END CALIGULA is on the horizon. Yes, you thought it was the sun! But it's not! It's a play! But like the sun, it's a long ways away, but advance tickets are available, and no standing in line for two days prior like you'd do for Pink Floyd, which I did once, then finding out that you really do need drugs to enjoy a Pink Floyd show, because I was boooooooooored.

A third draft of DANGERBALL now exists, which is 131 pages. It's SO FREAKIN' HARD to do cuts in this way. You tend to take aim at things that are more idiosyncratic than anything else. Things that are particular to how I chose to reveal a character, which most often falls into the "fish out of water" category. You know... a well placed pause, and errant "What?", a strange little detail. If Pear does some good, perhaps I can talk my way into expanding the short version into the long version, but that seems a long ways away at this point.

The idea of a pruned script annoys me, because obviously it paves the way for extensive improvisation, which I'm not completely opposed to, but in the last few years, it has definitely become abused. A screenplay for a comedy film, for example, should only be 90 pages long. That means if a film runs longer than 90 minutes, then there was plenty of play time for the comedic actors who try different lines until the cast and crew and director crack up sufficiently. But that's what you get when you hand twenty million dollars to your actors... spoiled little misfits who think that whatever they do is gold.

God love the theater. The actors don't change the script. They may prune it a bit, as in the case of Shakespeare, which shouldn't even happen, but does, but the words spoken are there on the page. Can you imagine trying to improv Shakespeare?

Come on, imagine with me...

IAGO: O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on. The cuckold lives in bliss who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger; But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves!

OTHELLO: Yea! Verily! Most... verily! Forsooth, thou art fragrant! And my bodkin acknowledges thee as such a wise and fragrant flower!

Of course, it probably wouldn't occur like this unless... oh, darn. I've changed font once again. But this is... it isn't bad, is it? Kind of... it's more like the font on the other pages, isn't it? Like... homey? Familiar?

The first draft of DANGERBALL is done, and... 171 pages to boot, which means not only is it a movie no would would ever do, it's also too long. I'm currently shaping up an edited version, and I've managed to cut it down to about 150. I think I can go a little further, but I'm knocking some of the funny out of it by doing so.

The thing about writing screenplays is it's such a different animal from other forms. It's economical and it bullies you with very wide margins to achieve its end. Plays and novels I write until I'm done, screenplays I do the same thing with, except that I know that'll eventually someone will ask me to shave forty or so pages out of it and not have one scene last more than three pages.

Working on DANGERBALL. It's funny to think that I can still think of something to write about if I only have a title. It's not as spoofy as I thought it would be, though. It's more like my theatrical sensibility onscreen where I can do something funny about a situation that is not very funny. It's more in common with seventies comedy than what we dole out as comedy nowadays. No one will ever do this one, but at least I'm writing.

No. No writing. Ideas, but no energy. Kind of going through old material. Last night I was reading and editing THE KNIGHTS OF HISGARD to see if I could break it up. Unfortunately it's so freakin' long that it will take me quite awhile to figure it all out.

The Fringe is out. But at least I got into the Midtown Theatre Festival. Once again WHAT ABOUT THE BONES? lacks a premiere.

I am tossing around an idea in my head, a kind of satire of sports movies. I only have the name so far, DANGERBALL. We'll see what happens with that.

New System of a Down on Tuesday. Been listening to it at work. It pretty much blows everything else out of the water.

No, I'm not writing. BACK OFF, MAN!

Contract negotiations for WELL DONE, PEAR DANUBE! will begin next week. And another name for a possible Pear has been thrown at me. A name that I actually thought off after Gary Oldman's.

And that would be Eddie Izzard.

It feels very strange for something of mine being mentioned in the same idea as Eddie Izzard... without me mentioning it, of course.

Tell me when it's okay to start freaking out and joining Dave Chappelle in a psychiatric ward in South Africa.

No, I still haven't written anything, and it looks like I'll be sidelined for a while on this one.

My Dad sent me an email regarding a comic novel entitled "Gil's All Fright Diner" by a Mr. A. Lee Martinez. Get this... the two heros of the book are a werewolf and a vampire. The werewolf's name is Duke. Would anyone like to guess what the vampire's name is?

Go on. Take a guess. It's fun to guess.

The vampire's name is Earl. Earl the vampire.

Isn't that just something? There are two Earl the vampires out there. That's really... neat.

I hope there's no big stink when my EARL THE VAMPIRE novels see the light of day. At least the first two. I can't seem to get the gumption to finish the last one. Oh, well, it's not like I'm on a deadline.

Earl the vampire. Ha ha ha. Funny.