REEL BIG FISH: The Comic That (ALMOST) Happened

UPDATED WITH MORE ART SKIP TO THE BOTTOM FOR MORE A SAMPLE COVER!!!!

Up until about Ninth Grade I didn't really care about music outside of the oldies my parents listened to. Then I discovered musical theater albums and movie soundtracks. Even with the soundtracks I wouldn't have called myself music obsessive. I may have liked certain songs but was never inclined to seek out more from any one specific band.

Jump ahead roughly ten years later: I love music now and actively search out anything new I can find. I have over twelve-thousand songs on my ITunes. At one time I had two 80 gig IPods that couldn't hold all the music I had acquired. So what changed? How did I go from being only partially interested in music to a full out music lover?



It started with a band called "Reel Big Fish" and their third major release, an album titled "Why Do They Rock So Hard". The RBF are a ska-punk band that formed during the height of the 3rd wave revival of ska in the mid 90's. Here's some info from their WIKI page:

Reel Big Fish is an American ska punk band from Huntington Beach, California, best known for the 1997 hit "Sell Out." The band gained mainstream recognition in the mid-to-late 1990s, during the third wave of ska with the release of the album Turn the Radio Off. Founding member Aaron Barrett has been with the band since 1992, and horn players Dan Regan and Scott Klopfenstein have been involved with the band for more than 14 years.

Their music was life changing for me. Their sound was hard but fun. Their lyrics were silly yet infused with a type of discontent that was familiar to me. They sang about being rejected, hurt and frustrated on some tracks. They also sang about being in the mosh pit, being vegetarian and having a lesbian ex-girlfriend. Their themes are eclectic but all of them struck a cord somewhere inside Young Shawn. Their music and lyrics combined into a sound and mood that seemed to be speaking direct to me. Their frantic energy was just like mine; scattered but mostly geared toward making people laugh and smile. They were and remain my favorite band.

In 2005 I contacted the RBF's manager Vince with a proposal to write and produce a comic about and starring the band. Vince could not have been nicer and was quick to put me in touch with two of the band members who I was to meet in person while they were on tour in South FLorida (where I lived at the time). Just reaching this point alone was a dream realized. I hung with the band, we discussed my ideas for the type of book it should be and the kinds of things they wanted to have in it.

When the meeting was over I had a legal pad full of notes and a brain bursting with ideas. I went home to start scripting with my buddy Dave (the guy who introduced me to the RBF in the first place) and we came up with a series of short stories, each focusing on one or two members of the band. Some of them were spoofs of super hero comics, one was a cooking segment, another (which you'll see at the end of this post) was a Tales From The Crypt type story. Part of me wants to post the full script here (and I might) but I'm reluctant because I still hold a thread of hope that this project might someday find its legs.

So what the hell happened, Shawn? Why don't I have an RBF comic in my hand right now?

The answer is both complicated and simple. The short version goes like this: after loosing a few artists and then gaining a few we seemed to be on track. Then the band lost a member who had factored into the book pretty heavily, but with some quick rewrites that was taken care of. The killing blow was when one of the founding members of the band, Matt Wong, announced he was leaving the band to be a family man. At this point there was so much art drawn that included him we would have either had to publish the book as is or struggle to have it all redrawn.

Ultimately the book stalled and has sat on my hard drive ever since.

It's sad to me that I could never give the band the gift of an awesome, published comic book. That's maybe the worst part. I just wanted to be able to give back to them. This was to be my "thank you" for being the greatest ska band in the entire world. Maybe someday we'll get to make this actually happen but until then, this blog post will have to suffice. Thanks guys.

Now I don't want your time to be wasted here at Shawn Writes so I'm going to end this with a never-before-seen look at one of the "Reel Big Fish: The Comic" short stories that was completed in its entirety. The art is provided by Andrew Drilon.

This story is called "I'm The Bad Guy", enjoy:




There it is. Any thoughts?


UPDATE: Here is some more art I found. This is Zac Trover's proposed cover:

 

Retrofied Modern Movie Posters

Retrofied Modern Movie Posters: "

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BONUS MINI-BLOG: NEW FEATURE!

DEFORMED BABIES

Sometimes I have stories or ideas that I absolutely love. I mean I really, truly love them. They are like babies. Which is why when they don't work out I don't just stop working on them and walk away. How could I? If you had a retarded kid would you kick it to the curb? While instinct might be to run from the deformed, mentally challenged monster that sprung from your loins, most people don't. Instead you do your best to raise that child, teach it to function as best it can in this cruel world and love it with all your heart because, after all, it's your child.

