is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Thursday
Jun 28, 2007

Re[5]: Shockah's Time to Die Pitch: 1.0 posted by Martin

One note I just thought of. I’ll bet I threw you off by my blank meets blank statement, so I should describe it a bit. Of course, the need to do so totally negates the spirit of the statement, and shows probably how poor my choices were. But, as a first stab, I picked those two movies because each had elements I thought important to Time To Die.

Silkwood Picked because I liked the idea of September Rose being tenacious and dedicated to her cause, but without being a caricature of a male character. The obvious choice here might have been Alien or Aliens, but I chose Silkwood because of Streep’s feminine take on strength. I think the trap to avoid here is making September Rose masculine in her actions and demeanor. The question really stands as: how would a real unstoppable woman handle this?

Speed I’m sure this is where the idea of the road trip movie started, and this is where I fell on my face. I picked this movie not because of the driving, but because of the non-stop forward momentum. So, let’s take this one off the table until I think of one that better describes the action I see in my head.

I’ll make an effort to describe better my left-field choices, and I know these weren’t perfect. I just didn’t know we had the option to post without the blank meets blank statement (Oooooooooo! Smack!).

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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.