is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Thursday
Feb 09, 2006

Re:[5] Round Four: Rise and Vote, gentlemen and scoundrals posted by Martin

Did I call you out?

No, you didn’t—I don’t think you had a problem with it, but some readers did, and also I think some people made comments during a live reading we had, although I’d have to dig through my notes to remember. But since we’re talking about this more, I thought I’d dig up the scene and put it out there, let people judge for themselves. It was longer originally, but got shortened when for the version that was actually submitted.

To me, the interesting thing was that people seemed to take issue with a white guy writing a black guy doing something that lots of black guys do—talking about hip-hop. But, just because lots of black guys do it doesn’t mean that all black guys do it, and therefore it’s potentially a stereotype. To our credit, this same character also did a mean Groucho Marx impersonation, so he was far from stereotypical.

In this scene, set at the fictional Bierce Academy of Visual Arts, the three characters are students: David, the black character, a painter, Bernardo, a jazz pianist from Italy, and Sharpe, a “doll revolutionary” — a bit of a full-of-himself rube and Bernardo’s roommate.

INT.  BIERCE CAFETERIA - EVENING

David and Bernardo are sitting at a round table.  In front of them plates that have been picked clean.

BERNARDO

But there is no melody, no counter point, no dynamic range.  It is all…

He pounds on the table with his fist BOOM BOOM BOOM.

BERNARDO

…all the time.

DAVID

See, now, you’re missing some subtleties.  But the biggest thing you’re missing, besides that you ain’t the audience, brutha, is that hip-hop is a dialog….

Sharpe walks up with a full tray, and drops it noisily on the table.

SHARPE

I fucking love hip-hop.

BERNARDO

I am glad you have headphones.


SHARPE

I love that hardcore, gangsta shit, man.  Fuck the poh-lice!  Ha ha.  Old school rocks.

DAVID

…aaaaand the dialog is over.

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What is Spitball!?

Spitball! is two guys collaborating to write about writing and collaboration. We're writing partners who have worked together since 2000, and placed in the top 100 in the last Project Greenlight for our script YELLOW.

Currently, we are both working on multiple screenplay, short story, and novel ideas independently and together, and collaborate on this blog.

What Spitball! used to be

Spitball! started as an attempt to collaborate on a screenplay online in real time. From January 2006 to July 2007 we worked on an interactive process to decide the story we were going to make. A full postmortem is coming, but you can find the find all the posts by looking in the category Original Version.

During this period, we affected the personalities of two of the most famous spitball pitchers from the early 20th Century. Look at our brief bios for more info about this, and so as not to be confused as to who is talking when.

We rebooted the franchise in early 2009 in its current form.


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Kent M. Beeson

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Kent M. Beeson (aka Urban Shockah) is a stay-at-home dad and stay-at-home writer, living in Seattle, WA with his wife, 2 year old daughter and an insane cat. In 2007, he was a contributor to the film blog ScreenGrab, where he presciently suggested Jackie Earle Haley to play Rorschach in the Watchmen movie, and in 2008, he wrote a film column for the comic-book site ComiXology called The Watchman. (He's a big fan of the book, if you couldn't tell.) In 2009, he gave up the thrill of freelance writing to focus on screenplays and novels, although he sometimes posts to his blog This Can't End Well, which a continuation of his first blog, he loved him some movies. He's a Pisces, and his favorite movie of all time is Jaws. Coincidence? I think not.

Martin McClellan

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Martin (aka Burley Grymz) is a designer and writer. He occasionally blogs at his beloved Hellbox, and keeps a longer ostensibly more interesting bio over here at his eponymous website. You can also find him on Twitter.