Down in the Parish

Destiny kills and eats a snake

2012-04-24T15:33:00.000-05:00

Looking this up on Instructables for when the girls are in the swamp and have to kill, skin and eat a snake. Good for me to know as well for after the apocalypse comes. I want to have some mad skills.

Quotation Marks | Punctuation Rules

2012-04-24T11:07:00.001-05:00

Working on the documents for the Writing Labs. Some grammar rules for punctuation that might be helpful for all of us to review.

Quotation Marks | Punctuation Rules

Draft 4.5

2012-04-22T19:18:00.000-05:00

This is from an early draft of the script circa 2003:

2012-04-19T21:12:00.000-05:00

It no longer exists in the script. It only exists here.

EXT. ARABI - EARLY MORNING

Arabi, Louisiana, directly across the Industrial Canal from the New Orleans upper 9th Ward. "Support our Troops" banners, bumper stickers and yard signs are everywhere. And American flags hang proudly.

It's August, early morning just before sunrise, and even at this time, it's sweltering. There's a thick haze that hangs low in the air. The city is still asleep.

A six foot alligator crawls out of one of the canals and starts to prowl for neighborhood pets.

Inside of Destiny's Trailer

2012-04-18T09:07:00.002-05:00

Minister Antoine Brown

2012-04-16T22:14:00.002-05:00

Occasionally, Antoine Brown will call me to ask how the show is going? In some kind of weird way, we've become sort of like friends. I don't know how this happened.

I've written a small part for Antoine in the feature. He plays himself again: The Minister Antoine Brown on public access TV. I'm hoping he will let me use his original song: Fire of Christ.

There is a sequence between Destiny and his character that I had to cut out. I loved that sequence. It was the only one I've been able to write where Magical Realism occurs naturally. I so wanted more of it in this script. Instead there is violence. A lot of violence.

It's how I feel about the world at the moment. And how I feel about the world always ends up in what I write.

Destiny's Trailer???

2012-04-15T20:05:00.001-05:00

Old Trailer home, a photo by kknox55 on Flickr.

pirate4x4.com

Even more music for the Film

2012-04-12T15:57:00.001-05:00

More Music for the Film

2012-04-12T07:52:00.002-05:00

Music for the Film

2012-04-12T07:49:00.004-05:00

Everything comes from Somewhere

2012-01-21T14:16:00.001-06:00

"Merissa" from Picture Truths

Everything we produce comes from somewhere. Patrick said to me the other day that the hardest part is coming up with pure fiction. Something that comes only from the imagination. But this "pure" fiction is a myth. Everything comes from Somewhere. There is nothing new under the sun.

My cousin Connie told us this story about a shooting that happened right across the street from her house out in the East. It has finally worked it's way into the script.

We catch anecdotes and personality disorders. Our heads spin with the stories people tell us. Everything we see. Everything we taste. Sometimes it gives me a headache.

Faster

2012-01-19T22:52:00.000-06:00

Today was the most hideous writing day ever.
But, still we moved forward.
Faster, pussycat, faster!
I wish we would move forward faster.

The Canal Revisited

2012-01-13T22:30:00.000-06:00

picturetruths.blogspot.com

Characters have to be in the moment

2012-01-13T17:29:00.006-06:00

GLORIA

Hey Officer Del.

OFFICER DEL

They ain’t sent out the Detective

yet, Gloria?

GLORIA

Ah ah. An' I’m about to get off my shift.

Officer Del edges around the crime tape and looks in.

OFFICER DEL

Were there drugs, Gloria?

GLORIA

I don’t know. I just got here.

Influential People

2012-01-12T18:54:00.001-06:00

John Biguenet told me: "Always look for ways to repackage your stories." Martin Stitt said "You can't fuck about. Write scripts as fast as you can."

######################################

I've been writing this blog for 5 years. Haven't we completed this ~~fucking~~ script yet?

Well, yes and no.

1We've written a feature script that essentially turned (award-winning) "Destiny lives Down the Road" (the short) into a feature. 2We wrote a science fiction after the BP Oil Spill. 3And, we've just completed the detailed Outline of a Southern Gothic Noir set between Bourbon Street and St. Bernard Parish. 4I think there was also an early draft of a Katrina script.

