September Sweeps - Day 224

I was a bit blue today, can't really explain why*, but hung out with my uncle and my cousin from Vegas for part of the afternoon.  Their lives seem more exciting than mine, but I suppose everyone's does.

While my uncle was over he talked about an idea that came to him in a dream for a story and he wanted me to write it for him.  I told him I 'd pass because I don't manage to write half the stories I come up with myself, and I know that bothered him.  Non-writers are always so surprised when they come up with story ideas, and they want them to get out there, and we've all heard the "I have a great idea for a movie, why don't you write it and we'll split the proceeds?" pitch a time or two, but it's hard to explain that the real accomplishment is the writing, not the coming up with an idea.

"Hey, they should make a machine that records your dreams, so you can go back, if you choose, and experience them again.  You build it, and we'll split the money 50/50."

They had a get-together they were going to, and I hoped they would invite me to come along (despite me not knowing any of the people there), but they took off, and my sister's family took off for the cabin, leaving me pretty much alone.  I decided to head over to the library again today, just to force myself to write a little more. Yesterday wasn't much, but I often (not always, but often) feel like I've accomplished something when I write, so I tried it again today.

Sit-ups Today: 150
Sit-ups In September: 1662

Push-ups Today: 36
Push-ups In September: 400 (nice, but my Uncle John probably does that much in one sitting . . . during a funeral)

I veered suddenly left yesterday while I was writing the Natalie story, and wrote a scene showing what Mason was doing.  It probably doesn't belong--if the story's from her POV, she should get all the scenes, right?--but I wanted to explore what was happening to the rest of the staff while Natalie is having her adventure (I set up a future story telling where Meeshelle is in between my first story and Marshal Latham's story), and I also wanted a scene to explain why Mason isn't in those two stories (I had honestly figured he was dead by this point, but the stories keep on surprising me).

So, I skipped the main ghost scene with Natalie and wrote what happens after, and went on through until "the end."  The story's not done--I have to go back and write the ghost scene (or not, I could be a cheater and just skip it)--but it's still super close now to being finished.

I went on my full run tonight--something I hadn't managed much this week--my sore foot be damned.  And it only really bothered me for the first block or so (and going down stairs).  As a reward, I looked on the free On Demand section on TV, to pick a movie, and noticed AD ASTRA on there.  It was a heady Sci-Fi movie starring Brad Pitt that I remember saying wouldn't make a dime because the title was in Latin.

It ended up being a tremendously boring future Drama about a guy with father issues, with two or three pointless action scenes jammed in there, perhaps after the first disastrous test screening, where the entire audience fell asleep.  The action scenes, as inappropriate to the story as they are, were the only entertaining bits of the movie (especially one with a space baboon), and I almost wish they'd stick to their (absence of) guns, because I could at least admire them for it.

In the middle of the movie, I got an idea for a horror story, about an ex-soldier (or policeman) who, due to a brain injury, is the perfect candidate for a mission to save the world.  I focused on that idea during the super boring parts (as opposed to the simply dull parts), but then worried that I was stealing my idea from EVENT HORIZON, a movie I went to in 1997, and only vaguely remember.

Was the premise of that movie that this crew finds a spaceship with a portal in it that causes peoples' worst fears to manifest?  Seems like something like that.

So, when ED ASNER ended, I did a search for EVENT HORIZON and, wouldn't you know it, it was available for free too (with commercials, though).  I went ahead and watched it.  Holy smoke, the CG in the movie was shite . . . not quite BIRDEMIC bad, but close.  

It was a little bit worse than I remembered (and I've never quite gotten over my loathing for Kathleen Quinlan--can't really explain that), but it was better than AD ASTRA because it delivered on what it promised, and wasn't trying to be something artsy, just a Haunted House movie in space.  Lots of jumpscares, a couple of eerie sequences, and hey, it had really first-rate set design.

It was directed by Paul Anderson (the RESIDENT EVIL guy), who now goes by Paul W.S. Anderson because the Paul Thomas Anderson who directed BOOGIE NIGHTS was registered with the Writers Guild as "Paul Anderson" and this one was registered with the Directors Guild as "Paul Anderson," and that was apparently a huge headache.  He's the video game director who was married to Milla Jovavich, and also did ALIEN VERSUS PREDATOR (which you may say sucked, but was better than anything from ALIEN: RESURRECTION on).  I saw that he did that movie about the fall of Pompeii, and I may bug Marshal about watching that with me for our movie podcast.

Apparently, they shot a scene for the movie with a bunch of porno actors and amputees that was so disturbing to test audiences that they dropped it, and that footage is now lost.  A shame they didn't jam that into the middle of the Brad Pitt movie.

I also read that somebody is trying to turn EVENT HORIZON into a television series, and believe it or not, I'm all over that.  It's not the idea behind the movie that's flawed, just the dumbness of the movie itself.

Afterward, I was a bit disappointed in myself, that I could've used the time to record audio or write, and I didn't do it.  I'm 96% done with my "Delusions of Grandeur" episode, and I could've done that too.

I did sit down and jot down some notes for the story (I will never write) that was inspired by AD ASSMAT, that I feared was the premise of EVENT HORIZON, but it's pretty derivative, and I don't usually write Sci-Fi anyway, because it just becomes Horror set in space (see "Ten Thousand Coffins").

I did the math, just to see, and two-thirds of a year is 243 days.  So, I'm a couple weeks away from having written every day for two-thirds of 2020.  Remarkable?  Sure.  Meaningful?  Not so much.

Words Today: 804
Words In September: 14,571 (I'm still ahead!)

*Okay, I could explain, I consider myself a writer, after all.