I loved watching movies in the living room as a kid.

Movies simultaneously reflected life and defied it. I would lose myself completely and then find myself all over by the end credits of a good movie. I watched them repeatedly until I eventually memorized every beat, line, music cue, and shot. Star Wars, Mighty Ducks, Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Heavyweights, The Rocketeer, It’s a Gift… these were tapes to be treasured and cherished because they reminded you that you were alive. They shone a light and winked at you and took you on an adventure.

When I was eleven or so I saved up and bought a VHS shoulder-mounted camcorder and started making some movies of my own starring my dog, my family, and my best friends. It was really fun, challenging, a testament to sharing – shooting and watching together, a declaration of close relationships and ambition. In high school, I quit drumline to free up my schedule so I could take Video Production class, which I took over and over. That was where I met Brandon, my best friend in high school.

Filmmaking felt so natural and so neccessary, even back then.

We went on some road trips and got paid to shoot an ill-fated documentary in Thailand. He went to Chapman University, I went to Brooks Institute… college was everything they said it would be and we we made films the whole time. Family was there through it all. My grandfather gave me his old Charlie Chaplin tapes before he passed. My mom called and worried about my general health and safety. My grandfather in Colorado passed away. I got poison oak on my face from rolling around in it shooting Somewhere Else and got a shot of penicillin and a much bigger rash, over my whole body (discovering you’re allergic=kodak moment). My Dad froze a lot of money on a credit card so I could rent a set of Zeiss lenses for Relentless, my thesis film. My sister kept in touch from the other side of America.

After graduating from Brooks, I moved in with Brandon and his roommate from college, Alex. We lived in Anaheim. Brandon and Alex had just dropped out of school and every night at 8 o’clock we heard the fireworks shooting off over Disneyland. It was a confusing time. Anaheim is a city of trickery, candlight, and dissapointed immigrants. We shot Young Again. The whole time I was driving to Sunset Blvd. to and fro working as a development intern, covering scripts. Most of the scripts were bad. The few good ones never saw the light of day because no one could sell them. I wore a lot of black, drank Red Bull on the long car rides, listened to reprehensible talk radio, and read about neuro-linguistic programming and Myers-Briggs typology and wondered if I could find the key. It sounds like the movie Pi but thankfully I didn’t drill a hole in my head.

I moved to North Carolina for a change and worked at a summer camp for nine months. How one works at a summer camp for nine months is a story for another time but I would recommend it to anyone.

More trials and tribulations in the family as loved ones are taken away once more… Meanwhile, Alex and Brandon had experienced some sort of epiphany and started asking me if I was interested in moving back to the West Coast to make films and be a part of something new and exciting that had something to do with free market economics, re-signification, and justice and freedom for all. Alex had been helping his sister Melody structure her first feature screenplay The Last Days of Summer for some time now.

Alex and I had sort of avoided each other in the past. He was threatening because it seemed he had replaced me as the best friend / filmmaker buddy in Brandon’s life… we kept it cordial (we did watch Deadwood together, after all)… but those early cross-country calls quickly forged a basic mutual understanding. I was about finished up with my time at the camp. I ditched my plans to join the Peace Corps and moved to Las Vegas, where The Last Days of Summer was set.

You take one long drive across the U.S. for me. You add a pinch of doubt and excitement, a nearly fatal car crash for Brandon, and for Alex – the sight of his car slamming into a rock wall in the middle of the night. Mix in desires, fears and testosterone, pour into a blender and liquify on high.

Hazy period follows… trial by fire, calls to arms, refusals to back down. I get a job. Start writing the new way. Frustration. Unfuifillment. Aspiration. Plans. Failed blogs. Mistakes and dishonesty called out. Torrential storm of arguments, misunderstandings, dreams, epiphanies, failures, over-commitments, realizations, broken hearts… Melody and Josh arrive. Writing meetings. Connections made. Steps backward, steps forward. Leases signed. Tuffy Jones. The Last Days of Summer screenplay is finished. Apologies, forgiveness. Water under the bridge. Some came and some went. Lines were drawn. We grew closer. I helped one guy get hired as a watch repairer… he was from New York and got fired. Daniel moved in. A television was purchased. We started meeting regularly and started making concrete decisions and actions… out of desperation, clarity, or boredom, I could not say. We worked on the budget, the schedule of the shoot, the business plan, came up with a name. I keep writing a screenplay about a knight named Goodheart. We start the blog.

