barrington99@gmail.com My brother is leaving LA and moving (back) to Chicago. I’m happy for him, because it feel like a change, and it feels he’s been looking for a change, but I’m also sad because he will be gone. Although we are certainly different in many ways, in other ways, of my siblings, we have the … Read more
My friend HinxMinx recently turned me on to Every Frame a Painting, and in particular to this video about inter-scene cutting in the work of animator Satoshi Kon. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz49vQwSoTE?rel=0&w=560&h=315] Watching this reminded me of a John August / Craig Mazin conversation about transitions in writing at JohnAugust.com. They talk about the different kinds of devices … Read more
Got a call from my doctor / surgeon yesterday. “Surgeon” is perhaps not the right word for him, because we do a pretty good job of not using the word “surgery” for the minor procedures I’ve had this year. Instead we call them “procedures.” A “surgery” is defined by Merriam Webster as medical treatment in which … Read more
Paul and I took a long-weekend road-trip this past weekend. We spent one day exploring Berkeley, CA, one day in San Francisco, and two days of driving. Paul and I get along well on drives, so the whole thing was pretty fun. We stayed in Berkeley with a retired faculty member from my job who recently retired … Read more
If you’re just getting to the party, this is the last of a three-part series about the The Blcklst.com site. Part 2 contained two examples of evaluations for scripts that I posted on The Blacklist site. Part 1 provided an overview of the site, and posed some questions I wanted to address: “Have you tried it?” … Read more
Yesterday, Paul and I embarked on a little road trip up to Berkeley and San Francisco. It officially started here: This is the restaurant’s owner: I thought his name might be Jack or Joe, but it was Mark. He explained that Jack was for “flap jacks” and Joe was like “cup of Joe”. He was … Read more
Continued from Part 1 Have I ever tried the blklst.com site? Why yes, I have. Toward the end of May, I uploaded three scripts on the Black List and within a few days I ordered one evaluation for each. Some people suggest that if you order one evaluation, you should go ahead and order two, … Read more
On a few of the forums and online pages I occasionally lurk on, the question comes up: What is this Blacklist dot com thing? Have you tried it? Is it worth it? In this three-part series, I will address each of these questions. Part 1: What is blcklst.com? Back in 2004 (according to Wikipedia, and … Read more
Read this article in The Atlantic yesterday about the development of Toy Story. To summarize, from first draft to green-light took three years, what looks like at least a dozen incarnations of the script, and a whole team of writers and execs who were getting paid to work on it. I think this makes me … Read more
This blog is dividing / moving. Because the blog that you are reading has a tab on my “professional” site, such as it is. It’s probably the not that confidence-inspiring for someone to get my business card, visit the site, read the bright and cheery “about me” section, and then click my blog to find … Read more