Red Wedding, the Novel

I'm turning Red Wedding into a novel, and I've posted the first chapter on my website.

Check it out!

Red Wedding, Chapter 1

Horror Boom about to Bust?

The Los Angeles Times weighs in on the state of the horror film market:

So has the horror bubble burst?

Those who traffic in mayhem insist not, though almost everyone admits that this year's crowded market, filled with horror retreads, has left splatter fans unimpressed.

"There became a glut of so many horror movies, and I think the audience is oversaturated," says Dimension Co-Chairman Bob Weinstein, who launched the horror film craze with the satiric slasher flick "Scream." "Sometimes the industry has the habit of making the same movies over and over again."

Moreover, topping the last thrill is intrinsically hard. "There's nothing you can do to a human being on screen that is taboo anymore," says Oscar-winning writer-producer Akiva Goldsman. "Over and over again, people are breaking the boundaries of the body, hurting people, chopping people up, ravaging people…. For things to be truly scary, we're going to have to find new boundaries to tread on."

Undeniably, horror, one of cinema's most enduring genres, is having a spiritual crisis. Once the playground of such iconic directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott, the genre has gone way down-market. Not that it's mattered much to the businesspeople who run Hollywood. Ever since 1996, when "Scream" snagged $100 million at the box office, the town's love affair with horror has been reignited. The films cost little to make and historically have delivered big returns. In recent years, whole divisions of major studios — Dimension, Rogue Pictures and Fox Atomic, to name a few — have been staked on horror's vitality.

For smaller studios, horror can be the IV that keeps their hearts beating. "It costs less to make a good horror film because you don't have big visual effects budgets or the $20-million stars," says Tom Ortenberg, president of theatrical films at the independent company Lions Gate.

And expectations are more modest. As Joel Silver, who heads Dark Castle Entertainment, a genre label, characterizes the horror business: "We're only looking for doubles and triples. We don't need home runs."

Read the full article here.

Next Steps

After Red Wedding made the semifinals in the Slamdance Horror Competition, I received a half-dozen requests from producers, directors, and managers who wanted to read the script. I sent out copies and am still waiting to hear back.

Meanwhile, I'm considering producing and directing the film myself.

In researching my options, I came across filmmaker Scott McKinlay's blog, where he discusses the making and selling of his first low-budget horror film, Gag.

So, let’s say you are thinking about making a movie…first, and this is very important–unless you are seriously wealthy and don’t care if you make your money back and unless have at least a million dollars for a production budget AND at least one name actor to star or at least appear in your movie–you MUST make a horror film…like it or not, horror films are about the only movie genre people will see even if your movie is low budget.

Check it out at Gag the Blog.

The Elliott Wave Theory of Horror

The horror film genre is booming right now, as it does from time to time.

We've seen previous horror booms: the 1930s, for example, and the late 1960s to early 1970s.

Inevitably, the boom will crash, only to rise again like a mummy from the tomb.

But why?

What drives the boom and bust cycle in the horror genre?

Could it be tied to the stock market?

To social trends?

To general pessimism?

Robert Prechter thinks he has the answer.

It's called the Elliott Wave Principle, and it predicts not only stock market cycles, but social cycles as well.

According to the new field of socionomics, which is built on Elliott Wave theory, mass psychology rides predictable waves of optimism and pessimism, and these waves can be seen in outward phenomena such as the stock market, movie trends, women's fashions, presidential popularity, interest in political scandals, the rise of terrorism and warfare, etc.

Prechter believes that our economy is already in a bear market (despite the rise in the Dow), and says the horror boom is related to that. So is the Iraq war. And Bush's low poll numbers.

"All the popular, groundbreaking horror movies were produced in bear markets - Dracula, Frankenstein, King Kong, The Mummy, Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde, all those were produced from 1931 to 1933, two short years during which time the Dow Jones Industrial Average was plummeting," says Prechter in History's Hidden Engine.

