Showing posts tagged comedy
Hey Paisanos!  Fresh off the digital press—check out my new interview with Editor Pauline Nolet, and while you’re at it, grab my eBook NutJob: A Squirrel’s Dozen Secret Tips To Productivity for free today! View high resolution

Hey Paisanos!  Fresh off the digital press—check out my new interview with Editor Pauline Nolet, and while you’re at it, grab my eBook NutJob: A Squirrel’s Dozen Secret Tips To Productivity for free today!

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Be so good they can’t ignore you.
Steve Martin
(via Rare Photo Shows Steve Jobs’s Rebellious Spirit As He Flips The Bird To IBM | Cult of Mac) WHAT A BADASS!!! View high resolution

(via Rare Photo Shows Steve Jobs’s Rebellious Spirit As He Flips The Bird To IBM | Cult of Mac)

WHAT A BADASS!!!

Brilliant.

Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office, and You Can, Too! is the funniest book I’ve read in sometime.  Oh yeah, it’s also happens to be about Screenwriting, easily making it THE FUNNIEST BOOK ABOUT SCREENWRITING - EVER.  Period.  Authors Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon are the jack-wagon yay-hoos responsible for the delightfully demented Reno: 911, and the surprisingly diggable Night At The Museum flicks. Yes, you need an agent.  And to get one these days, you must be creative.  Simply sending out your script unsolicited is about as appealing to agents as a cold call from a discount butt sandwich company. Now, before you go out and pick up this book and L-O-L to the M-A-X, realize this is targeted at writers who want to sell scripts to studios.  This is not for writers who only write cuddly, inaccessible Arthouse films, it’s for those who want to make money as a Screenwriter, and (God forbid) even make a career out of it. Let’s put it this way: Do you like movies that challenge and confuse you?  We do.  Sometimes.  Eraserhead is great.  But not every night.  Can you take your in-laws and their kids to see Eraserhead?  Can you pop Eraserhead into your Blu-ray when your family is over for Christmas to shut everybody up for two hours?… Don’t get us wrong, we love Eraserhead.  But 95 percent of Americans, if you forced them to watch Eraserhead, would want to punch that movie in the face and would punch YOU in the face for making them watch it.  If you want to make movies like that, make an indie.  Make a movie with people who don’t care about box-office receipts. Some chapters merely exist because the authors were most-likely drunk off their asses while writing them: L.A. has the best Mexican food in the world.  MUCH better than Mexico.  Plus, unlike in real Mexico, you won’t get your face sliced off and sewn onto a soccer ball! which, of course, precedes a list of their favorite Mexican restaurants in town. However!  There are many nuggets of wisdom here, ripe for the taking.  Seriously, there’s actually some fantastic advice within (especially when detailing finances between studios and writers, the development process, etc.)  Read about all of this and more in the book which has a chapter called, “Why Does Almost Every Studio Movie SUCK Donkey Balls?”* *True story.

Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office, and You Can, Too!
is the funniest book I’ve read in sometime.  Oh yeah, it’s also happens to be about Screenwriting, easily making it THE FUNNIEST BOOK ABOUT SCREENWRITING - EVER.  Period.  Authors Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon are the jack-wagon yay-hoos responsible for the delightfully demented Reno: 911, and the surprisingly diggable Night At The Museum flicks.
Yes, you need an agent.  And to get one these days, you must be creative.  Simply sending out your script unsolicited is about as appealing to agents as a cold call from a discount butt sandwich company.
Now, before you go out and pick up this book and L-O-L to the M-A-X, realize this is targeted at writers who want to sell scripts to studios.  This is not for writers who only write cuddly, inaccessible Arthouse films, it’s for those who want to make money as a Screenwriter, and (God forbid) even make a career out of it.
Let’s put it this way: Do you like movies that challenge and confuse you?  We do.  Sometimes.  Eraserhead is great.  But not every night.  Can you take your in-laws and their kids to see Eraserhead?  Can you pop Eraserhead into your Blu-ray when your family is over for Christmas to shut everybody up for two hours?…
Don’t get us wrong, we love Eraserhead.  But 95 percent of Americans, if you forced them to watch Eraserhead, would want to punch that movie in the face and would punch YOU in the face for making them watch it.  If you want to make movies like that, make an indie.  Make a movie with people who don’t care about box-office receipts.
Some chapters merely exist because the authors were most-likely drunk off their asses while writing them:
L.A. has the best Mexican food in the world.  MUCH better than Mexico.  Plus, unlike in real Mexico, you won’t get your face sliced off and sewn onto a soccer ball!
which, of course, precedes a list of their favorite Mexican restaurants in town.
However!  There are many nuggets of wisdom here, ripe for the taking.  Seriously, there’s actually some fantastic advice within (especially when detailing finances between studios and writers, the development process, etc.)  Read about all of this and more in the book which has a chapter called, “Why Does Almost Every Studio Movie SUCK Donkey Balls?”*
*True story.

