To Grandmother's house we go...

We've been on the road a few days visiting Grandma Matassa in Eugene, Oregon. Rita approves heartily of the top secret screenplay idea, and has started reading a screenwriting book to show her support.

Yesterday someone sent me the beginning of his screenplay, and I went to Borders yesterday and bought him a copy of Syd Field's "Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting," but then I started reading it again and decided to keep it, so I had to get him another copy on Amazon.

Syd's books are pretty good. I took his class a couple of times at USC. I always thought it was kind of funny he's never sold a screenplay himself -- but he seems to know how to tell other people how to do it.

Anyways, we've finished our three graf summary of the movie, now we're writing backstory and ideas. We're a few weeks away from taking out Final Draft -- the screenwriting program Syd helped develop. It's been fun working on it and thinking about it.

Meanwhile, Mark's reading that excellent book Kaye sent him on how to write a book proposal. He's about half way done, and says it's really giving him a great sense of what he needs to do to pitch his book. We decided on a title we both like quite a bit: Travels with Old Navy and the Cat Psychologist.

More road trip pix:

Skytram in Portland


Portland from the Freeway



La Familia