Friday, April 12, 2019

Are you a Hollywood writer? I'm a Hollywood writer! Hey, I'm also a Hollywood writer!

It seems everyone I've met in the past few weeks has been a writer. I write for a living but my writing is not related to the entertainment industry. I write about plastic surgery so I work on news stories and medical articles with board-certified doctors all over the United States.

I also work with different clients across the country on blogs and social media.

In this town, writers can be found everywhere. They are working on screenplays, network pitches, reboots of their favorite TV shows from the past, grim and gritty/adult versions of childhood favorites and video game scripts. It seems the only writers I don't meet are the ones working on their version of the Great American Novel.

To give you an idea about the amount of people in this town that want to be a writer in the entertainment industry, check out this list of discussions I've had with multiple writers over the course of the past few weeks:

  1. "A Hulk reboot that ignores all of the Marvel movies in favor of a Hulk that is gray, lives in Compton and drives a taxi."
  2. "A game show where all of the contestants can only answer in 150 characters or less even if the actual answer is more than 150 characters. It's a game show where people that text will rule the game!"
  3. "Boy meets girl. Girl meets another boy. First boy meets second boy. It's a love triangle mixed with a touch of The Amazing Race."
  4. "What if Luigi tried to buy out Mario's share of the plumbing business? What is Mario's second act? The game is Mario trying new professions. The unofficial name of the game is Mario's Mid-Life Mania"
  5. 'What if we did an SNL-type show on the web but it was on 3 nights a week for 5-7 minutes each night? It's SNL without the filler!"
  6. "I'm writing a screenplay about a guy that writes scripts that are never produced for a living. That way, if it doesn't sell, I look like a man that really knows his subject."
  7. "It's like the Real Housewives franchise except all of the women are mistresses instead of wives."
  8.  "It's a show kind of like Dallas but, instead of oil, the family is fighting over 1000 acres of avocado farmland."
  9. "I'm rebooting the X-Men franchise. No one asked me to do it but, if I believe enough, I will manifest that job opening through the power of positive thinking."
  10. "It's the story of an all girl band if they were actually house painters instead of musicians."
Once again, I write about plastic surgery for a living so I might not be the best judge of those wanting to write screenplays for a living. I will say that all of the above ideas seem like they need a bit of massaging before they are ready to be seen on the big screen, the small screen, an iPhone screen or an Xbox near you.