It's fiction. It's fun cause it's not real... That night something came alive in me and it was from you... Art representing life representing art...

The Beauty of Life (1999 never produced)

Blank Stage with grand curtain closed behind. Nine people standing downstage left to right with spot lights from directly above each Nathaniel, Jerome, Matt, Tom, Melissa, Kara, Kate, Amanda. Down center is a little girl seated on the edge of the stage with her legs dangling off the edge playfully.

Nathaniel: In
Jerome: these
Matt: Warm
Tom: moments
Melissa: I
Kara: lose
Kate: my
Amanda: breathe
Kate: thinking
Kara: of
Melissa: your
Tom: persistent
Matt: Sweetness
Jerome: Here
Nathaniel: I
Jerome: can
Matt: confide
Tom: in
Melissa: you
Kara: I
Kate: feel
Amanda: The trust. I see someone I'll always
Nathaniel: Feel something for. My image in
Matt: Your eyes lets me know
Kara: I've reached you. I don't doubt
Melissa: You here
Everyone: I trust you
Tom: Maybe it's because I remember the look you gave me the first time you revealed your
Jerome: Love to me, or maybe I just know what
Kate: Goes on in your head, but if ever we were prohibited from speaking.
Nathaniel: one look in your
Everyone: eyes
Nathaniel: would tell me
Tom and Melissa: All
Matt and Kara: that
Jerome and Kate: I need
Nathaniel and Amanda: to know.
Little girl: For it is these eyes that hold and color my world. (pause) My mother always told me
Everyone except the little girl: Love was when you put someone else before yourself
Nathaniel, Jerome, Tom, and Matt: She was my light in the morning. I woke up
Amanda, Kate, Melissa, and Kara: Just to see his shining face
Nathaniel/Amanda: she/he
Jerome/kate: had this way about her/him
Matt/Kara: There was this one time she/he
Tom/Melissa: was so radiant, she/he was the
Little girl: one in the room I couldn't take my eyes off them. Words could not describe how they made me feel
Everyone: Words could not describe



The Favorite (2002)

Christian: To be truly honest with you I think it's a load of bullshit. I think you've gone hook line and sinker to the Disney Slash Hollywood magic of life.
Kevin: It's Possible. I mean Adam had Eve.
Christian: Adam didn't have any choice in the matter. A there were no other chicks at the bar of Eden. And B God didn't say "Hay Adam I know your probably getting horny so what do you say I take one of your ribs. No he just did it.
Kevin: Let's premise that god did just do it. Wouldn't it be fair to say that if god did it for adam then he would do it for all his children. Like Perhaps you and me?

Maria: Me neither. When you fall in love, you fall, at least I think so. It's not just a phrase. There's emotional magic on the first interaction.
Melissa: You don't think it's just a state of mind. Like you tell yourself. hey I really wish I was in love. And poof you meet someone attractive that compliments your personality and tell yourself I must be in love.
Maria: That's definitely possible. But without the heart the brain and body is nothing.
Melissa: Blah, blah, romantic nonsense. Please comfort my bleeding heart.
Maria: You can't reason with love. Most of the time there is no logic. Haven't you ever been in love?

Maria: I'm just kidding! But we do grow a little bit everyday. So much that I contend that we are children all the days that are pre- this moment.

Kevin: I'm turning my phone off
Christian: Good so when she realizes you've turned your phone off she can start calling me. Why don't you just be honest with her?
Kevin: Because I'm allergic to drama
Christian: This isn't drama

Maria: So I think you should break up with her.
Kevin: I will
Maria: Right Now
Kevin: I'm not breaking up with her right now.
Maria: Come on. Do You want me to do it for you?
Kevin: No I can break up with my own girlfriend. Thank you very much.

Christian: I don't want to come off as desperate.
Christine: But you are desperate.
Christian: But I don't want to come off as desperate!

Christian: This shit drives me nuts. What happened to the days of I like you do you like me?
Kevin: They have passed. Your in the real world. Everything is very methodical here. You just have to get used to it.
Christian: I don't want any drama
Kevin: Aren't you a writer? And you don't want any drama?
Christian: It's fiction. It's fun cause it's not real.