So, obviously, when one of my creative babies comes out only partially functional my instinct it to trash it but I know that I can't. My love is to strong so instead I work to fix it. To shape it. This results in a FOUR STAGE cycle that lasts for the duration of the project and it goes like this :

1. Frustration - My first instinct. I just want it to work. I KNOW it makes sense when I think about it in my head in broad strokes but when I start to add in the finer details things get jumbled and confusing. I'll try to approach the story from different angles and sometimes that helps. Maybe I'll switch the location of a scene or swap in a character for one who wasn't working but when those things don't solve the problem I move into stage...

2. Denial - Maybe it DOES work and I'm being to hard on myself. This usually works for a day or so. I convince myself that what I'm unhappy with is actually not bad and that I'm just letting my low self-esteeme get the better of me. This makes it easier to watch TV, surf the internet and procrastinate for as long as possible before I move into stage...

3. Depression - My least favorite stage. Some time has passed and I decide it's time to re-examine whatever story I'm stuck on. I do a read through and slowly die inside with every turn of the page. Phrases like, "This is terrible", "I can't believe I wrote this", "I'm going to be working a shitty day job forever"....the hits just keep on coming. This is followed by excessive eating of junk food, smoking, drinking and feelings of inadequacy, self-loathing and animosity towards anyone or anything I perceive as having more talent than me. This stage can last anywhere from a few hours to a few months before I move into the final stage...

4. Mysterious Over Confidence and Motivation - By far the strangest stage. I can describe what happens but not WHY it happens. The depression cloud lifts. I start to feel human again. Confidence builds ever so slightly. Then I start to read anything and everything. I watch a lot of movies and TV. I talk about the craft. I bounce ideas off of other writers. Suddenly I'm filled with the desire to right my wrongs. Even though it's been a struggle I'm suddenly positive I can leap this hurdle. This is the point where I pick up a RED PEN and start making serious notes. I make note cards and outlines. I write character profiles, make lists of what they want and fear. I do all the leg work and then

CLICK. POP. BOOM.

Everything works. Honestly folks it's like fucking magic. I don't know how or why. All I know is that eventually the smoke clears and the end is in sight and plain as can be.

Right now I'm somewhere between stage 2 and 3. I work on a lot of projects at once so that if I'm stuck with one script there is another that needs attention but lately I've been putting a lot of effort into reworking a script written over five years ago. All the parts are there but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to assemble them. It's like having a billion piece puzzle with no box top to give you guidance. Usually these things work themselves out but it's been FIVE FUCKING YEARS.

How much longer do I have to have these characters, stories and voices in my head before I get it right and can put them to rest? Sigh.

I think I'm edging my way towards Stage 3. Maybe that means the end is (finally) nigh.

GOOGLE WAVE: The Future of Email? Maybe....

UPDATE: Since writing this blog post I have discovered an WONDERFUL, FREE, online document called " The Complete Guide to Google Wave" which explains EVERYTHING you need to know. You can find it HERE. Enjoy.

It's been called the "future of email" but I'm not convinced. Unless you've been under a rock for the past two months you've no doubt come across at least one article announcing the newest offering from Google Industries, Wave. You can find more information at www.google.com/wave if you have no clue what I'm talking about. I'll wait for you to get caught up.....





Okay so now you've seen what Google claims Wave can do. It all seems very cool in theory and I have a feeling that someday it may actually be "cool". For now, Wave (which is still in the "invite only" phase) is an alien looking application with familiar elements that never quite gel together in the seamless way Google promises. I'm pretty tech-savvy but I have to admit that after a full day with Wave I still feel technically retarded whenever I attempt to navigate the site.

As I said all the pieces are their; threaded conversations, real-time typing that appears on your screen as people write to you, the ability to embed videos, pictures and music... The possibilities should be endless and I can see, or at least I can imagine how cool this could actually turn out to be but it's just not there yet.

The conversation threads are close in style to that of a message board or the comments section of your favorite blog (like this one) only because Wave is all about seemingly endless dialogues these threads quickly become cluttered. The few Group Waves I was invited to were slowed down by the excessive number of threads and sub-threads they contained. Add in the embedded media and my browser struggled to keep everything flowing as smoothly as depicted in the videos of Wave in action Google has released.