What’s up Mario Van Peoples - I know it’s been a bit quiet on the ol’ blog lately, but that’s because I wrapped last weekend on the crazy rock-u-mentary I wrote and performed in, Hipster Backlash!  Our production will rear its fashionably pretentious head sometime in January; look for it as a short film and possibly also as a web series. Mad-Nazty thanks goes to all in front and behind the camera that made it possible, Crazy-Wack-Funky thanks goes to We Make Movies, and a Saucy-Spank-Tastic thanks goes to all who donated their hard-earned skrilla to finance the production on Kickstarter.  What inspired this delicious descent into mayhem?  Imagine Spinal Tap, but skewering Hipsters and the current state of the music industry (it’s about damn time!) View high resolution

What’s up Mario Van Peoples -

I know it’s been a bit quiet on the ol’ blog lately, but that’s because I wrapped last weekend on the crazy rock-u-mentary I wrote and performed in, Hipster Backlash!  Our production will rear its fashionably pretentious head sometime in January; look for it as a short film and possibly also as a web series.

Mad-Nazty thanks goes to all in front and behind the camera that made it possible, Crazy-Wack-Funky thanks goes to We Make Movies, and a Saucy-Spank-Tastic thanks goes to all who donated their hard-earned skrilla to finance the production on Kickstarter.  What inspired this delicious descent into mayhem?  Imagine Spinal Tap, but skewering Hipsters and the current state of the music industry (it’s about damn time!)

Scriptnotes Podcast by John August and Craig Mazin Are you a Screenwriter who spends a metric ton of time in L.A. traffic?  Have I got just the podcast for you!  Screenwriting Heavyweights John August (Big Fish, Go) and Craig Mazin (The Hangover Part II, Senseless) throw down in a candid (and often funny) way only real Screenwriters can.  They answer nuts ‘n bolts questions about the craft and business of Screenwriting - and believe me - they’ve seen it all!  Learn from their mistakes and realize you’re not alone in your writing adventure…  These guys are seriously paying it forward - take ‘em up on it!

Scriptnotes Podcast by John August and Craig Mazin

Are you a Screenwriter who spends a metric ton of time in L.A. traffic?  Have I got just the podcast for you!  Screenwriting Heavyweights John August (Big Fish, Go) and Craig Mazin (The Hangover Part II, Senseless) throw down in a candid (and often funny) way only real Screenwriters can.  They answer nuts ‘n bolts questions about the craft and business of Screenwriting - and believe me - they’ve seen it all!  Learn from their mistakes and realize you’re not alone in your writing adventure…  These guys are seriously paying it forward - take ‘em up on it!

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One night we were in L.A., staying at the Hyatt on Sunset Boulevard. As a dare, we told this cab driver we’d give him a hundred bucks to drive us backwards all the way to Small’s, which was a bar on Gower and Melrose. He actually did it! He went down Sunset, crossed down Fountain, the entire way in reverse. I don’t know how we didn’t get pulled over by the cops, but it was funny as shit.
Tommy Stinson, founding member of The Replacements and Bassist for Guns ‘N Roses, as interviewed in Spin Magazine, Sept. ‘11