Playing catch-up continues with June.

June 1st uncovers the mystery of the Weinstein biz affairs offer. It’s interesting to say the least. It’s a one step deal. Not for a screenplay but for an outline. Over the previous months we came up with four takes which we pitched. This was one of them and the company was offering to buy it. Not exactly thrilling to us for numerous reasons. Our guess, the previous writers still owed a draft and would likely be handed our outline.
Look folks, I’m a fan of writers. ALL of my best friends are writers. I correspond with young writers, offer advice, encouragement, whatever I can. Mark Wheaton rewrote me and ended up getting credit and we are good friends. I read scripts for writer friends. I like writers. I respect writers. Writers automatically start out with my loyalty. You don’t gotta earn it…its a freebe. Basically for me to dislike a writer…they gotta eff up. Bad.
These cats effed up. Bad. I won’t get into the details because it doesn’t matter but we couldn’t really stomach handing our idea over so that these two jokers could take credit. I know Hollywood is a town that prides itself on rewarding bad behavior but no. Can’t do it. There aren’t as many jobs out there as there used to be. The idea that some fakers are taking jobs from good writers annoys me. I’m not saying that I should be King and decide who is worthy and who isn’t but I want to be King so I can decide who is worthy and who isn’t.
We passed.
Shame too. Because we wanted to be in bed with the Weinsteins. Patrick’s made 22 films with them. Not even Lucas understands the true symbiotic relationship that’s going on there. And I was more than happy to tag along.
While I didn’t write down passes on Drive Angry…we did have them. But again, they were praise passes. Weird. I’ve gone out with specs before. Most of the time you simply get, “pass”. Not this time. This time it was just weird. We LOVE it. Wish we could buy it but we can’t. For instance, Adam Goodman LOVED the script. Loved us. Kept saying he’s got to get us over to Paramount to write for him. This was before Adam took head office. He said if they were still making 20 pics a year it would be a slam dunk…but with less than ten slots…
June 2nd we finish ISWYD. We’d sent it to friends. Other writers. We had collected the feedback, tweaked, adjusted and were pumped at the outcome. Of course, we had yet to receive our contracts. Sigh. A phone call was made informing the powers that be…that we had a finished draft in hand. Four weeks early. Contracts showed up at the lawyers office an hour later. Imagine that.
It would take a few days to reach an agreement. At which point it was recommended that we hand in the draft. This actually annoyed me a bit.
When did we drop from “a finished script forcing a check to arrive” to “a finish script forcing an agreement to be reached”? You know what they do to you at the drive-thru don’t you?
But…we did as we were told. We handed in the script.
June 4th. Lesher/Weston out. Adam Goodman takes over as Grand Poohbah at Paramount. Interesting.

On June 8th we learn that Dreamworks passed on Fright Night. We were told that Spielberg had decided to go in a different direction.
We also learn that Relativity is doing a budget for Drive Angry before they’ll make an offer.
June 9th: We get paid for Commencement on ISWYD…even though we delivered four days ago. And only Commencement. NOT delivery. Even though we delivered four days ago. Even though it was a one-step deal which we delivered four days ago.
We also begin the heavy lifting that comes with creating a pitch. The Eyes of Laura Mars. It amazes me the amount of energy and brain power required to create a pitch. It is a massive undertaking.
That evening…around six or so…we learn that Relativity wants to meet at 10am the following morning. Only time they have. Quick shower/shave and I’m in the car. Pacific Grove to Agoura Hills. I’ll crash with Patrick. Two hours later I see an email about the meeting being postponed. I call Patrick. He’s on the phone with Zach. There’s much debate…will it or will it not happen? Finally I turn around and go home.
June 10th the Relativity meeting takes place at 11am. I miss it. But Patrick meets on our behalf and they love our little screenplay. Wheels are in motion.
June 11th. Rona responds to ISWYD. “It’s exactly what you guys said you’d deliver, but I’m having buyers remorse.” He tells us he feels the villain should be changed to a masked killer or a ghost because that’s what the kids want to see. But Andrew, we pitched you Three Days of the Condor in High School. Collateral meets Breakfast Club. Rona said he needed to think about it and get back to us.
We knew the romance was over.
Later we have a call with the producers on Eyes of Laura Mars. Turns out Clint owns the rights and hasn’t signed off. Sigh. Without Clint’s consent it’s all a waste of time. We try to explain this to the producer. Deer in the headlights.
June 15th: We meet DeLuca, Zach, Avi, Ari and Rachel at Sony and pitch Ghost Rider 2. We LOVED this pitch. We gave Ghost Rider a kryptonite. We created a smart villain who could go toe to toe. It was full of action. It had a smart, empowered female lead. It was scary. We pitched what we were asked to pitch, the horror version of a superhero story.

