Scarecrow

I guess the big news this week comes by way of an old source. I wrote Scarecrow at the end of 2002/beginning of 2003. After completing my steps Revolution brought Stuart Beatty in to do a rewrite and somehow it then went into turnaround. There were numerous reasons given but I was never clear on the exacts. It floated around for a few months then Raimi’s Ghost House productions picked it up where it’s sat since. Until this week. The Pang brothers have signed on as directors.
Dean called with the news, then Patrick (having been told by his agent) and I got the standard stream on congratulatory emails throughout the day. Drew, my favorite of the Terminal Reality crew working on Demonik, shot me an email having read an article at CHUD. Here’s an except.
After getting attention for their Thai crime thriller Bangkok Dangerous, about a deaf-mute hitman, the brothers Pang made an impression on the horror genre with their creepy pant-soiler The Eye and its follow-up.
Not to be confused with those virtually unwatchable direct-to-video slasher movies, this Scarecrow follows a family who takes over an old sunflower farm and begins to experience increasingly odd behavior from some of their members. The story comes from Todd Farmer (Jason X) and Stuart Beattie (Collateral), and knowing the Pang brothers, it’ll have its share of unsettling scenes and outright crap-scares.
By the way, they spelled Stuart’s name wrong.
The original article made the front page of the Hollywood Reporter so this is all good news. Looks like I may finally get a second credit. I’ll probably share the credit with Stuart but I always thought he did a good rewrite considering the stupid notes he was given. A lesser writer would have resulted in the script being shelved forever.
I finished Last Vamp about 10 minutes ago and shot the 200 pages out to Whitley, Michael and Andrew. Michael will forward it on to Frank, Jerry and the rest of the crew.
This was a tough rewrite…well a time consuming rewrite. The beats were there, the elements already set up but when you make any change the hard work becomes keeping everything else from unraveling. It was alot of meat and taters work.

But, hey, I ain’t complaining. I like “my” job.
Although I have corresponded with Drew a couple of times this week I’ve heard nothing about my level one rewrite on Demonik. But, of course, I fully expect to learn that somehow my draft is the very cause behind global warming and will most likely be blamed for the death of all little babies.
I was supposed to have met with David and Brad from Tiger Hill yesterday but Dave hit me with an email explaining that he was under the weather. The meeting has been pushed to next week.
Speaking of Dave…David Bergantino called from London today. He’s taking a week off of work to recharge. David works for a Developer, very much like Virtual Reality. Dave and his team are designing racing games.

Patrick called Josh concerning Mass Destruction and discussed our proposed changes to the pitch. Josh agreed and Patrick has spent this week creating a bullet outline. Good man, Patrick. I really needed to finish my rewrite so he was there to pick up my slack. This weekend I’ll make the outline pretty with ALL CAP headings and pretty bold captions. Monday we’ll send it to Josh and pitch Alex at Fox later in the week.
I’ll shoot F.J. an email today just to make sure that there has been no interest lost in my pursuing Magnus and if all is well I’ll jump back onto it next week as well. I normally don’t like developments but this is a good story.

So, I’m on the phone with Dean. I’m trying to work but he keeps bothering me. It’s unending. He’s now telling me about his taking a big dump, a process to which he refers to as getting a big demon out of him.
Mel and I are heading to their house tonight to take part in massive quantities of alcohol and heroin (Also called diacetylmorphine). It’s all good, Dean gets the good stuff. I’ll take some swim trunks this time because I’m tired of his neighbors posting my nude hot tub shots on the www.nakedwrestlers.com.
He’s on his way home from pitching a one-hour at Touchstone. Sounds like it went great. Hard to believe it wouldn’t have. It’s a fantastic idea and only the utterly stupid will pass. That’s not an opinion. It’s a law of nature. Like gravity and Crop Circles.
Enough for now. Gonna jump in the shower and shave my balls.