I'm endeavoring this month to post more progress reports on all my projects. Almost more to remind myself of how I'm doing!
My thoughts have been turned inward to the movie. It's still little more than a collection of a half-dozen pages, each page representing a different movie outline. That may not seem like much, but writing it down is a formality; by the time it's on paper I pretty much have the entire thing straight in my head. A lot of my writing process is spent slouched in a chair, brow furrowed, staring at a blank screen. The typing occurs in my head in some weird Zen trance.
Anyway. I've started cutting the ideas that don't work. I mean, yeah, I love the movie idea about a metal band riding winged steel horses that are also made of lightning, but I don't think I'm ready to film a spiritual sequel to Flash Gordon (with MANOWAR).
The best idea I have so far, and probably the most feasible is a sort of Counter Monkey movie that follows the journey of a roleplaying group in the real world, and then dives into the fantasy world as the game plays out. There's been a lot of demand for this, and I do like the idea. The only things holding me back are (1) I really, REALLY don't want it to be a rehash of "The Gamers" and (2) I was sort of hoping to make a movie that "stands on its own," if that makes sense.
Now, I have enough material that the CM movie wouldn't just be dorks bopping around a fantasy world doing the exact same thing the Gamers movie did. At all. But I do think the movie needs a different spin that I need do come up with. As for the second thing: stop bitching and give the people what they want, Spoony. Honestly, I have no problems with a CM movie. I think it's just the way of comedians sometimes that they get an irrational urge to make a Not Comedy.
What kind of Not Comedy? Well, that's what the other ideas are. Horror (an idea I've been struggling with for years), a superhero story (likely beyond my means), and a love-story comedy. Which counts as a Not Comedy because it's my normal kind of comedy. I actually really like the last one. April thought it was cute, and if I won the lady over I might have something there.
And then there's Counter Monkey, in which I've already scripted a scene where I snikt a guy's balls into a power outlet with my Cyberpunk Wolverine blades to get him to tell me where the bomb is.