Five Houses (2005)
EMANUEL (V.O) : I guess I felt like I deserved to be punished or something. You know for being so introverted. I felt guilty. Guilty like catholic crucifixion guilt. I mean the sins that I’ve committed aren’t that bad, but guilt, in essence, what is that?emotion?

EMANUEL: High School. I keep looking for some kind of replacement I think in friends. I trusted everyone around me like everyone deserves to be trusted. How naive?

CLARK Listen to yourself. You don’t want to buy your friends but you’re willing to do what they say. You’re a fucking sell out.
EMANUEL I’m a fucking sell out!
CLARK Yup!
EMANUEL I’m a fucking sell out?

CLARK I’m sorry. I think you’ve just lost sight of what’s fun. Your right these people don’t care about you. I do though. I care. I don’t want you to leave this over priced university without having a great time.

GREGORY These days seemed still in precious windows deep within the safe corridors of this very campus. But mark my words with swift justice, treachery is afoot. The things I tell thee soon. These brick walls and concrete dorms hold back rain and sleet alike but when the storm takes up residency among it, the havoc it inflicts is life altering.

(V.O) GREGORY Even in a dream so gloomy, so strange, so mysterious, there is still some light. A teeny, tiny, iota, of inner purity and innocence. Like a candle in a barn, the silence, the perception of sweet bliss.

ELISA (O.S) Do you still feel that way?
EMANUEL Sometimes.
ELISA (O.S) What do you do?
EMANUEL I guess I try to use all my will power to wait for it to pass. My best friend Clark helps some of the time.

Daydreams: The Life of The Guard (2007 pre-production)

Maria: I don't think I should be talking to you
Kevin: I don't think you should have been looking at me that way either.
Maria: Looking at you how?
Kevin: Like aw....... shit! Marry me!


Mickey: It says here Kris that you were on a traveling swimming team?
Kris: Actually it was more like a drinking team with a swimming problem

Maria: Your a really nice guy. It's a shame that we kick your ass and demoralize all your friends at the lifeguardathon every year.
Kevin: You know your a real sweetheart, it sucks that you work for a cock sucking ass licking sonofabitch!

Maria: So what now?
Kevin: You could kiss me like I know you've been dreaming about all date.
Maria: Oh is that what we've been on? Why don't you kiss me like you've been fishing for the oppertunity all night?
Kevin: I won't say all night, there were a couple of key moments where I was checking out other girls. (maria smacks him on the arm)
Maria: (pause) this is the part where we have a long awkward silence and you lean in nudge, nudge.
Kevin: For your information, I (kevin pushes maria's hair back and grabs her neck and pulls her in for a kiss)

Mickey: The kids seem really beach prone.
Sheiley: Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Mickey: If we put the other blanket on top of us no one will realize we're having sex?
Sheiley: No
Mickey: If we run back to the car we could have wild crazy monkey sex at the other side of the parking lot and no one would be the wiser.
Sheiley: No
Mickey: Ice Cream would be tasty?
Sheiley: My mom was right you I did marry a retard.

Mickey: You know Mark I know you've been carrying a grudge with me since we were younger about Sheiley (pause) and i just wanted to tell you I never meant to hurt you.
Mark: You used to be my best friend. You knew I liked her.
Mickey: We were kids! So innoscent, ya know it just happened. And look at your wife now!
Mark: You think she's hot?
Mickey: Hell's yeah! She's much hotter than...

Xenos (2007 pre-production)

Andreas's Father: Fast growing septic tank cleaning company seeks hard working college graduate for lucrative fast paced entry level position.

Lil G: Naw naw, tell her her ass is on fire, I wanna get all up inside it. Tell her I wanna lick her pussy like it's the last gulp of milk in a cat's bowl and I gots to find the right angle to lick it. I want to slurp all that shit up! slurp, slurp.
Andreas: Just give me a second.
Katerina: What did he say?
Lil G: Did you tell her?
Katerina: Are you having fun?
Lil G: Tell her I'll fuck her so good she wouldn't be able to walk tommarrow. (pause) Tell her! This is what I pay you for!
Andreas: Lil G says he's sorry he just gets nervious around really beautiful girls like you. (pause) He says he meant your eyes not your ass. We must have not translated very well.