The pitch can be a high. You can tell when it’s going right. When it’s simply smoking. You can feel the electricity. You can see the sparkle. The giddy bounce of excitement in the listeners. The smiles, the laughs, the nods of enthusiasm. Now. None of that means anything in terms of getting the job or not. But it does mean the pitch went well.
On June 16, on her own, Jaime King sends a beautiful email to Avi and Ari praising what it was like working with us.
Later that day Jaime tells me she and Kyle are looking for a thriller that can be shot for under 15 million. I send her Riddle Me This. I also mention Monkey’s Paw which I wrote for RKO. She and Kyle are good friends with Kevin, an RKO exec. I tell Jaime that I actually wrote it with she and Tom Jane in mind. She says she’ll call Kevin.
June 19th, I drive into LA to meet with Geoff Steir. Geoff and I met ages ago. We developed a take on Magdelena based on one of David Wohl’s old Top Cow Comics. By the way, hot Catholic girl fighting evil in tight spandex. BIG fan. Now, Steir’s working under Goodman at Paramount. I drove in. We chatted. Was good to catch up. Something had come up so he needed to end a little early. So. I left. Let’s recap. Six hours to LA. 20 minute meeting. Six hours home. Who wants to be me?
June 20 Tom commission John Wrightson to begin work creating a sculpture for Devil’s Commandos. He’d already commissioned several AMAZING drawings from Bernie.

Same day, Bradstreet begins working on a Wolfbane poster for Comicon.
June 23rd. We’d planned on talking to Goodman about Damn Nation. It hit our radar a month or so ago. Dark Horse wanted to go one way. Paramount another. But it turns out Damn Nation was one of Westons. Which means it’s likely on its way into turnaround.
At the end of the day we learn Avi passed on our writing Ghost Rider 2. He said our take was too violent.
June 24th: Fright Night, Ghost Rider…even though we had great feedback and solid movement on Drive Angry…we really thought both of those were slam dunks. Not getting them was tough. It was a couple gut shots in a row. So, we refocused and got back to work.
Back when we were doing Haunting in Tennessee there was talk of a rewrite at Gold Circle. We all decided to wait until after HiT played out. Then we got busy doing other stuff. We asked one of the agents to follow up with Brad. See if it was still available. It was still available. But they wanted to go more four-quadrant and felt we weren’t right for it. Right in the gut.
But since the pass Patrick and I had taken Haunting in Tennessee and renamed it The Wanting. It was ours afterall. Based on my wife’s ghost story. We debated making it our next spec.
On June 26 we’d still heard nothing back from Rona. Due to his statement that kids only want to see masked killers and ghosts…we decided to send our very detailed outline for The Wanting to Dark Castle. Patrick jumps on the phone with Gambino who reiterates how much he loves ISWYD. But obviously it’s out of his hands.
End of the day we learn that Relativity is about to make an offer on Drive Angry.
June 30 we have a production meeting with Relativity. We’re told we’ll have an offer by the end of the day. We meet DeLuca, Zach and Josh then go up to meet with Ken Halsband (head of physical production) and Jason Barhydt (suit). Overall, it’s a good meeting. It’s very clear by the end of it that Patrick Lussier is no fake. He started as an editor. His brain is an encyclopedia of movies. He knows 3D like few others. It was a good meeting.

And thus brings us to the end of June.

25 days later Rona has still not paid us for Delivery of ISWYD.