Sir Knavely Azuzus Maleficus Evilbottom

I just finished watching Troy: the credits are rolling behind me on the screen and the music is playing in the background.

What do I think of the movie?  Hey.  You gotta admire high production values.

The latest member of my family -- my new child, Sir Knavely -- is also located  behind me, lodged between my back and chair.  Cats are funny that way; they know which spot their owner likes the most, and they claim a spot on it by eminent domain.

Who is Sir Knavely?  Okay, a little history here.  Sir Knavely arrived this past Sunday.  I guess I've been missing a cat ever since I left my two cats in the gentle hands of their owner back in Hartville, Ohio.

So how did Sir Knavely come to be?  It all started this past Saturday.  I was going to watch Closer (a bloody good film, by the way), so I ended up in Westwood, having purchased my ticket, with an hour to kill before the film screened.

I decided to spend it hanging out at Borders.  I crossed Wilshire Blvd., walked up Westwood Avenue, and got sidetracked by the lovely cat you see above this entry.  He was sitting in a cage in the window of Katie's Pet Depot.  Sprawled out, actually, trying to ignore his missing fans.  I entered the store, knelt down beside the cage, and it was love at first sight.  The owner of the store, whose name was appropriately Beatrice, appeared mysteriously beside me almost immediately, and the rest is history.  I picked up Sir Knavely the next afternoon.

It's nice to have a cat again.  You know why?  Because even when you're watching a really awful film or television episode, if you having a friend sitting with you, it makes it all better.

Note: By the way, everyone wants to know where the name originated.  Give it up for my co-writer Steven Huey, who created the name Sir Knavely Azuzus Maleficus Evilbottom as a comical wannabe Satanic priest.  Unfortunately, the character didn't really fit our needs, so we quietly transformed him into Hans Geist.  But Sir Knavely wouldn't go away: he has now reincarnated himself into the person of a 2.5 year-old cat who now causes laughter merely by showing up for a conversation.  That's true immortality.

Making dreams

Happy New Year!  

One of my friends asked me in an email when I expect to see our current screenplay go to production.  My response ...  

I started The French Inquisitor back in April 2000 when I was still teaching in North Canton, Ohio.  For about half a year, I tried to develop the concept into a screenplay, but it didn't work: I needed skills I didn't have.   So I went to work to gain those skills.  

A little arithmetic.  Add together the past four-plus years of writing, the talents and skills of my co-writer Steven Huey, the experience of adapting a novel into a play, the books on screenwriting I've absorbed, the significant writing seminars I've taken, and the advice I've been given by veteran screenwriters ... and only in April 2004 were my co-writer and I able to begin to write the story I envisioned way back at the beginning.  

Nothing is easy in this business.  From what I've learned about the business, here's my best guess about the path The French Inquisitor will take in getting to the big screen.   Assuming ... we complete our screenplay by August of 2005 ... and then acquire an agent who shares our love for the story ... and then find a powerful actor or actress who wishes to attach himself/herself to it ... and then sell a version of our original screenplay ... and then convince the producers who bought the bloody thing to actually schedule a production team, rather than putting the screenplay on a shelf marked Acquisitions We Won't Produce ... and then watch the gods smile favorably upon the production process ...   Yes.  Each of those steps are land mines that sink uncountable screenplays each year ...  

This is just a little taste of the kind of business in which I've chosen to invest almost every moment of my energy and spare time learning ... and time is money.  Learning the business of filmmaking from the inside out is a gamble every bit as big as Wall Street or Vegas.  Probably bigger, since I'm gambling with the years of my life.  

If I were sane, I'd leave Los Angeles and run a business and raise a family and live out that side of the American Dream. Uhm, no thanks.  

So to answer your question, if every step of the process works, you'll see The French Inquisitor on the big screen sometime after the year 2008.    Will I ever become a starving artist?  Artist?  Hopefully, yes.  Starving?  There's a reason I've chosen to teach -- besides the fact that I love doing it.  It helps me avoid reaching the starving part.   

I'm not just here in Los Angeles hoping to make it.  I'm following a plan that will eventually give me a second career in film.  Veterans say that it takes about 8 - 10 years to develop into a professional screenwriter.  If I date my beginning in April of 2000, that means if I'm lucky, I'll be able to pay my way by April 2010, about five years from now.  Since I'm in my twenty-first year as a teacher (I started in an Arizona parochial school the day I turned 20 and have only taken off one year, when I studied in London in 1988-89 under Rotary), I'm hoping to retire from teaching to become a writer/director/producer sometime between teaching years 26 - 30, thus launching my second career.   

Hey, everyone has to do something with their lives after they retire.  Some people become education professors.  Some golf.  Some work at McDonalds.  I intend to sidestep my way out of teaching into writing and producing.

I used to listen in amazement to the number of conversations I heard in the teacher's lounge ... a lot were about money and retirement.  I'm choosing to plan now for my next career, and I'll leave when I'm ready, not when I've filled in my time card.