John August

News

The Movie is premiering at Sundance

News, Projects, Sundance, The Nines

RyanAfter months of vague hints, I can finally reveal information about [The Movie](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/so-i-made-a-movie) I wrote and directed this summer.

* It’s called The Nines.What? There’s a show on ABC called “The Nine”? Oh wait, it was [cancelled](http://www.zap2it.com/tv/news/zap-abcpullsthenine,0,7597771.story). Or put on indefinite hiatus. The truth is, we had just finished clearing the title “The Nines” through the MPAA when ABC decided to retitle their pilot “Nine Lives” as “The Nine.” Guess how happy that made us. We made back-up plans, but I had a hunch that nobody would give a damn about what happened during a bank robbery. For once, America did not disappoint me.
* It stars Ryan Reynolds, Hope Davis and Melissa McCarthy.
* It’s a drama. Funny in places, suspenseful in places, but basically a drama.
* It will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

This last point was the primary reason for secrecy on the first three. I made the film with the goal of debuting at Sundance, where my first film (Go) launched in 1999, and didn’t want to shine too big a spotlight on it until we knew whether the festival would pick it up.

We found out last week that we got in, but the Filmmaker Agreement we signed required us to keep a lid on the public “woo-hoos” until the official announcement came out. Which [it did](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117954801.html?categoryid=13&cs=1), today. So, woo-hoo!

The film was produced by Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen (American Beauty, Big Fish), along with Dan Etheridge (Veronica Mars and many indies). It was independently financed,A polite euphemism for “rich people paid for it.” with the hope of finding the right distributor.

Feel free to ask about the budget. I will whistle and look in the other direction.

In an [earlier post](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/test-screening-the-movie), I bemoaned the difficulty of trying to arrange a test audience screening, given the danger that any internet leak could be deadly. I can now tell you that there were two screenings, which were invaluable. The first one helped us figure out what movie we’d actually made. The second one told us which scenes we actually needed.There was in fact one blogger at the first test screening, but he so rarely posts that even Tyra Banks feels a little neglected.

What is the movie about? Well, if you got a Sundance catalog, the description would read something like this:

A troubled actor, a television showrunner, and an acclaimed videogame designer find their lives intertwining in mysterious and unsettling ways.

Which is entirely true. There’s also a lot more going on, but there’s no sense in spoiling it now. The movie isn’t The Sixth Sense; it doesn’t hinge on one giant twist. But it rewards paying very careful attention.

So, hey, if you’d like to see it, [come to Sundance](http://festival.sundance.org/2007/festival/festschedule.aspx)! In addition to the premiere, there will be at least two more screenings that week. The movie is playing out of competition (that is, it’s not eligible for awards), so I’m honestly not trying to stuff the ballot box. But a friendly audience is always welcome.

For the majority of readers who won’t be able to make it to Park City, I’ll try to keep up with the blogging to give a virtual Sundance experience.

Introducing jaWiki

Geek Alert, jaWiki, News

[[wiki logo]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki)When I [redesigned the site](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/redesign-part-one) in February, the major goal was to allow better access to the archive information. Unlike most blogs, the bulk of the content on johnaugust.com is equally relevant today or four years from today — unlike celebrity marriages, the answers to screenwriting questions pretty much hold solid.

Although I think it’s worked out pretty well, the [Big Fat Footer](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/footnotes-on-the-footer) wasn’t my original plan.

I wanted to harness the power of the hive mind to create a user-organized repository of screenwriting-relating articles. See, I’m only one guy. A pretty busy guy at that. I’ll never be able to go back through and update old entries, fixing broken links and outdated references. But my readers? They’re screenwriters, with an overwhelming need to procrastinate. Some of them would likely jump at the chance.

Perhaps the answer was a wiki.

So I installed [Mediawiki](http://mediawiki.org), the same software which drives [Wikipedia](http://wikipedia.org). (Maybe you’ve heard of it?) Guess what: It’s complicated. Even as we added articlesChad Creasey and Howard Rabinowitz deserve props for getting a “critical mass” of articles written. Mucho thanks to the two of them., I started to dread the eventual launch. The software was so complex, and such a target for ne’er-do-wells, that I finally shelved it until the vaguely-defined timespace of “after The Movie.”

The wiki has been quietly sitting there, one slash away, for months. And now, finally, I’m ready to give it a go.

