Where I'm At...

All right. Let's get going and recap where I'm at and where I'm going. Besides struggling to limp around the UCLA with two busted knees (which has made another UCLA MFAer named Dave a hero in my eyes. Dave walks with crutches and I am forever in awe. My temporary ass immobility will get better and I'll go back to not noticing the thousands of unnecessary steps at each building, or how far the ATM machines are from each other. Being permanently disable is a bitch and this world, despite ramps and auto door openers, ain't built for folks without full mobility. I'm getting a small taste of it now.)

From now on, I'm going to divide the blog into my two different lives: UCLA film school and my books. Both will be active over the next two years and it will seem like I'm doing a lot of stuff, but it's all about compartmentalizing. I did get burned out while on the Friends With Benefits tour, but that was mainly because I hate to do book tours, and I'm starting to detest travel of any sort. But knock on wood, I haven't even come close to getting burned out on writing. It's the pleasurable thing about this whole biz.

So for the next two to three years, I will be serving two masters, and this is probably the best time ever to read this blog. My wife knows that I'm going to be selfish with my writing over these next few years and so does my son (who is hilarious by the way. I did a lecture at UC Santa Barbara and he was silently doing his pencil drawings close by when he pipes up and says to the audience "You're a funny man.") So, if you're interested in writing books, this is the blog for you. If you're interested in going to film school, this is the blog for you. If you're interested in writing screenplays, this is the blog for you. If you're interested in how documentaries are made, this is the blog for you. If you're interested in black writers in Hollywood, then this is the blog for you. So here we go:

UCLA:

I'm excited, really excited. I have three classes this quarter and two are led by the co-chairman of the MFA screenwriters program. Richard Walter teaches 130A, which is a mixed course of undergrads and graduate students. Hal Ackerman teaches 431, which is a sort of intro to screenwriting course for grads only. It is much more intimate with about ten students per class. My last class meets on Wednesday evening and is a marketing course taught by Terry Press, who is the head of theater marketing at Dreamworks.

What I like about UCLA to date is the atmosphere. Per being a California institution, the professors and students in the program all seem casual and determined that the best way to get the best out of you is for you to focus on your work, give it your all, but still keep some perspective on life at the same time. Richard Walter is an example of that. Honestly, after having gone to his first class, I'm not too sure what we're going to be learning. Scratch that. I know that we're going to be learning about the craft of screenwriting, but Richard talks about screenwriting in a very eclectic style. One minute he's talking about communism, Aristotle, writing a personal story, George Lucas, and the right wing nut job David Horowitz. I figure that it'll clear up soon enough. He has a great sense of humor and knows what he's talking about.

Hal's class is more my flavor though. Small set of writers who each have their own life experiences that they bring to their writing. I like that. I don't want to only hear about my stories. I thirst for other people's stories. In our first class, we did a sort of "My Name is Earl" exercise, where we listed our regrets. Some were funny, others were poignant, but as you wrote them, it became very apparent that you could be a little bit vulnerable. And if you are, you damn well better trust the people in the room. I think that even though everyone in the room is somewhat nervous as to how they stack up against each other as writers, we still trust each other because we obviously had enough talent to make it this far. As we continue to write, that trust will help us write the best screenplays possible. At the end of Hal's class, we're to write a thirty page first act. It's going to be fun.

My last class is a marketing class and when I sat down in that class, it felt like was stealing from UCLA. I LOVE marketing. For three hours, we talked about how bad "The Island" was, why it is hard to get older men to get off the couch and go to the movies, etc. Then we watched trailers. I was in bliss. I have an Art and Commerce philosophy about writing and my writing career, and since I want to write a lot of scripts that put black folks in international situations, i want to learn how a studio will or more importantly, won't marketing it.

MK and I are working on our documentary. More info later...

So that's UCLA. On to my bread and butter.

My agent wants my non-fiction book proposal soon and I'm determined to get it done by this weekend. When it gets sold, I'll say what it is.

Money Shot, my next fiction piece, is still being read by Karen Thomas at Kensington. I expect to have an answer by the end of the month.

I am about to do a telephone interview tour Friends With Benefits and The Divine Nine.

That's about it. More tomorrow.