Yes, sadly I'm beginning to feel more and more like I'm a drying breed on the Internet; the omega man on the Internet -- for realsies Kim Kardashian! A Mad Max of sorts who seams to have outlived my peers, my fellow pre-pro screenwriters of years gone by, who have left the blogosphere and gone into regions unknown. They had places I used to visit on a regular basis. Now abandoned sites.
Ah the seasons of life. Ah the seasons of pre-pro writers. Why I am still here -- and they're not?
I know; it's a hard, hard business to break in to. It's a business where it's more about who you know then what you can deliver on paper. And I guess after a while some people just have enough of that, and succumbed to their lower nature.
What really sucks is that even when you try, and coexist in this pre-pro screenwriter world, you find that most of your peers, people trying to do what you're trying to do, are total assholes, people that you don't wanna hang out with. People you actually wanna avoid, like zombies from one of those George Romero movies, "28 Days Later", or "I Am Legend." Sadly SOME parallels can be made them and some pre-pro screenwriters of today. Overly opinionated. Unable to cope with different ways of looking at thing if they don't EXACTLY mirror their own preferences. And these are so-called, "creatives", people who should by nature be ready and willing to look at things from other point. But as they are, they zombies, the modernday equivalent of the infected; people to be be avoided -- because by THEIR OWN INNER ABILITY TO DEAL WITH THEIR FRUSTRATIONS are are now reduced to being assholes. The sad part is, like many zombies out there, they may not even realize that they are indeed assholes. They're just going through the motions. Going from place-to-place causing chaos. The frustrations of the industry have changed them into the infected -- infected with asshole-itis!
So how do I keep myself from becoming one those aforementioned assholes? Well, for starters, I don't think too highly of myself. I don't pretend to be the end all when it comes to writing. Second of all, I don't take myself to seriously, and I try to have fun with life. Thirdly, I want to mingle with others. I've wanted this for-ever. I dream of being part of a greater group of cool people. Forth, I am open to other people's opinions -- even when they're different than mine. And that's really an integral part of being a writer; possessing the ability to look at things from different perspective, how else do you write compelling heros and villains?!
I wish the blogsosphere was more alive with cool people who are into writing and feature films like I am. God knows I've been looking for that haven. Still haven't found it. Rather I feel more and more alone. More and more like the lone hero in a sea of DICKS! I wish I had nicer to say about my fellow pre-pro writers, but they need to be better people than they are. They need to be deserving of being called cool. Cool people do cool things. They act act cool. They are cool. Be cool.
The creative landscape I find myself in is a nasty one. Maybe it's a sign of the time. People tainted with mean and rudeness as a byproduct of their own sense of failure, I dunnow. But venturing out into it many times I feel like one of those heroes from a post-apocalyptic movies: "Omega Man," "Planet of the Apes", "I Am Legend", "28 Days Later," or "The Road Warrior". When the sad truth all along is, all I wanna find is a couple survivors out there. A clan of "safe" people I can share a writer's journey with.
And so the search goes on... In a dangerous, difficult landscape, where terrors unfathonable can lunge out of the next building alleyway you pass by...