The Batmobile

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/scz/mis/2161327767.html

Location: Chevron on 41st
Me: Cute girl driving black Civic - my friend gave you a thumbs up :)
You: I think you're Batman, but I need to know for sure. You drive what's known around here as the Batmobile. I've seen your car around before, but today I got to see you through those skinny windows. I liked what I saw.

To be honest, your car really turns me on. I'd love to go for a ride sometime. Let me know if you're interested. ;)

=================

The Batmobile
by conrad panganiban

GABRIELLE
So how long have you had the car?

BRUCE
Not that long. People really call this the Batmobile?

GABRIELLE
Well, maybe just me and my friends. You're new here, aren't you?

BRUCE
Not that new. You just never saw me before.

GABRIELLE
Right. The skinny windows.

BRUCE
Right.

GABRIELLE
So. You gonna take me out for a ride?

BRUCE
Depends.

GABRIELLE
Depends on what?

BRUCE
If you're worthy.

GABRIELLE
Worthy?

BRUCE
Yeah.

GABRIELLE
Trust me. I am.

BRUCE.
Not in that way, Gabby.

GABRIELLE
It's Gabrielle, and how'd you know my name?

BRUCE
Well, then excuse me, Gabrielle, but not in that way. I was talking about something you can do for me.

GABRIELLE
What I can do for you?

BRUCE
I need the keys to your dad's shop.

GABRIELLE
What are you talking about?

BRUCE
You said that you wanted a ride?

GABRIELLE
Yeah, but…

BRUCE
Well, how much of that ride do you want? Or is it, how much do you want to drive it?

GABRIELLE
I told you, the car turns me on.

BRUCE
350 dual-cam carburetor with a

GABRIELLE
500 cubic manifold intake valve.

BRUCE
It's 550.

GABRIELLE
You might want to check again. So what do you want from my pop's shop?

BRUCE
Does he still have the three-quarter Edge Spring for the '66 Chevy Firesnake?

GABRIELLE
A '66 Firesnake?

BRUCE
I guess you're not very interested in the Batmobile anymore.

GABRIELLE
It's a Prius compared to a Firesnake. No offense.

BRUCE
I wouldn't say Prius. More like Mustang… but definitely not a Prius.

GABRIELLE
You know what I mean. So… how'd you get the other one? Since there were only...

BRUCE
Can you get me the Edge Spring?

GABRIELLE
He's gonna notice it's gone.

BRUCE
Of course he would. But by the time he'd notice, we'd be long gone too.

GABRIELLE
We?

BRUCE
The people I work for would appreciate your line of expertise, Gabby. A lot more than your father does.

GABRIELLE
How much more? And it's Gabrielle.

BRUCE
Let's just say that the Edge Spring isn't for my car. It'd be for yours. Trust me. The best thing to ever come out of this rinky dinky town is you, but if you wanna stay rinky dinky, you can stay right here taking orders from your old man who'll keep you trapped swapping oil underneath Soccer Wagons and Priuses forever. Call me crazy, but I'd think that working on Lamborghinis, Bugattis, or a Koenigseggs would be a step up.

GABRIELLE
A Koenigsegg?

BRUCE
The Agera, Trevita, and I almost forgot, the CCXR. You think you can handle those?

GABRIELLE
I… uh.

BRUCE
We don't have time for "uhs", Gabby. 1:23am. In the back of your pop's shop. You're there with the part, and we're gone. If not… then I'll be. I'll see you soon… Gabrielle.

THE END

Working working working

so my new project is to adapt a short story or poem written by a filipin@-american author into a 20-minute play. i've selected the short story "A Portrait of an Aristocrat" from the novel WHEN THE ELEPHANTS DANCE by Tess Uriza Holthe. i've been drawn to this story ever since reading this 3 years ago. for some reason, it's really taken a hold of me. i think it's just seeing a scene where the protagonist, Fredrico Jacinto-Basa is mixing it up with the contagonist, Divina Zamora. The scene is where Divina first confronts Fredrico in his painting studio after he runs over her mothers vegetables in the market place with his Kalesa. she splashes wine all over his painting and i see him totally enraptured by her passion... something that none of his other portraits have.

at any rate, my task is to take this story of about 21 scenes and compress it into 15-20 minutes. it's gonna be hard, but it eases my mind to know that i've taken the steps to get to that point:

- re-write the story in my words point-by-point
- break this point-by-point re-write into scenes
- identify all of the characters
- identify the main theme
- create a "This story is about..." sentence. Learned this from Philip Kan Gotanda.
- this actually changed from my initial thought of what i thought the story was and this was only accomplished by having the point-by-point re-write.

