101 and
DMc have tagged me with
Joel's damn scribosphere chain questionnaire... Okay, okay, here goes.
ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:
Walking out of
Day for Night at college and thinking, "If only I'd seen that when I was younger, I would have gone into showbiz. Too bad I'm too old."
Oh, or possibly, watching the "Tevye's Dream" sequence from
Fiddler on the Roof and being so scared I had to watch it between the seats I was hiding behind.
TWO (2) favorite lines from movies:
"Bug hunt." --
Aliens"To be on the wire is life. The rest is waiting." -
All That JazzBut really, it should be favorite couplets. Shouldn't it?
THREE (3) jobs you'd do if you could not work in the "biz":
I was seriously thinking at one point about going back into computer programming, so that'd be one.
Advertising exec. Which is just the other side of the "biz" so there you go.
Novelist. Which isn't really a job, so I better stay in the biz.
FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside the industry:
Computer programmer. (Back before there were "software engineers.")
SAT prep teacher. (Part time during film school.)
Wargame playtester. (Well, the pay was free games, but...)
Y'know what ... I don't think I've had four jobs outside the industry.
THREE (3) book authors I like:
Neil Gaiman
Neal Stephenson
Ernle Bradford, Ulysses Found
TWO (2) movies you'd like to remake or properties you'd like to adapt:
The Odyssey/Ulysses. Well, actually, I already did adapt it. Just haven't sold the adaptation. Yet.
Zodiac, by Neal Stephenson.
ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated:
Answer #1: As Denis says, all of us.
Answer #2: As Denis says, me.
Answer #3: Denis.
THREE (3) people I'm tagging to answer this meme next:
John Rogers, Craig Mazin, Danny Stack
5 Comments:
Damn me!
Glad to see you got it all figured out, buddy!
And you MUST have had other jobs, as a kid or something. But no worries! Good answers.
Y'know what ... I don't think I've had four jobs outside the industry.
That's very telling!
BTW I messed up on the last comment and deleted it.
Yeah, but what does it tell?
It tells:
(1) You knew what you wanted
(2) You went for it
(3) And you're good at it
Even though I knew early (like at age 10) that I wanted to make movies, I developed really good computer programming skills "just in case"...
And now? I'm a really good software designer. I don't hate my job, but I don't love. Sometimes I feel like I'm walking down the road of middling neutrality.
I think you wrote about that (your decision not to improve your computer skills) a few weeks ago and it hit a nerve.
What do you do when you realize at age 37 that you took the "safe" route? Is it too late to jump/run to the other road?
Zodiac! Good call. Neal Stephenson is one of my favourite authors too, although most of his books would be difficult to adapt, since one of the things I like most are his little (and not so little) detailed tangents. Zodiac would be one of the easier ones to do, since he doesn't sidetrack so often. Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon I'd love to see some day too...
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