Fund Raising for Hell Raising

Hopping on the back of great minds like JJ Abrams, I am beginning a viral marketing campaign. You needn't know the details, but you must know that I'm a little short in the skin (WALLET).

Phase 1 of this project will cost me $10.00.

You can send donations via paypal to RODGRAPHX@YAHOO.COM

I kick ASS! And thanks for your support!

Rod-ish

World of Nerdcraft and Screenwriting

On any given day, when I'm not at work or visiting the kids, you will find me in my room. Like a darkened abyss, with nothing but the ceiling fan for white noise, I sit with headphones on, staring blankly into my laptop like I'm waiting for it to say something funny.

What am I doing? One of two things. Screenwriting, or (more times than none) playing the World of Warcraft.

Fuck, I hate to even say it out loud, but it's who I am and it's what I do. Internally I struggle to find a common ground between the two, but since the Warcraft movie is in pre-production it seems as though my dreams of writing said movie are lost. So where is the common ground.

(Pause for a few moments while I search under the bed, night stand, and desk for what they have in common)

FOUND IT!

EQUILIZED!

Before I describe my middle ground in a single sentence or less, I think I should cover exactly how Warcraft works for the "WTF is that" people.

It's a game. A Multi-Player, Massive, Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) which boasts a subscribership of almost 10 million members world-wide, paying $14.00 bucks a month. Based somewhere between D&D and LotR, you can choose from a menagerie of races, classes and looks. So even with that many people, on multiple servers, the chance of running into a Blood Elf Rogue that looks exactly like you is almost impossible.

The world itself is exactly as described...massive. Two continents in the base realm of Azeroth, and another larger continent through the Dark Portal in Outlands. Each player can choose from professions like skinning, mining, leatherworking, enchanting, etc, etc to make money in the game. There are auction houses, inns, castles, dungeons, battle grounds (PVP) and interactive grouping and raiding. It is, in itself, a self contained alternate reality. Which is probably why mofos are getting divorced, losing their jobs, and going to rehab from playing.

But here is where I have found my middle ground. It's nothing for me to spend 5-6 hours a day playing this shit. I run around slaying animals and people like Ron Jeremy slays the Vaja. I'm a badass and know it. But what the hell is it doing for me in the real world....nothing. So I'll sit there for hours devolving into a lazy, pale piece of Wowing shit when I should have been writing the entire time. So this is what I figured out. I love Warcraft, but I NEED to write. Thus, I have found my comprimise. I'll take turns. Everytime I finish a quest, I'll write a page and won't go back to WoW until the page is complete. If I'm outlining, then I'll set a time limit that I will write for before going back to WoW.

This could work...I'll let you know.

Rod

I'm the jugganaut, Bitch!

Okay, well not really, but right now I lack even the minimum amount of energy or excitement to put together a 2 minute short film such as the Jugganaut, bitch. I am finding that I am in one of those moods where just being awake makes me aggrivated. I don't want to write, work, play a game, eat, drink, smoke, or even fucking move. It's like I'm suffering from LIFERS BLOCK.

I'm not depressed or anything, just lack the major motivations to do anything more than pound away on this little keyboard, while staring at this massively intimidating screen. I have ideas, even now, surging through my head for my next spec, but they remain an accumulating jumble of shit in my brain because I lack the fucking energy to write them out. At this pace, I should have the entire thing written in my head, word for word, by the time I actually sit down and right it.

...fuck...

I like that word. Not because it's bad or because my wife says it in conjuction with other dirty words during happy-time. No, I like it because it's simple, smooth and flows like a good drag from an even better cigar. It's familiar, like an old friend and who do we all turn to when we're sucking ass for motivation? That's right! Old friends. So fuck, fuckety fuck...fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Fuck this, I'm going to smoke.

My New Tattoo!!!

Ahhh...the glorious, numbing pain of a new tattoo. Now I'm not some biker-styled, skull sporting badass, but I love a good tattoo. I FUCKING LOVE THEM!

But you know what I hate...shitty tattoos. Looking to the pic to your right, I want you to notice something...you see it...DETAIL. I wish I had a better pic, but I suppose I'll take another one after it heals. Detail, though, is the main ingredient in a great tattoo as much as it is in a great screenplay. When you look into the eyes of that Greek warrior on my arm (which was meant to signify pain and defeat) I want you to feel that pain. Even the greek letters on the helmet mean 'pain' in Greek. But if the detail had been horrible and the eyes came out cartoony, then you would not have felt the deep seated pain that was throw into this tattoo at it's conception. If I wanted cartoony, I would have asked for something cartoony. It would be like writing a drama starring a clown on speed. NOT SERIOUS.

The Greek warrior part of the tattoo was done in Souda Bay, Crete (Greece) in 2004 right before my nervous breakdown. I was on a train of drunken pleasures and deep rooted self hate that made me feel like shit. It seemed like no matter how hard I tried to guard myself from the bad things in my life, they still got through. So when it came time to get a tattoo, I wanted three thing...I wanted something to signify that I got it in Greece (warrior), I used the helmet to signify the armor I had used to attempt to keep the bad things out, and then I put those painful, teary eyes showing defeat, because no matter how hard I tried, I failed. Defeated.

