The Orange County Screenwriters Association
Be Inspired, Do Good Work
Mark Sevi
We are holding OPEN CASTING call for several of our TV/Film/Web projects, to include:
THE AMAZING DATE (a scripted dating/scavenger hunt show), SWEET TALK (a mock late night talk show/webseries), THE SVENGALI
CODE (a high octane film), A TRIBUTE TO THE MAJIC (a live variety performance show) and a host of other productions. Union/nonunion,
experienced and aspiring talent welcome. We are looking for lots of people with obvious and/or hidden talent!
If you are a:
ACTOR, SINGER/RAP ARTIST, BAND/GROUP, POET (SPOKEN WORD), VOICE OVER ARTIST, AUTHOR, DANCER, COMEDIAN
or if you have a REAL product to promote such as a self published book, a calendar, an independent film, a stage show, etc., or you are an ATHLETE
who is actively playing "organized" sports (meaning in a league or on a structured team of some sort) then please go to our website SubmissionBros.com
or send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your information (headshot, resume, links to your site, or whatever you have) and we will contact
you with an audition time. Feel free to call us AFTER you have sent an email IF you haven't heard from us within two to three days. Our office gets
swamped so please be patient with us on getting back to you.
OPEN CASTING SESSION is September 26 & 27 and October 3, 4, 10, 11 ~ from 12pm to 6pm in Hollywood and the Westside.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
SubmissionBros.com
(310) 259-0739 M-S/10a-6p
(submitted by Heather Winn)
Film, Stage & ShowBiz Expo is a five-star event that brings everyone in Show Business together under one roof. Whether you are a Producer, Studio Executive, Director, Musician, Filmmaker, Performer, Designer, Writer, Stage Manager, or anyone else involved in Film, Stage and Show Business, this event is for you.
Due to expanded distribution to new channels, Demand Studios is recruiting several freelance writers to research specific assignments and write concise and informative articles around those topics. As one of the web’s leading writing communities, Demand Studios is responsible for publishing thousands of articles a day to a large network of premium media brands including Livestrong.com, eHow.com and Trails.com. Apply today to start writing on the topics that you’re passionate about in the comfort of your own home.
The Job:
• Choose from thousands of unique titles, claim and work on multiple assignments at a time, and enjoy the flexibility of working around your schedule
• Writers are paid per article through multiple payment options - upfront and royalty based
• Payments are made at the end of each week and are deposited directly into your PayPal account (payments average in the $15/$20 per article range)
• All writers receive a byline on each piece written, to help build exposure for your talents
Qualifications:
• Educational/Professional background in Journalism or related degree
• Some writing experience and/or expertise in a specific topic category
Apply Today:
To apply, please upload your resume and writing sample via our online application: https://www.demandstudios.com/application.html?role=Writer&utm_source=craigslist&utm_medium=jobpost&utm_campaign=app
Location: work from home
Compensation: $15/$20 per article
Telecommuting is ok.
This is a part-time job.
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PostingID: 1328232448
Our Apologies.
The Jule Selbo Event is Sold Out.
Best,
OC Screenwriters
I had a conversation a few days ago with an aspiring screenwriter who spent a good part of an hour telling me about all the ideas he wants to put in script form. His excitement was followed by confiding about his feelings about all the horror stories he hears and the cynicism that shows up in articles and even books on the subject of the film business and specifically the world of Hollywood. That was a prime example of the conflict between a passion for the craft – A yearning to release the stories the writer carries - and the realities of the movie business. Are those two worlds really in conflict or is it just a matter of viewpoint?
A couple of weeks ago I attended a talk on archetypes in film led by Jim Curtan, an ex-Hollywood talent agent whose portfolio of clients included John Travolta, Geena Davis, and Willem Dafoe among other big names. One of the questions that Jim brought up for the sake of discussion was: What is it about some movies that attracts or touches so many people? Classics like “The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” have become household titles and holiday staples. Super heroes like Superman and Batman have been portrayed in so many different plots and storylines that have always attracted the public. What keeps them coming?
the Jesus story). In Jim’s words “Batman is a contemporary symbol of Christ as scapegoat bearing the sins of people.” The viewer might not go that deep in their analysis but they know they want to keep watching. The story has power and appeal.