Despite all my complaints I'm oddly drawn to the idea of Google Wave. I'm hoping when they open their virtual doors to the full public and I can get a few of my writer friends on board I can try what I think will be the best application for this product: Collaborative Writing.

Imagine being able to use Wave to seed an idea, allow other to contribute to that idea: other ideas, videos, pictures, mp3's of songs that further inspire the original idea. What makes Wave unique is that you would be able to house all of these things in one streaming conversation that updates itself in real-time. Sounds exciting, doesn't it?

What do you think?

Your Halloween Happy

Where the Hell Has The Time Gone?

It's been a long time since I last blogged. Last I left off I was embarking on the long trek to Los Angeles, CA by way of my car. There are a ton of pictures from that trip and some very interesting blog posts that I could write about (who knows maybe someday I will) but for now we're skipping ahead to the present day.

It's October 30th 2009 and I've been living in LA for almost FIVE MONTHS. I found a job doing temp work in a doctor's office, which has been a great way to get paid but not creatively fulfilling in the least. I work with a variety of people: women to young to have children but already have three, tall Hispanic men that speak mumbled English and middle-aged mid-western women who have big hair, big thighs and loud voices. The office is pretty busy, housing three doctors who are all Internal Medicine practitioners as well as Nephrology specialists (if you don't know what a Nephrologist is I hear there's this amazing thing called a "Google" that answers your questions, mostly accurately, on this series of tubes called the Internet).

The day job has kept me afloat these last few months and allowed me a lot of free time to work on my own stuff when I'm not in the office. I've been taking on a lot of lettering projects, over-seeing the (slow but awesome) development of my graphic novel "Detectives In Space" (DUE OUT.....er....I don't know, I'll do a whole separate post about the current status of DIS), writing a tv pilot, shopping another pilot, working on several screenplays and putting some final edits on a script was waaaaaaay back. Needless to say I keep busy but still find time to watch a lot (too much) of TV, movies and comics (technically reading but whatever). So I figured I'd use this unusually light day do one of my favorite blog tricks: Bullet points!

• Paranormal Activity/Saw VI - The former was a huge chunk of crap. It was boring beyond belief, not scary and, worst of all, horribly written/improved. I don't usually flat out slam a movie, if I hate it I just never speak or think of it again, but this movie is the exception. Maybe it's all the hype surrounding it. Maybe it's because people kept telling me it was going to be better than Blair Witch (I hated that movie but found it actually much more enjoyable than Activity was). On the flip-side sits SAW VI, here's a movie I NEVER thought I'd enjoy. I watched all the films just before the summer and, while I like the first I felt they got successively dumber and harder to watch due to the excessive gore. When I went in for Saw VI I was expecting to watch the whole movie with my hands over my eyes during the torture and my head spinning during the "story" parts. I was wrong (oh shit, I think a pig just flew by my window) this movie was the MOST enjoyable of the series to date. Sure it was waaay to on the nose with the Financial metaphors but it was fun and lite and NEVER took itself to seriously.
  
• TV- In the time away from the blog the summer ended and the great FALL TV SEASON is once again upon us and moving along nicely. I have some shows I love and I'd like to recommend them to you now (in no particular order): Modern Family (the best sitcom of the season - it is a comedy with a ton of heart), Community (discovered how great this is last night and now I'm hooked), Fringe Season 2 (much improved from the first run of episodes. The best stuff moves the larger story along but the stand-alone installments are getting better), Dexter (this is the best season yet, this show gets better with every single episode ever since season 1 episode 2).
  
• The Muppet Movies - recently re-watched all the films. It's VERY CLEAR at what point Henson died and his son, Brian, took over. Not that the Brian Henson run films are bad (I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE A Muppet Christmas Carol) they just don't have the same feel as the films his father was making. If you haven't seen them in a while I highly recommend re-watching all these films (even the post-JH ones)

Tonight is Devil's Night, a holiday I didn't even know existed until I saw a movie that would become I favorite of mine, The Crow. This is a classic revenge flick, years before Uma Thurman would try to Kill Bill, Eric Draven clawed his way out of his grave to avenge the brutal murder of his girlfriend, Shelly. I would request you all curl up tonight in your favorite movie watchin' spots, rest up for a night of Halloween fun by watching The Crow. You can thank me later.

Enjoy!