Andreas's Mother: How does your boss feel about her?
Andreas: It's tough to say
Andreas's Mother: He hasn't said anything?
Lil G: I'd like to bend her over my table, lube up her thighs with oils, I'm mo then able to lickety lick lick dem smackety smack smack her with my huge hard....
Andreas: Nothing note worthy


Andreas: So what are you doing in Ayia Napa?
Katerina: Eleni and I were just spying on some friends.
Andreas: You were spying on your friends?
Katerina: Stalking them really.
Andreas: Why?
Katerina: Why not?

Bartender: Ah women say that all the time, especially when they're pissed off at you. I find when I've done something really bad to my girl the best thing to do is to try something really special to cross out the badness. Is there anything you and your girl have in common that you could...

Andreas: The truth is that night began a change in me that is still going on. Before that night...... I was a different person. I never pursued what I wanted. I was just another wandering asshole with no reason or direction. But that night something came alive in me and it was from you. I know that for sure.

Katerina: So what do we do now?
Andreas: We could start over.

Drama (2008 pre-production)

Andreas: We could just kill him.
Tasos: We can't
Andreas: We can
Tasos: How many more people that we love must die?
Katerina: As many as it takes to become whole again
Tasos: With each death the hole has gotten wider.
Andreas: It's strength
Katerina: It's moving on
Tasos: It's insecurity

Katerina: Remember your father.
Tasos: I remember him
Katerina: Really remember him, I mean it. (Tasos buries his hands in in face). You got him? Now know that there's only one reason why he isn't with us anymore.
Tasos: He was the best part of me, my strength, now I'm so weak.
Katerina: Our mother is that weakness, I feel it too

More Drama (2008 pre-production)

Andreas: You have no one to blame but yourself. You should have married a man like your brother, but instead you married image, you married shallow, vein, self service. You grew the worst parts of it in your belly, twice! How does that make you feel?
Katerina: Helpless
Andreas: You are helpless, this isn't the life you would have chosen for yourself if you would have reflected on the past just a little more. I'm a perfect example. blinded by my own hands. I know you were shocked and asked how I could do this to myself. But the glazed over look in your eyes, I know it. I know it like I know myself. You love and hate him, you love and hate yourself, and the only time the madness and pain will stop is when that balance of equality tips one way or the other.
Katerina: What can I do, what should I do?
Andreas: That is up to you child, let it burn, I don't have any answers for you. My experience has branded me for life. Take what you can from me.

Stavros: This isn't about the money anymore Tasos! This about respect. You thought you'd just come to Drama blow me away and live happily ever after. There is no happily ever after. There's Happily never after and you'll learn that. I'm immortal.
Tasos: Your fucking crazy!
Stavros: Your alone now. Haunted, stalked by your past but without any home, family, or hope.
Tasos: Why?
Stavros: Where's my fucking money, my cut grows everyday.
Tasos: I don't have it.
Stavros: Find it or live the rest of your days in pain and suffering.
Tasos: I'll kill you!
Stavros: If you do that there will be nothing left of you, you know where I'll be.

Tasos: How do I love so deeply all those who I keep close. I've tried to keep them so close, so dear to my heart. I've tried to live a honest, virtueous life. The more I love the less are around me. Constant fleeting moments in my mind of giving and losing. It perplexes me, of course these phantoms should stalk me, whatever my error, I am cursed if I can't see it to grab it and right it. I write to you euripedes in dire need of your wisdom. Any reason or logic has fallen short of my passions and these passions have set in motion countless tragedy that is barrelling completely out of control. Please direct me.
Euripedes: Fuck it all!

