A Fast-Moving Summer

August already? This is the time of year when results start coming in for all those screenwriting competitions we all submitted to back in February and March. I didn’t have a lot of new stuff to submit this year, so it is nice to see the two new-ish things I did submit get a little recognition.

My Ireland-themed sitcom pilot “Gotta Be McGee” added “PAGE Awards Semi-finalist” to its list of accolades, making it now a “Top 5%” script on all of CoverFly, while my horror feature “SeaBird” also made it to the semi-finals in the “Creative World Awards” screenplay contest.

This is all good news. Especially since I haven’t been doing much/any actual “screenwriting” this year. Oh… I’ve been plenty busy writing other stuff though. I just don’t know how much of that will see the light of day: Earlier this year I cranked out two short fiction eBooks (about 15k words each) and in just the past 3 months I focused on writing just one thing: a highly personal/autobiographical project that I just finished today, which is clocking in at 80k words. I don’t know about you but 80k words in just under 3 months is, for me anyway, a lot of writing. I don’t know what to call it exactly, “memoir” seems a bit overblown, but it is definitely an autobiography… and one that wasn’t easy to write.

Actually, it was beyond “not easy,” it was actually difficult and a bit painful to write but, it just felt like it was time to write it… whether or not I ever share it with anyone or not. I think most writers know that feeling: Of being unable to write anything else until you get one. specific. thing. out of your head and onto the page. …that’s where my head was at. And now it is done. I’m not sure what I’m going to focus on next, writing-wise, but I finally feel free to choose among other projects.

In other news, my time at the LA Connection Improv Theater in Burbank is already ending. This is very disappointing news but I guess it couldn’t be helped. The group I was part of just sort of disintegrated with too many people not showing up for rehearsals or dropping out of the theater altogether. Those of us remaining were offered slots in other groups (that met on different nights) but I just couldn’t make any of those new choices work with my schedule. But damn, it was very nice to be on stage again and more importantly, be back in a rehearsal/class atmosphere with a lot of lovely, kind, and funny people. I’m going to have to find a new improv option soon because I definitely feel re-bitten by the bug and want to get back up-to-speed the way I was back when I was doing improv 5-6 nights per week. — In related news, there might be an improv teaching opportunity for me soon. THAT would be spectacular. Sometimes I think I miss teaching even more than performing.

Halfway Through An Even Weirder Year

The WGA is on strike. Still. Since my last post here, “Artificial Intelligence” has become a real threat to the livelihoods of writers and creative people of all kinds. I don’t know about you, but a future where the computers get to write poetry, create music & make art while we humans continue to do all the sh#tty jobs is not what I was expecting – nor is it what we were promised.

The strike has been eye-opening for a few reasons. As I mentioned in previous posts, my lit. agent died (from Covid) over a year ago. Since then, I’ve been trying to establish or re-establish some professional contacts with agencies and production companies on my own. I’ve made hundreds of calls in the past six months. Anyone who has tried this will tell you that it can be very frustrating to play phone-tag for days, weeks, or even months only to eventually get blown off with the standard excuse “We only accept submissions from agents.” But now here’s the thing: As the Writer’s strike reaches the two month mark, I have gotten calls from TWO different production companies that had either ignored me or blown me off for the past year+. They’re suddenly “interested in” either my horror feature or one of my pilots now, and “would I like to come in and talk about them?” – These are exactly the kinds of phone calls I’ve been working on getting for the past couple of years, but now, I have to ignore them, and I have. Because, as the son of two pro-union parents, I’m no scab.

I have also kept a New Year’s Resolution that I made back on January 1st: I have managed to climb back on stage. A few months ago I auditioned into the company of the LA Connection Theater. Where I now spend every Tuesday evening in rehearsal/class and get to do two Saturday shows a month. It still feels a bit weird. Even though I’ve been doing the storytelling and spoken word shows, open mics and even played guitar publicly, I haven’t been part of a “theater company” since my beloved bang. theater closed. My new theater focuses on short-form improv and “games” which are fun, but after years of doing long-form improv it is an adjustment to shift gears to the lower-stakes and increased “structure” of doing improv “games.” I am also still getting to know my cast mates, and getting back up-to-speed performance-wise, but so far I’m glad to be doing it and enjoying the Tuesday night workouts as much as the actual shows. We’ll see how it goes.