"You didn't have a situation like that ... until the late 1960s and then you had Halloween, Night of the Living Dead and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and all of these groundbreaking horror movies that were popular and you don't see that sort of thing in bull markets."

The fact that some of the most internationally successful horror films of recent times (such as The Ring (Ringu) series) have been coming out of Japan would seem to back this up. Japan has been stuck in a psychologically wearing bout of deflation for many years, a situation which occurs when money's purchasing power strengthens, and the onerousness of debt rises. Prechter has said that he expects that the crash in stock markets will be accompanied by a period of global economic deflation. As this takes hold it will cause suffering and socio-political instability.

He believes that you can already see this in the movies being produced. Writing by email he says: "We are already in a roaring renaissance for cutting-edge horror movies. The theme in the '30s was monsters; in the '70s it was zombies and slashers; now it's torture: Saw I and II, Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, The Devil's Rejects, Wolf Creek, etc. We are deep in a bear market psychologically, which also shows up in the President's low popularity. This is not unusual in bear market rallies, such as 1968 and now."

Read more about Elliott Wave Theory and the horror genre here.

Congratulations Slamdance Horror Winners!

The Slamdance Film Festival awarded its prizes tonight, and the winners for the Horror Competition were:

$10,000 Grand Prize and Production Deal
Bobby Darby & Nathan Brookes for Slaughter

$1,000 Creative Excellence Award
Adam Balsam for Blood-Sucking Leeches and Flesh-Eating Maggots

The Grand Prize Winner, Slaughter, will be produced by Angel Baby Entertainment and Maverick Red, and will premiere at next year's Slamdance Film Festival.

Congratulations to Bobby, Nathan, and Adam.

Get more info on the other Slamdance Film Festival awards here.

Maverick to Co-Produce Slamdance Horror Winner

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Maverick Films is joining forces with the Slamdance Film Festival and Angel Baby Entertainment to produce the winning script from the Slamdance Horror Competition:

The Slamdance Film Festival, currently taking place here, is getting on the contest bandwagon. Slamdance's Peter Baxter and Angel Baby Entertainment's Gregory Segal said Sunday that Maverick Films is lending its support to the Slamdance Horror Screenplay Competition. Maverick will annually finance and co-produce, with Slamdance and Angel Baby, a feature film based on the prize-winning entry. Maverick also said that it is launching a new division, Maverick Red, to focus on horror films. Maverick Films recently signed a deal with Angel Baby to finance and co-produce three films during a three-year period.

Read it here.

Slamdance Horror Top 5

The Top 5 Finalists for the Slamdance Horror Competition are:

Blood-Sucking Leeches and Flesh-Eating Maggots by Adam Balsam
Hunger by Latrisse Goffigan
The Shop Teacher by Joel Watson
Slaughter by Bobby Darby & Nathan Brookes
Torn Apart by Shaun O'Sullivan

Congratulations to all the finalists!

Especially to Shaun O'Sullivan and Bobby Darby, who've dropped by here and said hello. Now I have some names to root for.

Red Wedding did not make the finals. We'll see if my semifinalist status can help me get the film made.

I'm also hoping to see the rest of this year's Slamdance group get their films on the big screen.

Good luck to everyone!

Slamdance Horror Coverage

One interesting feature of the Slamdance Horror Competition is that you can request a reader's analysis ("coverage") of your script for an additional fee.

I didn't opt for this service, as I prefer cash to cavils.

Many years ago, when I sent out my first feature screenplay, one Hollywood agent sent back a copy of the reader's coverage. The reader included such salient comments as "this is the worst screenplay I've ever read" and "the grammar is weak, especially in the dialog" and "while set in the future, this story doesn't work as science fiction; the advanced technology is unrealistic."

I admit that my first screenplay was not great. It had a strong concept but weak execution. However, it did get me into film school at UCLA, so someone liked it.

I've also read plenty of scripts from friends and classmates, and I know how difficult it is to give good notes.

I do think it's great that Slamdance offers this service. Some people will find these notes very helpful.

Kelly Parks is not one of them.

