I write screenplays. Im not a pro but its been my dream job for a while - since I was a kid. I've also written novels but they take too long!
Any of you write?
If you want to read one of my screenplays, drop me a message with your email on and I will send as PDF.
I can read your stuff too.
Creative writing: novels, screenplays, poetry
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I've watched the film you wrote. Also spotted your very, very brief cameo.
Naturally I won't out you on the forum but it would be interesting if you could post something about your experiences writing the play and screenplay.
After all, Everyone Comes to Rick's (filmed as Casablanca) was co-written by a TEFLer.
I think one or two writers have posted on the Cambodia forums over the years, but anonymity is something to be prized in the digital age. B Traven had the right idea, whoever he was / they were.
Naturally I won't out you on the forum but it would be interesting if you could post something about your experiences writing the play and screenplay.
After all, Everyone Comes to Rick's (filmed as Casablanca) was co-written by a TEFLer.
I think one or two writers have posted on the Cambodia forums over the years, but anonymity is something to be prized in the digital age. B Traven had the right idea, whoever he was / they were.
I used to write a lot, and for a long time thought I would improve - I never did. I've got screenplays, short stories, the start of several novels....but I now understand I'm a crap writer and no longer harbor the aspirations of publishing I once did - I just write for my own enjoyment these days.
I think the following is posted on K440 somewhere, it's a night I got stung by a bar girl and cops many years ago - it's pretty bad writing. Maybe post a short of yours also. After the story is a short documentary I made on a mate of mine as I followed him around before one of his gigs.
Jakarta Hustle
I was a naive know-it-all and Indri was a well rehearsed exotic beauty who’d found her mark. The invitation to join her at home promised we might know each other in other ways, this was the final card she’d play before the rabbit was pulled from the hat.
We both finished our whiskey, grabbed our cigarettes and ran laughing out of the bar and into the night. I grabbed at Indri, she giggled and playfully slapped at my inappropriate hands - she was gorgeous.
Mounting her motorbike that lay hidden down a small alley at the back of the bamboo bar, we started to work our way through the heavy Jakarta traffic, me using the excuse of momentum every time we slowed to lean my chest against her back and grip the outside of her thighs with my knees. Indri would respond with a caress of my leg - I imagined what might lay ahead between the two of us for the remainder of the night - my intimate imaginings far removed from reality.
I thought Indri had said she lived close to the backpacker ghetto of Jalan Jaksa where we’d met, and I was surprised after thirty minutes on the back of her scooter not having arrived at her apartment. I leaned close to her ear and asked when we’d be there. "Soon. Soon,” she palmed my thigh "Take you home morning”. With that she powered the bike on, strands of her hair licking at the sides of my face as we sped toward her den.
We veered off the main road into side streets, side streets into lanes, lanes back onto streets, winding our way into darker quarters on worsening roads until I hadn't a clue where we were, or how I would get back if I left to myself. Finally we pulled up outside a small block of rooms that were almost in complete darkness except for a single dim bulb that shone from the porch.
I looked over my shoulder back down the small street as I got off her bike - It was dark and deserted. It was unusually quiet for a suburban Indonesian city street.Turning to follow Indri into her room I saw a small laneway that ran alongside her home ending at a brick wall. Indri called me into her flat - gee she was pretty.
Her place was a simple affair - one large room sparsely furnished with a double bed, a small table and chairs, a dresser with make up and grooming implements strewn across its surface, a gas stove on top of a small concrete bench with sink and a food cupboard. Windows draped with sarongs, old family photos, tomorrow night’s outfit hanging on the wall and a small attached bathroom with a squat toilet - this was home.
We sat at the table with conversation becoming labored and I noticed Indri looked edgy - I wondered if she’d changed her mind about getting to “know each other’ further. The banging on the door gave me something more serious to wonder about.
Indri jumped at the sound while I jumped to conclusions as to who I thought it might be. Was it an angry boyfriend she had conveniently omitted from our conversations, an over protective father who had heard she was cavorting with a westerner, her gangster brother…?
Indri opened the door and I heard the quiet controlled voice of a stern man. Indri didn’t speak. I then felt the hand of my host on my shoulder and then “Polisi, you go outside.”
I went to the door understanding the situation and aware of the scam they had working. Find a fresh young westerner and lure him with a beautiful Javanese woman to a dark and dangerous part of Jakarta, then intimidate him into giving you as much money as you could get from him.
I threw Indri a look of disgust and went to the door to be confronted by a short fat man in a uniform covered in polished bits of silver and brass. He stood with the palm of his right hand resting on the butt of his gun holstered at his hip. He looked at me in a sort of gauging way assessing me, then with a voice much louder than the tone he used with my host, he yelled "PASSPORT!!"
