Adam Dorsey.com

Hitchcock’s Definition of Happiness

This, you guys. THIS.

Here’s a spoiler-free video I made to poke a little fun at the whole Mass Effect 3 ending upset. You probably have to have some familiarity with Mass Effect to have any idea what I’m talking about up there.

I’m actually not done with the game yet, so please no real spoilers.

michaelmidnight:

We mustn’t stop dreaming! We must reach for the stars and race for Tomorrow!

This is important. More important than war.

I got to see this get taped yesterday. It was my first time going to a late-night talk show taping, and it was a blast. Helped that Kumail blew everyone away. It’s cool to have hilarious friends.

Here’s a picture I snapped of the Conan stage before the show started. Everything is much smaller in real life.

“Ready to feel the force?”

“YEAH!”

I have been a fan of this quote for a while now. I’ve posted it here before in text form, but this is a video, or more importantly audio. In the past couple years, this quote has gotten me through some rough spots, and I guess I’ll talk about that a little.

A few months back I finished a new screenplay. It was probably the most anti-climactic end to a project that I have ever had, but I guess that’s because that wasn’t really the end. As soon as I was done with it, I started thinking about what needed to change in the rewrite. And the thing is, the screenplay isn’t bad. It’s a good idea, it’s a fun journey, it’s very much in my voice, but like Ira says, it’s just missing that thing—It’s missing that thing that made me want to start writing in the first place. And so I now have these 100 pages of okay screenplay, and I’m going to let them simmer there, and I’m going to move onto the new project, and while I’m working on that new project, I’ll be fiddling with the pieces of this old one in the background, refitting things and adding new things and trying to make it that thing I know it can be.

It’s so hard, because while writing these screenplays, there are moments where I reach a high point in my outlining and I glimpse what they can be—WHAT THEY SHOULD BE—and from that vantage point I can see the movie that is a better movie than any other movie that’s been made before. But then, like Ira says, I’m just not quite there yet, there’s just a little something missing in my execution, and I fall just a little short.

I like this Ira Glass quote because it reminds me to keep working and keep writing. Countless times over the last few years I’ve stopped writing because the work just wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. And it’s good to be reminded that the only way the work is going to get better is if you keep producing more work.

Right now I’m in the trenches, writing a screenplay that I’ve been outlining for the past three years. It’s a sci-fi action movie, with a twisted soul and an open heart, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever tried to do before. I’ve climbed the mountain and reached the vantage point and seen the great work that it can be, but I just hope I’m good enough yet to shepherd it there.