Metablogging
Now that there are several screenwriter-oriented blogs, I thought I’d take a moment to examine the six-degrees of separation quality among them.
Or perhaps I just want to revel in the fact that I’m the Kevin Bacon of screenbloggers.
★ I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing
This is how I met Josh Friedman: When I bought my house, my agent said, “Oh, hey, Josh Friedman lives down the street. You should knock on his door or something.” Like’s it’s Mayberry. But one day while I was walking my dog, I said what the hell, and introduced myself.
As it turns out, Josh and I grew up in the same town: Boulder, Colorado. He went to the cool high school downtown, while I went to the preppy high school up on a giant hill, literally looking down on the town.
Josh and I had the same agent starting out, sort of. Mine was an actual agent. His was the young woman who answered the actual agent’s phones.
Josh lives in a bigger, fancier house than mine, covered with vines. (Like Madeline!) Actual famous people grew up in Josh’s house. Honest. Meanwhile, I sold my house to Michael Rappaport.
My moving had almost nothing to do with Josh and his monkeys.
I suspect Josh’s blogname for me will be some derivation of Ned Flanders, pesky do-gooding neighbor. Although it’s pretty egotistical to think he’ll ever write about me. (bashfully twisting foot.)
Craig Mazin and I have the same agent. One day, my agent says, “One of my other clients has some questions about your website. Is it okay if I give him your number?” I say sure.
Craig calls. He asks about how I set up my site. He really wants to know how I got the brad graphic to float over on the right-hand side. (Answer: voodoo.) It’s only after a few minutes of conversation that he mentions that he’s at the hospital, because his wife is in labor.
Now that’s dedication. Or avoidance. It’s something.
To this day, I’ve never met Craig in person.
I first encountered David Anaxagoras’s site through a comment he’d left on a post. Apparently, he was significantly influenced by my site, but his layout and such is actually quite a bit smarter.
In fact, I stole these quotation marks from him. I have not poached his progress bars, but that’s only because I haven’t thought of anything worth charting.
I ended up meeting David when I spoke at his screenwriting class. He’s a good guy.
As for the other screenbloggers, I have no juicy dirt to spill. I only know them by their URLs.
Articles
September 22nd, 2005 at 3:35 pm
I bet you get a lot of comments about that voodoo graphic in the top right corner. Something to the tune of “your paper clip picture is broken. It shows up funny…” Shortly after, thier browser gets hijacked.
September 22nd, 2005 at 3:37 pm
Hey John–
So, it’s not very juicy, and not actually dirt, but I have a new blog and we’ve ACTUALLY met. I’m sure you don’t remember, and in fact, I probably didn’t even drop my name since I was too busy thinking, “holy shit, I’m talking to John August and sound like an idiot,” but I was actually the first to talk to you in what I believe was your first panel at the Austin Film Festival last year.
How’s that for a long sentence?!
Anyway, I hope you don’t mind, and maybe it’ll jog your memory, but I have your picture posing with yours truly posted on there. (Don’t worry, it’s a good picture)
September 22nd, 2005 at 4:14 pm
Is it too egotistical to share that in the 6 degrees of screenwriter blogs, I’m connected to you in just two steps? (it’s just that I’m proud!) 1) Screenwriter John August used to have an assistant, Dana Fox. 2) Dana Fox became a screenwriter and had an assistant, Jackie Honikman. 3) Jackie Honikman – who does not have an assistant or a career, yet – does have a screenwriter blog. And now the world’s just a little smaller :)
September 22nd, 2005 at 5:30 pm
Enjoyed the notice of the various blogs. Really agreed with yours and Tim’s view of Charlie not needing to grow or change.
It wasn’t his role.
Why do so many people trying to break into Hollywood and working in Hollywood have this insane view that growth and change has to be done and to such anextreme.
That’s telegraphing.
Which any half way decent storyteller steers clear away from.
Keep doing the good work.
I’ve got 5 scripts under consideration, one of them hopefully (finally) getting into an agent’s hands.
Wish me luck.
Thanks for all your inspiration.
MARK
September 22nd, 2005 at 5:39 pm
Strangely I really enjoy Josh Friedman’s BLOG. It’s quite entertaining to hear him write about pretty much everything. Brutal honesty is something you rarely see in Hollywood. Once it rears it’s funny little head. I try to be honest in my stuff, but… you know, I have nothing to be honest about.
Stupid… stuff.
September 22nd, 2005 at 5:39 pm
Is Josh’s blog really a screenwriting blog? Or a wannabe “Hollywood Animal?” I half-expect him to lay the smack down on Ovitz any minute… oh, wait…
September 22nd, 2005 at 7:35 pm
and you only know me by my smartass retorts and exhaltations
September 22nd, 2005 at 10:16 pm
You forgot about me… Just kiding! Keep up the good work, John!
By the way, I get to review “The Corpse Bride” for the newspaper tomorrow. Yay!
Justin
September 22nd, 2005 at 10:37 pm
I’ve never met you at all, but I did see some boulders when I passed through Colorado. And I got paid for covering a script you wrote called “Fury” in 2003, so I guess trickle-down economics sort of works.
