Suspicious ballot photos posted by Iran state media?

This item is from Nico Pitney's liveblog at the Huffington Post. It is fortunate for the moral arc of the universe that criminals are, by and large, stupid -- and here they appear to be broadcasting evidence of their own crimes:

12:23 PM ET -- Suspicious ballot photos posted by Iran state media? A reader writes, "I believe this is well worth reporting: many interesting photos are being put on the web as I write, a good number of them published by IRNA itself (see here). These are images from the recent Guardians Council TV broadcast session where they 'recounted' some ballot boxes and found out that indeed Ahmadinejad's votes were higher than previously counted. These pictures show two things very clearly: 1) that a whole lot of the ballots that are being recounted are fresh, crisp, unfolded sheets - which makes no sense, given that people typically had to fold these sheets before they can slip them into the ballot boxes, and 2) that the handwriting on so many of the sheets which are votes for 'Ahmadinejad' are the same handwriting (and very clearly so)."

Pitney goes on to post another item providing more evidence of vast and clumsy fraud:

1:06 PM ET -- Rezai's spokesman claims ballots had similar handwriting. Mohsen Rezai, the most conservative of the three 'defeated' presidential candidates in Iran's election, agreed to drop his official election complaints several days ago. But Rezai's unofficial spokesman Omidvar Rasai charges in an interview here that "between 70 to 80 percent of the votes in some constituencies was written with the same pen and with the handwriting of a single individual."

Track Record, Track Record, Track Record

If you're fortunate enough to get more than one option offer on a script you've written and are trying to figure out who to sign with, I recommend going with the producer with the best track record -- even to the point where doing so might mean foregoing a decent option payment (around $1,000) versus a negligible option payment.

In my experience, track record -- how many films they've made and how consistently they've done so recently -- has been a better indicator of whether or not they'll be able to get your film made.

Two different companies were able to get me thousands of dollars in options -- but neither were able to make the movie. They also had few to no movies made, though they did have good financing connections.

On the other hand, a $100 option led to the assignment that got me my first film, and I worked with another producer with no option at all that eventually would've gotten set up as a little indie if I hadn't optioned the script to someone else first. Both these people had consistent (though not spectacular) credits. I think the consistency counts for a lot. People who get things done, get things done.

Was horror the best choice?

I like horror films so that's what I started out writing. And there's generally a number of smaller production companies out there looking for horror -- so it's also a practical choice. However, at the moment, the well appears to have dried up so it's not so practical now ... though it seems these sorts of trends can change every six months.

In retrospect, though, I think there was a problem with writing horror, or at least focusing so heavily on it. Horror, particularly teen, Freddy and Jason kind of horror, is intrinsically a reactive genre -- and this and other features make it a genre where it's challenging to demonstrate or develop your character building skills.

In fact, through the original Friday the 13th, the protagonists spend the majority of the film not even knowing that they're being attacked. They neither are nor can be proactive simply because they don't realize that there's anything to be proactive against.

But in most stories we much prefer our characters to drive the action -- this is how we get them to reveal their inner selves and turmoil.

This is compounded by the fact that another intrinsic feature of horror is that the characters are grossly outmatched. They can't drive the narrative because they're too busy getting their asses kicked.

A Nightmare on Elm Street actually manages to create a strikingly pro-active heroine in the Nancy character, and is a good film to study for keeping the heroine in the driver's seat -- but this is also a rare feature of the pure horror film.

Another problem with horror films is that you've got a limited amount of time to do any character development with the side characters. After all, at least one of them dies by minute 20. That means you've got 20 minutes to establish your setting, introduce the stars, set up the bad guy, and generate enough feeling for this poor dead-on-page-20 schmuck that he won't feel like a throwaway. Let alone all the other secondary characters who get eviscerated before they ever get a chance to complete even a partial character arc.

The couple family films I wrote on the other hand have plenty of time to see all the characters through to the end and they're almost completely driven by the young protagonist on their quest -- things very conducive to fooling producers into thinking that you're a much more serious-minded and sensitive writer than you actually are.

That said, I'm not sure family films are great for breaking in from outside. I don't think they were 5 years ago -- but I have noticed more small companies looking far afield for family films lately, so that might be changing.

Looking backwards, I suspect thrillers would have been good to develop. They're hero driven, many of the characters stick around for a long time, and there's also a wide market for them -- small companies look for them for DVD features, cable movies, TV movies, and particularly strong ones can also be picked up as theatrical releases.

