is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Tuesday
Apr 25, 2006

More Meta Commentary posted by kza

Shockah? Did I forget something?

Don’t think so. I told you about the crazy opening scene of Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss and how I saw that in connection with the potential opening of Time to Die, with the brutal violence that starts without any context, but other than that, I think that was it.

One thing we did talk about that you didn’t mention (probably because I haven’t written my bio for it yet) is the stuff we discussed about Rasputin the Translator. Way back when, I mentioned how I didn’t want the Rasputin character to be an out-and-out Bad Guy, in the same way that I don’t want either Okkervil or the warden to be Bad Guys. But now that we’ve started on characters, we’ve hit upon an odd and interesting way of defining Rasputin: by who he isn’t. He’s not Jake, he’s not Jones, he’s not Cemile, he’s not any of the other characters. He’s defined by the negative space created by these characters. I even proposed that we not know (and thus, not define) anything about Rasputin except for what he wants, the major definition of a character in a mainstream screenplay. And because of this idea, I came around 180 on my position: I think it’s okay, perhaps even mandatory, that Rasputin be a capital “B” Bad Guy.

(Oh, and you had an idea where each character sees Rasputin differently, and thus his personality and even looks seem to change depend on who he’s talking to, which is a cool crazy-ass idea. Assuming I presented it correctly.)

This is interesting commenting on a different character and thinking about how they might dovetail with the character I did the bio for in the movie—this feels so much smoother than working on the same character and having to deal with the things that don’t fit in with your vision of the character. We’ll play it by ear, but I might just pick other characters than you do in the next round.

Good idea — I say we continue with this mode until we come to a situation where it doesn’t seem to work. It’s interesting: part of me says that we’re bound to come to a story where we severely disagree about the presentation of a character… but part of me says that the disagreement will be more about the kind of a story that character represents (like what happened in Round Nine) and not about the character per se. But, you know, keep writin’ them like you did for Round Ten and that’ll never happen.

So, what’s Round Eleven again?

(checks)

Little Black Stray v. Terminal Connection

Oh fuck me.

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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

Urban Shockah pic

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

Burleigh Grimes pic

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.