Screen

I’ve written a dozen films, and a couple handfuls of spec treatments and outlines. One of my feature film scripts, RED TEAM, is based on the true story of a “white hat” hacker investigating the most massive cyberespionage threat to date. That script was a quarterfinalist in the American Zoetrope screenplay competition.

Because I can’t yet refer you to a produced film I’ve written, I’ve decided to share an treatment I wrote for a feature. This project is, to my knowledge, currently stalled, and I don’t believe I’ll do any damage sharing my work here.

My job was to adapt a short story into a feature film. Because the original story has only seen publication in Spanish (and had not been translated), I enlisted the aid of my friend (and Spanish-speaker), author Dan Larson, who read the story over several times and then discussed it in depth with me. The story was far from film-ready, and I added characters and scenes as structure seemed to demand. I’d then consult with Dan to find if my work was still true to the original story’s spirit.

The twenty-three page treatment was completed in roughly two weeks. I have, on occasion, completed feature scripts in a similar time frame… though frankly, nobody enjoys working in such haste!

I’m also sharing a three page outline I wrote for a director friend. He was working with a production company and was in search of a “druggy western” that would be bloody and relatively cheap to shoot. I think I turned this around in a week or two. Soon after, the market saw a flood of westerns, so there’s probably no market for this piece (which I own all rights to), but I think again that it will serve as a good “for hire” example. Neither of the two works shared on this page are truly representative of what I’d write given an open field, but both are fine examples of hired-gun storytelling.