A lot of my time recently has been taken up with live shows and writing screenplays, which are a million miles apart in terms of action and reaction.
See, one of the things I used to love about doing stand-up (the gravestone of my stand-up "career" reads 1998-2002) was that the reaction was instantaneous. If I said something, I knew straight away whether people liked it or not. They laughed or didn't, applauded or didn't.. There was no real waiting involved. This principle carries across to doing live shows about filmmaking, to a degree; I know how a show is going from the reaction of the audience and the feedback/questions I get throughout. It's nice. No waiting.
Writing a screenplay, on the other hand, is nothing but waiting. I wrote a great gag for the Strippers vs Werewolves screenplay today. How long am I going to have to find out to hear an audience reaction to that gag? Best part of two years, in all likelhood, by which point I will be so sick to death of the gag that I won't actually find anything funny about it myself anymore. The delay between action and reaction is so interminable that I'll be a different person by the time I get to the payoff.
So maybe that's why I enjoyed the live shows so much. I'd be up for doing some more, so if any educational establishments/film festivals/film clubs or whatever fancy booking a 90 minute show about making low-budget horror movies and getting them distributed around the world, feel free to get in touch.
If I can keep the instant gratification itch scratched, that might hopefully prevent me from going back to the fickle arms of stand-up again. I suspect that my millennium bug routines are now somewhat dated..
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Thursday, June 03, 2010
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