Such knowledge or awareness is not easy to acquire because writers don't just have to know about archetypes but rather to dig deep within themselves and touch their darkest and most vulnerable places. It is an experience rather than an understanding. In a way it is the writer’s own hero’s journey that allows them to return with the boon, their unique boon, than can then be expressed powerfully in their stories and their writing.
MAMET TALKS by Tom McCurrie
After reviewing several multiplexes worth of movies, I figured I'd take a break and review one of the writers of those movies: David Mamet (THE UNTOUCHABLES, HOFFA, HEIST.)
Recently I (Tom Currie) attended a Q & A session with Mamet at the Writer's Guild Theatre in Los Angeles. Now I have to admit, Mamet came across like an irascible, cocksure SOB -- then again, if you won the Pulitzer for GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, wouldn't you? Still, Mamet had some very interesting, and controversial, things to say about screenwriting circa 2003. Here they are, in no particular order (forgive my paraphrasing, Mr. Mamet):
1) Don't write screenplays to sell. If they're good, Hollywood won't want them. And if you try and write down to the mediocre tastes of studio execs, you're only training yourself to be subservient to the demands of "second-class minds" who will soon kill off your creative spark altogether. Instead, write something you're passionate as hell about...and make a movie of it yourself (unless your spec has the budgetof MASTER & COMMANDER, of course).
2) Never write exposition. And I mean never. Let plot and dialogue push your story along.
3) The ability to write is a gift. If you don't got it, you don't got it. If you do got it, Craft can make this gift even better.
4) Most writers don't got it (a.k.a. they suck).
5) Directing makes you a better writer since it teaches you to cut for pace.
6) Write till you can't do any better, then move on to the next project.
7) Read Aristotle's POETICS and Joseph Campbell's THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. These will tell you all you need to know about writing.
8) Write each day, even if it's just for three minutes at a time.
9) Writing is hard and always will be. It doesn't get easier the
more you do it.
10) There's no such thing as character in a script. There's just a good story with good actors talking.
11) Narration can be either good or bad, depending on the writer.
12) Get out of school as soon as possible. Experience Life. Put that experience in your script.
13) Biography is the hardest to write since you're trapped by actual events -- and actual events aren't necessarily dramatic. Use Poetic License to remedy this situation.
14) Don't write and drink at the same time.
15) All movies are about good and evil (or should be).
16) Some of Mamet's favorite movies are DUMBO, GALAXY QUEST and THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COLONEL BLIMP.
17) All writing is getting over what happened to you before you were ten years old.
18) God is a mystery. And writing is a way of getting closer to that mystery.
19) Mamet's formula for a good script -- a simple premise with unforeseeable twists and turns.
20) Mamet can't explain the writing process. That's because he works unconsciously.
21) Forget every rule Syd Field, Robert McKee or any other screenwriting guru ever taught you. Except one..."Never Be Boring."
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
Five easy pieces: thoughts and analysis
by Mark Sevi
Exclusive to the Orange County Screenwriters Association
Written more than thirty years, "Five Easy Pieces" is a story about loss and alienation in a post-Vietnam, post-hippie world. But it has still-timely lessons for today’s writers both personally and professionally.
The loss is the loss of the innocence of youth when a mother’s touch and guidance could buffer one from the harsh realities of the world and seemingly make us fit into this world even if we are the proverbial square peg in a round hole. The alienation is one of intellect and societal norms that weigh us down and force us to do what is expected, rather than what we want. Also, this film reflects both the loss and alienation of unrealistic expectations - the expectations of youth when everything seems possible.
