Kelly's Ready To Write SILVERFISH!!!

I don't believe I've shared this with you yet, but I have a goal:

5 screenplays in 2006!!!

I realized earlier this month that I've been focusing on WRITING for the last 3 or 8 years, but I haven't been focusing on my CAREER as a writer.

So, taking stock what I know, I decided I'm in a position to try to start my career again. Most experts will tell you to have 3 good screenplays to take to Hollywood with you. One guy suggested that to get your screenwriting career started you be writing 6 screenplays a year. But because I'm just as arbitrary as the next fellow, and I have to do things MY way, I settled on 5 screenplays this year.

Now, I knew from talking with Kelly at the end of last year and the beginning of this year that he would very likely be ready for me to join him in co-writing his screenplay sometime in 2006. (he's been developing it, figuring out themes and characters and tentpole moments in the piece, but he had chosen to share the writing duty, 'cause that just MORE FUN than doing it alone!) And so I had decided that if Kelly were indeed ready to write SILVERFISH (working title) this year -- and I ahd already enthusiastically told him that I would drop whatever I was doing to help him write it, since he's working for a production company and all but has a secured green-light already -- I could count that as one of my screenplays for 2006.

See, the point of the screenplays is to have writing samples. That's how you get assignments (like, say, doing the next MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie for a studio, or writing Warner Brothers' next DC Comics-based movie; just for example), or how you get hired on to write for series television. (Those usually, for a TV show, they'd prefer to read a spec teleplay for some other show, just so they can see you can write for TV.)

But even if you sell one of your spec scripts (the scripts you didn't write on assignment; the scripts you didn't write for a paycheck) agents and studios and production companies like to see that you're A WRITER, as opposed to someone who had ONE good screenplay in them.

Therefore, for an aspiring screenwriter to get into the habbit of writing 6 (or 5) scripts a year makes a lot of sense, because it teaches you to write and write and keep writing.

Now here's where this becomes a Ray Jay Story...

So for the past 2 days I'm trying to figure out what my first screenplay this year is going to be. I've got a good character here, some good backstory there, but not that CLICK moment when you know you've got a good movie.

Then my buddy Kelly calls me up!

He tried to call Sunday, but I didn't get his message in time, so when I called him back he had already gone to bed or something.

But he calls me up at work -- late, so I've got plenty of time to talk -- and we catch up, then we start talking about the movie.

And as we're talking, I'm hearing a lot of what I've been hearing in previous conversations, only now it's locking together. What I'm hearing is that he's not coming up with a lot of NEW material, he's been exploring how the material he's already created fits together!!!

Whether he knows it or not, I suspect, he's ready to write this movie!

So I pop the question: "It sounds like it's time for us to write this."

His reply is quick and decisive: "It's time for us to right this! We've got to write this NOW!"

So now I don't have to wonder what my first screenplay of 5 will be, it's gonna be KELLY'S MOVIE!!!

And like I said, the production company he works for KNOWS he's a writer/director, and they're WAITING for him to hit 'em with a finished screenplay! And Kel seems to have an idea how he can shoot this thing with the resources he has at his disposal. (Some of these resources would astound you!!! Like the ability to take 15 pound off an already hot singer for her music video -- I've SEEN IT!)

So I am, naturally, ELATED!!! Not only has my first screenplay landed in my lap, but I don't have to write it alone!!! AND, it VERY WELL may turn out to be my first PRODUCED screenplay!!! (Second, if you count a pilot for an independant TV series that never got bought, back around 1995-ish. )

So YAY!!!

GREAT evening for Ray Jay!!!

And I'll be keeping you updated, natch.

PEACE!!!