Friday, February 24, 2012

Remember that time I cowrote a script with David Goyer?

Screenplay
Screenplay (Photo credit: Matt-Richards)
Seriously, in 1998 I cowrote a movie script with David Goyer (and seven other people). Back in the day, TNT had a pretty fun website called Roughcut.com, whence I drew inspiration for my movie rating system. In late summer of '98, Goyer participated in a sort of exquisite corpse crowdsourced screenwriting contest at Roughcut, and I was one of the lucky few to earn a spot in the script rotation.

After my recent trip to Boskone to see -- among others -- Bruce Schneier and talk about data that survives the death of people and websites, I was reminded that Archive.org probably has some saves of Roughcut from 14 years ago.

Guess what I found?

The script is rather painfully '90s, but I still find it a lark to read, even after all these years. My contribution is part seven.

Ironically, I almost didn't know I'd won a spot in the contest, as my selection was announced as I went off to my senior year of college, and a snafu with my school's IT department had me locked off the web for about two weeks. Once I got back online, I had a string of desperate emails from the contest producer asking where to send my prize money.

I still have the $100 money order, uncashed, as a keepsake. It was the first occasion where I was "paid" for my creative writing, and the first inkling I had that I wasn't just better than most of the kids at my school in the fiction skills, I might actually have a shot at making a living stringing words together.

The rest, as they say, is history.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Jay -

    I was also a weekly winner in that contest - which was definitely fun at the time - much better than their second attempt at it. Surprisingly(?) - nothing ever became of the finished script, though Goyer certainly went on to bigger and better things.

    -Eric Feinstein

    ReplyDelete