The L.A. Dime

I did an online interview with Roger Ebert about writing and stuff. Not really Roger Ebert. But I did do an interview.  You can find it here.

Also, I was a judge for the Derby City Film Festival, which is next weekend in… The Derby City. You should go and stuff. The festival movies are, like, really good, and the people are way cool. Our friend Kelly Rouse’s movie is a finalist in the Documentary category, and it’s about her dad’s band, The Nightcrawlers, and their hit song, The Little Black Egg, and it totally rocks. You can buy it on iTunes now. I did. Twice.

Thanks, I’m sure, to my Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and blog readers no doubt, Road Trip 2: Beer Pong won the award for best comedy in Straight2DVD’s first-annual write-in contest.  Details here. Thanks for voting if you did!

Visionary trendsetter, Apple, does not include writing credits on its iTunes movies. Why? Please email itunesmarketing@apple.com to ask.

I’m kind of a Twitter and Facebook fanatic. I like to see what people are doing, saying, and thinking  out in the world, and both of those applications cater to my need for people knowledge.  They are also great for market research, and to that end, I have a saved Twitter search for “Road Trip-Beer Pong,” which updates me when anyone says anything about the movie. On Tuesday, I awoke to discover dozens of tweets offering links to illegal downloads of the film, which apparently was  leaked overnight. This is not a unique situation. Nearly every movie made is leaked to the internet, these days. And most pirates don’t bother to think about what they’re doing — it’s free, they want it now, and it’s easy.  Those who do think about what they’re doing believe they’re “sticking it to the man” atop the rich, powerful, corporate studios.

While the studios do lose a lot of money because of piracy, it’s  artists like me who really take a hit to the pocket book.  Each sold DVD generates a very small payment to many of the key creative people who made the movie.  These “residual payments” help artists pay the bills between jobs, because contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of writers and directors are not hopping from one seven figure contract to another.  Most film artists are middle class folks, living on a budget, doing the best they can in an expensive city to get by week-to-week as they fight for their next gig.

So, for two days, using Twitter, I decided to send a personal message to each pirate who admitted to downloading and watching my movie. My message wasn’t about their opinions, good or bad. It was about their actions. And at first, most were astounded to hear from me. Then they got angry. “How dare you challenge my right to steal?” was the general attitude. Or, “your movie sucks, so who cares if I steal it?” They got really mad when they found out I was reporting their user info to Twitter and the Anti-Piracy folks at Paramount. I was threatened, black-listed (from future robbery, I guess, because they never actually BUY anything), called a tool, a twat, a cry-baby, and told to #$%& off.  One guy suggested I was an idiot for relying on residuals — that I should instead ask for more money on the front end.  Sheer ignorance. The system doesn’t work that way at all. And that’s my point. People will always steal.  My goal was to put a face on who they were stealing from, and they didn’t like that one bit.

A few guys wrote back to apologize. Several people had legitimate questions.  And a lot of people were glad to tell me that they liked the movie.  But the internet haters can’t stand sequels like the ones I’ve done — though they watch them anyway.  They think I somehow sold the studio a sequel to the movie they love.  No, the studio approached me with the idea to write a sequel to a popular movie based on their solid marketing numbers. I need to pay a mortgage and buy groceries like everyone else, the folks at the studio are good people whom I like and respect, and so I took the job.  And for that, the haters call me a sell-out hack, as they flame me from their mother’s basements.

AFTER they stole the movie and took the time to watch it, the pirates preferred to tell me how bad it is, with choice vocabulary, as opposed to discussing the reasons why they felt obligated to watch it two weeks before its release, thereby stealing from my family.  One guy said I should be thanking him for the free marketing. One guy tweeted that he loved the movie, even quoting dialogue, then as soon as he heard from me, he flip-flopped into a total hater “who wouldn’t buy it from the dollar bin.” Hilarious.

These last two days were enlightening and exhausting.  Shouldn’t someone speak up when the opportunity is there?  So I did. Part of me regrets it, part of me doesn’t.  The movie is still out there. People are still tweeting about stealing it. Paramount is doing all they can to fight back, and we’re lobbying Twitter to crack down on piracy, which is expressly against their sign-up rules.  But now it’s time for me to get back to work, making more product for them to steal, so I threw up the white flag.

People laugh at those pre-trailer commercials against piracy in movie theaters. And I know this sounds like a sanctimonious Sally Struthers charity commercial to some, but before you click to download, please remember that regular, hard-working people — not just rich celebrities — are paying for your movie experience out of their pockets.

As of today, Road Trip - Beer Pong is officially available to be saved in your Netflix Queue.  I assume it is available at Blockbuster, too, for you blue and gold types.  It is vitally important that you add the movie to your Queue.  Our entire way of life totally depends on it.  I mean, everyone should, of course, buy his or her own personal copy at 12:00 AM on August 11th, but in the meantime, storing the movie in your queue would significantly impact Sophie’s chances of attending college.

And while you’re queuing it up, please make sure to give it 5 stars!  Thanks, I know you’ll do the right thing.