And I think about my friends in LA, and my family on both coasts, and my friends in Oklahoma, and New Mexico, and Denmark, and who knows where else. On down days I wonder if I made a mistake by coming here… because I miss them and I have a picture in my idea of a different life but I know I must let these feelings go. There are things to be thankful for. There are things to be excited and scared about. There is art and there is family and there is God, and an understanding that times like this should not be shied away from.

-Max

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to live the life that is waiting for us.”
E. M. Foster

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Winston Churchill

I was majoring in TV/Film Production at the Brooks Institute of Photography (which is now called Brooks Institute) and was required to take a series of 16mm Workshop classes to graduate. This was in 2006.

In the first two-month class, the students were required to write a low-budget screenplay under ten pages. I wrote a short drama about two punk teenagers on the run from the law, their brief love affair, and their eventual split. In the second class, everyone voted to decide which two screenplays would be put into production. “Escape! from Robot Island” and “Hideaway” were selected. My screenplay was not.

At this point, everyone put their name up on a list candidates for the position(s) they wanted. I put myself up as a candidate to direct “Hideaway,” if I remember correctly. Tim Thompson was the obvious and perfect choice for “Escape! from Robot Island.”

Well, I was not selected to direct “Hideaway” (the very talented Jacob Chase was).

I knew I had to fill a position to pass the class. Everyone raced to pick their 2nd and 3rd choices. I noticed the Electronic Press Kit position. An Electronic Press Kit (EPK) for a film is usually comprised of promotional videos and stills. They are used by major studios and independent production companies to advertise to potential audiences, film festival selection panels, acquisition executives, etc.

I took the position uncontested. I figured that I could make a documentary while operating under the guise of making a “Behind the Scenes/EPK” video for “Escape! from Robot Island.” I just hoped that my professor and peers wouldn’t mind too much when they realized I had not made a “promotional tool” for the film.

I had complete creative control. Naturally, my camera was drawn to the people and interactions that interested me, namely the writer/directors involved in “Escape! from Robot Island.” You have to remember that many of the aspiring writers and directors in my class had just put up their screenplays and been rejected, put up their names to direct and had been rejected, had agreed to fill their 2nd or 3rd choice crew position, and had been required to pay their share (about $650) to finance the film.

And these are all young, ambitious, gutsy, talented kids with crazy dreams. The ones who decided to pay to go to film school. The ones who survived the first two years and DID NOT drop out despite the advice of their family, friends, professors, and the succession of failures that filmmaking inevitably brings. And we all collided in a situation which caused us all to doubt and dream in ways we hadn’t before…

I tried to capture some of that story in The Making of Escape! from Robot Island. I hope you enjoy it.

My “EPK” received a lot of praise and its share of criticism when I showed it in class. The professor said that if I could cut it down to twenty minutes he would show it to every incoming Workshop class. But I was gearing up for my thesis, so I didn’t follow up on his offer.

And here is the “making of” video…

I spent a year after graduating film school wanting to write. Did I write?

Nope.

I tried to. But I was too hungry. Or too tired. As soon as I would sit down to write, some unimportant task (such as checking emails or writing cover letters) would become a huge priority in my life. I couldn’t sit down and type out the stories I had mapped out in my head.

I watched Eyes Wide Shut, The Shining, The Empire Strikes Back, and a ton of my other favorite movies to get inspired. I became fixated on crazy dream images, hoping one of them would lead into a great story. I even tried to created characters based on some of my favorite songs. I still couldn’t write past page 2. I was devastated.

Why did I want to write so bad? Because I wanted to make another film. Why did I want to make another film? Because on set I’m surrounded by some of my favorite people, it’s challenging to get to the emotional core of something and amazing when you can somehow portray it to others, and it’s a great way to almost kill yourself and feel like some crazy survivor afterwards. Plus, 95% of everything else, as an activity, bores me.

I was getting desperate. Then, circumstances in my life changed. I can take credit for some of the changes during this time. The rest were out of my hands.