This story is about how an aristocratic painter changes his beliefs on social equality after meeting his muse and her family during the late 1800's of a Spanish-colonized Philippines.

what i still need to accomplish:
- edit out the scenes which will help me tell the story into 20 minutes
- figure out what's the best method to do this
- cut out as many characters as i can and maybe combine characters

i'm on my way and the more times i go over what i've already done, the story will come more clearly into focus :)

Character Dosier

Sister Mary Clarence:...If when you wake up in morning and you couldn't think about anything, but writing, then you're a writer.

After my 9-to-6, I head on over to borders to do some writing. I'm feeling good about this story idea I've had for quite some time. Before I get started, I even do a little writing exercise: A wants something from B, but B wants something from A first. A little tip: when starting this exercise on a laptop, write down the two character names, which is better than A and B, one line on top of the other, copy those two lines, and copy and paste, etc., down the page. And bada bing, before you even have any lines written, you're committed to this little drama because you have outlined two characters that go back and forth WAITING for you to insert the story. I'm a visual person, and when I saw this, I got inspired.

So, I'm writing this little scene and half way through, I realize that in a short play like this, I still don't know what this is about. Not good. And I started to think that in my last couple of short plays, it takes me a while for me to get into not only what is this story about, but what are these characters like?

I stopped in my tracks and, with this question in mind, I started to write my play... but in a very different way that I've written everything else. There are two different philosophies of writing. 1) sit down and start writing. The characters will eventually start talking to each other and to your own wonderment, a story happens and in a very schizophrenic kind of way, these characters start to write their own story while you're just there as a stenographer. 2) start out with writing down what each of these characters are like. write down everything they went through; what their history is; what is their needs; what makes them... them. In doing so, in theory, the characters will start to write your play, but with motivation and forethought.

I believe in both philosophies, especially the first one, because of that artistic sensation of really creating something from nothing. Very organic since you're just letting it happen. But last night, I started writing out the Character Dosier for each of my characters, but in the organic kind of way, I've discovered more themes to the play itself. I was as excited to write this as I was when I just free wrote.

Needless to say, I came out of this writing session with more that I thought I was going into it: stronger individual characters. I'll still be working on this for other characters, but the goal is still the same in the anticipation of seeing what each of them has to say to each other.

10x10 Exercise

Here's the exercise: on a piece of paper grid out 10 boxes by 10 boxes. by doing so, you'll have 100 little squares just big enough to put 1 word in each. using the following instructions, put a word randomly into any of the 100 boxes. At the end, you'll come up with some really funky 100-word prose/spoken word/word art that might or might not make any sense, but it's cool creative prompt to get ya goin'!

1) someone you love
2) place where you grew up
3) name of a body of water
4) a body part you don't like
5) 5 verbs
6) 5 adverbs
7) 5 nouns

This is what I came up with today :)

Chair underneath the immovable earth hurridly spinning while dizziness runs numbing wildly brown hat from where Marina meets the blue ocean. I laugh in peace even though life's lamp is tossed in the pacific bay where cooking and cleaning inhabits the Raine of my mind's resting place. I journey into the center of my soul gracefully stepping around my quietly everchanging mind - shoot the scene. I walk down the block of blood fearlessly spitting in the eye of a speeding car careening into undeniable murder by running over tummy after eyes over hearts where my life's book ends.

===

wtf was that? there were some incredible examples read during the workshop, but i learned that this really didn't make sense mostly because my mind was really random today. *sigh*

Scene Stream - Exercise

One of my goals for having this blog is to keep record of the exercises I do in order to become a better writer. So this is an intro of what I'm calling, a Scene Stream. It's basically writing a scene, that's timed, out of thin air without thought or any preconceived notion of where the play/situation/characters will take me. Of course, for a real play, knowing me, I NEED to have an ending for me to plot out where I'm going and how I'm getting there.

This is an exercise that we learned in class 2 weeks ago. 2 characters are in a situation and I have to write a script based on their conversation. To begin, I'll need character names which are RANDOMLY picked from my iTunes library and base the character's names from the artists I select. After the character names are set, I'll find a situation/event/dialogue snippet to place them taken RANDOMLY from the book, The Writer's Book of Matches). After getting the names and the event, it's fair game from there!