He waved me outside, I saw four officers over his shoulder leaning against a Polisi personnel carrier, each of them smoking lazily, guns cradled lightly across their arms like fragile babies - I still don't know how I didn't hear them arrive. The door of Indri's apartment close behind us. She’d played her part, and now it was up to the Polisi to extract her reward.
Silver and Brass read aloud the details from my passport then looked at me with an enormous smile. I wasn't sure if he wanted me to congratulate him at his ability to read English, or whether he was pleased with the fact I was an Australian and deemed to be a good catch that brought him such glee. I didn't respond to his self approving grin. I just glared at him. He didn't like that.
Giving the universal sign for intimate relations pumping his finger of one hand into and out of the fist of the other, Silver and Brass burst into a rage about western men and Indonesian women being engaged in that type of behavior. How it was "against the law" and I could expect to spend "long time" in "bad Indonesian jail”.
Throwing my passport to the ground, Silver and Brass pressed it into the muddy soil with his shiny boot. After disfiguring my passport he told me to pick it up, all the while making sure when I bent over his shiny boot didn't move an inch, keeping it close to my face, lending no doubt he could kick me to Allah and back if he wanted to as easily as he could fart. All I could think was I wanted to kick him in the nuts.
Putting his hand in the small of my back this horrible little man pushed me toward the alley. I looked again to the other officers now following as we walked into the dark lane along side Indri's apartment, they stopping so as to stand across in line from the building blocking any way of escape - they all grinned. I wondered if they were all bored after a slow night and looked forward to a Silver and Brass song and dance routine using this westerner as his stage.
With more threats from Silver and Brass followed by feigned concern for my troubled lifestyle, I withdrew my money belt, opened it to show everything including the three hundred dollars Australian I had in it, and handed the money over. Silver and Brass told me I was now “on detention” and not to leave my guesthouse until I “Go home Australia.” He pointed toward the road flicking his wrist back and forth - I was dismissed. The others parted as I walked out onto the street.
I had no idea where I was but grateful not to have to listen and see that horrible little grub any more. I needed to find light, I needed to find the city, I needed to get out of the darkness where I was a soft target for other thugs. I was more nervous walking the back streets of Jakarta than being rolled by Silver and Brass.
I could see the city’s lights reflected off low lying cloud maybe eight or ten kilometres to the north, or was it south, and set out in that direction to a chorus of barking dogs that now came to life? Ten minutes later with lights flashing and sirens blaring, Silver and Brass was back with his goons and pulled up along side. One of the officers jumped out and approached me. He told me to get in the back of the personnel carrier."Fuck" I thought ,"Looks like we are off to cash some traveler cheques" Silver and Brass leans out the window and says “Not good for you here.” They would take me back to Jalan Jaksa. I burst out laughing, as did everyone as we all understood the irony of what just happened - we laughed a lot on the way back to Jalan Jaksa, me and my new Polisis pals.
On Jalan Jaksa outside Margot Hotel, Silver and Brass gave me a packet of Marlboro, 50 000 rupiah and a fond back slapping farewell. I went to the deli got a Bintang, sat on the kerb, lit a smoke and laughed again as they left. Fuckers.
I've made a few short docs.
I think the following is posted on K440 somewhere, it's a night I got stung by a bar girl and cops many years ago - it's pretty bad writing. Maybe post a short of yours also. After the story is a short documentary I made on a mate of mine as I followed him around before one of his gigs.
Jakarta Hustle
I was a naive know-it-all and Indri was a well rehearsed exotic beauty who’d found her mark. The invitation to join her at home promised we might know each other in other ways, this was the final card she’d play before the rabbit was pulled from the hat.
We both finished our whiskey, grabbed our cigarettes and ran laughing out of the bar and into the night. I grabbed at Indri, she giggled and playfully slapped at my inappropriate hands - she was gorgeous.
Mounting her motorbike that lay hidden down a small alley at the back of the bamboo bar, we started to work our way through the heavy Jakarta traffic, me using the excuse of momentum every time we slowed to lean my chest against her back and grip the outside of her thighs with my knees. Indri would respond with a caress of my leg - I imagined what might lay ahead between the two of us for the remainder of the night - my intimate imaginings far removed from reality.
I thought Indri had said she lived close to the backpacker ghetto of Jalan Jaksa where we’d met, and I was surprised after thirty minutes on the back of her scooter not having arrived at her apartment. I leaned close to her ear and asked when we’d be there. "Soon. Soon,” she palmed my thigh "Take you home morning”. With that she powered the bike on, strands of her hair licking at the sides of my face as we sped toward her den.