When my life changed, so did my thoughts on writing, my writing style, and my writing habits. The only thing that didn’t change was the core of the writing itself, what interested me as a person on a very basic level… a few themes that carry over into everything I write. But back to the things that changed in my life.

Here they are, to best of my knowledge:

* I started taking more responsibility for what I say and do, and for my own reactions to people, events, and ideas.
* I accepted a YMCA job that forced me to work with a large group of coworkers/teammates.
* I involved myself in other’s people’s lives. I became a confidant for others.
* I met people halfway to mend/build relationships by beginning to speak with them more openly and honestly.

The funny (sad) part is is that I’ve known these things, known I should have been living this way, for years. But I was still wrapped up in myself (even after a lot of good changes), and it took some encouragement from a good friend to step up as a person and start living differently, the way I knew I should. It’s sort of like remembering, all in one big rush, the expectations I had for myself as an adult when I was a kid.

You might be thinking, “What a wacko.” That’s understandable.

It wasn’t easy to hear what I already knew from a friend, to be told I was living the wrong way. There was yelling involved. I don’t usually yell when I’m angry. I almost shut down. So I understand why you might write me off.

Now:

* I’m more assertive, I can have more casual conversations with strangers.
* I am less critical in general, of myself and others (which allows me to write, instead of worrying about how much I suck at writing).
* I give less advice and listen more.
* I try not to ruin apologies with excuses.
* I’m not as intimidated by other people’s success.
* I am much more interested in tomorrow, in the future.
* I am not as easily offended or hurt by what people say.
* When I share my fears to a trusted friend/family member, its power over me begins to subside.

It was silly of me to be worried about not being able to write, as if I could separate that conflict from the rest and fix it. Well… we learn.

For now, I have one piece of advice for screenwriters…

If you want to write more often than you are, or if you can’t write the things you want to write about, talk to someone. That’s basically what we’re doing with art, right? So take baby steps. Before you pick up a pen and attempt to connect to a bunch of people, start with one and have a conversation.

To properly even out my advice, a quote from Goethe:

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better than book or orator.

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. – Gene Fowler

I’m pretty sure what everyone has been calling “writer’s block” is just anxiety. Sometimes I find it hard to move forward on a screenplay I’ve been working on because I’m scared I don’t know who my characters are and what they actually are feeling, or what they believe. I’ve been having them go about their daily “business,” finding a few hints about what’s really going on here and there… but I’m slowly beginning to doubt myself, because they feel like strangers.

Inevitably, whatever the character is really feeling comes rushing out in dialogue and action in some crazy, nothing-really-happens, scene. It’s usually two characters screaming at each other and kissing or something. You can see it throughout the screenplays I’m working on, most notably this recent entry in the Henry & Mary story.

Gordy Hoffman, the screenwriter of “Love Liza” and “A Coat of Snow,” actually suggests trying something similar at SimplyScripts.com:

Take your lead characters, pull them out of your script and have them talk in a void. If that’s too abstract for you, put them on the porch of a house, or in a diner having coffee. Have them scream about what they care about. Tweak the combinations. Have your characters talk to God. Have them talk to you. This process will give you pause over your movie, and then you might find where this is supposed to live.

[...] Submerge yourself in the ridiculous. Shoot for the absurd. Chances are you have limited yourself and believe there are only a few places you can land. Bullshit. [...] To really floor people, you have to go off the grid. Start with all the stupid stuff you can think of. Your ideas will flow from this crazy place, and you will find something, a seed, that will sign you off.

Most traditional teachers of screenwriting encourage their students to always hide what their characters are really feeling. It’s considered bad form to have your characters reveal themselves. I think this idea is popular for a few reasons.

I think the main reason is that this sort of unbridled emotional content makes a lot of the people uncomfortable. If you never get to express how you really feel to others, and the characters on the page/screen get to, you might feel cheated, or it won’t ring true to you… and you’ll opt out. Or, it might stem from the idea that no conflict can exist if our characters actually say what they mean – if the “truth” is out in the open. Or we might just prefer leaving this sort of stuff to the soap opera writers.

But you always have the final say whether or not a scene like this ends up in the final draft you’re handing out to everyone. So it doesn’t matter. If it keeps you writing, it can’t be that bad.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why. – Eleanor Roosevelt

It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write. – Sinclair Lewis

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. – Ray Bradbury

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