A bunch of friends showed up for the festival screening of STRING THEORY, some of them coming all the way from the San Francisco Bay Area. I was really touched by the show of support from all of them.

I was also pretty damn nervous. I wasn't sure whether people would like the film, but as soon as the film started and I heard the first wave of laughter, I immediately relaxed. The audience laughed all the way through the end credits and gave the film a hearty round of applause. The Q & A session afterward, with all the filmmakers, went well also. The audience even laughed at some of my answers, especially when I told them about the real life stories that inspired the film.

I received an email from LA Shorts Fest that began like this: “Congratulations! Your film ‘String Theory’ has been selected to be part of the 14th annual LA Shorts Fest, July 22 - 30, 2010.”

This was a pleasant little shock because I’d given up on the thought of STRING THEORY playing at any festival months ago.

My film is going to be on the big screen, in front of a paying audience, at the world’s biggest short film festival! I called my dad and closest friends to give them the good news.

At the get-together at his house, Tom gave me my script back, and again, he said he thought it was very good. I wanted to ask him whether he’d be willing to pass it on to his producer friend Sid Ganis, but we were all gathered in the living room and I didn’t want to pull him aside or put him on the spot in front of the other students.

Instead, I emailed him the next day. I thanked him again for his support then asked him whether he thought Sid Ganis might be interested in my script, and if so, would he feel comfortable recommending it to him. I reminded him that Sid, as a guest speaker in our class, had specifically mentioned he was looking for a good thriller script, and that he would consider one if it came with a recommendation from a trusted source.

Tom’s email response came quick: “Sorry, but no I don’t show scripts to personal friends. It has a tendency to change the relationship.”

I emailed back, telling him that I appreciated his candid response, and that I understood what he was saying.

That first part was true. I did appreciate his candid response. But the second part wasn’t. I don’t understand how recommending a script to a friend can “change the relationship”.

I more or less expected a “no” so I’m not too disappointed. It’s my job to look under every stone, even if I suspect there’s nothing under it.

My UCLA Master Class finished today. I handed a copy of my new script to instructor Tom, who invited everyone to a get-together at his house next Thursday. He said he'll give my script back to me then, along with his notes. I’m anxious to see his reaction to the finished script. If he likes it, he might be willing to pass it on to one of his industry connections.

It's 1:38 AM and I just typed “The End" on my new script, on page 104. Then I laughed out loud with joy, cranked up some upbeat music and started dancing in my tiny studio apartment.

The first draft is complete and I'm extremely pleased with it. It's my third feature-length screenplay, and I think it's the best thing I've written yet. It’s also the fastest I've written yet. I started outlining the story back in October 2009, when my UCLA Master Class in Film Writing began. It’s now eight months later and I have a complete screenplay.

I've been carrying this story in my head almost as long as a pregnant woman carries a baby in her womb, and now I've given birth, after many nights of staying up until 3 AM, thinking, writing, loving and hating in quiet solitude as the rest of the world seemed to sleep. As I wrote in the middle of the night, my mind would go to a dark place, a place I had to go to constantly in order to write this story.

I was accompanied in these late and lonely hours by dark and brooding rock music, from Pink Floyd to Pearl Jam to Ministry. Their songs provided a mental movie soundtrack that helped sustain the mood of the story. Maybe some of these songs will actually be in the soundtrack of the movie someday.

It should be fun taking the final pages of the script to my UCLA class. So far, the instructor Tom Lazarus has said that I'm a "phenomenal writer" and that it's turning out to be a "really good script". Some of the classmates’ reactions have been: "I love your script", "it's creepy", “very disturbing”, “you’re a sick man", “it scares the crap out of me”, "you're incredibly talented" and "I can't wait to see how it ends". Wonderful compliments, all of them.

The class ends in June, then I have all summer to rewrite and polish my script before UCLA sends it out to a literary agent on my behalf. Will this be the script that gets me industry attention? We'll see. There’s a lot of subjective taste and politics involved so I won’t hold my breath.

I recut another film I made in 2008, one originally called TWISTED ROOMMATES. I hated that film because I had screwed it up in almost every way, except that I felt it had a really good action sequence at its core. Throughout the last few months, I would occasionally revisit the film, trying to figure out how to salvage it. I finally came up with the idea of discarding the “plot” and dialog and making it into a more abstract action film. It’s now called GIRL-ON-GIRL ACTION.