Post Adolescent Molestation And Its Ties To Getting Poor Studio Coverage on Kimberly And Valentine...

For two summers, the summers after my sophomore and junior year in college, I traveled half way across the country to live in a small town apartment in Thomasville, North Carolina. It was in the middle of nothing. Actually, the entire state of North Carolina is in the middle of nothing. Nevertheless, I spent two absolutely memorable summers playing baseball with man-children from across the country in the Coastal Plains collegiate summer league.

In my apartment building, there was this old, kind of lurking man who lived below me. He was tall, a lurcher, often odd-bodied and shirtless. Maybe that paints him stranger than he deserves...truth was, he was totally harmless. I suppose I came to know him fairly well. He'd come running out of his apartment as I would run off to practice or to the gym or to a game, always eager to chat. Every now and again, he'd come to watch me pitch. For someone that likes to live in something of a bubble for stretches of life lasting anywhere from one week to one year, I guess you could say he was, at times...a sleight burden.

Anyway, it was sometime during the summer after my junior year...

Right before I was leaving to get fixed my tattered and cracked elbow, he asked me to a goodbye dinner. And let me tell you...if the come around to this story wasn't such a dementedly perfect transition into part two/B/the conclusion of this post, I'd turn to fiction and speak of a brilliant and lonely man who in that last dinner, passed unto me in one magnificent sentence...the story of his life - a sentence that has since defined my every breath. I'd tell you how we've kept in touch over the years, every Sunday...say at 8 o'clock, something we both learned to live by, to count on. Then I'd tell you how last Sunday, he didn't call...didn't answer when I tried to call him. I'd tell you of a package that was delivered to my door with a note from the apartment manager in North Carolina, informing me that my great friend had passed - and that his last wish was that I received said package. Then I'd tell you about how I opened the package and found his old and worn baseball glove, priceless baseball cards from the 40's and 50's...from when he was a little boy - the last time he spoke of knowing pure joy...days at the ballpark with his father, his brothers. I'd cry and say something like I've been moved, I may never move back - and think it to be a powerful and poetic close to the post - thinking to myself, what a powerful and poetic closer I am...

But the truth is...it's, well...it's not fiction. It goes a little something like this...

We hit the early bird at this buffet place where all the senior citzies rolled. I think we talked about baseball, the wars he'd been in, his distant family or lack of...girlfriends of mine, mysteries of his. At some point, he said something strange, something that knocked me on my heels. He mentioned or asked about...and I need some ellipses here...either my loss of virginity or my taking of virginity. I think I gave him something, maybe out of admiration of his asking something so odd so casually, then told him to top off and togo the iced tea he was nursing...we were leaving.

On the way home, we made a park detour to look at some newly built youth baseball fields. We parked, got out, looked around...quick. When we got back in the car, he started talking about the military again. By then, I was kind of shut off, ready to fucking go, to get back on with my life. At some point, something about the whole ordeal had become an extreme chore. Something about it had turned odd...maybe because in my mind of minds, I had a feeling about what was coming. I heard it out the side of my ear, something about showering in the military and this joke they would play and then...

Then the old man grabbed my shit - this glancing swipe, reaching across the center console, straight into my crotch. I looked over to him, speechless and bewildered, not really knowing what to say. Mind you, when this happened, I was 30 pounds heavier than I am now, all power, probably hopped up on what would today be an entire regimen of banned and illegal substances. With a finger, I could have snapped the man...maybe that's why I didn't. I'm not really the passive type, but again, in my mind of minds...if that made his day - a man nearing the end of his days, then that's an after the fact gift I suppose I was willing to give. We drove away, moved on. Forgiven, odd, sad, whatever...

We were close to home, and I was probably talking about the pain in my arm when we stopped at a stop sign. He did it again. This time, there was no mistake. I kept my cool, told him to not do that again with whatever authority you use on a 75 year old man. He was like a fucking infant child reaching for the cookie jar. It was one of the most bizarre and world-humbling things I've ever been a part of.

He dropped me off and I went up to my apartment, locked the door, went to sleep and immediately dreamt of him kicking my door down, chloroform cloth in hand. That was the last time I saw him...a monster in my dreams.

Later, after I had woken up and composed, I made my 20 minute drive to the field. We had a short road trip that day, maybe to Gastonia, so we were taking vans. Once we were going, I think there were 11 of us in the van when I told our coach to turn down the radio - that I had a tale to tell. After two years on the team, aside from pitching, stories were my fame. I'd write fictional player bios on pitching charts during games I wasn't pitching. I'd often fill pages front and back, in my tiny cat scratch...just going on endlessly. When I catch up with players today, some of them tell me they still have their bios framed on their walls. It makes me happy. So anyway, when I had a story to tell, ears were given. All I knew, I had to get this out, had to put what happened out in the world for the world to consume. And I stretched it out and set it up, taking my time, telling with exact poetic justice, what would forever be known as the famed Reilly got molested by and old man story. And we laughed and I felt purged and took welcome shit for the next week before I left and put it all behind me...the good and odd...

...

Last night, I met up with Team Burn to go over some new ideas. The plan was to get something solid together so I could start working again on Monday. I need to start working again. The great and terrible thing about having Team Burn around is that he's like this pit bull, trained to choke, strangle and ultimately kill potentially great ideas the second they show any weakness. Actually, it's great. He reads everything, all the time...sees every path, every talent, every trick...and he might be nearly as obsessed with his side of the business as I am with mine. In the end, it makes it brutally fucking hard to get anything past him. He's exactly what I need...to save my now self from a potentially dangerous later self.

