A couple of months ago, I started writing a long post about the movie Expelled. I made the mistake of assuming there were but a handful of sane voices in the meeting-place of public opinion, and that I needed to join them to be heard above the crowd cheering on this insidiously dishonest movie. But when I showed up at the meeting, the crowd was jeering and the filmmakers had already been laughed out of the room. My humble services were not needed–much to the relief, I'm sure, of those who would have received them.

So I just slapped together this list of links so you can enjoy the saga if you like. For those who are curious about the Expelled kerfuffle (a polite term deriving from the Latin word "clusterfuck"), I include the following one-paragraph synopsis:

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It's become popular to make fun of Hayden Christensen. And why not? He killed Anakin Skywalker. With brow furrowed in angst and lightsaber blazing as blue as his poster-blue eyes, he destroyed the Anakin we once knew and replaced him with Darth Emo.

For those of you unfamiliar with his performances in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, I will summarize some notable comments by critics:

"Christensen plays Anakin as if he were a brooding, whining brat forever on the verge of a teary-eyed tantrum." –Christopher Smith, WeekInRewind.com

"Anakin, as embodied by Christensen, is the kind of needlessly moody kid you might see getting punched out in a Dairy Queen parking lot." –Paul Tatara, CNN.com

"Part of the problem is Christensen, whose breakout role was playing the young Anakin Skywalker in the recent execrable 'Star Wars' installments, and who has never managed to project anything but a sullen air of lazy entitlement." –Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

Before I talk about Stop-Loss, I have to talk just a bit about Hayden Christensen. First of all, let me be fair. The problem with Star Wars was the lack of directing and writing talent, not the lack of acting talent–poor Hayden wasn't the only one George Lucas humiliated onscreen. Nevertheless, for some reason Hayden continued his misunderstood writhing in other films, like Jumper, which was best described by Andrew Pulver of the Guardian as being a series of "tortured love scenes for Hayden to glower through." You know how Michael Jackson is the guy who started everyone moonwalking? How Marlon Brando is the guy who introduced believable performances into film? Well, Hayden Christensen is the guy who brought emo to Hollywood.

It may well be that you can't fully understand Stop-Loss until you understand this. It may be different for you, but for my own part, if it hadn't been for Hayden, I might not have seen why Stop-Loss was such a terrible movie. I would have hated it without the important step of knowing why. Fortunately, I do know why, and I'm gonna tell you.

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This morning I woke up to my phone ringing. I'd been up late working on a new website–I haven't been writing on the new screenplay lately because I decided to make some money for a few months first so I could afford to concentrate on it. The call was from Lacy Pearman, the vice-president of development at Dreamworks. She was calling to offer me $180,000.

When I was at Sundance, I met a guy, Renardo, who worked at one of the little coffee shops in Park City where all the famous people go in between screenings. He was on break and had picked up a flyer for my movie Moving which I'd strategically left on tables in shops and lounges and screening rooms. I got to talking to him about it, and we struck up a conversation about movies, which he loved as much as I did and wanted someday to make himself.

Well, Renardo eventually made his way to LA and became a script reader, then a member of a development team, then a producer, then an assistant to Lacy back when she was with Universal, around the time they were working on "Charlie Wilson's War," written by one of my favorites, Aaron Sorkin. When one of their subsidiaries offered us our $20,000 distribution deal I mentioned in an earlier post, word filtered up and it jogged his memory. He asked for some of my stuff and I sent it, not expecting anything in response.

Well, Lacy was out in New York pulling together some East Coast talent for a sequel to "Charlie Wilson's War" about the repurcussions in Afghanistan of America's intervention there against the Soviet Union in the 1980's–a theme strongly hinted at in the ending of the film but never actually addressed. Apparently, Aaron Sorkin wanted to do it himself but is busy working on a West Wing feature film idea, and is having trouble getting Martin Sheen onboard, because (and this is just scuttlebutt) he is working on some bigger-budget projects to help pay for his son's legal bills over the past decade or so, which nearly bankrupted him. So my buddy Renardo sent Sorkin my screenplays, and he loved them and recommended me to Lacy personally.

This is Lacy's first big project at Dreamworks since leaving Universal, and I've been offered it! Plus the possibility of a three-film development contract if the screenplay hits certain milestones. I'll probably be moving in a few months.

A few months ago, my friend The Finn told me to send him a DVD of our indie movie, Moving. It turns out he had a friend who was starting a new distribution company, a subsidiary of Universal. They offered us $20,000, 20% of net profits, and we would have had access to the full Universal music library for licensing if we wanted to put in new music. At my insistence, we turned them down.

To be precise, I proposed revisions to the contract they wanted us to sign–and they flatly refused to consider them. So we didn't sign. Here's why it was the right thing to do.

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"Glen Phillips is playing the NorVa," said my friend The Finn.

"That's the guy from Toad the Wet Sprocket," replied Traveling Matt.

"Duh. Let's go."

"Don't know if I can afford it."

"I'm bringing two women."

"Pick me up at seven."

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So where we left off in Part One, I was 1) struggling with whether to make the characters in my screenplay more sympathetic, and 2) in Maine.

After a day in lobsterland, we packed up and continued on into Nova Scotia. In case you were wondering whether they have a different set of values up in the Northeast with regard to their natural environment, the following two pictures are from a highway rest stop along the way:

Every writer needs something different to write their best. I need trees, water, and wildlife. (And the occasional shoulder rub doesn't hurt.)

This was my first view of the Nova Scotia coast:

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When I visited New York City several years ago, I went to the New York Public Library for the first time. I walked up between the giant stone lions, past which the Ghostbusters in the 1980's ran screaming. (photo: Wally Gobetz, used with permission) I hopped up an old staircase and found myself in a room filled with glass cases. In one of them was a small hardbound book, with yellowish-white pages, opened to the title page printed in that distinctive, spread-out all-caps old-timey typeface (you know what I mean)–it was Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

Just under the title and author was a small note, written in pencil. I don't remember the exact wording, but basically it said, "To my dear friend Ralph Waldo Emerson" and was signed "Henry David Thoreau."

What I remember most was the fact that it was written in pencil. I don't think Henry was giving much thought to how it would endure in museum displays; he was just writing a note to his buddy Ralph, who was more famous than he was.

But that's not an interesting story, so feel free to go back in time and not read it. The point is that I was thinking about Walden the last couple of weeks. Henry David Thoreau stepped into the New England woods and came out with one of the great beloved books in American history. Every writer is different, of course–some can write brilliantly in the middle of subway trains, NASCAR races, and leafblower conventions. Most of the ones I've met, though, are a little more like Thoreau and need their space. We can go anywhere to read Walden, but Thoreau had to go to the woods to write it.

So when I was invited to go to Maine and Nova Scotia for two and half weeks, I emailed all my web design clients, called a few friends to cancel plans, and left within three days. A dear friend got frustrated with me and said, "You don't have to leave to write! You can do it anywhere." We are no longer on speaking terms.

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