Just A Little Behind

I often see myself as that novelty act performer I watched on the Ed Sullivan show when I was a little kid, who use to keep plates spinning on the tips of pool cues. He was always running around the stage trying to keep all of the plates moving so that they wouldn’t fall on the floor and break. I have a zillion things to do - and every once in a while a bunch of plates break.

This blog is a responsibility. Most people with blogs ditch them after a year. There are some dead blogs over there in that right hand column that I probably should remove, but if you read the old entries they may be new to you. I have decided to do the opposite of what most people do - and actually have *more* blog entries in 2009 than I did in the first year. But I’m always stretched thin (you’d think I’d lose weight being stretched thin... but no) and sometimes throw together a blog entry the night before. Like this one.

I also like to do series - and tomorrow there should be a new Hitchcock entry here... finally. Originally there were going to be 53 Hitchcock entries - one a week for just over a year. Then I was going to do an old TV show the next year - as an episode guide for a series that was not available on DVD but every once in a while sold to some cable or syndication channel. I taped them on VHS, thought it would be fun to have an episode guide for them - and there were around 48 episodes - enough for a year of Fridays more or less. Um, maybe I’ll still do that after I finish with the Hitchcock movies, but they are planning to release that old TV series on DVD and I’ll bet someone else is doing the episode guide already.

Well, over the holidays back in 2007, probably when I first began thinking of the Hitchcock series, I came up with a nice revamp for my Script Secrets website: I would have a section for each one of my produced scripts, with the backstory on writing it, any funny behind the scenes stories, maybe a screenwriting lesson from the film, a link to the screenplay so that you could read it, and anything else that might be of interest about the film - including the trailer. I collected links to all of the trailers, and thought - why not run that on the blog first, then “retire” it to the Script Secrets website. Kill two birds with one stone. Well, all of the trailers got a work page on the blog with the format for the rest... and then those pages were mostly forgotten. They exist unpublished way back in the blog history - and I never see them. The blog has moved forward.

Over the holidays in 2008, I realized I was often searching for some stupid YouTube clip to post as a filler when I didn’t have anything for the blog, and came up with a cool idea: why not go on YouTube and find clips and trailers for some of my favorite movies, and some movies that are just wacky but I love them anyway, and create work pages on the blog for them, then write screenwriting lessons from the film or an appreciation or a review or maybe a personal story of the first time I saw the film and what it means to me. Those would be great “fillers” for times when I was too busy writing something else to come up with a new blog entry. I did outlines for what I might write about a couple of the clips... and now those work pages are over a year back there on my blog pages - I never see them anymore.

Over the holidays a couple of months ago, I watched every single episode of the old TV show... but didn’t write notes.

I was looking for some old blog entry today, stumbled on the workpages with the film clips, and realized I had all of these potential blog entries that I forget about because they are buried back there where I can’t see them anymore... and moved them up. Oh, yeah, along with all of the clips for another series on Screenwriters On Screen. Now that I have to look at them every time I play around with the blog, maybe I’ll get some of them written up and ready to go... and maybe I’ll watch those TV episodes again and take some notes this time.

By the way - someone in comments said I ought to take Brad Pitt Guy entries and write a book... well, this blog was originally going to be called All The Losers In Hollywood - and some of the past entries have been about those losers, and a few more loser entries are on the horizon... and maybe all of those will be collected into a book someday. Until then, thanks for reading this thing, and I’m not going to quit writing it.

Only took me a year and a half to get halfway through the Hitchcock series.

- Bill
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Dilemmas - and kissing Jennifer Garner.
Dinner: Subway - the spicy Italian.
Bicycle: Short one. And after my long bike ride a couple of days ago, right after my bike wreck, my leg hurt and I didn't know if it was from over-working the muscle or that huge purple bruise taking up 35% of my skin.