As I look back on my “activity log” for 2023 so far (yes, I keep an ‘activity log’) I am realizing that I haven’t written any screenplay pages this year. I haven’t even worked on (much needed) rewrites of a couple of my existing scripts. …but I have been writing. A lot. I’ve cranked out two 15k eBooks, I have done some ghostwriting and in just the past month, I’ve written over 40k words on a memoir of sorts and will likely top out over 100k words by the time my self-imposed mid-August deadline rolls around.

Maybe “memoir” is too grandiose a word. With all the writing projects that are always on my to-do lists, suddenly and without warning THIS (writing about myself) became the top priority in my mind. It could be because I’m approaching some major personal milestones, I don’t know. I just realized I had hit a point where my past keeps bubbling up in my head and affecting my present. For a while now, everything else I have been trying to write has felt lifeless and false or it just fizzled out, and I kept coming back to the feeling that it was finally time to write about myself… even if I’m writing just for myself. I think, like a lot of people, these past couple years have been a time of introspection and of questioning what it is I really want to spend my time doing. It is also a time to re-take some personal inventories and see where I have been failing myself and where I’ve been living up to my own expectations. …and maybe I’m finally ready to face and work through some stuff from my past. I’m not exactly having “fun” with this particular project, but I am feeling good about the progress I’m making on it. I also feel like I can’t work on anything else – or if I do, the work will be sub-par – until I see this “memoir” through to the end. I just can’t ignore it anymore.

If all of this sounds self-absorbed well, it is my website. The whole point of it is to post personal updates and news… but believe me: I am well-aware that the world continues to be on fire and it looks like even more difficult and tricky times lay ahead for all of us. I can only hope that kindness, cooperation and love can triumph over this moment in time where hate, intolerance and avarice are so in vogue. As a species we have so much potential that we’re not living up to.

Wrapping up this weird year.

December already. Like a lot of people, I had hoped 2022 would bring back some much-missed calm and normalcy, but that just wasn’t the case for me – nor for most of the people I know. While I understand that, from a global perspective, I’m still incredibly lucky (or blessed or privileged or whatever you want to call it) compared to the vast majority of my eight billion fellow humans, I reserve the right to say “Seriously, what the actual f#ck?!” every once in a while too.

I started the year off in January with a middling case of Covid which incapacitated me for a week – and reminded me of how much worse it could have been if I wasn’t vaccinated. This lesson was brought home for real a few weeks later when my unvaccinated literary agent died from Covid after a months-long horror show of respirators, medically-induced comas, and sorrow for his family. At the risk of sounding callous or mercenary, losing my agent at this point in my career/life is a pretty big setback. I’ve had to spend a lot of time this year hustling to find a new one – a process that is never easy in the best of Industry times… and these are not good Industry times, so the search continues.

Bigger problems surfaced when I was in a serious car accident in February. While both parties walked away, my car was a total loss and, as you can imagine, the ensuing insurance hassles that followed took up a lot of my mental/emotional bandwidth for the rest of the year (and still are, in fact) and plunged me into a spiral of anxiety of all kinds.

Oddly, this negative state of mind channeled itself into an unexpected creative place: A few weeks after the accident, I suddenly had an idea for a Horror feature. Anyone who knows me knows how out of character this is for me. I haven’t watched horror movies since I was a kid in the 80s and I don’t read horror books – at all. Heck, Stranger Things sometimes freaks me out a bit too much and I’ve never seen a single episode of American Horror Story either… call me a scardy-cat if you must. So it was extremely odd when an idea for a horror movie (which has nothing to do with cars or car accidents, by the way) arrived in my brain fully formed. Maybe the muses saw where my head was at and took pity on me.

I wrote the entire first draft in about 10 days, and then – after doing barely more than a quick spelling & grammar check, I submitted that first draft to two Horror screenplay competitions and landed in the Quarter-finals in both. Now, two drafts later, I think it is a script that needs to be read, purchased, and shot. I also took (yet another) sitcom pilot idea of mine from blank page to completion this year. It too did OK in a few contests in just its 2nd draft, and I’ve tightened it considerably since then. A feature and a sitcom pilot, not bad output for a year like this one… if only my agent hadn’t died, these scripts might already be “out” in the world, making an impression.