We veered off the main road into side streets, side streets into lanes, lanes back onto streets, winding our way into darker quarters on worsening roads until I hadn't a clue where we were, or how I would get back if I left to myself. Finally we pulled up outside a small block of rooms that were almost in complete darkness except for a single dim bulb that shone from the porch.
I looked over my shoulder back down the small street as I got off her bike - It was dark and deserted. It was unusually quiet for a suburban Indonesian city street.Turning to follow Indri into her room I saw a small laneway that ran alongside her home ending at a brick wall. Indri called me into her flat - gee she was pretty.
Her place was a simple affair - one large room sparsely furnished with a double bed, a small table and chairs, a dresser with make up and grooming implements strewn across its surface, a gas stove on top of a small concrete bench with sink and a food cupboard. Windows draped with sarongs, old family photos, tomorrow night’s outfit hanging on the wall and a small attached bathroom with a squat toilet - this was home.
We sat at the table with conversation becoming labored and I noticed Indri looked edgy - I wondered if she’d changed her mind about getting to “know each other’ further. The banging on the door gave me something more serious to wonder about.
Indri jumped at the sound while I jumped to conclusions as to who I thought it might be. Was it an angry boyfriend she had conveniently omitted from our conversations, an over protective father who had heard she was cavorting with a westerner, her gangster brother…?
Indri opened the door and I heard the quiet controlled voice of a stern man. Indri didn’t speak. I then felt the hand of my host on my shoulder and then “Polisi, you go outside.”
I went to the door understanding the situation and aware of the scam they had working. Find a fresh young westerner and lure him with a beautiful Javanese woman to a dark and dangerous part of Jakarta, then intimidate him into giving you as much money as you could get from him.
I threw Indri a look of disgust and went to the door to be confronted by a short fat man in a uniform covered in polished bits of silver and brass. He stood with the palm of his right hand resting on the butt of his gun holstered at his hip. He looked at me in a sort of gauging way assessing me, then with a voice much louder than the tone he used with my host, he yelled "PASSPORT!!"
He waved me outside, I saw four officers over his shoulder leaning against a Polisi personnel carrier, each of them smoking lazily, guns cradled lightly across their arms like fragile babies - I still don't know how I didn't hear them arrive. The door of Indri's apartment close behind us. She’d played her part, and now it was up to the Polisi to extract her reward.
Silver and Brass read aloud the details from my passport then looked at me with an enormous smile. I wasn't sure if he wanted me to congratulate him at his ability to read English, or whether he was pleased with the fact I was an Australian and deemed to be a good catch that brought him such glee. I didn't respond to his self approving grin. I just glared at him. He didn't like that.
Giving the universal sign for intimate relations pumping his finger of one hand into and out of the fist of the other, Silver and Brass burst into a rage about western men and Indonesian women being engaged in that type of behavior. How it was "against the law" and I could expect to spend "long time" in "bad Indonesian jail”.
Throwing my passport to the ground, Silver and Brass pressed it into the muddy soil with his shiny boot. After disfiguring my passport he told me to pick it up, all the while making sure when I bent over his shiny boot didn't move an inch, keeping it close to my face, lending no doubt he could kick me to Allah and back if he wanted to as easily as he could fart. All I could think was I wanted to kick him in the nuts.
Putting his hand in the small of my back this horrible little man pushed me toward the alley. I looked again to the other officers now following as we walked into the dark lane along side Indri's apartment, they stopping so as to stand across in line from the building blocking any way of escape - they all grinned. I wondered if they were all bored after a slow night and looked forward to a Silver and Brass song and dance routine using this westerner as his stage.
With more threats from Silver and Brass followed by feigned concern for my troubled lifestyle, I withdrew my money belt, opened it to show everything including the three hundred dollars Australian I had in it, and handed the money over. Silver and Brass told me I was now “on detention” and not to leave my guesthouse until I “Go home Australia.” He pointed toward the road flicking his wrist back and forth - I was dismissed. The others parted as I walked out onto the street.
I had no idea where I was but grateful not to have to listen and see that horrible little grub any more. I needed to find light, I needed to find the city, I needed to get out of the darkness where I was a soft target for other thugs. I was more nervous walking the back streets of Jakarta than being rolled by Silver and Brass.