It's funny, though. All of the work mentioned above and even including (the specially commended) "Mrs. Carmella Prays" and "Little Baby Eyes" and the Photo blogs and a lot of other work...all of that work sprang from an article I wrote for the Guardian the year after Hurricane Katrina.

But it goes back even further than that. As far back as 2002. But, that's all too much to go into.

We work on the Noir daily. We are pushing to have a readable draft by the end of January. In February, we want to do another pass on the Science Fiction.

www.picturetruths.blogspot.com

Location Scouting in the East

2011-12-03T18:14:00.001-06:00

We took a drive out to New Orleans East this morning to do some location scouting and to get some stories from my cousin Connie who lives out there. The place is lonely and spread out. We're particularly interested in that stretch of land on Chef passed Crowder. Motels and factories and trailer parks. Sweet. We drive some more, and there is a small casino and I think the last General Dollar before the land turns to water.

Connie tells us some stories about what it's like to live in the East. This is a place where family members shoot each other in the street. A place where drunks crawl up the front steps of the house and where people take more than they are supposed to. Connie will stay because she owns this little sliver of land.

Patrick doesn't take pictures, and, when I ask him about it, he says "I'm overwhelmed."

Now we have to go back at night. We have to see what the light looks like and what things are possible. Again, the locations are informing the story and vice versa.

Researching Angola

2011-12-02T14:09:00.000-06:00

Latest News - Angola Prison: Visiting a Modern-Day Slave Plantation

Angola on Wikipedia

As abuse mounted, DEA boosted painkiller supply - Drugs - Salon.com

2011-11-30T16:36:00.000-06:00

As abuse mounted, DEA boosted painkiller supply - Drugs - Salon.com

Drug Research

2011-11-30T15:39:00.001-06:00

Doing loads of research on "Pill Mills." It seems that there is a huge problem with addiction to Opioids in this country. Opiodis are the synthetic version of Opiates that come from Opium, a natural substance. It's all very interesting and fucked up how pharmaceuticals turn something natural into a highly addictive substance then release it onto an unknowing population through legitimate and legal dealers. Still getting my head around it all. BUT, forget all of that political bullshit. This is some interesting research for the feature.

From the Pill Mill Grand Jury:

Another addict testified, “I could not function without it [Oxycodone]. I had to have it every day.” He then described the withdrawals:

The first part of it would be you would start to get ill as in your stomach would hurt, you couldn’t
eat, you couldn’t hold food down. You’d try to sleep at night, or I should say you would get cold
sweats. It didn’t matter what the temperature is, you feel like its 20 degrees outside and you’re
sweating bullets. And then from there you couldn’t sleep at night. And that would go on for,
different areas of those symptoms would go on for about a week or two. And then from there, I
think a month after that, within the month, that first month of detox, I couldn’t get a full night’s
worth of sleep. Your legs would kind of kick and flex and twit. I mean twitch around.

Another thing is this guy should not be on trial. He should be medically cared for, and the Pharmaceuticals should pay for it out of their profits.

Pharmaceuticals have a little bit of evil in them, and if you don't see me no more, you know who's got me.

Narcissism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2011-11-28T17:38:00.000-06:00

Narcissism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Another Dark Vision of Chalmatia

2011-05-28T15:42:00.000-05:00

Research: The "Resistance" live in Tree Houses

2011-05-22T13:11:00.002-05:00

Link here

We want "The Resistance" to live in tree houses above the pollution. This is one kind of idea for the art director. I like that this one looks like a camp on the Bayou. Another idea is the trailer tree house here:

How to Survive The Apocalypse � Survival Guide

2011-05-21T15:51:00.000-05:00

How to Survive The Apocalypse � Survival Guide

What's Wrong With The Three Act Structure

2011-05-21T15:38:00.001-05:00

What's Wrong With The Three Act Structure: "A two hour feature film shown in a movie theatre is a continuous action. There are no intermissions. It's one continuous act-less event which revolves around a problem. A much better way to look at a story, when you are creating one, is not through any arbitrary division into acts but through the eyes of that problem, which is the central event and the heart of a great story's structure."

Research for "The Science Fiction"

2011-05-20T15:17:00.000-05:00

Why societies collapse

Throughout human history societies have prospered and collapsed leaving behind tantalizing glimpses of their magnificence in crumbling temples, ruins and statues. Why did these ancient civilisations fall apart? Why did some collapse and not others? And what lessons do they have for our civilisation?

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/07/17/2858655.htm