The Nicholson character, Bobby, loses (through death) his mother’s guidance as a young man (this is only dealt with in the script - his mother is never mentioned in the film). This sets within him the seeds of an alienation that become so profound that heust flee his upper-class, musical arts-infused upbringing that has ultimately failed him. He leaves after his mother’s death and drops into a world that asks little of him but also gives little in return. But for a while, that’s enough for Bobby. When your loss is this profound, you go numb. Bobby is numb and stays numb for many years after his mother’s death.
Imagine a young man who hates the pretense and confinement of his upbringing which was insular, incestuous (experiences, not sexual), and filled with endless obligations that weren’t a lot of fun. Add in the fact that Bobby, the youngest, never quite fit with his older siblings (and father) who seemed to flourish in this stifling environment and you have the makings of a young man who can’t seem to find his place in any world. Sensing or knowing that, it’s simply easier to just drop out and live a
mundane existence. This becomes the Bobby we first meet as the film opens. Without the buffer of his beloved mother, he just- is.
In Bobby’s blue collar world, the only thing asked of him is being a good old boy, to buy a round occasionally, and to bowl a game once a week. What he doesn’t realize is that even alliances of convenience in this world require you to participate in other people’s lives. That participation sometimes become chains that hold you strongly in place against your will. We can certainly all relate to that.
Rayette, Bobby’s Miss-Right-Now, takes her relationship with him seriously even if he doesn’t, and doesn’t see it for the sexual companionship trifle that Bobby does. She becomes pregnant by him, and clingy and suddenly, those chains that held Bobby in Seattle when he was younger are quickly transferred to his neck in the oil fields of Signal Hill, California. When his “friend”, Elden, (Bobby has no real friends because he is incapable of forming alliances that aren’t just temporary), mentions that (1) he should “get him one of those” (a kid), (2) that Rayette is in fact pregnant, and (3) that just hanging with the wife and kid is what basically makes Elden happy, Bobby has a fit and says “It’s ridiculous. I’m sittin’ here listenin’ to some asshole cracker compare his life to mine.” - and - “Just keep tellin’ me about the good life, Elden. If you want ‘a see me puke my lunch.”
This sounds a bell in our minds that Bobby isn’t the Okey-Doky good old boy he appears to be in the opening scenes. There’s something fundamentally different about him from Elden and Rayette. A higher sensibility, perhaps, about the tedium and sorrows of life. This so-called “higher sensibility” about life is pre-shadowed in the scene on the freeway when Bobby climbs on a truck and plays a piano like a concert pianist. Who knew he could play like that? It’s a simple scene, quickly done but it says so much about this character. Here’s our good buddy Bobby, hungover from a night of debauchery with Elden and two “working girls”, just been bounced from work because he can’t walk straight, swearing up a storm about the traffic jam they’re stuck in - and yet, he has this amazing musical talent that speaks of hours of higher-ed training buried inside. Most certainly this is a man of contradictions who just can’t be comfortable in either world. This is also subtly expressed in the fact that the truck he’s on, while he’s playing, takes an off-ramp away from the “sheep” who are in line waiting- for the traffic jam to clear. A sign that Bobby is a man who walks his own path, mostly unaware of where he’s going. He’s reactive rather than proactive in his own life.
As smart as he is, Bobby can’t reconcile his uncertainty no matter where he is or how he tries. Seeking some solace and relief from Rayette’s constant barrage of love pronouncements, Bobby agrees to go see his father who has suffered a major stroke 
and may not live. Once there, his clumsy attempts at his brother’s fiancé lead to a sexual union but a total rejection from her of him in any other way. This goes back to his mother and his confusion over her he takes with him all his life. When he asks Katherine “And living out here in this rest home asylum, that’s what you want?” and she says “Yes”, Bobby simply cannot accept it. He just says “Okay” and allows her to walk away from him. This is him, talking to his long dead mother. How could you live here, he asks her. How could you die here? Why did you never escape? He clearly doesn’t want to make the same mistake she did.
