All on the Hayride

This is my underground blog. The other blog is reserved for carefully crafted statements about my career. This is where I'm slightly more candid.

I've moved on from the Butcherhouse project. This might be old news to some of you but I'm on the verge of selling the screen rights completely to the studio that originally optioned it and it's made me... contemplative.

I'll always own the stage rights and my name will always be attached to it if/when the studio moves forward with the project (which they claim—to my lawyer—that they're still very serious about), but it's just not something I'm creatively invested in anymore. On a practical or emotional level. I had hopes that it would be my first produced movie credit (which it may yet be), but I've also been developing other projects non-stop. I never wanted it to be my one-hit-wonder.

Still waiting on initial feedback from my reps on my first draft of "Hayride". It could take a while because my two managers and my features agent have to read it through and talk amongst themselves before they get back to me. It's not everything it could be just yet but I'm hoping they see the potential in there.

I think it took me longer to write because it shares a bond with Butcherhouse and Hayride initially felt too much like more of the same. They're both horror stories centered around high school kids in a small town.

But the more I developed it, HAYRIDE became my effort to bury BUTCHERHOUSE.

Still waiting to find out when I'm going to L.A. to pitch the CADAVERS project. Could be next week, could be anytime thereafter. It's just the eternally obnoxious hurry-up-and-wait nature of being a screenwriter.

HAYRIDE and CADAVERS are my two highest priorities right now. I think they could both be amazing showcases for what I'm capable of. I'm uniquely excited about CADAVERS because it doesn't involve teenagers in a small town.

I've still got so much to prove to the world. It's been a long hard road. There was a time when I hoped that BUTCHERHOUSE would beat the odds of development hell, get greenlit very fast, the works. But I refuse to be another bitter screenwriter, whining about the industry. It's a bitch but I'm determined to make this career work.

I know what I can do. I know what I'm capable of. I've no sense of entitlement. I'm just going to keep working my ass off to get to where I want to be. (Back on the Upper West Side.)