Kelly's script, Ghoul, was a quarterfinalist for the Slamdance Horror Competition this year. He ordered coverage, but did not find it helpful.

If you'd like to see the feedback he received, you can check out his blog, where he's posted the coverage along with his own rebuttal.

Keep in mind, Kelly is already an award-winning horror screenwriter. Another script of his, Howard's Cross, won 1st place at the 2006 International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival.

So the guy's got some chops.

What happened? Was the script bad? Was the reader incompetent? Was it a poor match?

I don't know. I didn't read the script.

Sometimes these things are just the luck of the draw.

On Wordplay, Terry Rossio (Pirates of the Caribbean, Deja Vu, et. al.) once posted five coverages his company received based on the same script: Instant Karma by Paul Hernandez. Terry had loved the script and optioned it, but found that getting past the readers was, even for him, incredibly difficult. It's an excellent article, well worth your time, and you can find it here.

Also, I should mention that I did once pay for coverage, and found the script notes very intelligent and even a little helpful. I can recommend "the $60 notes offer" from Scott the Reader without hesitation.

Welcome, Slamdance Horror Semifinalists!

While waiting anxiously for the final results, quite a few of the semifinalists for the Slamdance Horror Competition have wandered over to this blog and said hello in the comments.

Hey, that's great!

Glad to meet you all.

Since people are introducing themselves under various posts, I thought I'd try to centralize the handshaking here so people can find each other.

Feel free to introduce yourselves, talk about your Slamdance scripts, other projects, favorite horror films, your life story, or whatever.

If you've got your own website or blog, give us the link so we can find you.

Self-promotion is not only allowed, but highly encouraged.

So far, I've heard from:

Paul Kramer (Crave)
Bobby Darby (Slaughter)
Roger Rousseau (The Dead of Winter)
Shaun O'Sullivan (Torn Apart)

I've exchanged emails with a few more of you, so by all means speak up.

One of the things that is unique about this screenplay competition is that the winning script will immediately be taken off the market by Angel Baby Entertainment.

Any residual publicity will accrue to the semifinalists and finalists whose scripts are still available.

I expect that when the grand prize winner is publicly announced on January 26, a number of us will benefit from the Slamdance buzz.

If fellow screenwriters have landed on this site from Google or wherever, then producers, agents, and managers probably will too.

So if you've been lurking, please say hello to the Slamdance Horror class of 2007.

Horror Producer Blogs Slamdance Film Festival

One of the sponsors of the Slamdance Horror Competition blogs under the nom de net "Grumpy O. Selznick":

"I’m here as a production executive on something called 'The Ten,' which the Hollywood reporter would have you believe is one of the two biggest buzz movies of Sundance. Look it up. I am also here for the Slamdance Horror Script Competition, which I am sponsoring and from which, I will be producing a horror movie this year."

Today he gives an interesting recap of the evolution of Sundance and Slamdance, and the rise of the horror genre in both festivals:

"In a weird way, though, Slamdance, because of the interest of the programmers in the horror genre and in documentaries, has been successful to some degree in breeding a commercial outlet for the films it shows as well (Mad Hot Ballroom was a big sale at Slamdance in recent years). As some of you may know, Hollywood is a little bit interested in horror (like a new one every other weekend in wide theatrical release) but hasn’t necessarily had the best luck in coming up with new franchises (see, e.g. remakes of every seventies and eighties horror film currently in release or being remade). So its always looking to buy.

"Anyhoo, as the horror craze continued, Sundance, which had focused on drama, saw that it was missing out on something (i.e. press from big popcorn deals), and started to program midnight screenings of horror films. Independently-made but highly commercial movies like Saw and Wolf Creek debuted at Sundance, where they were acquired (Lions Gate and Harvey, respectively) and released to good financial success (great, in the case of Saw). So Sundance had jumped in on the territory that Slamdance had monopolized in the Park City events of each January."

The entire post is worth a click. You can read it at donttellmehowitends.

Horror films? Oh, No! Save the Children!