When we were both totally burned out and stopped to take a breath, I asked him about the coverage on Kim and Val. He got it off to one studio and I thought it would be coming back next week. It wasn't. He got it yesterday, on Friday...or maybe before. The first thing he said was something like you're tough, otherwise, I'd tell you I never got it back. It wasn't great. It wasn't good. Actually, I have no concrete idea what it was because I haven't seen it yet. When I do, I'll post the highlights, because depressing as it may be, I'm not going to run from it. Depressing as it may be, today, for the hangover, in the long run, it really doesn't change anything. Team Burn said that the things they picked on were things that he always picked on, choices that I lowered my head and powered through. I don't know what else is on there, but I can't wait to find out, even if it isn't good...especially if it isn't good. I've come to preach this thing through the people I train, through the lives I advise, through my own life that's under constant advisment...that pain and hurt and change and challenge are meant to be grabbed and consumed and owned and cherished. You wanna be built -- when the dark side leans on you, lean back. That's the beauty of the struggle...to force and allow ourselves to feel it all, to let it wash over us, to scald us, to re-make us.

When I recently told one of my friends and mentors (whose movies have grossed in the hundreds of millions of dollars) that I was getting coverage on a script, he told me to take it back. He told me that Steven Speilberg's coverage girl tore one of his greatest scripts to pieces, and then just kicked him around and around and around. And he was affected by it. He said something that is undeniably true, that studio readers are almost without exception exactly one thing...wannabe, bitter writers who will never be what they want to be and in turn, get off by ripping, literally ripping scripts apart. And I could see that. In a lot of cases, that's probably true. The world is all envy, I believe that. But I also believe in the other end, of a reader who loves to read scripts and goes to work every day hoping to find the next gem and to them, I disappointed. And now here I am, sitting in that...and what can I do about it but push on? Nothing.

Someone else is going to read it. Someone else is going to love it. Or not. And whatever happens, you just gotta keep going, you gotta keep playing. This is my game...and my absolute belief hasn't wavered.

I started thinking back to a meeting I took when I first started Kimberly and Valentine. It was with this industry monster and if I'm recalling what he said right now, chances are, I'm never going to forget it. He said exactly you'll succeed in this business when you have no heart left to break.

And I just love that, want to give all my love to that - knowing instead, no matter what comes, that if there's one thing I'll always be...it'll be all heart.

The Plan...

Last night, I had a little heart to heart with Team Winburn about Kim and Val's path to introduction. I turned it in last week, this piece of work that I believe to be beyond solid. Actually, I'm using restraint on adjectives here so I don't sound delusional, which I am...but I can sling words, so my delusion is at least partially justified at this point.

So, now that we're done, he did this great thing where he switched to business, all business, realistic business. There were reasons he wasn't doing cartwheels. There were reasons I wasn't expecting him to do cartwheels. See, this one's tricky...

In the world of sending out a spec, going out with someone's first is a tricky thing too. It's an introduction to the world, a play to get into the game. And sometimes, you only get one shot at it, so you have to be careful what you deal out and when. The biggest problem with Kimberly and Valentine is their universal accessibility. What does that mean? Well, I'll tell you...

It means that if you fall in love with them. IF they're not too salty. AND you're on board with their sweet but extremist, tongue twisting tendencies, introducing a poet antagonist on page 13 who chops off hands and snorts cocaine cut by the blood of his victims...then I may lose you.

It means that if you're on board for the first 31 pages, right up until their famed Cheyenne robbery and marriage and then I stop, flash back to their first star crossed night and you can only dig a linear narrative, then I may lose you.

It means that if you're on board when these sugar dipped youths are forced into killing, it may be a touch too much when Kimberly dangles a gun to her head with this whole, you die, I die kinda thing...I may lose you there.

And truth is, there are a hundred parts like that, and monologues...lots of monologues. And buckets of style. This script would set a studio checklist on fire for reasons why it would never work. I know that. Maybe I just like to think or believe that the great movies, the great scripts will always do that.

And he convinced me, maybe because he's just not sure, maybe because going super wide was never going to be a real possibility for this one, but this is one that we're gonna need to hustle. It's too refined. And I don't have a problem with that. At the end of the day, as brilliant as I believe this story and script to be, I'm very realistic about it. And I absolutely believe that there is someone in this town that is going to flip for it. We just have to dig for them.

So right now, the town is on lockdown. Everyone is leaving until January 5th or somewhere in the ballpark of. I recently gave it out to my small fan base, fanned it across town through alleys and into companies and producers and directors. And now I'll wait forever.

But what my guy can do, and what he's going to do that I've never really had access to, is getting coverage. Unbiased, thoroughly objective coverage through agencies and studios. This means your script goes into a stack of scripts. Everyone goes in the stack. From Diablo Cody to David Benioff. And you're judged on skill, on viability, execution. And then you get a report, written by someone who reads for a living, by someone who sees everything, and you see where you stand. Obviously, coverage isn't everything, but I'm sure it's quite rare for a script to get stank coverage and stand any chance at succeeding. We're both so deeply connected to this story and these characters, it's time to see where it stands.

He had this great closing line that I like to keep in mind. He said that at the end of the day, what we have here is a good script, absolutely...and it was a world created out of thin air, and so few people can do that. For now, my job is done. And whether we sell it now or in 5 years, when I have some absurd quote, that's something, certainly something.