But there are objectives that I must try to achieve:
1) each character MUST have their own voice
2) there is dramatic action (drive towards one's goal) constantly happening with EVERY character ALL the time
3) each scene and/or beat must:
    - move the story forward
    - reveal something about the character
    - infer action
4) keep writing CONTINUOUSLY for the allotted amount of time.
5) after I'm done writing, give the piece a KICK-ASS unique title!

Oh, yeah... i'm not expecting these scenes to be any good at first! As I said, this is an exercise to get me writing. What sucks is that I don't get into a groove with the story until the last couple of lines when I realize just where the hell is this story going? But in a way that's the fun of all this!

My Destination Ends at You

My Destination Ends at You
a Scene Stream exercise

Character 1: Brian (Littrell - Jesus Loves You)
Character 2: Nelly (Furtado - Say It Right)

Situation:
While driving to work one morning, (Brian) decides to pass the office and keep on driving.

Time: 20 minutes (start: 11:34pm)

NELLY
Brian, what are you doing? You just missed the exit.

BRIAN doesn't say anything.

NELLY
You know that I have a meeting at 9:30 with the marketing person from Tokyo. I can't miss it.

BRIAN
You'll talk to him next time.

NELLY
You crazy? I've been prepping for this presentation for a month now. I even learned some Japanese.

BRIAN
Like what?

NELLY
Like, "I need this job!"

BRIAN
That doesn't sound like Japanese to me.

NELLY
That's because my Learn to Speak Japanese in 1 month book is on my desk where I need to go but you just missed the exit.

BRIAN
Let's just take this time off.

NELLY
What's wrong, Brian? This isn't like you.

BRIAN
But this is me.

NELLY
No, the Brian I know gets freaked out when he's 5 minutes late for anything.

BRIAN
Didn't you ever have one of those days when you just wanted to explore life and everything around it. You know not just the everyday stuff?

NELLY
Sure, who doesn't?

BRIAN
I don't. Every morning I get up at 5:30am. Put on a pot of coffee. Put on the Jogging shoes. Head out the door. Run until 6:30am. Take a shower. And get the clothes from the hanger that I selected the night before, get dressed. Read the paper with my coffee and jump in here and be at work by 8:45am. Every day.

NELLY
For the last 5 years. Every day.

BRIAN
Exactly.

NELLY
So, what's the change? What's different today than those other days in the last 5 years?

BRIAN
Kevin Sparber.

NELLY
Did this Kevin Sparber tell you to drive passed your work?

BRIAN
He couldn't have. He's dead.

NELLY
So if he's dead, what does he have to do with me missing my Japanese appointment?

BRIAN
Kevin and I went to school together. High school. He was a good guy but I never saw him really achieving much. He was always happy, but the thing I didn't ever connect with him on was that he never achieved. He was a slacker. I haven't seen or heard of him since we graduated from High School... like all high school kids did, we lost contact. We're from a small town, and all I ever wanted to do was move to the big city and make it big. Have the best car. The best Job. Respect. Power. Yeah, that's all I ever wanted... until this morning, in between sips of my Sumatra Blend, I read KEVIN SPARBER from Marina, CA leaves behind a wife and 2 kids ages 9 and 4. He's my age... and I came to think to myself. I don't have anything that I can leave behind. How sad is that? I clawed myself up the school and corporate ladder to travel the world and have this success and now not to have anyone to share it with is... sad.

NELLY
Uh... geez thanks. I thought I was something you'd... fine.

BRIAN
That's not what I meant. I meant that.

NELLY
Why are you stopping? It's the middle of the freeway.

BRIAN
That's why I wanted to drive passed the lives of us trapped in a building. Why we're here on 101 in the middle of the freeway during rush hour. Look, everyone's constantly moving with a destination in mind, when my destination is sitting right next to me. I want to end the crazy pursuit of what I thought was life. I want to have something to leave behind. I want you. Will you marry me?


DONE! time 11:57pm

I totally forgot the other objective to this exercise and that's to have the other person, NELLY, have a totally DIFFERENT voice!!! she has to sound different and I guess my character of BRIAN got too monologue heavy. Eh, it's an exercise, and I'll learn to get better with each one of these I do. Hmmm... now I gotta come up with a title....