is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Monday
Oct 09, 2006

Re: [9] Round 12, Part Two [La Commune Planet v. The Scabs] posted by kza

I think you’re right. It is closer to suspense, and possibly does border on horror. But, then the questions are raised, what is the suspenseful situation, and what is horrible about it? I see it more as dramatic, but then the thing is less formed and more amorphous in my head. We’ll work on that. I’m sure we can come to terms over this. So long as coming to terms means doing exactly what I want.

It’s funny — as I’ve been working on my latest character bios, I’ve made the switch: I can see La Commune Planet as a comedy and The Scabs as a drama. The key for me on the latter was to forget about the robots and look more deeply into the human character — not to put too fine a point on it, but what’s his angst? Maybe it has to do with the robots, but maybe it doesn’t. The more I can think of this guy as the subject of a drama, the more I can take the situation/story seriously as a drama. (It’s tough, admittedly — the situation just sounds more comedic than dramatic to me, but I think I can do it.) I don’t know if that quite dovetails with your approach, but I don’t think it’s contradictory, either. If that makes any sense.

To me, that’s the heart of collaboration, and my segue into mentioning that I’m working on a few posts about collaboration and how we work, which I think is kind of interesting.

How’s that coming, btw? I’d like to read that. I might learn something :-P

I didn’t sign up for this. Well, yeah, I signed up, but not for this. I was the middle manager of a Stuckey’s Fun Station, for Buddy’s sake. I haven’t gone through the training program for running a pleasure port. You know the time and effort it takes to keep one of these things running, let alone smoothly? And one of the size of Chanel #5? Of course you don’t, few people do. Hell, I wouldn’t even know myself if it wasn’t for Wes. That bastard.

Wes called me a month ago. We came up the ranks together, but Wes was always a top dog — a little smarter, a little smoother, a little luckier. He graduated the head of his class, and was pursued by everyone. It was a no-brainer; he immediately signed up with FritoGoogle2 and got the pick of assignments. I was about twentieth or so, and only McExxon had any interest whatsoever. That’s okay; I was only pushed into this by my parents and I just wanted to skim by, without any need to put in effort. Clock in, clock out, clock dollars, spend, repeat.

And that’s how life was for a long while. It was good. And then like I said, Wes called. I hadn’t heard a peep from him since graduation, yet here he was ringing me up out of the blue. But when the top dog calls, you answer. He tells me he’s running Chanel #5, recently promoted, would I be interested in heading up Housewares & Domination?

Well, no, not really. What do I know about housewares? And I didn’t need the money. Money meant responsibility, and at the Stuckey’s, I just fill out paperwork all day, and eat at the buffet for lunch. Why change that? But Wes was persistent, so I flew over there to give the place a once over. Let him think I was interested, let him think the FritoGoogle2 charm still worked.

The place was slick, I’ll give him that. A tight ship. The employees were well-trained and well-behaved. I saw this one big fat guy come out of a room, totally naked except for a Mickey Mouse hat, and he started ripping into one of the hostesses about this and that, how the oils weren’t the right temperature and the straps didn’t chafe the right way. And this girl was just totally red star. Dude was back in his room doing whatever he was doing within a minute, smile on his face like he got what he wanted, and I’m not even sure he did. And she was like it was no big thing, totally expressionless.

So then Wes lays out the offer, and I’ll admit, it’s a good one. But I went in with a mantra — “Thanks, but no thanks” — and kept it going through the entire tour. Thanks but no thanks. You pulled this shit all through school, Wes, this sweet talk, but we’re not in school anymore. Thanks but no thanks. So he wants my answer, and I open my mouth, and in my head I see the girl, the one with the expressionless face, and I hear myself say, “Sure thing” and my heart sinks. Bastard.

So then I’m in charge of Housewares & Domination at the biggest pleasure port in the system, and the girl, Gertrude, is my employee. What was I thinking? There are rules in place — I can’t even shake her hand. She and the others report to me every day, and every day I’m greeted by the same lack of expression. It’s a mask that I want to rip off her face and It kills me.

But I can’t worry about that now. Wes and the other department heads left for a two-day conference, leaving me in charge. Shouldn’t have been a big deal — the place can kind of run itself for awhile, even with no head, and they’d be back soon enough. Then, six hours after they left, something happened. Asceticists bombed the New Los Angeles International/Interstellar Teleport. Chanel #5 was cut off from Earth and all the other stations. It’d take a decade to fly to the nearest one, the rest of your life to get back to the planet. The reality of it hasn’t fully hit everyone, but already I can hear the murmurs: We’re alone. It might be a long, long time before anyone comes for us. Why are we working for this idiot, again?

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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.