The Isolation of Yesterday's Storm Got Put To Good Use

So yesterday I finished polishing the latest draft of "Radio Days" and, after receiving the initial (thankfully positive) response from my collaborator, I continue to feel like it's a strong improvement - even if it's now seven pages longer. Originally the goal was to keep it to no longer than fifteen minutes as my collaborator (Myspace Man) had informed me that this was a standard length for UK festivals. Now it sits at twenty-three pages and with the rough [one page = one minute] formula being kept in mind...well I'm sure there are other "weight classes" for festival submissions. Plus one to three pages could end up being pruned if only through my thinning out the scene descriptions.

Due to all my earliest writing forays being short and long stories, a tad too much prose can wind up in the aforementioned descriptions which in turn can artificially bulk up the assumed running time (i.e. it only takes a moment to show a complex background that may have taken "fifteen seconds" to describe. How much the viewer will pick up in that moment is another story). That being said, I wonder at what point you draw the line regarding highly stylized films where the world is as much of a character as the people in it?

Now I'm going to spend the day attending to something folk have been telling me I should write since long before I even decided that film was the avenue I wanted to go down - comedic monologues. I still have my sexy Belkin iPod widget that lets me record my jabberings in the time-honored style, so I'm going to have a go at that while keeping a list of topics and sub-topics I doodled out last night under my nose. This will probably feel particularly apt after having watched Adaptation last night for the first time since it was in theaters.



Let us all take a solemn moment to remember those who have fallen in the battle between technology and horse.