The swords also have a dual meaning in that the scimitars are the national blade of Iraq (I made that up, but the fuckers are on statues and shit everywhere) and I wanted something to remind me that I was there, to signify my time there. The second meaning of the swords is an easy one: Connor and Simon...my two sons. They are literally two of the most important people in my life, and the only two I'd lay under the blade to give my life for.

Without these intricate details, and bold meanings behind the tattoos (which will eventually be part of a half-sleeve) they wouldn't be what they are. When you look an artist in the eyes and tell him, "This is the worst time in my life...make it show," they get it and want to put that pain and defeat in there. As screenwriters, we need to be no different.
My point is that when it comes to writing scenes that keep a tone, I am often guilty of writing something hilarious when it needs to be serious, and vice versa. I'm learning and slowly growing out of that, but when I think of the screenplay I am working on now, I ask myself...is this a Greek Warrior or Calvin and Hobbes on my left ass cheek? If you spec, spec something that means something to you, because it's so much easier to relate and put the best and worst of yourself into it. Create those characters that remind you of the people you love, hate and feel for. Put them into situations that are comparable to things you've been through. You're essentially tattooing yourself when you spec write...so ask yourself, when a stranger sees that tattoo (spec) do you want them to say, "Wow, that is just...awesome," or, "I don't get it?"
Of course I'm going to use my tattoo to turn this into a screenwriting essay...it's a screenwriting blog, get over it.

PS...Ignore the scrawny arms...the camera takes off 15 inches.

Rod

How Big Are My Nuts?

Two years...as of November, I have two years until I can either wrap up my sails and get out of the Navy, or I can reenlist for another two to six years. Now, I'm not trying to sound like a whiner, or anything, but FUCK ALL, that is a pretty hard decision to make. Let me walk you through this for a minute.

I joined the Navy in 1999, straight out of high school because I seriously had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. And it was a great choice, because I was a wisked loser. But over the last eight years, I've gotten married, had a kid or two, pretty much saw all of the world, and just enjoyed the ride. Some of my greatest memories thus far have come from being in the Navy. I mean, how many people can say that they ran up on stage at the David Letterman Show during Fleet Week and gave Dave a Dixie-cup (Our cute, white sailor hats) and said, “You’re the shit, Dave?” How many people have scars from getting wasted, forgetting that they're not a Navy SEAL and jumping through the roof of some poor Frenchmen's garage in a covert op to "stop the terrorist?" My point is this...I love the Navy. Whole-heartedly, I do. It’s in my blood, it’s in my heritage, and it’s in my heart.

You see, the Navy is just like any other job while I’m in the US, and not deployed. I wake up at 0430, get my shower, get dressed, fight traffic and report to work no later than 0545. I struggle to look busy, take long smoke breaks, and even longer lunches. I have ten different bosses of various ranks and sizes. It's the epitome of an Office Space environment, only when the shit hits the fan, the guy writing memos about TPS reports is the President himself. Those are the times I love. When something global happens, or when I see an operation on the news that I had a hand in planning at some point or stage. But this is just the day to day.

A deployment is the shit! The shit, people! Now, while it sucks to be away from my family for six-12 months at a time, there is no freedom like the open seas. When the only hindrance of the sunrise, set, horizon and heavens is a large white fluffy cloud. The action at sea is real with fire drills weekly, weapons checks daily, navigation details whenever, and every now and then you get to witness something truly beautiful that you never knew existed (you'd never get it, so I wouldn’t describe any further), but you get my point. Steaming on the open ocean, in my opinion, can only be shadowed by childbirth, your own wedding, and the first time you discovered porn.

I love my job.

So here I am, asking myself, do I really have the nuts to bail on this when the time comes? Do I even want to? Pay wise, with all benefits, allowances, special pays and bonuses...I make around 50-60,000 a year (relative to a civilian job). I can live on that, so it's not a matter of money. It's a matter of creative expression and wanting to do what's right in my heart, by me.

When I sit at my laptop, and I stare at that empty first page, with my outlines, and my stack of character notes, and it all starts filtering through my head to where in a few hours I can have 30 pages done. They are a shabby 30, but I've at least written them all. I once finished an entire first, sloppy, rough-ass draft in 15 hours of binge writing. Not because I was on a deadline, nor because I didn't feel like sleeping. It was because I wanted to tell the story and couldn't stop. I actually got off of work, went home, started writing, finished the spec, took a shower and went right back to work. I was fueled by passion to finish...passion to be a writer for that small amount of time.

When I finished my latest rewrite of The Yank, there was an accomplishment in my heart, this feeling of glowiness, that made me smile with more satisfaction than the day I landed in Iraq. This is why I feel like I’m in the wrong place in my life, that I’m not where God wanted me to be. So this is my dilemma now...get out and chase the dream of screenwriting, or stay in and never truly have the freedom to chase anything more than a blip on my radar screen. How big are my nuts?