Rocks Being Dropped on My Head

Diamonds form in the molten rock of the Earth's mantle over millions of years, but it only took me five days to realize that the rocks being dropped on my head were precious. After compiling the overwhelming readers notes into a single document fit for consumption by the Harold Greenburg Fund Board of Directors, I began to realize that with or without a development grant, I had been given some incredibly useful insights into my script. One of my worst fears as a filmmaker is of writing a script that's formulaic. To my mind the last decade has been a progressive downward spiral for Western filmmaking and much of that can be attributed to structural conventions at the script stage. It feels like it's time for another maverick renaissance like the kind inflicted on Hollywood in the 1970s by young nonconformist filmmakers. But in order to contribute to that wave, I know that I've got to re-invent convention and find new ways of telling fresh stories. But here's the thing—a confusing plot that doesn't tie together is not the sign of an innovative writer but a lazy one. Reworking the script notes into a re-write plan gave me insight into how I might make some of these crucial changes. So now I feel like I have the tools to begin to fix Living-Room War on a structural level, hopefully without falling into formula. And that's really exiting.