September 23rd, 2005 at 12:22 am
New to the blog world, but I’ve had a screenwriting website since ‘98. Enjoying all the new people I’m meeting through the blogs, and your blog was one of the first. Thanks again.
Mark
September 23rd, 2005 at 5:53 am
After hopping on the blog reading train, I attempted my own amateur screenwriting blog. I stopped after I realized I had nothing to contribute to these already heavily populated pro sites. While working on my yet-to-be-sold high seven figure spec, I started a real blog about my day job: Directing live TV.
September 23rd, 2005 at 5:56 am
I just started mine, but yours was the first I landed on. So much great information to be found here. Plus I wouldn’t have heard about those other hacks (hey, we’re all hacks, right?) you mentioned had I not come here first.
Thanks for the advice and inspiration.
September 23rd, 2005 at 9:46 am
Funny thing with the graphic on the upper right, ´cause I just came here because of that damned “web-design-jiu jitsu”-thing you did there. Somewhere on the net there is a french wordpress-community I once found, and the first question I read in their board was about how the hell you put that graphic up there. From that day on I was an addict to your site.
Needless to say – I still don´t know how you did it.
September 23rd, 2005 at 10:15 am
John -
By preppy school did you mean Fairview?
Boulder is a great place to grow up.
September 23rd, 2005 at 11:08 am
Yup, Fairview High School. Go Knights.
I went back to visit last year. You know how everyone always says their school went to shit after they left? Fairview actually got much better, academically at least. It was eerie.
September 23rd, 2005 at 11:38 am
Funny. I don’t know why the “small world” stuff continues to surprise me.
I was heavy in the choir department. Their new band room is amazing – The whole fine arts department was pretty sophisticated for a high school.
So – to enter their names into the blog world – a salute to Ron Revier and Jim Keller. Great techers. A great run.
By the way, this year I was called out of the blue by a reporter from the illustrious Royal Banner.
I know, I have arrived.
Anyway, and I’m guessing you were ‘89 – Thank you for Big Fish and this website.
Fellow Knight
September 23rd, 2005 at 11:40 am
teachers, sorry
September 23rd, 2005 at 11:47 am
I was class of 88. No choir, alas.
September 23rd, 2005 at 12:23 pm
85 – when the carpet was still brick red…
the gum board, quite disgusting.
and some guy threw a fish over the senior balcony.
Never understood that.
September 23rd, 2005 at 3:47 pm
And the girlfriend that I reference in my Hawking post who used to get drunk with her “friend” while I was taking driver’s ed? Fairview Knight ‘85 as well. (Transferred from BHS.) Bitch.
September 23rd, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Okay, I’m one of those “other screenbloggers” that John has no juicy gossip on but links to (and thanks for that!), but just to test the “Sex Degrees of John August” concept, I racked my brain to see if I could come up with a connection.
This is the best that I could do. It turns out that Heather, a good friend of mine and member of my writing group, was college roommates with Stephanie Savage of The OC, who happened to be an associate producer on Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, which of course John wrote. Not too bad, huh?
September 24th, 2005 at 9:48 am
Mine might be the juiciest screenwriter blog of them all, since “Things They Won’t Tell You In Film School” isn’t about screenwriting, per se, but rather one girl’s pathetic attempts to get paid for it. While I can’t always promise the sexual smut of a true Hollywood confessional, there is a very popular post called “Julie The Porn Star.” Though Craig Mazin does link to me, he did not call me from the maternity ward for blogging advice. At least not so far.
September 24th, 2005 at 10:52 am
John:
One day, we shall meet. Oh yes, we shall meet. We will know each other by our code names only. I will be “bank” and you will be “oxlips”.
In the meantime, that whole labor thing was our second kid, and you know, labor isn’t really like the movies. It’s a lot of waiting around, and dammit, brads just don’t float themselves!
Naturally, I paid someone else to design my site. Maybe I should ask her how she floats that damn quill. Anyway…everyone who visits here is in awe of your screenwriting prowess, but though I love your work, I’m really more impressed with the fact that you can code.
Geekily yours,
C.
September 24th, 2005 at 1:02 pm
Craig:
For our kid, labor actually started two weeks before she came, so yes, I appreciate that it’s not at all like it is in the movies.
September 25th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
John:
Still, we should probably boil some water.
Just in case.
October 1st, 2005 at 2:57 pm
John: I was at a party last night and we old folks talked about all of the Fairview grads now in the entertainment business. When Fairview opened in 1960, in the building that is now Platt, kids were transfered there so it had classes from 9-12 grades. Joan Van Ark was the first head girl ‘61 and went directly to the Yale School of Drama. I was in the class of 1963. IMDB list 26 people born in Boulder, Colorado. I am a past president of the Boulder History Museum and have a moderate interest in trying to develop an archive (potentiall an exhibit) about people in the business who went at least part of K-12 here. If their only connection is CU, that would be left to others. I have been somewhat surprised that those I have talked to have expressed interest and want to cooperate with such a project. These things always take more work than it might seem at first and usually most be done by volunteers. The first step is getting a comprehensive list of Fairview and Boulder High graduates in entertainment. Fortunately, most are still alive. Best regards. Jim