Paul Kramer, screenwriter of Crave (Slamdance Horror semifinalist), makes an interesting point in the comments to an earlier post:

"...when I was young, my parents wouldn't allow me to watch horror films, which of course made me seek them out all the more."

My parents, too, did not allow me to see horror films. Violent images were strictly censored. We rarely went to movies and did not have a TV for many years. When we did watch television, we were not even allowed to see Speed Racer because it was, you know, shockingly violent.

And yet I grew up to write Red Wedding, one of the most violent, depraved, disgusting scripts ever written (I hope).

The only explanation I can offer for this bizarre turn of events is that, instead of watching films, I read books.

Lots and lots of books.

My parents approved of this.

Even if the book was written by, say, Stephen King.

Or H.P. Lovecraft.

Or Edgar Allan Poe.

Or Bram Stoker.

Or Dante.

The great thing about reading horror literature, as opposed to watching horror films, is that your imagination is actively engaged in creating the horrors.

Hollywood special effects will never equal a terrified reader's imagination.

So if you're a parent and you'd like your child to grow up to be a horror writer, my suggestion is to ban all horror movies and give your innocent little darling something stimulating to read.

Like, say, Macbeth.

Written by William "I have supped full of horrors" Shakespeare.

Script Review for "Halloween" Remake

John Carpenter's Halloween is one of my all-time favorite horror movies. I could not have written Red Wedding without studying this masterpiece.

I have mixed feelings about the Halloween remake. I'm not really looking forward it, but I will almost certainly see it, if only to check out Rob Zombie's new take.

Fangoria just posted a script review:

"Next to James Gunn’s DAWN OF THE DEAD and Scott Kosar’s TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE scripts, Zombie’s HALLOWEEN is yet another wild, daring mesh of old and new in this decade’s spate of divergent remakes. In spite of franchise purists’ expectations, Zombie has made HALLOWEEN his own—his voice is clear (some of the sharp banter is unmistakably “him”), his respect for the original evident, influences are in check and the courage to steer Myers thematically across new ground is worn on his sleeve. Restraint isn’t exercised here, but then again, these haven’t exactly been cinematic times of restraint when it comes to our genre."

Sounds promising enough.

Read the full script review here.

"Chiller" Channel for NBC

Here's another sure sign of the current horror boom.

NBC Universal, which owns the Sci Fi Channel, is launching a dedicated horror channel.

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

"Chiller, set to launch March 1 on DirecTV, is a 24-hour cable channel dedicated to the horror genre, featuring classic films and TV shows. At launch, the slate will include the TV series "Friday the 13th," "Twin Peaks," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Tales from the Crypt" and feature films including "The Shining," "Psycho" and "Blade Runner," said Jeff Gaspin, president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment, Digital Content and Cross Network Strategy. "

Bloody good news!

Chiller's official website is here.

Horror Movie Boomlet

Horror movies are in a boom cycle. Not only are more horror films made each year, but they are grossing more and becoming more gross.

Why?

There are a number of factors, but one I'd like to discuss is...

Demographics.

Most of us are familiar with the baby boom, the generation that was born to parents returning from WWII. It is the biggest demographic wave in American history.

And like all big hits, it spawned a sequel.

The baby boomlet.



This demographic chart illustrates the baby boom, peaking around 1960, and the baby boomlet, peaking in 1990.

A person born in 1990 will turn how old this year?

17.

What happens when a person turns 17?

They start going to R-rated movies without their parents. (Yes, most kids start early, but we're already a couple of years into the R-rated horror boom.)

Please note that the baby boomlet generation is nearly as large as the baby boom generation.

To understand how the baby boom effected the horror genre, look at some of the horror films of the mid to late '70s:

The Exorcist (1973)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Black Christmas (1974)
Jaws (1975)
Carrie (1976)
The Omen (1976)
Audrey Rose (1977)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Halloween (1978)
Alien (1979)

What about horror novels of the 1970s?

Ever heard of Stephen King?

