After posting about Carrie Fisher’s passing I spent most of yesterday (five or six hours) tapping out the first draft of a short film. Just a one-set conversational thing (based on a real encounter that happened in New York in the early to mid ’80s), but it has a mapped-out beginning, middle and an ending and a fair amount of backstory and exposition to cover. And it has to be done within 15 pages or less. I was happy with the dialogue and portions of it here and there, but it’s hard to get it right as a whole. I punched out three or four spec screenplays in the mid ’80s before realizing that my talents lay elsewhere, and yesterday those old feelings of frustration came rushing back. It was fun for a while, but then I began to feel like I was making my way across Lake Michigan in a rowboat. I learned a long time ago that short, concise reviews are a lot harder to bang out than longish, sprawling ones. Same deal with scripts.