Onward now. I need to write something for Ricky Gervais...

Decompression...

A couple days ago, 2 to be exact, I parted ways with the children. The same children I've been going on about for some 8 odd months now. Kim and Val. They're finished this time, with a hard period after finished. The feeling now, in my personal camp after the re-write is that if I can't communicate what I'm trying to communicate about love and life and the choices we make in between and the consequences of those choices in 8 solid months, then this one isn't going to be the one that goes. Of course, add to that the quip that for every rule made in this town, there are dozens others to refute it, like some of the greatest films to ever be made taking years in the development pipeline, sometimes all you're left with is a giant creative clusterfuck. Of course, this one isn't quite in the pipeline yet. Yet.

So I turned it in on Tuesday, after something like a 28 hour home stretch binge. And before the 28 hours, there were literally thousands before it. Probably in the low thousands, but still, that's a lot of days, a lot of hours, a lot of minutes. On Wednesday, I woke up with nothing to do. I wasn't working. I wasn't going to the gym until 7, so I started lurking around my apartment, immediately decided to clean. And we're not just talking a random straighten/Fantastic/vaccum job. It meant first picking up the 9, count 'em 9 empty gallons of Crystal Geyser surrounding my computer. It meant dusting the coves and corners I haven't touched in months, years. It meant straightening clothes. It meant going out and buying vitamins, changing wireless plans, updating my calendar, shuffling bank accounts, making phone calls I've been putting off, making plans I've been putting off, and reaching out, actually reaching out. When I sit back and look at the day, it's staggering, this feeling, actually putting my feet back on the ground. Obsession can do that. If there's anything I've recently come to accept about myself, it's exactly that, I'm highly obsessive. Not the development, or the realization, just the full realization.

Today, I go to work, dinner afterwards. Tomorrow, I have a dinner. Saturday two parties. Sunday two more. Monday dinner. Tuesday Dinner, Thursday dinner. And between that, I'm teaching and learning to dance, really dance. Then I go back home for the holidays. And my immediate future is thoroughly booked. And that's good. And I'm going to take this time and let it sink, the work I've done, the direction I'm headed. And sometime at the beginning of January, things are going to slow, and some new obsession is going to take over, and we'll start in again. Because this is the cycle, likely for the rest of my life.

I don't really have any expectations, I think I've already burned through them all. Hell, I've been toting this thing since March, and it got some decent reviews in June, and I got signed in late August and now it's December and it's nothing like March and only a fragment of what it was in August. It buries its past, no doubt about it. And it buries anything I've done in the past, no doubt about it. And now it's out to a few of my insiders, and hopefully will be championed by my management, and hopefully it brings adventure to this life of mine.

I used to have this thing, this thing where I would finish a script and I was working 5-6 nights a week waiting tables and really grinding it out every day of my life. And when I would finish a script, I would think of its limitless possibilities and of how it could rescue me from the life I was living. I'd think of how it could transport me into some entirely new stratosphere of life. And that was a lot of pressure to lay down - hopes that something so fickle could be so saving. I don't envy the parts of my past that behaved that way. I think it's all part of the process, growing up in both realms...life and art.

Any number of things are about to happen. Either the team behind me loves it and they take it out and the town goes nuts for it and it gets bought and made and makes international stars out of everyone involved, or they tell me I wasted my time, and theirs, and that that be all-end all trip I'm constantly threatening -- touring the globe, becoming a soldier of fortune -- they'll tell me there's no time like the present. I don't know. The only thing I know, the only thing I can control is that I told my story, and it's shaped, and buffed and it's out. And now it's going to get read. And this is the important part...my happiness no longer hinges on how the world consumes my creative endeavors. And I'm not just saying that to say it. Maybe that's just the next step in the journey of self-obsession. I don't know when it happened, but it did, this shift, and it's welcome to stay.

Saturday Night Through The Eye Of An IPhone...

You Know, Like That Green Day Song...

There's been a lot of movement lately, in life...on many fronts. And at some point, when August was fading, I remember bracing, readying myself that September was going to be rough...but that once I made it through to the other side, all that would await: bright lights and a new and majestic life. And a few days ago, the above song crept into my playlist and it started banging my head and it kind of made me smile - thinking back to what I was thinking, labeling a month as this villain, training myself to think of it as a battle. Funny, behavior in hindsight.

I've been working hard on a script that is going to change my life. I completely believe that. And last week, I finished it, and I had in my hands a story about two kids in love, and it's raw and it moves and it crushes. I believe all that. And on Tuesday night, I had a meeting with Team Burn to talk about the direction we were going to take it in. We talked about the process of sending out a spec - that you get it in the best possible shape it can be in, you get everyone on board in the company (in my case, a management company), and usually on a Tuesday, you circle the wagons and send it out to everyone around town. And then you wait. And the thought of it put a fire in me. And we started talking about the small things we had to do to get it there -- the character work that we needed to do before it would be ready. Then we started talking about other things - scripts, ideas, writers who had recently caught fire and the scripts they wrote, the scripts they broke with -- everything that had been moving lately around town.