I haven't seen anything lately except old ass movies on the TV. These are all snibets of my work. The last Two need a lot of work. All of my work is inspired somewhat off real life situations, some more specific than others. The Beauty of life was the first play I wrote. I had a tight nich of close friends in high school. We were all in boyscouts and we all had serious relationships by our junior and senior year of high school but by the time we left for college not one of those relationships survived and I don't just mean the romantic ones, none of us talk anymore. Well I think Tom and Jerome might still speak cause their parents were friends but as for the rest, I haven't seen or talked to them in years. I thought for this blog I'd say something about how the fiction directly has shaped who I am and where and what I'm doing. When I purchased my first camera I did a documentary and shot over 55 of my friends. Thinking I could somehow capture them. Like Hi8 video would ever replace conversation, or a hug, or intamacy. It never does. All of it does document it. More so the fiction than the documentary.

My best friend in America was the supporting cast in the favorite. He played kevin and how he has changed since then. Time is just flying by leaving all these bread crumbs of nostalgia in it's wake. I loved shooting that film. I loved the full control and the creative energy of my cast. I liked how it was an awkwardly quirky film with lines that were so outta left field. It was written a summer after one of the big break-ups with my second big real relationship and is riddled with the lingering feelings of that and her. It's got all this defence mechenism in it, before I knew what defence mechanism was. How do I deal with a break-up, i make a movie, or write a screenplay. Anyway point of interest... we screened the favorite at Hofstra University as the initial screening and my x came. There's a musical montage the scene before last, where christian gets up and gets in his car and goes to the bay to ponder his existence to the sounds of change of weather by room 2. At the screening my x gets up and leaves, so i go after her. She tells me she doesn't want to hurt me anymore and i tell her I'm not going to let her. Which has become a classic lie that has haunted me ever since. I think this is so because I do wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm too sensitive and what's worse is I talk about it. If I had a dime for all the times that I caught feelings and voiced them, jeez.

All of these script are suppose to be practice for my lifes work. The main reason why i got into the film thing at all. I had a vision in a diner around 18 years old of a ball of color that smashed into earth and evolved into our lives. Essentially I've interpreted that into the relationship of good and evil. And what I want to do with it is tell a story of how there is a god but we can't talk to him, and all our efforts through the years have been miscommunication. I believe that's a story worth telling, and in all my inspiration, all these scripts have had real life things inspiring them, they weren't visions, there is nothing I can compare to the the original but I don't think I'm talented enough yet to tell it. Tell it right you know, so it has an impact maybe. A lot of people have given up on god or how he/she/it could or does relate to us. Fear of punishment was what put people in line back in the old days.

I'm not that interested in putting people in line, I'm kinda interested in people believing in each other and actually doing things to benefit everyone as a whole. It bothers me that society is the other way, serving only the needs of the individual. Even with everything bad that's happened to me, all the news and bullshit that's out there pushing and selling points self promotion, I still just can't give up on the common good. It's important. I'd like people to leave my life's work feeling A. Good to be alive, B. happy that they are there with all those people, and C. wanting to help others. In this day and age, that's damn near impossible, unless a feling as extreme as love and catharsis is conveyed. Like how about god is in you, maybe the evil however you wanna thinka bout that evil is in you too but it's your responsibility is how you handle or share it. It's there, untapped, awaiting your discovery of it.

As I write My Drama Trilogy these elements are so hard to master. I know they are not the same as what i described above. And strangely enough the philos-aphilos love in hate is the hardest to wrap my brain around. When I was doing research I was left to ponder how it works for days and am in fact still pondering cause I have big ol bunches of experience in this department but I can't really make sense of it. I ritualistically retire some of these thoughts from a girl that I loved who was hell bent on me hating her. She had a mirror theory that I still to this day don't completely comprehend. The love in hate thing in general plays out like pretty existentially in the stories I'm studying. And it's fair to say that if you hate someone that's so close to you that they feel like they're part of you, especially romantically, I mean I've been in situations where I've caught myself thinking about someone and not wanted to be doing that, punching my pillow and such, talking to myself, screaming get out of my head. Essentially not hating them but hating the part of them that is within me, within my thoughts and feelings. It's easily feasible to hate that thing inside you. You know it's bad for you and yet it still returns and your left wondering A. why is it there and B. How do I get rid of it. In these scripts I'm premising if your an immature adult, like a child in adults clothing and you act the way and think that way then your response isn't gonna be to reason it out, it's gonna be to murder that part or you which is embodied by a person that's close to you. Ideally someone you love but can't express it or you see that love as weakness creating hate from it's unbearability.

