Well, last weekend I attended the Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters Conference, and it was a blast. One of the more interesting things I overheard there was a group of people sitting at a table one night in the Driskill Hotel brainstorming on which comic book character would make a great movie (and discussing comic book movies in the works or already out there). It was fun to listen to…especially since they were pretty damn knowledgeable in comics (it was apparent that most of them read comics regularly). I chatted with a bunch of people at the festival and when they asked what I do, everyone seemed to perk up when I mentioned that I do some comic book writing (that was kind of neat…some even showed some interest in seeing DWP #6 when it comes out). There were tons of people from L.A. out here for this, and I was amazed at how friendly and encouraging everyone was.

 And there was lots of fun stuff at the screenwriter’s conference portion of it…went to a science fiction movie writing panel and met Robert Gordon (writer for Galaxy Quest), Bill Broyles (writer for Apollo 13, Castaway, Planet of the Apes), and Lem Dobbs (writer for Dark City). Also attended a roundtable discussion with Adam Beechen (freelance writer for X-Men: Evolution, Jackie Chan Adventures, Static Shock, and the upcoming Teen Titans cartoon). Also got to attend a craft session on dialogue presented by Scott Rosenberg (Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, Beautiful Girls, Con Air, Gone in 60 Seconds, High Fidelity) and moderated by Chad Oman (president of production for Jerry Bruckheimer Films)–this was both informative and entertaining (lots of good laughs during that session). I also got to attend a panel on comedic writing with Robert Gordon, Jessica Beddinger (Bring it On, Sex & the City), and Ed Solomon (Men in Black, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Garry Shandling show and Laverne and Shirley), an informal meet and greet with Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight) and John Lee Hancock (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Rookie[director]), and a great panel on finding an agent. Overall, I learned a lot and met some great people…and hopefully, I’ll have some screenwriting samples to put up on the site in the future.

I had planned on finally finishing the code/database changes for my site this past week while I was on vacation, but I wound up having to give up most of that off time to go back in to work. Oh well, I managed to get some of the core stuff done this weekend, so over the next couple weeks, I’ll slowly start converting my pages over to my new code (and update some of the content in the process)–the 3×3x3 section has already been updated, but since the changes are geared towards making the rest of the site similar to that section, it looks pretty much the same as before.