Then we started talking about our expectations of ourselves and of each other. We talked about our expectations of the scripts we want to take out to town - our names big and bold on the front. And we came to a couple conclusions about our kids, Kim and Val. We knew that the story was good, and that it works and works well...it does. And we knew the writing was there. But this moment hit and we couldn't avoid it...there's room. It can be better. It can be bigger. It can be bolder. It can blow the fucking doors off this town. And the only thing standing in the way of it being better is the work, is the grind and the shit and the piss. And running from all that is coward. And running from all that isn't how I'm wired. Lucky and/or fucky for me - it seems Team Burn's gonna hold me to it.

He left and left notes and I chewed through it all. And all day yesterday, all day, I felt like I was going to throw up...all day. It was amazing, all these feelings and ideas burning and tumbling through one another. Like everything was coming to life and dying all at the same time. Because I realized that October is going to be just like September. And November is going to be just like October. And down the line when this sells and my life does change, 2009 is going to be just like 2008 and nothing is going to change. And I'm okay with that. Because looking back, September was pretty fucking raw...but pretty fucking sensational. I've never made strides like this, ever. I've never grown like this, ever. And I can be happy pretending to be miserable for the rest of my life. So anyway...

I'm sitting at home yesterday, honestly fucked out of my mind and I get this phone call. It was from a production company that works in the 10-20 million range. And they roll out with Warner Bros. and Universal and Fox. And this girl says that she read Kim and Val and that she loved them and that it was the kind of film they might be interested in -- maybe with a little less violence and a little development - and she said her boss already had it and was going to read it on her flight to London or sometime after she got there. And I said that was great and amazing and that I was flattered and through the roof -- but that it is still evolving and that me and Team Burn were going to take it under the knife again - that it will be ready soon, and to be patient. And she was cool with that, said that when I was ready, they'll be ready for it. Hard move...but the right move.

I just can't cut the corner on this one. I just can't do it - unable to allow self. And I made a promise with Team Burn that we will never settle for anything less than the best we can possibly be. And he made a promise back. We're going big, eyes set on the biggest of big boys...in the biggest of big boy towns.

And so away we go...once again and forever 'til we find that screen.

Dear Kim & Val...

I apologize, it's been a while since we checked in. Or, since I've checked in. See, I've been busy. I've been working -- sweat, blood, tears to bring the two of you to life. I've been fighting, every day, nearly a thought a minute, doing everything I can to help you find immortality. You've taken my sleep, my calm, my rational thought and replaced it with fury and invincibility and hope. You've made my mind and heart unstable. To that, I give profound thanks. Every day, you get inside me, save me, occupy me...and to that, I give profound thanks. All I can offer in return -- a promise to not let you down, to not stop until you're on that screen, until your story pours out onto the world. That I promise.

Since we met, you've been my obsession. And I hope that's not weird, me coming out and saying so. I believe in and value honesty above all things and can't help but think our rapport is strong enough to handle any truth.

Recently, as you know, I sent your story, in progress, out to the first line of gatekeepers in charge of making possible everything we envision. And they loved you. They're fascinated by you. And now there's a team working to give you due perfection. We're working together to bring you to life - not one inch short of what you deserve. And with this team behind me behind you, you will be unstoppable. And you'll find life. And your story will take over the world. And you'll never die...

But patience now. Much work ahead. Soon, we begin.

All love,

Burn

Oh, Kids...

I woke up today the same way I've woken every day for the past 2 weeks. I eat, settle and greet the kids -- Kim and Val -- for a span of time ranging anywhere from 5-9 hours. And I slam and destroy and bend words and feelings, trying to make something so flimsy into something so concrete - something that'll fetch me my 5-6 figures - something that officially ends playtime and begins, well...playtime.

I'm abstract when I'm working, at least when I'm in deep. I have nothing left at the end of the day. Things get simple, things are simply simplified. And the harder I work the harder I have to work to blow it all out, to fit it in a box and dispose of it somewhere outside of my person. Today, after a brutal but all affirming day of script work, before going to the gym, I ran up Sunset Plaza Drive with my buddy Will. Last March, we somewhat ran the LA marathon together and have made this something of a weekly appointment - to climb the steep and winding hill until we reach the top, above the smog, above the cars, above this wonderfully poisoned city . It's metaphorical to say the least. Between breaths, we talk shit and of ideas that fetch far. And when we get to the top, we check the clock at Ice Cube's house, slap hands and decide the pace of decent -- all depending on how much time we have before the real workout starts.

I left the gym sometime after 7 tonight, overdone as usual, but lighter. My motor skills and skills of mind had long ago departed. When I'm in work, I lose my gift of communication. The vocal webs I usually sling with such skill and savvy hang limp like Durban's whiskdic. People think I'm on drugs. I'm actually not. It's all good...because I'm on pace. I'm at the exact spot I want to be. And this progression is my vigor, and I'm moving into something of a rare form, only wanting to be composed of three things -- moving towards a day where I am all and only three things...Muscle, Brain, Heart. That's all, all I have a tolerance left to carry.

Somewhere In The Night...

I'm on a new kick, back to Knights of Cydonia - and it's pounding me, somewhere in my guts, because I listen to everything too loud, because I want it to explode my head. And it's pulling back memories -- of seeing the Muse boys play live and feeling something so profound, so big, so charging.

I'm berserk. Last night, lightning struck, something coming into me, changing me with a no discussion declaration -- that the things that have brought me happiness will no longer serve - that the things making me content will no longer suffice. I felt in an instant I would never get back the person I had so recently been. And I can't point to exactly what caused it. I got back from dinner sometime around midnight and couldn't sit still. I paced and analyzed and fantasized and spoke to myself in such abundance that I had to stop, find a mirror, tell myself I was speaking to myself in such abundance - because calling it out makes it okay. And I couldn't settle. I couldn't right my mind and didn't want to -- it was involuntarily righting itself.

