American Geniuses Blog is Live posted by Ben

Today marks the official launch of my companion blog, where I am serializing a very silly screenplay called American Geniuses.

Let me tell you a little bit about this project. I sat down to write American Geniuses as a way of clearing my head and simply writing. While the typical route that I and my writing partners take on a screenplay involves careful plot management, over ten drafts, and many, many months, for this piece I have chosen simply to write and see what happens. I have a sketch of what happens and the order is happens in, but everything else will be a discovery along the way. (This is exactly what all those Hollywood screenplay gurus tell you never, ever to do. For this project, Robert McKee, you can go suck an egg!)

Were I actually writing this for the screen, you would not be reading it right now. The script that will eventually sit here is a first draft that I am writing as we go along. It will be unpolished, will probably have some plot holes, and will value plot above character, theme, and all other standard elements that make a screenplay great. I write it purely for my own and your amusement in an atmosphere where anything can happen and probably will.

Genres will mix. Characters will shift in and out of focus depending on the needs of the story. And you who are reading as I post new pages each Saturday will have the opportunity to comment on each stage of the process. Not only that, but if you have a fun idea for how to tie all of these threads up in the end, or even an idea for how to change or improve something already posted here, just let me know. If I like it, I'll implement it. Why not?

Remember, this is not intended for production. What studio would touch such a bizarre story, a story that, before it is done, will involve brilliant high schoolers, Communist ice cream, secret government agencies, Chinese acrobats, ageless English gentlemen from the 1890's, and maybe an alien invasion? This is pulp, pure and simple, and I invite you to join me and have some fun with a story where saleability, market research, accessibility to Joe Shmoe, and impossible production values are mere gnats of inconvenience, rather than acting in their normal function as creativity-stomping, idiot-giants.

Let's have some fun!