Another thing is I'm fairly set with making my charachters vulnerable to other characters. Pretty good with that sensitivity factor. All these charachters need to play it off like they are strong and inpenitrable but when they're isolated and on their own is how the first episode needs to play out. Second episode not so much. I'm working on it, it'll be good, patience and thought. I'll get there. It's like one big puzzle. Like life ya know. Give some heart, give some thought, hope for the best, deal with what comes.

These people actually think I have some kind of, uh... fantastic imagination. It gets very, uh, lonesome. So this is permanence; love-shattered pride.

I'm Not There. (2007)
Arthur: I accept chaos. I don't know whether it accepts me.

Billy the Kid: It's like you got yesterday, today and tomorrow, all in the same room. There's no telling what can happen.

Jude: Look at all these medicines! Hey man what are those?
Man At Party: Mandy's, make you sleep.
Jude: Sleep? aint sleepin'... Sleep's for dreamers. I haven't slept in thirty days, man. Takes a lot of medicine to keep up this pace.

Jude: God, I'm glad I'm not me.

Jude: Doesn't really matter, you know, what kind of nasty names people invent for the music. But, uh, folk music is just a word, you know, that I can't use anymore. What I'm talking about is traditional music, right, which is to say it's mathematical music, it's based on hexagons. But all these songs about, you know, roses growing out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans are turning into angels - I mean, you know, they're not going to die. They're not folk music songs. They're political songs. They're already dead. You'd think that these traditional music people would - would gather that mystery, you know, is a traditional fact, you know, seeing as they're all so full of mystery.
Keenan Jones: And contradictions.
Jude: Yeah, contradictions.
Keenan Jones: And chaos.
Jude: Yes, it's chaos, clocks, and watermelons - you know, it's - it's everything. These people actually think I have some kind of, uh... fantastic imagination. It gets very, uh, lonesome. But traditional music is just, uh... it's too unreal to die. It doesn't need to be protected. You know, I mean, in that music is the only true valid death you can feel today, you know, off a record player. But like everything else in great demand, people try to own it. Has to do with, like, uh, the purity thing. I think its meaninglessness is holy. Everybody knows I'm not a folk singer.

Claire: I would like to know what is at the center of your world.
Robbie Clark: Well, I'm 22, I guess I would say me.

Billy the Kid: People are always talking about freedom. Freedom to live a certain way, without being kicked around. Course the more you live a certain way, the less it feel like freedom. Me, uhm, I can change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time.

Jude: [looking up at a giant Jesus on the cross] Do your early stuff!

Arthur: Seven simple rules of going into hiding: one, never trust a cop in a raincoat. Two, beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway. Three, if asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again. Four, never give your real name. Five, if ever asked to look at yourself, dont. Six, never do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand. And finlly seven, never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.

Narrator: There he lies. God rest his soul, and his rudeness. A devouring public can now share the remains of his sickness, and his phone numbers. There he lay: poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity. Nailed by a peeping tom, who would soon discover...
Jude: A poem is like a naked person...
Narrator: - even the ghost was more than one person.
Arthur: ...but a song is something that walks by itself.

Hobo Joe: [Woody shows Hobo Joe and Hobo Moe his guitar case which says 'THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS'] You wouldn't be stashing no weapons in there, son?
Woody Guthrie: No sir, not in any literalized way.

Jude: People actually think I have some kind of a fantastic imagination. It gets very lonesome.

Control (2007)
Ian Curtis: When you look at your life, in a strange new room, maybe drowning soon, is this the start of it all?

Ian Curtis: So this is permanence; love-shattered pride. What once was innocence, has turned on its side.

Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

Frances: I'll hire the muscular descendants of Roman gods to do the heavy lifting.