There's something big afoot here - something that's bigger than anything I've ever been. I can feel it. And the thought of it stretches, and the thought of it is the aim of my every search, and the thought of it transforms the world I know - teaches me to cope with revelation.

Because this, THIS has to be bigger than everything in this life. And I feel like life has to suffer for it to flourish - because nothing gives me glory like it - and I'm okay with that - I feel like I'm going to have to be okay with that - and I'm never going to apologize for it. This is a state of evolution. When I don't know how to handle these things, I simply sit back and let them handle me.

In Dreams and Welcome Back...

I woke up yesterday with this great gift. Usually on Sundays, I wake up with an apocalyptic mind. Yesterday was different.

I was sleeping when I got the phone call. When I answered, I was still sleeping, if you follow. Someone was yelling on the other end, so angry at me - my actions, my lacking responsibility. The voice told me to come to the hospital and fast.

When I arrived, there was this line of people waiting for me, eyes like razors as I made my approach. And they were judging, hostile. I felt awful, not so much as for what I'd done, but for what I would have to live with. When I got to the room and turned inside, I found this girl, and she was holding a baby. I recognized her straight away - a girl from my past. She was beautiful, so beautiful. Durbs, you woulda been so proud - a mag girl on many occasions. I remembered a distant feeling, lusting after this...her and her face and her body like possibly no other I had known. But when we spoke, I'd float away. We went to dinner, maybe a movie a long time ago and I remember this numbing feeling crawling over my body and mind, so un-held. I remember taking her to bed, knowing I wanted to but shouldn't. And I remember that being that, knowing it was going to turn out exactly like that.

Everyone in the room started in on me, yelling and screaming, evidently pissed that I had slept through the birth of my child. I looked at the mother and she was indifferent, soul-less, like they or I or everything had sucked it from her. They were yelling and screaming and I felt like I was dead or wanted to be.

I woke up a few minutes after 8 and didn't move, let it settle that what happened in my sleep wasn't my reality. I considered the possibility that laying in bed not being a father was my dream, that the alternate reality was in fact, mine.

It wasn't. It isn't. I was okay.

...

It's Monday. I woke today before 7 to start back in on my two darling, deviant lovers. I woke up with some shit in my guts, still some remnants of the recent girl, one held in distantly higher esteem. The fact that she's still here is marveling and maddening. I want to go to the bathroom and puke her out, all of her - be clean again - for moments. But then comes back my thirst for self destruct, something inside me and all it wants to do is embrace the shit, teach me how to love it like I would my would-be bastard child.

Good things, I'm in. Promise.

...

This room is dark and long and would echo if you let it. These headphones swallow my head. This instrument beneath my hands makes me strong. My heart is bleeding. This feeling feels like home. I'm home. Now I eat the world.

Bonnie & Clyde...

Butch & Sundance...

I spent the day at the WGA library, glued, leafing through William Goldman's 190 some page Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. I was reading it for style...how he handled the stick up robberies of the old days and how to send two brilliantly drawn characters to their death and into cinema immortality. The day was awe-inspiring. I mean, Goldman goes so far beyond brilliant that it's like he's all ease. His pen just glides. Fiction, screenplays, whatever. Read Princess Bride and tell me otherwise.

And this...oh, this...

Romeo & Juliet...

This weekend, I met with a gentleman who is going to manage me and career. We're on the same path - two young bucks, foaming at the mouth, eyes with aim on world domination. He took a liking to Kim and Val, embraced its strength, its weaknesses that I was too weak to see and we tore through it with a plan -- go back to work, spit it out in a couple of months when its undeniable, let it alter our paths in life. And I feel there's a weight been carried away. I got a corner man.

The process for this week is simple. Read a script, watch the film. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Last night was Boondock Saints. This was today's:

My Old Friend Walt...

These last few days have been blurry. I flamed through 5 new drafts of Kim and Val - cut 20 pages. Two weeks ago and today, I could have defended every word when it was 126 pages. Today, it's 106...and it's better, tighter. Sometimes, it all feels so fickle.

The process behind this is taking a little longer than my initial expectation, which was overnight...but it's getting there. A consultant recently sent me an e-mail, a note about the Disney Fellowship. They employ up to 4 writers per year, pay them an annual salary to work on the lot and come up with original material. I had flirted with something like this in the past at Disney, just a few notches above. I thought, why not try again? Hell, I have a gem in my back pocket, right?

So I started thinking, breaking it all down. Kimberly and Valentine in the house that Walt built. Let's see...

The word fuck or a variation of appears 19 times.
There's a scene involving rape.
Someone bites off someone else's ear.
Someone cuts off someone else's hand.
Sex is had or implied in 4 scenes.
A dead body is mounted against the grill of an SUV.
Guns and/or drugs appear in...too many scenes to count.
There's a miscarriage.
The word cunt is used twice.
Many die...quite violently.

Sometimes I stop...think about the phrase "setting up for success," wonder my competence for such things. Or care.

First Word...

It's into the third week since I carefully introduced Kim and Val. All this fucking waiting making me nutso. Yesterday, I got word from a producer quite wired in the game. Not one of the first two, but still the first real word. I was expecting him to take it for a run, take it to his people for a run and so on and so on.

