I am heading off to Nashville Friday.
The purpose: to meet with my fabulous publisher Michael Wiese to discuss the new book coming out this fall! We are really excited about its prospects and I will be doing a lot of appearances starting in October to promote it — including Screenwriting Expo 2007, the Austin Film Festival and many, many Barnes & Nobles and Borders. I love these events! Can’t wait!
Meantime, I will also be catching the sights and sounds of Nashville and the film festival therein. My good buddy Will Akers, who teaches screenwriting at Vanderbilt, will be my guide and I am grateful for his help. Will just sold his screenplay about the last days of the Viet Nam war; director Jon Amiel is scouting locations as we blog. This will be Mr. Akers’ 5th produced screenplay, and it’s a really cool one, too (titled 105 Degrees).
As to the festival itself, apparently I am right in the thick of things and will get a chance to actually see some movies (what a concept!)
I am really looking forward to these few days away from L.A. and then it’s on to Toronto, New York, and Barcelona!
p.s. A friend called up the other day to let me know that my “Monster in the House” chapter is right on. They had just seen The Reaping starring Hilary Swank and lo and behold there he was, the character I point out in my book that is in a lot of MITH movies: “The Half Man.” This is the figure (Robert Shaw in Jaws, Randy Quaid in Independence Day, Scatman Caruthers in The Shining) who has had an interaction with the monster before and came away damaged because of it. These characters usually die on page 75! Did the “Half Man” in The Reaping go in a timely manner? Apparently so! But I will be checking out the movie myself to see. Let me know if you see it first!
