The Ace of Spades Writers Workshop

For my entire lifetime, if not longer, Conservatives have ceded Hollywood and the entertainment industry to the left. Oh yeah, you'll see an OCCASIONAL movie with a conservative foundation sneak its way through the process and end up on your local multiplex screen; but those movies are always lauded way too much in the conservative press because they're the exceptions that prove the rule. Andrew Breitbart and his "Big Hollywood" site affiliated with Pajamas Media are trying to reverse this trend, and I laud them for their efforts.

What's the AoS Writers Workshop, you ask? Well, I've heard it said time and time again that "Everyone has ONE novel in them, its just a matter of getting it out in a readable form". Since the AoSHQ is considered by many to be a SMART MILITARY BLOG, I thought we could do a little thought experiment and solicit treatments for screenplays. I had a thought pop into my head last night that would qualify, and I'll put it in comments to get things started.

Now obviously we're not talking about movie screenplays. You've got to walk before you can run, so I figure that once we master the 30 or 60 minute TV format, then we can turn our attention to getting "Citizen Ace" made into a movie.

Here's the rules:

1. No blatant ripoffs of classic TV shows. That almost killed "Star Trek: TNG" in its first season: About half the episodes were ripped straight out of the Original Series screenplays. Hell, they even used to make references to it, saying "Captain, we found a reference to a similar phenomenon in the 23rd Century logs of the Enterprise". So don't give me a story where some woman kills her husband with a leg of lamb and then cooks it and serves it to the detectives investigating his murder. And for GOD'S sake, don't do any modern updates to classic Twilight Zone/Outer Limits episodes. Yes, the thought of Arlen Specter clutching a copy of the Stimulus Package legislation and sobbing into the C-SPAN cameras "It's a COOKBOOK....A COOKBOOK!", is humorous; but we're going for original ideas here.

2. Script treatments with conservative themes are welcomed, but are not necessary. We're not leftists. We don't need to insert political propaganda into everything we write all the way down to breakfast cereal commercials. Just write something that doesn't blame THE JOOOS or Big Business for all of the World's problems and you'll already be 347% more conservative than Hollywood.

3. Try and keep it short. It's just a "treatment". Just lay out the main characters, the setting, the main plot, and any "twists" or "McGuffins" you need to use to get the story to make sense. Don't worry about dialogue or casting. Those are part of fleshing the story out. Just write something that takes less than 2 minutes to read. You're trying to catch a producer's eye here, not seal the deal.

4. Lets save all the pr0n screenwriting for the next "Frakk it all Friday" thread, mmmmmKay? Not that its a bad idea, but I'm seriously curious to see what the lot of you can come up with for consumption by a family audience. Admittedly, the family IS dysfunctional, but pr0n screenwriting deserves its own thread.

5. No whining to Ace if some Hollywood assclown steals your idea and it shows up on "Fringe" or "Gilmore Girls" next season. If THEY steal from you, you should sue THEM, not Ace. And DEFINITELY not me.

Think that screenwriting is above your paygrade? Think about this: Trimark Pictures actually wrote a check to the person who wrote the screenplay for THIS movie. The bar has already been set, and even Steven Hawking could jump over its current position.

So go forth, my winged monkeys. Go forth and write. We'll get back to documenting the end of the American Empire after this thread, but for now lets just have some fun and impress each other with our creativity.

posted by Russ from Winterset at 07:13 AM

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