Didn't get it. Missed. Overshot.

I heard things like they're too in love, that it never stops, too intense the whole way through, never a moment for a breather.

I respect his opinion, and hate, hate defensive writers, but I quickly found myself un-listening. I tuned out, thinking how could you miss this, how could you let this go over your head, how could you miss this...

...

Lately, I've been losing sleep. Not that I've been sleeping all that much in the past 6 months, but still. And I can tell you what it is... or who -- Nikkorela...

She started showing up 2 weeks ago or something like it. Maybe in a dream, maybe not. Truth is, I still can't tell if she's real or imaginary. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay with the possibility that she's an invention of the mind, here to save me from void. She recently came to me in my sleep to speak of an ancient tale -- a master sculptor and his student, because I think she thought I needed it...

It was at the height of the Roman Empire, Luido was living in a province 200 miles south of Rome. He had at one time been stationed in the golden city, there to serve as personal sculptor to the Emperor himself. In his stay, he had witnessed the birth, the coming and going of the most gifted artists and visionaries that had ever lived.

When old age crept into him and the pace of the city grew too scathing, he decided to leave Rome and settle in a distant land, far removed. One day, walking the fields, he came across a young boy, Oederon, as if he were placed before Luido by the Gods themselves...he was sculpting the vinyards, olive fields, distant landscapes with a hand so steady, an eye so agile, it brought tears to Luido's eyes.

Luido took him on as his apprentice, though it was evident early on that the pupil's skill far surpassed that of his master.

Word began to spread through the hills and valleys, all the way to the golden city -- whispers of a boy with a hand that was guided by the gods. The Emperor summoned him at once. And so, Luido and Oederon traveled to Rome. The Emperor welcomed them, thanked them, declared that he was to hire a master sculptor to document the days of their empire, to immortalize his legacy. It was to be the most prestigous title an Emperor had bestowed upon an artist.

Luido had known since that first day that no man could stand against Oederon's talents...not even Rome's master sculptors. When the Emperor saw Luido in the audience, he summoned him forward. A recognition, for Luido had served as Rome's master sculptor when this current Emperor was just a boy. The Emperor spoke with an echo that rang through the royal courtyard...

"Great Luido, master servant of the Roman empire, you stand before us now with this fabled young boy. Word has traveled far of his divine talents. Of this boy named Oederon. I ask you now to speak in his favor, as his master. Tell me he is everything I have heard and there will be no trial. He will live here, amongst us until the day he no longer chooses, until he no longer sees it fit to document our travails. Speak your certainty and all this will be over."

Luido looked into Oederon's hungry eyes, certain, then looked back to the Emperor...

"I am not certain."

Oederon was sent off to complete his great trial, a sculpture that was to enter him into the forefront of Roman lore. But Oederon had lost his will. He felt betrayed by his master Luido. He was uncertain, weak. When the day had passed and the Emperor's royal advisors came to judge Oederon's work, he was nowhere to be found. He had left, alone, to wander distant lands.

Many years later, as Luido was on his deathbed, Oederon came to see his old master. Luido smiled, welcomed him, told him to sit. Oederon kissed Luido's forehead, spoke of his travels, the search of his destiny. The years had been difficult on both of them. Oederon's skin had hardened and stretched, a leathery glow. The color in his eyes had emptied. Luido's mind had grown forgetful, his thoughts had run senile. Oederon said goodbye, took Luido's hand, walked to the door when he turned back...

"Master, I have to know something. That day in Rome, when the Emperor asked for your blessing of me. He asked of my gifted hand. I never understood. All those days in the fields, all those days we had spent in the fields...if you didn't believe-

My son, I believed. The great Jupiter was alive in you.

Then why? Why? Why didn't you say so? Why did you leave me like that, why did you abandon me like that. It was my destiny, and you took it away from me. Why didn't you tell the Emperor?

Because my son, if it was your destiny, you wouldn't have listened to a word I said...you would have seized it for yourself."

Headed For Something Special...

I'm more than a little concerned. See, I've sort of hit the point. Mind you, we're now going to talk about something relevant and concrete, my life and career. Quite a refreshing change, or perhaps not.

I've been working on this latest tale, Kimberly and Valentine for about 5 months now. There's a fairly detailed history of its process on these very pages, but to give a quick catch up, I shot through a 92 page version, gave it out for two pairs of eyes to read 14 weeks or so ago. Today, it comes in at 126...14 weeks to add what only looks to be a total of 34 pages. But that's how it works. Because 34 pages change every word, every tone, much work had to be done to get it right here, exactly where I want it to be.

So now it's done. Finished on this end. When it gets picked up and goes into development, it's going to be shaped again, but until that point, there's nothing I can do to it, nothing I should. It says exactly what I want it to say and I don't think I've ever been happier, never been more hopeful or excited about the possibilities of tomorrow, or two hours from now...two minutes. It's brilliant. I don't feel like it's my work anymore. Something schizophrenic has happened, as if I've completely removed myself from it, able to talk it up like I were a fan, a crazy and rabid fan toting someone else's work.

Which brings me to the title of this post, the thing that really scorches me about this whole process. This weekend, maybe next, a handful of people are going to take it home with them. They're going to read it, say holy shit in their minds, make a call, line up their cards so that it becomes a weekend read for execs of the major studios around town. Several of them are going to jump on it, say something like this is great, that the youth will really gravitate, that it could be a very defining for a generation. They'll say it's timely and commercial and sensational and different. They'll make offers on a Monday. It'll sell and I'll sit back for 5 minutes and say something like shit, took long enough.

