I'm keeping a creative journal for some projects I'm working on. From time to time, I'll include a "page" from the journal that gets inside my head a bit. In case that's helpful in anyway.
Took a detour from working on this play. And from reading Seven Days in the Art World or watching food documentaries for
other projects. I went over to my best
friend Alanna’s house yesterday to bang out some sketches for a sketch project
we’re trying to work on together. I have
never wanted to work with a writing partner.
I never resisted it because I never thought about it. I just thought it was the dumbest thing in
the world. For me.
My theory is that the way you start writing is the way that
works. I know college roommates who
started writing together and are now very successful TV comedy writers. I started writing by myself. I read lots of comic books as a kid. I was a huge Marvel comics guy. My cousin Leighton, who is a few years older
than me, was a comic book fanatic. So I
got exposed to comics through him. I
remember reading the X Men Dark Phoenix saga because of him. Then I got into the Fantastic Four and Alpha
Flight and the Teen Titans. I would walk
to the corner store where they sold comic books and read them for hours. That’s what sparked my imagination. So when I was in the seventh grade and our
school teacher asked us to start writing short stories, I started writing about
these comic book characters. Everything
they did just captured my imagination.
Then I was writing little novellas and short stories in high
school.
Most recently, I started talking to Alanna who has been my
best friend since childhood about working on something together. We were just
chatting about growing up in the 80s and the things we used to watch on
TV. It was interesting to both of us
that we lived in an era where so much wasn’t talked about. Political correctness was finding its way
into the public consciousness. You had
TV sitcoms doing episodes on serious subjects that far outreached the writers
ability and sensitivity. And yet, in
addition to the Catholic church, this is how fiction became such a clear
influence on me. These fictions shaped
my world view. And somehow I wanted to
make a comment on that. We thought about
Portlandia. We talked about Square Pegs, an incredibly smart show that we watched as kids and
loved. We were too smart for our own
good. We were precocious kids. So we wanted to write about our memory of
looking back at that time, with some self awareness that has been gained over
the past several years. But we wanted to
do it in sketch form, so we could tell a few stories per episode.
The idea is to film four or five sketches for a sizzle reel
that we want to take out and try to shop.
I had never thought that I would want to write with anyone. The suggestion has been made recently, but I
feel like that takes a lot of chemistry and I don’t have chemistry like that
with just anyone. Except for my best
friend since childhood.
So I came over on Sunday and we sat down across from each
other. I’m very disciplined when I
write. I want to sit down and get to it
right away. I don’t like to waste
time. So we just start talking and we
come up with a sketch that isn’t even on our list of sketch ideas. Alanna stands up and starts talking in the
voice of a character. Then she goes back
and repeats the line, refining it every time.
But she’s also repeating it to make sure that I’ve got it as I’m
transcribing. But I’m also
rewriting. And as she’s thinking of the
next thing to say, I’m on a riff. And
before she can open her mouth, I chime in with “what I’ve got.” And we’re off to the races. Our references are the same. We find the same things funny, but here’s why
I think it works: she can just get up and start talking. She’s fearless. I need to get warmed up a bit and I like
having control of the keyboard, so I can begin to structure the jokes and the
rhythm of the scene.
Now it makes me want to write more with her. And it makes me want to get her take on the
pilots I’m working on and to do a little of the same sort of work on my
scripts. So who knows…this writing
partner thing might just work out.
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