German Woman: You greedy Americans. You think you're so entitled. You ruin everything.
Frances: A lot of us feel really badly about that.

Frances: Do you know the most surprising thing about divorce? It doesn't actually kill you. Like a bullet to the heart or a head-on car wreck. It should. When someone you've promised to cherish till death do you part says "I never loved you," it should kill you instantly. You shouldn't have to wake up day after day after that, trying to understand how in the world you didn't know. The light just never went on, you know. I must have known, of course, but I was too scared to see the truth. Then fear just makes you so stupid.
Martini: No, it's not stupid, Signora Mayes. L'amore e cieco.
Frances: Oh, love is blind. Yeah, we have that saying too.
Martini: Everybody has that saying because it's true everywhere.

Martini: Signora. Please stop being so sad. If you continue like this, I will be forced to make love to you. And I've never been unfaithful to my wife.

Frances: What are four walls, anyway? They are what they contain. The house protects the dreamer. Unthinkably good things can happen, even late in the game. It's such a surprise.

Katherine: Regrets are a waste of time. They're the past crippling you in the present.

Martini: Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come.

Patti: There's something strange about these trees. It's like they know.
Frances: And they know that we know that they know.
Patti: They're creepy. Creepy Italian trees. Of course, the baby's going to like them cause it's going to be a creepy Italian baby who goes around saying things like 'Ciao mama' and doing that weird backward hand wave thing. Life is strange.

Marcello: If you smash into something good, you should hold on until it's time to let go.

Unfortunetly I couldn't find too many quotes from Control, even though it's been hailed as the best movie to come out of England this year. Oh well, see it! See that and I'm Not here. Like all my blogs and blurbs and whatever I exceptionally appreciated these films cause in my rollercoaster-esk life with it's twists and turns I've been trying to come to terms with who I am. What my purpose is in this crazy cracked out world. Creating onseself and accepting things as how they are, how you express yourself and how that will be interpreted. All to often can you the artist recognize something as good but good in the sense that you like it and it expresses things in you. Your message like they say repeatedly in "I'm Not There" is not gonna change anything all it's gonna do if it can is give a take on what's going on in the world in a way that you wish you could. Again being that creative is lonely. It's a lonely path.

As a human theres this constant need for our human condition. Sharing things with each other, reaching out trying to find that comfort in a touch, in a grouping of words and phrases, in an embrace. Like it could ever be shared for more than a moment. When your an artist, and a good one at that. That Sharing becomes a broadcast. Suddenly the artist is a becan for expression and what started as mere self expression is now some kind of movement riddled with admiration without understanding. I don't pretend that I have even a little bit of the fame or talent of Joy Division or Bob Dylan. What I can say though is when you make the decision to push ahead and broadcast your message you leave yourself open for attack.

I watched a making of StarWars last night at 5 am. Couldn't sleep again. George Lucus was saying as soon as he knew that the first episode was a hit, it was time to get out of dodge, so he moved out to a ranch in San Fransico and kept with him only the closest friends he had. He was saying as much as a blessing to have this top grossing film it's like a cut off point for whether or not you get the freedom to meet people that are on the same plain of existence that your on. You could say that that element or idea is elitestness. You could say that. Like you make something that is critically acclaimed and then from that point on your better than everyone else. But I don't think that it is the artist that makes that distinction. I think they are. My family has a friend Olivia in Cyprus and the last time I saw her she said something that I thought was really wise. She said you don't need to have or be keeping people of less around you. Your never gonna become better that way. And it's hard cause you like people for a variety of reasons, but the ones that really humble you as a person are the only ones that matter.

So if you have friends that are funny, that's all fine and good, but if their humor isn't the kind that brings truth in a slam in the face type of way really you gotta move on. I threw Under the Tuscan Sun in as well cause it was just a feel good flick. Reminded me of A Good Year with Russel Crowe. All that off on your own trial by fire madness of wanting a romantic happily ever after stuff. Yes I watch chick flicks without chicks, and like them. Pathetic is the word your thinking of but I think it's a process. I have a little black kitten named tyler to keep me manly. ANyways thats all for now.