But that's not even the exciting part. The exciting part is the possibility that I am totally wrong. There certainly is a 10 percent chance or greater that it's none of that. There's a possibility that no one wants to see a movie about two scorching hot, star crossed criminal lovers. There's a chance I have no idea how to weave words. And the thought of it all excites me nearly as much as success. Because after all I've been through, after all I've labored and suffered over, if Kimberly and Valentine fall flat on their faces, I'm likely headed for a breakdown of epic proportions.

And I imagine myself wandering through South America, befriending guerrilla warlords or heading back to Africa to live in the Eastern villages. Out of touch, out of sight. Brilliant. And the thought of it lights me up. And the thought of it make me feel alive.

Let The Games Begin...

"Hypothetical" - Title of my reach out - sent to a Lit Department partner at a major management company who offered a look but is a virgin to my work...history-less.

XXXX,

So what if I've got a script that isn't just good but great...something with a new voice, timely, raw, sweet, disarming...

The kind of movie that creeps in as a June release and plays all summer.

That can be done cheap, with a 1 sheet that would lend beauty to billboards and define everyone involved, the kind of movie to launch two pretty young things into stardom.

The sort that in 15 years, shows up on AMC, because that's what it'll be...as a rescue for when the world comes home, searching channels, when all they want to do is watch something great for 2 hours and remember those feelings -- "The first time I saw this..."

What if...aside from all this love I have for myself, what if I'm right? What should I do, hypothetically speaking...if you have a minute. All I have are forgotten hip-pockets and no one's seen this...

Sincerely,

Reilly Winburn

An Evening Trip Through YouTube Playland...

I know, okay. Lately, I’ve been obsessed. This used to be a sanctuary for the written word. Lately, the YouTubification of Chronicles has been a little less than subtle. And my leaning solely on clips has been reprehensible to say the least.

But I want to prove that it serves a purpose. I want to show you my inspirations tonight, two things I came across that brought me to life. After all, you are visiting the site of a self-obsessed man who actually, just last week received an e-mail from an ex-girlfriend titled “Indicators of Narcissistic Personality Disorder…sound like anyone you know?”… and wouldn’t you know, I’m including an excerpt taken from that very e-mail:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance.
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love.
3. Believes that he or she is overly special or unique.
4. Possesses a heightened sense of entitlement.

Obviously, I answered yes. But that’s not the point. I want to show you a couple things, things to me, on this night that are absolutely remarkable.

First, if you asked me to pick one person in the world to meet, I would initially freeze, then worry the choice I was about to make wouldn't hold enough gravity before dropping the inevitable words, Matthew Bellamy...

Now listen for me, to Hans Zimmer's remarkable chime. The Siren song comes in at 4:39 but don't cheat. Over the last 3 weeks, True Romance has absolutely been my saving grace. The score is so good, so intoxicating, you can literally float away on it. Maybe the most perfect ever. The rest speaks for itself...


...
...
...

I’ve just finished closing folder 9 of my latest script, Kimberly and Valentine. Inside it lies a sketchpad titled 9th revised and Final Draft Documents titled 9a, 9b and 9c. 8 folders precede folder 9, all with multiple drafts and multiple sketchpads…

Ten scripts make up a stack that sits on top of my bookshelf. They range anywhere from 64 to 184 pages. My Rescue Me and Billy Bambino won me praise, meetings and promises. Training Angels broke me down, sent me traveling the world for 4 months. The rest just sit there, sporadically brilliant but mostly overwritten, amateur or sloppy.

Recently, as was documented, I was more than bursting my own seams…aching, acid ripping through my brain because I more than hopefully gave draft 1b of Kimberly and Valentine to a person who could have connected my professional dots. In my mind, the glorious 3-step process could not have been simpler…

1. Put raw script in Titan’s hands.
2. Woo said Titan.
3. Titan lifts peasant from literary obscurity.

In reality though, it didn’t quite go like that. Turned out said Titan was rather more interested in said peasant’s rooster than his writing. Oh charm, why have you cursed me so…

This town is such a cliché. Never even read it.

…

But pain heals. I’ve moved on, about 17 drafts to be exact. I no longer feel like I’m going to puke when I talk or think about this new darling of mine. Funny thing happens over the course of a new script. As it matures, so does this writer.

Tomorrow morning, I wake up and start in again from page 20 of 9c. I’ll polish, help smooth and grow the new seeds I’ve recently planted inside it and lose track of life outside this blackened apartment for hours or weeks at a time. This is my life now. For this moment, obscurity is comfortable and I feel calm. Because, because…

In ten years, two stars, an actor and an actress will be 28 and 29. They’ll be the most sought after things in town, pitching tentpoles and filling billboards. And when you ask them about their success, they’ll both point back to the day when they were cast in this silly little movie written by a silly little writer who had never before written a silly little thing. The silly little movie will be called Kimberly and Valentine.

And that’s how it’s going to go down. Not because I’m talented, delusional or something in between, but something entirely else…

This town is such a cliché.

There's obviously something wrong with him. He's taken off his shoes and one of his socks and actually... I think he's crying.

A smart man recently told me I can’t succeed without a broken heart. I laughed. People must think I’m so smug.

