Well, it's October now. It's hard to get excited about Halloween, all the way at the end of the month, when the candy, costumes, and kitschy jack-o-lantern leaf bags have been on display since Labor Day. Also, I don't celebrate Halloween (Thank goodness, do you know how expensive it would be to outfit 6 kids?!!!) so, aside from killer sales on Snickers Minis, it all seems kind of pointless. My local Wal-Mart has Christmas wreaths for sale now, too.

Mmmm. Snickers.

The highpoint of October is that my absolute favorite color is the color of the afternoon, cloudless sky in the middle of the month. I'm happy to say, even in the South, where the leaves aren't changing and the weather is down to 60's and 70's, the sky is still that brilliant blue that pierces the heart and makes me think of Heaven.

It is actually a good month for my screenplay, though. All the movies that I should probably watch for procrastination/"research" are coming on cable, so I don't have to rent them. I've mentioned before how much I hate the Horror genre. I've realized, after watching many, many scary films that I don't hate Horror movies. I hate poorly done, continuity lacking horror movies, which seem always to feature a creepy kid, a blonde in her panties, or a previous movie that made lots of money, so the producers popped out another one to get blood out of a stone.

There is a kid of sorts in my script, but he's not a demon in disguise, dark and brooding, or possessing of other worldly knowledge passed on in wise one-liners.


I've realized this after reading several online scripts in addition to screening the movies.

Some of my favorite movies are, or could conceivably be called, Horror.

An incomplete list, in no particular order:
HUSH HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE
POLTERGEIST (that clown still scares the crap out of me)
THE EXORCIST
THE RING
THE SECRET WINDOW
CARRIE

Movies I've watched the last couple of weeks that were horrible (not horror-ble, ha ha ha, oh, there's that Shakespearean sense of humor again, no pun intended!)
THE RING 2
BOOGEYMAN
POLTERGEIST 3

Movies that everyone else liked, and that I hated:
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
THE OMEN

A note on Elm Street: I think I was disappointed because I had literally been wanting to see the movie for 20 years. My mom would never let me, and whenI was all-growed-up and thought about renting it, there was always something better on the new release wall. I had to watch it on VHS, and even once I got over Johnny Depp, it just couldn't live up to the anticipation. Also, I wish the mother's character had been a tad more developed. Any point in the movie where the mother was speaking, I wanted to get up and get a snack.

I haven't actually watched a lot of scary movies - at least not more than the first 10 minutes, which was usually enough to bore me to tears and go find a good book. I waited until I had a "scriptment" first draft, with all of my plot points and action sequences mapped out, before taking up watching again. I feel the need to make sure I am not inadvertently copying a well known movie in any of my sequences. So far, so good.

What I've come away with, is even though most people are shocked when they hear I am writing a supernatural thriller/horror movie, I've come around to the idea that it isn't a fluke and this is the story I should be working on.

My desire is to make a movie that is scary on the level of THE EXORCIST - not full of cheap shots and jumpy thrills, but one that stays with you even after you've come home from the theater and makes you think twice about shutting the closet light off.