Okay, so baby boomer teens loved the scary stuff, but what about the baby boomlet's effect on the horror genre?

They grew up on Goosebumps.

They graduated to Harry Potter.

As Harry Potter matured, so did they.

Now they're turning 17.

They've had their fill of kiddy scares.

And they're ready for the hard stuff.

Are you?

If you've got a horror script ready, now is the time to hit the market.

And if you don't have a horror script, you may want to think about writing one.

My advice:

Make it bloody disgusting.

What is Your Screenplay’s Conceit?

Screenplays need theme, structure, character, plot, etc. But they can also benefit from something else that is rarely talked about in screenwriting books.

A conceit.

In literary theory, a “conceit” is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poem or story.

The 17th century metaphysical poets, like John Donne and Sir Philip Sydney, were especially fond of witty conceits.

One of the best known examples is John Donne’s poem, “The Flea.” A flea bites the narrator and his lover, uniting their blood, so that three lives co-exist in one life, that of the flea. The entire poem is built on this simple, if bizarre, conceit. The two lovers are “married” in the flea, and when the woman kills the flea, it is a kind of murder-suicide.

Sir Philip Sidney’s poem, “My true-love hath my heart and I have his,” takes this common sentiment literally.

Note that both of these poems have a horrific premise.

Screenplays, too, can have a literary conceit.

For example, I built a conceit into my horror script, Red Wedding.

The logline is:

“A serial killer crashes a wedding at a remote lakeside resort.”

What is the conceit?

“Wedding jitters become wedding terrors.”

I structured my film, and built most of my strongest scenes, around this extended metaphor, until Red Wedding became a hyperbole of all wedding disasters, with the bride’s anxieties writ large — and in blood.

Brides are naturally anxious about their weddings. Their entire lives may depend on the outcome of this one day, a day they have dreamed about since early childhood.

So many things could go wrong.

“What if it rains?”

In my screenplay, a violent thunderstorm arrives.

“What if someone shows up late?”

The storm knocks out the bridge and most of the wedding guests never arrive at all.

“What if my ex-boyfriend shows up?”

Not only does he show up, but he starts killing everyone.

And so forth.

I pitched Red Wedding last summer at the Fade-In Hollywood Pitch Festival, and one producer, Chuck Simon, told me he liked the idea, but didn’t love it until I said one line:

“Wedding jitters become wedding terrors.”

“That’s great,” he said. “That’s a movie.”

He gave me his card and asked for the screenplay.

Does your screenplay have a conceit?

If not, you might want to give it some thought. The right conceit might be the very thing that makes a producer want to read your script.

How Do You Get Your Script Noticed?

I'm sometimes asked by friends who've written their first screenplay: "How do I get my script noticed?"

There are various ways to get a movie script noticed: query letters, screenplay contests, internet sites such as InkTip.com, dating a movie producer, etc.

But there's really only one correct answer:

"Write a great script."

If you do that, your script will get noticed.

If you fail to do that, you don't want your script to get noticed.

Here's a true story:

I wrote a TV pilot script on spec and gave it to a friend of mine who produces music videos.

He loved it and gave it to a producer who makes documentaries.

She loved it and gave it to her entertainment attorney.

He loved it and gave it to a TV agent at CAA.

She loved it and sent it out to a dozen of the top television producers in the business.

They all loved it and passed.

But the script got noticed.

Structure is character in conflict

Film structure is character in conflict.

Take, for example, The Godfather.

Let's look at some of the main characters, and see how they give rise to the structure of the film.

VITO CORLEONE: Aging mafia don with three sons. A tough immigrant Sicilian, he now dreams of taking his business legit. He's a moral man in an immoral world: he loves his family and worries about the sleazy business of drug dealing.

SONNY: The eldest son, heir apparent, but a hothead.

FREDO: The middle son, a weak fool.

MICHAEL: The youngest son, a war hero, all-American (with a WASP girlfriend), very smart, loves his father but doesn't want to work in the family business.

