. Burpo said, they had not told Colton about it. “There’s just no way he could have known,” Mr. Burpo said.

Telling his story matter-of-factly, Colton said he was pleased that people were finding the story inspirational.
“People are getting blessed, and they’re going to have healing from their hurts,” he said. “I’m happy for that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/books/heaven-is-for-real-is-publishing-phenomenon.html?_r=0

My opinion: I’m not really religious, but I thought it was a cool article.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: I wrote a little about this before in a 2010 post:

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2010/11/funny-performance-dark-jokes-crazy-news.html

I never read the books, but here is a good Globe and Mail article “Should the little wimp grow up?” by Marsha Lederman on Nov. 9, 2010.  Here are some excerpts where she interviews the author Jeff Kinney:

"I'm using it as a metaphor for whether or not these characters are cartoon characters or if they're literary characters," series author Jeff Kinney said in Vancouver recently. "I've had to make the decision of whether or not the kids should grow up."

The Diary books are not graphic novels in the traditional sense; they're more like hybrids of fiction and cartoons. Written in journal form, the text appears hand-printed on lined paper. The diarist is Greg, a wisecracking, weaselly but fundamentally loveable middle-schooler and video-game wiz who's pretty sharp, but doesn't apply himself at school. He has a simple and kind-hearted best friend, Rowley, and a mean older brother, Rodrick.

Should it continue in the direction of a comic book, where the characters never grow up, à la Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang? Or should it go the direction of other successful young-adult series ( Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl) where the protagonist ages and matures, along with his readers?

"When I set out to write these books, I always had it in mind that the characters would grow up and that my readers would expect the story to have a neat, nice ending," Kinney said. "I always expected to wrap things up basically on the eve before high school and to never progress the characters beyond that point. But the more I've thought about it, I've really wondered if the DNA of the series lives more in the comics world where ... my readers might just enjoy reading about Greg year after year."

He came to the Wimpy Kid idea basically through failure. "I was trying to be a newspaper cartoonist and I didn't have that professional touch, and I couldn't break into that business so I eventually realized I might have a shot if I wrote and drew as a middle-schooler [Grades 5 through 8] which is sort of where my artistic talents maxed out."

He then spent four years trying to remember everything that happened to him when he was in middle school - consulting yearbooks and his younger brother - and writing down 13,000 pages of jokes, which he then pared down to the best ones.

He draws heavily on his own middle-school experiences, such as dodging swim practice by telling the coach he had to go to the bathroom, then spending the entire time hiding out in a change room so cold (if he'd taken his towel, it would have alerted the coach to his scheme) that he wrapped himself in toilet paper.
"I remember thinking, is this actually worse than being in the pool right now?," he said. "But now I'm cashing in."

"I worked all my adult life to get to be a cartoonist, which was my dream, and then to think that it might be over in 3 1/2 years is kind of shocking," he said. "I definitely don't want to go back to the well again and again. I want to know when it's time to give it up. I do think that these things have a life span. I'm definitely not in the business of milking cows as much as I can. I definitely feel that I've gotten what I was chasing after. So now I have to figure out what's right artistically and what my readers will enjoy."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/diary-of-a-wimpy-kid-should-the-wimp-grow-up/article573987/

My opinion: It was kind of inspirational and fun to read that article.