I’d slap a red “Beta” logo on it if it weren’t so Web Two-Point-Cheesy. But really, it’s beta. It could completely crash at any moment. The underlying software (not Mediawiki, btw) has many fans, but also many issues, and was honestly chosen for the ease with which articles could get yanked out of it should something more promising come along.

Right now, there’s almost no restriction on who can create or edit an entry. I’m holding on to the “delete” power for now, though I’d love to share that with some dedicated wikiers. You can create a profile for yourself by choosing “Login” and “Register.” By logging in, the community can see who is doing good work.

Early adopters, have at it. I urge you to look at it as I do — an experiment. It might be great; it might be a Really Bad Idea. But it might be worth your time. Have at it [here](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki).

Chicago: The Musical. No, not that one.

Formatting, Genres, News, Projects

I spent a few days in ChicagoTechnically, Evanston, which is north of Chicago. Apparently, confusing the two is annoying to actual Chicagoans, on par with saying “Los Angeles” when one means “Orange County.” My apologies to anyone offended. to see the premiere of my friends’ new musical [Asphalt Beach](http://www.northwestern.edu/observer/issues/2006/10/20/amtp.html), which is workshopping at Northwestern University. The show was terrific, and vindication for my decade of belief in my friends’ talent.

I took advantage of being away from L.A. to start writing something brand new. That’s my modus operandi; I generally barricade myself in a hotel room for a few days to crank through pages when starting a new project. I write longhand and quickly — first a scribble draft of a scene, then a more legible (but still handwritten) version. I fax pages back to Los Angeles and don’t let myself edit.

Since a writer can only stare at the same four walls for so long, I try to pick someplace interesting for my sequestration. Vegas is a good choice. When one doesn’t drink or gamble, it’s basically a giant, noisy food court. That’s where I started both Charlie’s Angels scripts and The Movie. I wrote Fury in San Diego, and Tarzan on a 23-hour [train ride](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/writing-on-the-coast-starlight-from-los-angeles-to-seattle) from Los Angeles to Seattle. I wrote Fantasy Island and Jurassic Park III in Hawaii, though the latter was more “forced labor” than a writing vacation.

It’s been six months since I’ve written something new, which is my longest hiatus by far. So I was happy to find that I could still string words together in a non-blog environment. After months of dealing with actors and vehicles and visual effects, it’s liberating to deal with only words.

This time, I wrote a play. An honest-to-[Baal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal), curtain-comes-up stage play. The story sort of demanded it: it’s necessarily talky, less about What Happens as much as What It’s About. The lack of easy CUT TO:’s is more than made up for by the luxury of scene length. In a stage play, you can do things that are unwieldy in films:

TOM: Let me make Point One.
MARY: Sure, we’ll talk about Point One.
TOM: Now let me tie that in to Point Two.
MARY: Really? Well, here’s Point Three.
(Steve ENTERS)
STEVE: What are we talking about?
MARY: Point Three.
STEVE: That sounds a lot like Point Four, which Tom and I were talking about in the previous scene, only from the opposite perspective.
TOM: Unlike a movie, we don’t have to simplify arguments down to postage-stamp sized thought nuggets. Ambiguity and uncertainty are a-okay.
MARY: We can also assume a much higher level of audience sophistication, since only rich, educated people bother seeing plays.
STEVE: And no unnecessary car chases!

On the downside, [stage play formatting](http://www.vcu.edu/arts/playwriting/formatnumbers.html) seriously blows. Dialogue stretches from margin to margin, and stage directions are surrounded by completely unnecessary parentheses. But one can’t have everything.

Back from Austin

Geek Alert, News

Two flights, three panels and five beers later, I can say I had a good time at the Austin Film Festival. It was certainly the best time I’ve had in Austin, largely because I got off my ass and went to the parties and screenings. (Although some of the credit for that has to go to the amazing new [Google Maps for Treo](http://google.com/gmm), which made up for the notable lack of a map in the festival catalog.)

The strangest thing about a screenwriter-centric event is that for a few days I feel like a minor celebrity. Strangers recognize me, which [almost never happens](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/are-you-somebody) in Los Angeles. But in exchange for anonymity, I got lots of nice comments and even a t-shirt with my silhouette. Which kind of freaks me out, frankly. I don’t know that I’d wear it myself, and I’d be unnerved if I saw someone else wearing one.

Mike Curtis from HD for Indies [wrote up](http://www.hdforindies.com/2006/10/austin-film-festival-john-august-panel.html) what I talked about in my solo presentation yesterday, so props to him for the live-blogging. And best regards to all the panelists, organizers and attendees at the festival these next few days.