Monthly Archives: January 2011

It’s True

When I was in high school I got to see the filming of a bunch of studio segments of the Super Dave Osborne Show.

 

I was also fortunate enough to see live performances by Colin James, En Vogue, the legendary (and I mean absolutely legendary) Ray Charles, and that calypso band that knows “plenty songs” but only plays Copacabana.

One night, when only a hundred or so people stuck it out to watch filming for the season wrap, I was picked to go up on stage and spend a second talking with Super Dave before muttering the 5 words I thought were sure to make me famous: Take it away Mike Walden!

The good news is that 6 or 7 years later I was at The Bombshelter (an on-campus pub) and some guy rand up to me and said that he had just seen me on Super Dave the night before. For the rest of the night he and his buddies bought me drinks and treated me like a king. I failed my exam the next day, but it was completely worth it.

To this day I have not seen the clip and would very much like it if I could get a copy. If anyone out there has old Super Dave episodes on tape, I’ll gladly pay to have the one I’m in copied and mailed to me.

The Big Idea

So lately I’ve been reading a lot of screenplays lately (but always keep going back to Pulp Fiction. Man, what a great flick that is – to read or to watch), and listening to audio books on how to write screenplays, and reading books on how to write screenplays. What I haven’t been doing enough of is actually writing my screenplay. Hmmm…

As it turns out there’s a lot of reading and research and good old fashioned learning that you need to commit yourself to before you can just bang out the next Oscar winner. As it stands, I’m in the middle of writing the treatment for my idea (not the big one, that’s coming soon) and almost have enough of the major action firmed up to the point where I can lay out some scenes and get Act 1 on its way.

All that is considerably less exciting than the other project I have just undertaken. Suffice it to say that it’s the single most ambitious thing I have ever attempted in my whole life (and I studied Applied Physics at the University of Waterloo!)

The problem with The Big Idea is I can’t share it with the one person that would appreciate and support the most. Why? Because the end result of this project is for her, and I want it to be a surprise. She’s also my biggest and toughest critic, and she’s smart as hell. Both qualities that would come in really handy when trying to pull this off.

To give those of you that don’t know her (or me), her brother died on my birthday in March, she has a birthday in August, our anniversary is in early November, and after more than 11 years of marriage I still really love her. That should at least provide some sort of idea as to why I’m doing this (for the less quick: birthday, memorial, anniversary, just because I love her).

I can only be cryptic on this blog on the off chance she’s one of the 3 people reading it, but soon I will have a separate website up with a giant splash page that reads something like “IF YOU ARE MY WIFE, PLEASE LEAVE. IT’S A SURPRISE. TRUST ME. If you are not my wife, then please continue. Seriously Jodi, just close the browser, you’ll spoil all the fun.”

So the fun begins. Actually, it began yesterday, and the idea was conceived over the Christmas holidays (I sent out a quick tweet about that. Follow me @PotatoChipMath). I will post a link to the site when it’s up and you can go there for all the Big Idea progress. I’ve already pitched this to a few people (friends and other likely more objective acquaintances) and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. One guy even jumped at the chance to be involved in any way. Very cool.

It’s going to be LEGEN…. wait for it… DARY!