Almost everyday, I get my afternoon news from NPR’s All Things Considered — a national radio show carried locally on KCRW.  It’s been a pocket dream of mine to somehow get on that show someday.  Well, on Tuesday, while I wasn’t mentioned directly, my movie Road Trip - Beer Pong was featured on the show in a rather ignominious story about one of our principal locations, Agnes Scott College.  You can read the full story here:  http://tinyurl.com/kjtzjp

I’ve seen the whole thing. Hell, I wrote it (for better or worse).  Now you can see the trailer for ROAD TRIP — BEER PONG right here!  Holla!  Rumor is that the official release date is August 11.  Save up for your copy so I can get my nickel.

Last night, Tina and I zipped down to Hollywood for the Cast/Crew screening of Road Trip 2.   It was great to see everyone again before the show began, and when the lights dimmed, I felt a deep, sweeping, powerful rush of emotion as the Dreamworks and Paramount logos come up before the opening shot.  I’m blessed to say that it was my third time having that experience, and even though they are all small straight-to-vid movies, I consider the production of each a minor miracle.

The movie is a lot of fun.  No exaggeration here — the core cast is amazing.  Now, admittedly, RT2 is not for everyone, and is targeted toward a certain (young male) demographic, but if you like a raunchy romp, I think you’ll have a good time with it.  Steve Rash did another great job directing (we did Band Camp together), and the music is fantastic.  A major highlight for me was meeting The Transcenders (pictured below), and seeing my name in the song scroll with them during the end credits:  “In the Buff, Lyrics by Brad Riddell.” Cha-ching.

I visited set during the last four days of production, and saw a dozen or so scenes get shot, but otherwise, had no idea what to expect.  As a writer working on a project for months or years at a time, you have a set version of the movie in your head.  Once it’s filtered through the director, the actors, the DP, the set and costume designers, and the music people, then put under stress by budget and schedule, it becomes its very own, very different thing.  Sometimes the alterations, omissions and additions are wonderful surprises for which you’ll gladly assume credit, and other times, they can be somewhat disappointing.  But there is much to be learned by a writer by watching the final cut of his/her movie — mostly about efficiency.  What is truly needed and what is not.  There is no better experience than getting a movie made, and hopefully each one has made me at least a little bit better at my craft.

My career would not be possible without Tina, whose love and support and toleration of this moody writer’s life are the bedrock of my Hollywood Quest.  See the post below for her thoughts on last evening.

I’m very proud of the film and everyone involved, and look forward to watching it again with family and friends sometime in the fall.  I’ll let you know if I hear anything about specific dates.  Unitl then, remember this: “Girl, it ain’t so tough, to do it in the buff.”

With The Transcenders

Brad and I were invited to attend the cast & crew screening of Brad’s latest movie Road Trip 2: Beer Pong at the Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. We had been looking forward to this evening for a while and the excitement kept building through the day and as we were driving to the city.

Once we arrived, there was a cocktail reception and a chance to re-meet and mingle with all the actors, crew and executives. Even though I knew some of the key players from the American Pie movie Brad wrote, I was somewhat on the sidelines while Brad was busy being congratulated and thanked for writing a script that all these actors and crew had a chance to work on.

We then made our way into the theater and could barely stand the anticipation of finally getting to see what had become of the script Brad had labored over for many months. We have come to accept that the vision Brad has for a movie, and the scenes he writes into his script, don’t always make it into the final “locked movie” but are always hoping that the general mood, ideas and character voices remain.  As the movie starts, we settle into our seats and hope for the best.

Sitting there in the dark, hearing cheers when certain actors that are in the audience appear on the screen and people around us laugh at various spots throughout the movie, I realize that this, this moment, this experience is why we are in LA. Writing movies for a living is what Brad told me he wanted to do a long time ago when we were still living in Lexington. We made a decision to pursue this dream and see where it would take us. He quit his job and applied to film school. Got in and worked really hard for 3 years to learn the craft and refine his skills. Since then, he’s done great work, earned the trust of executives at various studios and proven himself to be able to deliever on their vision.

I am so very proud of his dedication to this work; his commitment to providing for our family and in the midst of this crazy Hollywood life we’re living, still make the time to be an absolutely incredible husband and father. When the lights came on, and the audience clapped, Brad got up, walked towards the people who had worked in his movie and was received with nothing but compliments, accolates and pats on the back.

On a side note - while I am bursting with pride today, I know that there are many, many more ideas in Brad’s head and I hope that one day soon, his own scripts will also see the lights dim in a screening room on a Hollywood lot.

Here’s the thing about writing — it surely beats the hell out of digging ditches, but it’s with you ALL the time. No time is really down time, or off time, because the story always needs to be finished, and you should (or you think you should) always be writing it. Always. Playing with family, watching TV, eating dinner, visiting friends…it is the itch that will not go away, even if you scratch at it with industrial-grade sandpaper embedded with diamonds.

There’s a lot of guilt involved, especially on bad days when fear of the great white page, or terror at the idea of suckiness, partner up with procrastination to overwhelm you (this blog post means they’re winning). There’s also a lot of time committed for minimum to no gain. Like a running back plowing into a stacked line all day long for one measly yard. Today, up at 4:00 AM on a Saturday, I may work for 5 hours to get two pages that down the line will likely be cut or totally altered beyond recognition.  But a paycheck awaits (which is rare, I know), and it does beat digging ditches (though I’ve never done that before), and today, right now in fact, I’m gonna open up a can of whoop-ass on those twin devils Procrastination and the Great White Page (”Evil, I know thy name!”). Wish me luck.