AT: Moving forward from this point, have you written other screenplays you want to get produced?

VP: Yes. I had written what I wanted to be my follow-up, which was may homage to Dario Aregento’s “Giallo” thrillers of the early ’70s. That took me three years to finish the first draft, and wrote two drafts after that. I put it on ice because it’s pretty obvious to me that the script is going to cost a pretty decent chunk of money to make. It’s a chunk of money at this time, and even if I could raise it, I’d have to give up any shred of artistic control that I might want to have.

I’ve been looking for a project to work on in between, and for awhile, I was working on the first screenplay Kevin ever wrote, which was this off-the-wall horror film. He wrote it for me back in high school when I asked him to write a script for me that I could do for a class project. Kevin came back with this seventy-page script loaded with religious philosophy. It was obvious there was no way I could do it at the time. Then, it was lost. Nobody knew where it was. Kevin couldn’t find the disk he had written it on. Then, while Kevin was in production on JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK, my Dad was cleaning the basement of our house. He unearthed a bunch of old things I’d had in high school, and amongst those things was that script.

I re-read it, and the interesting thing was that Kevin had barely remembered having written it, but a lot of the stuff I guess he had kept in the back of his mind, because a lot of these speeches and religious [ideas] ended up in DOGMA. In re-reading it, I thought the core idea of it could make for a visually interesting horror film that could be done on a very low budget. I tried to work on it for a long time…for whatever reason, I couldn’t connect with it, so that fell by the wayside. Now I’ve found a different project that…I want to do. That project seems to be going pretty well, and it looks like it’s going to be the next project because it can be done fairly cheaply, and it’s something that I have emotionally connected with to the point where I’m cooking pretty well on writing the script.

Saturday was my first day on a movie set. Not really, it was an old high school, but served as a set that day. The film was called “13th Grade” (don’t worry, I had never heard of it either) but it really seems funny and stars Dustin Diamond (he played “Screech” on Saved by the Bell”). You might be wondering why I am telling you this. Well, word on the set was that Jay Mewes had recently appeared in the film and did a great job. I was speaking to a few of the non-paid extras (the “paid-extras” wouldn’t speak to us) but none of us heard what his part was or who he was playing. Anywhoo, just thought I’d share my story & info with you. THANKS!