I could see the city’s lights reflected off low lying cloud maybe eight or ten kilometres to the north, or was it south, and set out in that direction to a chorus of barking dogs that now came to life? Ten minutes later with lights flashing and sirens blaring, Silver and Brass was back with his goons and pulled up along side. One of the officers jumped out and approached me. He told me to get in the back of the personnel carrier."Fuck" I thought ,"Looks like we are off to cash some traveler cheques" Silver and Brass leans out the window and says “Not good for you here.” They would take me back to Jalan Jaksa. I burst out laughing, as did everyone as we all understood the irony of what just happened - we laughed a lot on the way back to Jalan Jaksa, me and my new Polisis pals.
On Jalan Jaksa outside Margot Hotel, Silver and Brass gave me a packet of Marlboro, 50 000 rupiah and a fond back slapping farewell. I went to the deli got a Bintang, sat on the kerb, lit a smoke and laughed again as they left. Fuckers.
I've made a few short docs.
"That was probably Londo...He is always shitty." - Marvin
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- 440 newbie - handle with care
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@ MaxB, I'm not sure how you know who I am, unless of course you are certain person who I know from another non Cambodia related forum who shall remain nameless. (I thought you used a different name on here ?)
There isn't much to say about it really but if you wish, for you, here it is....
A long time ago I had an idea for a one act three hander stageplay so I wrote it. It got picked up by someone, a theater producer in the latter stages of alcoholism. Apart from several utterly pointless wine soaked meetings that went nowhere, nothing happened. But while meeting him another producer became interested as it just so happened the lead role in the play was a role this producer could play; for he was also an actor.
So he put the play on at a leading fringe theater venue. The play got great reviews and incredible word of mouth. It was sold out for the entire run. (And has been produced by other theatre companies three times.) Movie producers showed up. One of them asked if I would write a screenplay of the play. (Unpaid.) As I was primarily trying to be a screenwriter, I decided to give it a go - even though I knew the story, which was more of a situation than a plot, was really only suited to the stage.
3 years and 16 drafts later nothing much had happened. By this stage another producer had become interested. So I bailed on the first producer, much to his annoyance - which seemed pretty bizarre to me as I had done so many rewrites for him and for nothing and he still had never offered me an option deal on the script. But I still got told I had let him down, etc.
This producer found another producer who knew another producer who had funding to make up to 9 micro budget movies for $250,000 to $1,000,000 each. I guess they were attempting the 'throw enough mud' style of producing. Dunno. I never understood why they didn't just do one movie for $10,000,000. But hey, what do I know?
The script fitted their budget - one location, not many characters. But they felt the screenplay was still too much of a stageplay. They came up with an idea that gutted the entire second act of the play but, yes, it made it a bit more 'cinematc' - whatever that means. I wasn't sold on the idea but by now I was over 3 years in and I had yet to get paid so I went along with it, gutted the second act, etc. They liked it. Things happened fast. They found a director, cast (who were well known at the time, one of them very well known) and they shot the movie for about $750,000. Everyone working for peanuts and goodwill.
(I did get paid - not much but enough to live in SE Asia for two years without having to work.)
I went to a screening of the completed movie and it was awful. Whatever was good about the stage play was gone. Somehow it still got distrubution and was released on about 70 screens, plus on DVD and later shown on TV. (This was way before streamers like Netflix, HBO, etc.) I never actually watched the film in a cinema, I don't own a DVD or even a poster of it. It remains the biggest let down of my life. All that work for nothing.
I did get an agent but by then I was jaded by it all. I had been writing for 10 years before the film got made and I had worked on the film for 4 years and got paid a relative pittance. Not that I was paid an hourly rate but the hourly rate would have been way way, way less than flipping meat at Burger King. As a screenwriter you don't get treated very well in the movie biz either. Compared to the darling actors you get treated like shit. No idea why this is as without writers there's no scripts and no scripts means no movie business. But that's the way it is - and why The WGA (Writers Guild of America) are currently on strike!
So I fucked up all the meetings I got sent on and I had other issues at the time that I am not going to get into here. About 3 years after getting the film made I quit writing in the most dramatic way possible and lost the next decade of my life to experiences that I'm also not getting into. In that time I did, however, get a children's novel published in Vietnam and in Vietnamese.
Fast forward to 2019 and I decided to have another go at writing, I wrote a script that got picked up in 2020 and is now in development. Another script, that I first wrote in 1998, I also dug up and that's been picked up too. Will they ever get made? Probably fucking not but I live in hope.
That's about it.
To be honest that's far more than I wanted to go into. This thread is meant to be about swapping creative writing or at least if anyone is bored and wants to read a screenplay I willl send it to them.
The end.......for now.
There isn't much to say about it really but if you wish, for you, here it is....