I don’t know if what I’ve experienced over the past couple weeks has been a dream -- these great and potential promises…or opportunities. Sometimes, I wake in the middle of the night, across the room or on my balcony, stirred from conversation with a mysterious gentleman in a suit whose face I try to ignore. At some point in our conversation, I bump my head or shin and realize I should go back to bed, to try and fall asleep before I think too much about what has again transpired, with growing frequency…before I remember again, the emptiness I feel when I look into his voided eyes.

Los Angeles is screwed. Or it’s me. I need everything. I need so much, worry and hope I’ll never be fulfilled. I can’t wait. No calming talents remain. Today, I was at the gym from 630-8, again from 1230-145, and again from 5-8…consciously obsessive, for clearance. I was reaching for something, some sort of fix because I couldn’t work and didn’t want to fuck or think. In these situations, I know little else to do.

And there’s not enough money to leave again.

…

A broken heart. I started drinking yesterday at 11 after deeming it appropriate to induce feeling. I wanted to get 5 hours into my shift at work, doing rounds on tables, and come crashing down from the Guinness and Jameson and Baileys. I wanted to feel a brutal moment of life, to tempt the bottom to find me, to scream it away until my eyes would bleed, because…

So many things I can’t talk about here or anywhere. Just because.

Either way, it was coming. I’ve known for weeks now, coming off this high…of creation, of seeing and feeling and willing a scripted world that was mine but wasn’t…this world not capable of reciprocating the love I’ve given. Stories don’t matter at this point, just that they’re told and out. And this last one I told felt like love, clearing away all my lust and sadness and anger, like I was inducing an artificial peace in hopes it would correct me – like I was cheating – all along knowing I would be punished for it.

It feels like Sunday, dragging forever, but it’s Tuesday…or Wednesday. And I can’t tell myself everything will be better by Friday, or next Tuesday, or a month from now, or a year or ever. All I can see is a clock that reads 1:24 and it’s not moving. It may never again move. This is mine, bliss turned to shit and raging through my veins, poisoning me, my mind. I have to respect it.

…

Selectively, selectively falling in love with the places and things and people I can’t attain, to have this bastard thing nagging and pleading and scorching inside. What else have I ever known but broken…

I want to pull it out and eat it, show it off, spit it into every face I see.

There is no rescue.

Just now coming up for air...

I recently had one of those Hollywood encounters that people look back and speak of, somewhere from the top of the mountain, about bumping into and meeting someone with the clout and talent to lift them from where they once sat. I’ve had them in the past, but never like this. He said in as many words: write a script no one else has seen, make it your voice and nothing else, don’t sell out to the market and let me see it…but don’t dick around and do it fast – I’m staffing.

I had just finished a 125 page – 16 song musical that will somewhere, someday find an audience and was easing into the idea of starting something fresh when all this happened. In fact, I was just beginning the exact thing he was suggesting…a tale of two kids in love, their dreams of escape, robbery, bounty hunters, YouTube and the media circus, murder, sex, revenge and the Rolling Stones. At least that’s what I tell myself – that this was the exact thing he was suggesting.

But I wasn’t there yet, not even close to passing it off. It would take 2 brain-bleeding weeks to get there...and then even that would be a stretch. But since I’ve always had drive – I wasn’t worried about being good…and quick, very quick.

So that I may continue, please trust me when I say that this is big. Actually, now confronting all this, the thought of such a blunt and direct opportunity scares the shit out of me. Because at the end of the day, it means I have to face myself, cock out, ready to rock, on stage, full audience, under spotlight. For 2 weeks, I spent every minute of my life weaving stories and arcs, electrifying pages, dancing lines…all that shit.

Somewhere in the binge, she came out, and I understood, not for the first time, what it’s like to write with someone in mind, my damsel, my heroine, my Kimberly…

Alison Lohman. It was Matchstick Men that did it. I saw her on my pages, saying something like…if you harm him in any way, I will kill you and everyone in this place. And if he dies, from this moment until the day of my last breath, I’ll rain a hell on this corner of the world so vicious, Lucifer himself will plead me to stop.

And with that, things turned concrete. Every now and again, she would show up in my dreams, kiss my cheek something sweet and wake me under a spell of love. Yes, brilliant actresses woo me prudely while I sleep. I love it.

I finished the first pass and thought of puking, giddy, just to empty what remnants of residue I had left. After the fifth pass, my face was numb, like I’d been sucked beautifully dry. And with that, it was time.

…

On Sunday, I woke up before the sun to make a 6 in the AM train to Universal City. From there, at 8:15, I ran 26.2 miles through the streets of Los Angeles. When I finished (3:43), I sat in the middle of the street eating apples and bananas. Then, I took a nap in the street. Then, I was abruptly stirred by Paramedics who let me leave under my own accord after much convincing that I was just, “kickin’ it there and not actually dying.” Then, I took a couple trains back to my car and drove home, skin burnt red and nipples crazy-glued.

At 7, I met my encounter at the Chateau for dinner (the gentleman, not the girl in the picture). We talked about endeavors and what I could only sum up as the joy and pain of life. As I paid the valet, as we were leaving, I handed him a packet, home-made, containing my script, Kimberly and Valentine. Afterwards, I wandered about town, stopping for drinks here, there…I don’t always quite recall.

Eventually, I made it home, obviously, because I’m here now. Then I slept, nearly forever and dreamt of things good and futures bright…at least on this Sunday.