End of the Month Update

My son and I probably only have a couple of days worth of working on our Monkey Kid Book before it will be completed!  I'm looking forward to it and reading it as a bedtime story.

A lot of progress has been made on my Crazy Family Feature Screenplay.  I've got a lot of the background information done, and I'll be working on creating my organic plot with the twenty-two-steps of story structure.

Monkey Kid Book Update

My son and I have been working on our kid book for the last three days!  We're really getting into a groove which a looming deadline has helped to get him motivated on it.  He has "show and tell" at school in a couple of weeks and he wants to bring it.

He's having a lot of fun and it's cool to think about he likes it so much that he wants to share it with his class.  That's what it's all about, writing a great story and sharing it with the world.

R.I.P. Harold Ramis

(Image from IMDB.com)

I was shocked today when I learned that comic genius Harold Ramis passed away today.  He was only 69.  He had health issues since 2010 that I wasn't aware of, so this took me completely by surprise.

I won't delve into his entire filmography, you can find it on the IMDB here.  But here are some of my personal favorites.

SCTV was a Canadian sketch comedy show which he was the head writer.  It starred the likes of John Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Dave Thomas, and a personal favorite, Rick Moranis.

Animal House, Caddyshack (which was also his directorial debut), and National Lampoon Vacation which he directed (written by another personal favorite of John Hughes).

Ghostbusters and Groundhog day were simply two amazing films.  They are ones that I've seen a few times and never get tired of them.  Both just brilliant and again, I don't need to go into detail about them, most people know how good they are.

With his passing I wonder if Ghostbusters 3 will ever get made, he was a big part of that, and it would be hard to image the movie without him (and without Bill Murray who has expressed no interest in reprising his role of Dr. Peter Venkman).

It makes me ponder his legacy and what sort of, if any, influence I will have on the film industry.  Certainly, he got off to a much earlier start, and I won't be able to match his creative output, but I hope that I can get a few noteworthy films out.

I need to go, it's getting late and I'm in the mood to watch Harold in action in Ghostbusters.

Continuing with the Monkey Kid Book

My son surprised me when he wanted to work on our Monkey Kid Book idea.  It's been a while since we've worked on it more than once in a month, so it was nice.  We're only about 5 or 6 pages away from being done!

Crazy Family Feature Work

There hasn't been a lot of variety lately in my writing, that happens when I'm working on a feature.  I've been going full steam ahead writing the crazy family feature movie idea outline.  I've mainly been working on the techniques I learned from John Truby's "The Anatomy of Story."  When I come up with an interesting idea, I'll jot it down, but it's mostly fleshing out the character and the story world.

So that's the only update and since I'm working on it so much, there probably won't be too much more to say about it in the near future.  So keep on writing and I'll do the same!

Monkey Kid Book Work

My son and I got a little work in on our kid book.  He's starting to get more into it again and I hope we get a lot more pages done this month!

Vail Commercial Idea

I had come up with a great 1 minute commercial idea for Vail Ski Resorts.  I wanted to use the last couple of days to actually write this one up so I could use it as a writing sample for more commercial writing work.  I wanted this one to be a little longer than usual, it would be something more on their website than shown on TV.  Plus, this one had more emotional appeal to it and I wanted the time to get that across.