Supernatural thrillers (by this I mean tamer, wider-audience horror films like The Sixth Sense or even The Ring) also have some of these strengths, but I'm concerned that these need a name star to sign on, which means they need to be higher budget, which means it's harder for someone outside the town to get to the kind of production company that can finance them.

Writing from the Wild

UPDATE 11/13/2009 -- the other blog is dead and gone because I am a slacker.

I'm starting up a second blog called Writing from the Wild -- this one focused solely on screenwriting.

It seems that I've made enough headway to call this a career, and so far I've done it entirely from outside of Los Angeles, which is particularly problematic for screenwriting. So I thought I'd share my experiences and talk about stuff that worked and didn't work, as well as theories pulled out of my ass, in case it'd be helpful for other people trying their hands at screenwriting from the lands of no In-N-Out.

I'm copying my screenwriting posts over there. But I'll also leave them here and generally keep this blog up to date at my standard glacial pace.

Billy Unger Wins and Cop Dog Pandemic

Billy Unger ended up winning Best Performance in a DVD Film at the Young Artists Awards!

He's also in like a dozen movies coming out over the next year or two.

The lead actress, Cassi Thomson, has also landed a recurring role in HBO's Big Love, playing Chloë Sevigny's secret daughter.

Finally, COP DOG has spread via cable and satellite to more portions of the world:

-- on DVD in Australia

-- on the Superchannel across Canada

-- and on HBO in Mexico and pretty much every other country south of Texas.

-- but still not the part of North America between Canada and Mexico... I blame Lou Dobbs.

Squirrel Tricks

We've been feeding the squirrels in Central Park lately and noticed a couple tricks they've learned.

The parks people put out little feeders for the birds -- and, knowing that squirrels will go after the seeds, they hang these small feeders on the thinnest branches so that only the light birds can get to them. But the squirrel in this first photo is brave -- he climbs down the thin branch to the very end, then pulls up the string hand-over-hand to drag the basket closer, then holds the basket with one paw and grabs seeds out of it with the other.

The pigeons have also figured out a strategy for this -- the squirrel drops a lot of seeds in the process so they all hang out below the basket.


As you can see in the second photo, they aren't shy. They also have another thing, which I suspect is a trick. You'll throw them a peanut and it lands maybe a foot from them, but they'll wander around looking for it and not finding it. Sometimes even walking right past it so their butt is practically hanging over the peanut.

We point and make clicking sounds to get them going the right direction, but eventually grow so frustrated that we simply toss them another peanut. Playing dumb gets you twice the food...

Pissbook

We're sitting at yet another NY Starbucks and over the course of a few hours as we watch out the window, every dog that passes the stack of garbage bags outside first sniffs them, then pees on them. It's Facebook for dogs.

15 Days

My dad wrote a little short story a couple weeks ago and I thought it'd make a strong short script (and be really easy to adapt -- all I did was change the formatting!)

So I spent a couple hours re-formatting, showed it to him, and then sent it off to a couple places asking for short scripts. 15 days later and a director now wants to make it.

It took me five years! I'd call my dad a bastard, but I think that might backfire on me in some way.

Low Budget Awards Season

The Oscars are over -- so now it's time for the movies that cost less than the dresses worn at the Oscars!

Billy Unger is nominated for best performance in a DVD film at the 30th Annual Young Artists Awards. Go Billy!

You'll need to scroll down to the bottom to see the list of nominees -- but he's doing well in a category where two of the other films are by Disney and Universal.


Also, my horror screenplays RED SKIES and THE SOUND are both finalists in the 2009 Paranoia Horror Film Festival script contest. After seeing their website I figured that my goriest screenplays might have a better shot.

Given that the IFFF where COP DOG showed was Feb 26-March 1, the Paranoia Film Festival is March 13-15, and the Young Artists Awards are on March 29th, and we just had 10 inches of snow dumped on us and wind chill is sub-zero -- you can imagine that this is a month I particularly wish I was in L.A.

The Marketing Strategy

The headline above is from the New York Times and if I were the Obama team I'd SEIZE on it.

Everybody thinks they're middle-class, or at least has reasonable hopes that they're on their way to being middle-class. He might even manage to get crazy Lou Dobbs on board.

7th Anniversary

We don't make a big deal about our wedding anniversary and don't mention it to people, but at dinner last night -- our 7th -- got this fortune in my cookie.

COP DOG at 2009 International Family Film Festival

COP DOG now has an official page at the 2009 International Film Festival.

It's showing at 12:30 PM on Sunday, March 1. I won't be making it, but I think much of the cast will be there.