I also read a lot this year, as usual. I should really keep better track of what I read, but at least the kindle app on my phone keeps track of a lot of it. I focused on female writers this year and was blown away by short story collections from Joy Williams and Izumi Suzuki, as well as two ahead-of-their-time novels by the late Ann Quin. I also read a couple of Vonnegut novels I had missed and was delighted to discover Ben Franklin’s autobiography (as part of the “Harvard Classics” collection you can find for FREE for kindle) which read so vividly, you could really hear his voice in it. Some other non-fiction reads included a few books on fungi, meditation, sobriety, and things called “hyper objects,” which I still don’t quite understand. There’s more, but I’m sure you all have enough stuff on your own reading lists already.

I didn’t do any live shows of any kind this year. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I’ve been on stage exactly once since the start of the Covid-times. I have kept busy doing voice-over and character work for some friends’ various podcasts, which is incredibly fun and convenient – since I can record at home, but I find myself missing performing in front of people. I think my biggest creative goal for 2023 will be to climb back on stage because I’m starting to fear that if I don’t go back “up” soon, I won’t get back on stage at all. I also want to get back to making my weekly LA Cartoon – which after 10 years of weekly posts seemed to run out of momentum for me back in April. Maybe I was busy and not taking enough photos, but I also think it had something to do with my post-car accident state-of-mind, which I struggled with all year.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: I went through some major surgery in August to repair a damaged hip and have so far recovered pretty well from that.

…as I said, it was quite a non-standard and challenging year, but I feel like I can honestly say I did my best and got back up after every knock-down. I’m looking forward to the new year and will, as always, do my best to meet any challenges that come my way with a “yes, and…” and to be as proactive and creative as I possibly can. That’s what I’m here for.

I wish anyone reading this a safe & successful 2023.

We’re all in this together, one way or another.

PEACE

This Has Happened Before

I believe “The Muse” rewards effort, but not in the way you might expect. Once again, a few months ago, I found myself working on a script – a spec comedy feature – but the more I worked on it, the more it seemed to get away from me. Undaunted, I still sat down every day and faced it, some days making no progress, some days even losing ground, but I refused to give up. This went on for weeks (ok, months.) Anyone who actually is a writer will tell you the same thing: You have to sit down every day and have at it. Nothing attracts inspiration or The Muse better than the sound a keyboard makes when you’re typing.

… and it eventually came to me. I woke up one morning with a nearly complete story that felt like it had been downloaded into my head while I slept, but it had nothing to do with the spec comedy I was struggling with. It wasn’t even in the comedy genre. It was a horror movie. I’m not saying I woke up from a nightmare and wrote it down, I’m saying I woke up from a horror movie I was watching in my sleep and wrote it down.

I never expected my gift from the Muses to be a horror movie idea, but I’ve learned to pay attention when something like this happens because it has happened to me a few times in the past. I’ve woken up with two spec sitcom pilots downloaded into my head. In both cases, they arrived when I was struggling mightily with some other, completely unrelated project.

So in just a few weeks, I had a solid first draft completed. I sent it out for notes to a few trusted writer friends, including one who knows a lot more about the horror genre than I do. I took in their notes and with little effort turned out a much better and tighter second draft. Wanting to see where I really stood with this 2nd draft in a more public way, I did what I tell my friends & students to do: I submitted the script to a couple of Horror-specific writing contests and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the results: I submitted to two contests and the script popped to the “Quarterfinals” in both of them. I’m certain the latest draft is even better.

Thank you mysterious muses. I really think this script could go places.

Dis-Content-ed

Like a lot of people, I’ve experienced a definite shift in my perspective as I’ve emerged from the long COVID lock down and started the long trek back to whatever “normal” will be from here on out. I’ve also had to seriously reprioritize how I use my time pursuing my (sometimes too many) creative endeavors because I have also picked up an interesting and steady gig that is taking up a lot of the time I used to have to write, read, and generally “make stuff.” Now my “free” time is a more precious commodity, and some creative projects are going to have to drop down several notches on the priority list for a while.

