You asked for, and the man has delivered. With a new entry today, Kevin promises to resume a more regular blog schedule, where he’ll once again detail his day-to-day, even if he feels it’s not that interesting to the general public (for the record, we’re enthralled by it all, just as the rest of you are). You can visit the official blog site as well as Kevin’s Myspace for the complete entry. Here’s a taste of what you’ll see in today’s trimphant return, which features “Red State” details, poker, and flicks:
Finished “Red State” around 1-ish. Totally different than anything I’ve written before. Very fucked up. Shortest script I’ve ever written, too, as well as the least dialogue-driven (not to say there’s not a lot of dialogue in it still; just not nearly as much as I’m used to writing). It’s a weird, relentlessly bleak and extremely unsettling affair, that “Red State” script. If you didn’t know I wrote it, and you read it, and I told you afterwards that I’d written it, you’d be like “Bullshit.”
After letting said story stew in my head for nearly a year, the actual writing of “Red State” didn’t take very long at all. Granted, I’d done about twenty pages of an outline that I worked off of, but from the moment I started the actual screenplay (from “INT AIRPORT – DAY”) to the moment I finished what I’d consider the first draft (“The End”), it was a five day affair.
When I’d gotten to page 87, I sent it to Scott, Malcolm and Bryan to read. All came back thumbs up. Mosier had excellent notes and suggestions, as per usual, so I went back, stripped stuff out, wrote new stuff, and wound up with 84 pages. 11 pages later, I was done. Like I said: shortest script (in terms of page count) I’ve ever written.
Mos was out when I finished writing, so the first person I sent the end pages to was Malcolm. Malcolm IM’s me back, quite simply, “I dare you.” That made me chuckle.
The blog’s been a fascinating read since it first started a couple years ago, so we say WELCOME BACK to what looks to be some daily, at least more regular posts. Fascinating stuff that the dude can manage to pull all nighters watching 90’s flicks and playing online poker. Ah, the life of Hollywood, eh? We’ll of course remind you of anything interesting that shows up in the blogs as they continue, though we of course encourage you to make Kevin’s blog pages a part of your daily web travels.
A few other “Red State” bits from the board as well. Regarding fears over the budget and subject matter:
“We’re kind of anticipating… reluctance, shall we say, from the money people. This flick wouldn’t necessarily occur to some as “audience-friendly” on the page. It’s one thing to hand them a script full of funny stuff with proven characters that a niche audience has enjoyed previously; it’s another thing to hand them this.
Which is not to say that I fully expect them to show me the door. I just wouldn’t be shocked if Harvey and Bob were like “We can’t go for the ride with you on this one, Kevin.” In that instance, Scott and I would just explore other financing avenues that’ve historically shown interest in what we do (Lionsgate, indie investors, etc).”
And on the excitement level over making the picture:
“A bit. Because it’s outside of our wheelhouse, there’s a touch more excitement, due to the fact that we’re heading into unchartered (for us) waters on this one.”
Kevin and Scott plan to bounce some further script tweaks off of each other before the pass it on to Harvey and Bob. Once again, expect more psychological horror than gore, but from the sound of it, this one’s gonna be way intense. Man we’re stoked. Two totally different but COOL films scheduled for 2008 from View Askew. Keep with us for the latest!