A long time ago I had an idea for a one act three hander stageplay so I wrote it. It got picked up by someone, a theater producer in the latter stages of alcoholism. Apart from several utterly pointless wine soaked meetings that went nowhere, nothing happened. But while meeting him another producer became interested as it just so happened the lead role in the play was a role this producer could play; for he was also an actor.
So he put the play on at a leading fringe theater venue. The play got great reviews and incredible word of mouth. It was sold out for the entire run. (And has been produced by other theatre companies three times.) Movie producers showed up. One of them asked if I would write a screenplay of the play. (Unpaid.) As I was primarily trying to be a screenwriter, I decided to give it a go - even though I knew the story, which was more of a situation than a plot, was really only suited to the stage.
3 years and 16 drafts later nothing much had happened. By this stage another producer had become interested. So I bailed on the first producer, much to his annoyance - which seemed pretty bizarre to me as I had done so many rewrites for him and for nothing and he still had never offered me an option deal on the script. But I still got told I had let him down, etc.
This producer found another producer who knew another producer who had funding to make up to 9 micro budget movies for $250,000 to $1,000,000 each. I guess they were attempting the 'throw enough mud' style of producing. Dunno. I never understood why they didn't just do one movie for $10,000,000. But hey, what do I know?
The script fitted their budget - one location, not many characters. But they felt the screenplay was still too much of a stageplay. They came up with an idea that gutted the entire second act of the play but, yes, it made it a bit more 'cinematc' - whatever that means. I wasn't sold on the idea but by now I was over 3 years in and I had yet to get paid so I went along with it, gutted the second act, etc. They liked it. Things happened fast. They found a director, cast (who were well known at the time, one of them very well known) and they shot the movie for about $750,000. Everyone working for peanuts and goodwill.
(I did get paid - not much but enough to live in SE Asia for two years without having to work.)
I went to a screening of the completed movie and it was awful. Whatever was good about the stage play was gone. Somehow it still got distrubution and was released on about 70 screens, plus on DVD and later shown on TV. (This was way before streamers like Netflix, HBO, etc.) I never actually watched the film in a cinema, I don't own a DVD or even a poster of it. It remains the biggest let down of my life. All that work for nothing.
I did get an agent but by then I was jaded by it all. I had been writing for 10 years before the film got made and I had worked on the film for 4 years and got paid a relative pittance. Not that I was paid an hourly rate but the hourly rate would have been way way, way less than flipping meat at Burger King. As a screenwriter you don't get treated very well in the movie biz either. Compared to the darling actors you get treated like shit. No idea why this is as without writers there's no scripts and no scripts means no movie business. But that's the way it is - and why The WGA (Writers Guild of America) are currently on strike!
So I fucked up all the meetings I got sent on and I had other issues at the time that I am not going to get into here. About 3 years after getting the film made I quit writing in the most dramatic way possible and lost the next decade of my life to experiences that I'm also not getting into. In that time I did, however, get a children's novel published in Vietnam and in Vietnamese.
Fast forward to 2019 and I decided to have another go at writing, I wrote a script that got picked up in 2020 and is now in development. Another script, that I first wrote in 1998, I also dug up and that's been picked up too. Will they ever get made? Probably fucking not but I live in hope.
That's about it.
To be honest that's far more than I wanted to go into. This thread is meant to be about swapping creative writing or at least if anyone is bored and wants to read a screenplay I willl send it to them.
The end.......for now.
I wrote a couple of books in my early twenties - nothing creative. They were books about books. Both published and I believe one is still in print although being young and carefree at the time - and needing money to get married - I sold the rights outright. No regrets.
Now I live vicariously in books, reading voraciously. I change my 440 guest name to that of a secondary character in whatever book I happen to be reading at the moment.
Now I live vicariously in books, reading voraciously. I change my 440 guest name to that of a secondary character in whatever book I happen to be reading at the moment.
Thanks for taking the time to pass on your experiences.Khmu Nation wrote: ↑Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:19 amAs a screenwriter you don't get treated very well in the movie biz either. Compared to the darling actors you get treated like shit. No idea why this is as without writers there's no scripts and no scripts means no movie business.
It's nothing new that writers are at the bottom of the totem pole in film making, and increasingly common for producers to call themselves 'Creators' and claim as much of the credit as they do of the profits. It's a ruthless business.
Soon they'll be using A.I. to generate their stories and cut the writers out altogether. Ditto with popular authors, some of whom already subcontract their writing to hacks starving in garrets, then resell it under their own brand.
The advantage of selling book rights or a screenplay is that at least you get paid before the product is pirated, unlike with ebook publication.
PM sent.