It’s appropriate that his father is stroke-ridden and cannot respond in any way to him. This was their relationship when he was young - even given full range of faculties, the old man never loved him like his mother did - he was for all intents and purposes stroke-addled.
In a deeper, existential sense his father represents God, the father, white beard and all. This is not really a contradiction. We talk to God all the time as we try to make sense of our world. He never answers us - we see results that we attribute to God but this is just as likely coincidence - according to the film makers. If there is a God, he is an uncommunicative old man who doesn’t interact with us in any way but has a profound influence, usually negative, on our lives. This philosophy skews toward the religious-existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard that basically states that there may be a God but he cares nothing for us and our goings-on.
The fact that Bobby’s father is stroke-damaged, as helpless as a child, is highly significant. This is a sign that the Bobby of his youth no longer sees the all-powerful man his father was. In leaving, he turned his back on his father and his iron-will but he also left when the man was vital and strong. Now he says “I can’t stand to see him this way.” In other words, he’s outgrowing the childish image of his father that he had. Many of us see this as our parents age and become unfirm. It’s hard, impossible, to look at their shrinking, wrinkled forms and remember the vibrant, strong people they were. This cadaver on wheels shakes Bobby to his core. It means he’s getting old. He sees his own fleeing years in the reflection of his father’s lined face. It’s a reminder of his own mortality and a rite of passage into final adulthood. And it’s a direct metaphor for Bobby’s lack of faith in anything anymore. Father = God. Both are damaged goods. Neither is the answer to his eternal quest for clarity in his life. If he is to solve his angst, he must do it without guidance either from him mother, long dead, or from his father, impotent with disease.
In response, Bobby seduces his brother’s fiancé - a way of proving he’s still viable, still vibrant, still strong, unlike his withered father. He disastrously seeks solace and vibrancy in this woman’s stable but pedestrian world. When she finally rejects him, he knows that he is truly, wholly alone and must make his own way in the world.
Bobby makes one more attempt at finding a place to be. He takes his father to an open
field to seek answers. It’s isolated, as is Bobby, and confessional in nature. He tries to form the basis for his life’s confusions but he simply can’t. And “God” can’t or won’t communicate the answer to help him. In the end, Bobby cries the tears of a child who has been abandoned and hurt. We don’t want to grow up, but we must - Bobby doesn’t want that either.
Bobby’s confusion is the confusion of many people, even today, who don’t see themselves as fitting in this world of Christian values - or really, the values of any religion or society.
This story was written at a time when disaffected youth, stunned by the lack of any real progress of the social movements of the 60's, suddenly had to deal with the realities of the world. They had to find a way to fit somewhere between the idealism of their youth and the fact that they needed to get a job, find a place to live, and bring children into a world that was changing rapidly. Vietnam, Watergate and the sudden realization of the shallowness of society is represented by Bobby’s loss of a mother who loved and nurtured him.
In the 70's there was no comfortable place for these hippy, quasi-adults who were now too young to screw around anymore and too old to be cute in their oft-expressed disdain of the world. Where, in fact, do you go when you’re abandoned by everything? Bobby tells us through his story - nowhere fast.
In the end, Bobby divests himself of his identity - wallet, car, girlfriend and even clothing (a jacket that he leaves behind even though he’s heading to frigid temps) and hitches a ride to one of the bleakest places on Earth - Alaska - where he will disappear and begin again without identity. Some say this is resignedly existential - that there is no happy ending for Bobby. I think you can stretch a point and view the ending in alternate terms - more messianic - death to self to pay for your sins, then to rise again. It’s up to your interpretation.
At it’s core, it is an existential world vision though. “Five Easy Pieces” seems anything but deep or moving initially. It feels like it wanders without much rhyme or reason. But the more you watch it, think about it - the deeper you dig, the deeper it gets until you discover that it’s a sinkhole leading to places dark, dangerous and personally deadly.
~ Mark Sevi is professional screenwriter living in Southern California. As of this writing he has over 18 produced films. He also teaches screenwriting and writes articles about writing for national pubs about scriptwriting.