These three characters don't really give you a film structure, but what if you add:

SOLOZZO: A drug dealer who wants to build his own empire. He needs the leverage of a big player — Vito Corleone — but he's too ambitious.

So here's your plot:

1. Solozzo (too ambitious) asks Vito to partner with him in the drug trade.

2. Vito (the man of morals) politely refuses.

3. Sonny (the hothead) speaks out of line.

4. Solozzo (too ambitious) thinks he can make a deal with Sonny, and tries to kill Vito, placing Sonny in power.

5. Fredo (the weak fool) can't protect his father.

6. Vito (the tough immigrant Sicilian) survives five bullets in the chest.

7. Michael (who loves his father) goes to see Vito in the hospital.

8. Solozzo (too ambitious) plans to kill Vito in the hospital.

9. Michael (the smart one) outwits the assassins and saves his father.

10. Michael (the smart one, who loves his father) plans to avenge Vito and restore order and power to the family business.

11. Michael (the war hero) goes to kill Solozzo.

12. Solozzo (too ambitious) falls for the trap and gets killed.

13. Michael (the smart one) flees the country.

14. Michael (the all-American) hides in Sicily, where he learns to embrace his heritage.

15. Sonny (the hothead) flies into a rage over the abuse of his sister, falls into a trap, and gets killed.

And so on....

Structure is characters in conflict.

Before structuring your screenplay, make sure you have characters who will come into conflict in a meaningful and interesting way.

(This article appears in a slightly different form in the Wordplay Hall of Fame.)

Low-Budget Movie = Few Locations, Small Cast

The secret to writing low-budget movies is to limit your locations and keep your cast size small. The fewer locations and characters, the better.

When I first came up with the idea for my screenplay, Red Wedding, I started with a sub-genre (slasher) and an theme (wedding).

I loved the idea. It had lots of story possibilities, and it implied a central location.

But I worried about the cast size.

Even a small wedding would require dozens of people in the supporting cast. You've got the bride's family, the groom's family, friends on both sides, the caterers, photographer, priest, etc.

How to manage all that on a limited budget?

I started thinking of film locations. I remembered back to various weddings I had been to: churches, hotels, backyards...

And a lakeside resort.

Bingo.

Setting the movie in remote location — cabins in the woods — put me in familiar genre territory, and solved lots of thorny problems.

I could trap the characters in one place with, say, a storm that knocks out the only bridge. Better yet, I could knock out the bridge before most of the wedding guests even arrived.

The screenplay starts with a small wedding rehearsal and a thunderstorm outside. We meet the priest, the bride, the groom, the maid of honor, the best man, two bridesmaids, and two groomsmen.

Nine characters.

The wedding rehearsal is interrupted when the bride's cell phone rings. She answers. It's her dad. He can't make it to the rehearsal. The bridge is out.

Later, I add the killer and one more character, a wedding guest driving through the rain, trying to get to the lodge. She becomes that familiar horror trope: "the first to die."

That's it.

Eleven characters.

Most of whom will not survive the film.

Of course, there's a drawback to my solution. Rain is a production expense. But writing a thunderstorm into the screenplay allowed me to reduce my wedding party from, say, 111 to 11.

I think it's worth it.

And another nice thing about cabins in the woods, from a production standpoint, is that the cast and crew can live out of some cabins while filming in the others.

So that's my recipe for writing a low-budget horror film.

Eleven characters. Limited locations.

Just add blood.

Screenplay Loglines

Every screenplay needs a logline, a shorthand description of the story's premise.

When you're outlining a script or writing it, a clear logline reminds you what your story is and keeps you focused.

Later, the logline becomes a sales pitch, a meme, a kind of virus you hope will infect everyone who hears it, so they'll spread it to the next person, and the next, until it becomes a pandemic.

When a writer pitches a logline to an agent or producer, the immediate reaction should be: "Can I read it?"

When a producer pitches the logline to a studio or financier, they want to hear: "Can I write you a check?"

When a studio pitches the logline to the general public, they're counting on: "Two tickets, please. And a box of popcorn."