I also have to admit that Bo Burnham’s recent Netflix special “INSIDE” hit home a bit more than a regular “comedy special” does. If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend that you do, even if you’re not a Bo Burnham fan. His “show” really digs into the downside of this new world where constant and endless “content creation” has become an obsession that diminishes every creative endeavor to a piece of data seeking a hack or “marketing solution” that’ll get it more of those precious, precious “views” and “likes.” It seems to be a given that, if you want to “build and audience,” you have to spend more time promoting your work online than you spend actually creating it, which is not a recipe for creating insightful or high-quality work. …and if you happen to already have a large online following, then you’ll be endlessly looped into feeding their voracious content hunger, on their terms, not yours, which is a recipe for burn-out and disillusionment for sure. 

I have fallen into this trap too. Case in point: Through my Blunt Farce persona and vaporous “Production Company” I’ve been putting out a weekly Bud Fallbrook animated “talk show” for the past four months, during which time I’ve used up an embarrassing amount of mental bandwidth fretting about “views” and a lack of new subscribers. I’ve also stuck to a ‘formula’ and a “new show every Monday” deadline, whether I’m feeling inspired or not.Why? Because “post regularly” is the mantra for Youtubers looking to build an audience. …so some episodes feel like a death march, and look as uninspired as they felt in the making. Compare that to the original version of Bud Fallbrook from (eeks!) ten years ago, which was a surreal, Dadaist adventure cartoon, that I put out sporadically, only whenever I had an idea and the time needed to animate it. The result back then? Over 100,000+ views of five episodes, even though they were scattered over a nearly two year period. It was creative work done for creative reasons, not a “concept for delivering content on a regular schedule.” and the difference (in quality and in passion) is pretty evident.

Don’t get me wrong, self-imposed deadlines are often an important part of the creative process (mine anyway,) but it has to be for the right reasons. You may or may not have ever noticed the link to my weekly “Another LA Cartoon” in the left sidebar of this website. Every Thursday since January 2009, I have posted a manipulated digital photo there (with a few hiatus due to computer problems or personal issues.) Now I have an archive of nearly 600 images. Even though I “sell myself” here on this website as a “writer” and “performer” and “Film/Video” guy, I’ve also been creating visual images/art in photos, film and even paint since my 80’s Art School days. I never stopped making the stuff, but I’ve also never really shared it publicly in any meaningful or specific way. These LA Cartoons are a good case in point; these images are a real “body of work” on their own and aren now part of my “visual art” portfolio. Sure, they were done under deadline and posted online, but for my own reasons. As with any long term project, some of those images are more successful than others I know, but a small percentage of them are pretty solid and have resonated with people. So, just a few months ago, I started submitting some of them to appropriate small art galleries and “group shows” around the city. Last month I got my first ever gallery placement at a cool space in Los Angeles called Shoebox Arts and just this week got word that another gallery, the Las Laguna Art Gallery (in Laguna, obviously) will be including one of my LA Cartoon panels in an upcoming group show. I am thrilled that such a long-term project, started just to please myself, and never “marketed,” is starting to generate some interest, even if it never garnered a huge, viral, online following.

In order to now keep track of this aspect of my creative endeavors, I’m going to be creating a new page here on this website for my ‘visual art’ projects and I’m finally going to integrate links to my Blunt Farce website and Blunt Farce-related projects (such as this one, and this one.) here too. The fact that I am/was “Blunt Farce” was never an actual “secret.” I wasn’t trying to be some kind of low-budget Banksy. Anyone could have figured it out with just one or two mouse-clicks. I guess I tried to keep Blunt Farce separate from my PlanetOConnor stuff because BF is where I tried out whatever I wanted to experiment with. Not “professional” or even “polished” stuff, just whatever I felt/feel like making from deep in my weirdo, neo-DaDaist heart. …but I’m realizing now that, for better or worse, it all comes under the heading of “stuff I do.” So expect that new “page” to appear on the website sometime soon.

In the meantime: keep making the magic happen for yourselves.

Be your own best audience.