A logline needs to be brief, catchy, memorable.

It must imply a two-hour movie in a one-line statement.

It should tell us who, what, where, and when. Possibly why and how.

It should indicate genre and hint at tone.

It must tell us what the conflict is.

It should be familiar, yet different. Common, yet compelling.

How do you do all that in 25 words or less?

Boy, it's tough.

Trial and error. Prayer and meditation. Practice, practice, practice.

But when you've got it, it's gold.

For example, my logline for Red Wedding is:

"A serial killer crashes a wedding at a remote lakeside resort."

Eleven simple words.

Who is the movie about? A serial killer.

What does he do? Crash a wedding.

Where does the story take place? A remote lakeside resort.

When? During a wedding. Presumably modern-day.

Why does he do this? (Watch and find out.)

How does he do it? (Well, that's the movie.)

Is the logline familiar?

Hell, yes. Overly familiar.

It sounds like a formula slasher movie. We've seen this kind of thing in Friday the 13th and hundreds of other horror movies.

But that also means we know who the audience is: horror fans.

Is the logline also different?

Well, there is that wedding. I've seen lots of slasher movies, and I've seen lots of wedding movies, but have I seen a slasher at a wedding?

Maybe not.

Combining these two sub-genres does suggest some interesting possibilities. Weddings have lots of traditions that can be tweaked with a little blood and mayhem.

Most of us have been to a few weddings, possibly even our own. We know the tensions that weddings bring out. We remember the pressure, the fear that something might go wrong.

But what if everything went wrong?

We also know who the characters are. A bride. A groom. Best man. Maid of honor. The priest. And, of course, the killer.

What's the conflict?

Serial killer vs. the wedding party.

Wedding jitters become wedding terrors.

Hey, that's not bad. Maybe there's a movie there.

Finally, and most importantly, does the logline for Red Wedding make you want to read the script or see the film?

God, I hope so.

Slamdance Horror List

I want to give a shout-out (or is that a blood-curdling scream?) to all my fellow semifinalists.

Congrats!

You're awesome!

I haven't read these scripts (other than Red Wedding), but I know you all worked extremely hard on your screenplays, and I wish you continued success in your writing careers.

Here's the list from the Slamdance Film Festival site:

SEMIFINALISTS:

Blood-Sucking Leeches and Flesh-Eating Maggots by Adam Balsam
Cage by P.A. Landa
Crave by Paul Kramer
Crimson Highway by Daniel G. Payne & Tony Lopez
Dare by Bob Sinnott
Dead in the Water by Irad Eyal and Ron Eyal
The Dead of Winter by Roger Rousseau
Desecrated by Sean Paul Murphy
Dig by Marc A. Samson
Highway Cold by Mark Lovely
Hunger by L.D. Goffigan
Porn Star Zombies by Keith Emerson
Red Wedding by David Wisehart
Scalp Peeled Forward by Jud Cremata
Shady Acres by Justin Chinn & David Greenspan
The Shop Teacher by Joel Watson
Slaughter by Bobby Darby & Nathan Brookes
Torn Apart by Shaun O'Sullivan
Tunnelman! by Adam Nadler
Vampire Strippers Must Die! by Keith Hartman

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Bite Me by Cowen Bailey & Dan Diprima
Check-Out Time by Christian McLaughlin & Terry Haley
Eaten Alive by Zachary Henderson
The Fall of 59 by Eric D. Schneider
Suffer the Children by Michael Strode

If you're a Hollywood agent, director, producer, or development exec looking for talented horror writers, you might want to contact Slamdance immediately and start calling some of the people on this list.

Slamdance Horror Semifinalist

I found out tonight that my screenplay RED WEDDING is a semifinalist for the Slamdance Horror Competition.

There were more than 500 entries. One of the 20 semifinalists will see their horror script produced this year. The winner's film will premiere at next year's film festival.

Sweet.

The finalists will be announced on January 12.

The Grand Prize winner will be announced at the Slamdance Film Festival on January 26.

Wish me luck.