Gratis. Money. Cash. Fortune. Easy. Amazing. Result. Incredible. Secret. Revelation. Discovery. Discover. Finding. Find. Gift. Open. Make. Create. Joy. Produce. Guaranteed. New. Innovation. Freedom. Justice. Happiness. Peace. Future. Love, certainly. Great!

These are keywords that often are introduced in searche engines. I guess that it isn’t a bad idea to mention them on my homepage in order to climb in the ranking. ;)

Once I gave an interview for a newspaper but fortunately requested the article in order to correct possible mistakes bevore the newspaper would come out. I can only say that I was well advisted to do so, for there was much that had been reproduced wrongly. If I interview myself then I can choose the questions I want to answer, including those that nobody else would ever ask me. Questions I don’t want to answer I don’t pose at all. 

I’m sure I’m not the first to have come across that simple concept and I can well imagine that I’ll be copied – I’m begging for that (what concerns this specific point)! I guess that particularly artists but also many others will prefer such an own yaw axis control to an external one or a path they can’t name. The danger that a good answer comes to mind too late or that you can’t eliminate something you find faulty later on is thus eradicated. Interviewer and interviewee are having the best relationship possible. You can complement, correct, and erase – without having to have a bad conscience (as long as you stay with the truth).

Contrariwise there is danger to not finding a close since there’s always something that might be corrected or deepened. To be honest I’m never entirely satisfied with what I’m writing (unless it’s a script like The Rewinding I’ve been writing on for months or years). It can become a burden especially when you’re a perfectionist without reaching perfection. Obviously, it can’t be the point of this endeavor to give you a too hard time for life’s hard already. Another disadvantage may consist in seeming more intelligent or arrogant than you really are. ;)

In my life I’ve encountered too often (and not only with oral examinations) that only by hindsight I knew what I could have expressed or what had better remained unsaid. What rankled me the most is when the light bulb moment took place just a second too late, when the ball had been passed on to the next player right an instance ago. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter anymore if they thought that my contribution had come to an end or that I didn’t want to or couldn’t add to it anymore. Often I waited for the moment I would be able to deepen the said or put it in in its true light, a moment that seldom reached, that I also feared, for there always was the possibility I could fail again, a moment they also didn’t grant me sometimes if I judge the people correctly I had to deal with in school times. You’ve got to consider that I don’t count amongst the ones that can raise their voices offhandedly (if not in the best of cases, then even less in the worst of them). Even back then I knew that a good speaker needn’t be a good writer – and vice versa! Obviously, the writer’s in disadvantage, for the words of the speaker are listened to by all, whereas those of the writer – it doesn’t matter how good he does his job! – maybe won’t be read at all. Unfortunately I learned too late to open my mouth (it’s as if you’d learn to walk being an adult – with all the disadvantages that entails).

Though I’ve been praying 10000+x for a woman, I’m still single for not having been singled out yet. That’s what those should consider that go on reproaching me nonstop that it would be time now. Just as I had to witness how grandparents, uncles, aunts, a cousin, and friends died without having been able to show them even one of my accomplished works, so I also had to watch how the girls of my dreams always were with others and how they married away one after the other. But I don’t give up hope and go on dreaming of my princess! Good things come to those who wait, they say, so I count on that, even I’m not a prince myself, I’ll be rewarded richly for having waited for so long.

Also I wanted to have children once – back then I dreamt with many, while now I’d be well served with only two of them, because my strength wouldn’t suffice for more. Before they dwindle away entirely, I’d love to have an own family. I also would like them to call me daddy still, in place of gramps. Both my wife and children I’d daily say how much I love them and how much they mean to me. They told me I’d do for a good daddy. Well, I haven’t had the luck to have own kids but I got my nephews that fill me with joy and pride! I’ve also dreamt of a residual income once in order to have more time with them and the whole family, but that’s another dream that hasn’t become reality yet.

Yes, at the moment, even if it’s for a long time now. But I’m also at home in Germany where I love to stay – also because of its mellow meadows, its shady forests, and my old friend the Lake Constance, but most of all due to the fact that my beloved parents and a fistful of friends I’m always missing are living there.

By the way, for many years I dreamt wholeheartedly of being the travel writer Karl May simulated to be. Still an aching for the faraway or ichy feet grabs me from time to time, but not as much as it used to back then (I’ve traveled far and often in thoughts). More and more it’s being replaced by homesickness.

In Bolivia, a country without a sea, I’ve run ashore about 20 years ago. However, I’ll never stop to fight for Bolivia gaining its access to the ocean back, not only for being so important but also for being a just cause, for a matter of humanity. Bolivia is also a country with lots of talent for all intents and purposes. What’s missing, for example in regard to the film business, is what Luc Besson has done for France and Jaume Collet-Serra for Spain: to build a bridge to Hollywood – with all the advantages and disadvantages such a step might entail.

Nonsense, in the main. Already as a child I knew what I wanted, and school was only a balk (the first of many) on my way. When I left school, I began learning. Well, it’s not entirely true, for already in schooldays I employed my time in drawing, rhyming, and writing. Don’t read me wrong: I didn’t merely do so to enjoy myself or because I’d have something against the old school system from the outset – I wanted to learn and get good grades! –, but in order to relieve tension that resulted from the bullying I was exposed to, nonstop, without being able to defend myself from it. Schooldays, the most wonderful time for so many people, for me were like being on death row and then being pardoned and given back to life. After that I had to study, unfortunately for again, while studying you don’t only learn what you want to or what you’ll really need afterwards but absurdity, particularly or at least much. If they’d limit on the essential, namely that what you’ll really need and apply later on, then the studies would be completed after one or, at most, two years – and you’d be still young and full of joy and zest for action. You’d educate yourself further on, if you’d like to or would see the necessity of that. It would be one’s own initiative, the best impulse for real research. Or, to express it another way: You’re a hot-air balloon and you want to rise into the air as soon as possible in order to start your own adventure. But instead of jettison they add ballast, cover you with ballast, and go on ballasting you. In the worst of cases teachers and pupils will accumulate stumbling blocks in your way, conjointly or alternately (so you learn, for example to be treated like dirt and be put into a corner where you can go on dreaming in reclusion; you’re being enslaved for years and all you do is think of liberty). Once left behind school and university it isn’t that easy anymore to jettison all the ballast. Some of it will stick forever! And the flight into the clouds starts too late. You can’t gain on lost time! But the worst are the cases of children and adolescents that don’t succeed in takings wings anymore.

In my film studies there was a so-called career coordinator who expressed himself selectively complex. Nobody understood even a word of what he was saying. We students only understood that he knew exactly what he was saying – and that we shouldn’t understand it! In the subject research methods that was about finding topics for our theses and to exersice ourselves in them, my brother and I had concluded with the best results and obtained the best marks – only to then being attacked by the career coordinator that suddenly also turned out to be one of the persons to evaluate our theses. Instead of finishing our studies half a year earlier and return to Germany as had been our plan whose realization we’d been struggling for candidly, a new life of suffering began. Years later we did present a documentary trilogy that gained appreciation but it was different with the document that had to accompany it for it was a matter of something we had not tudied and that had to sound just like the coordinator spoke. It’s this antiquated and never sufficiently complained about narrow-mindedness only designed in order to mellow students and let them lose out, affecting their development and career negatively forever, it’s this narrow-mindedness I’ll fight against until my last breath! Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. Please look that sentence up; it would take to much space to comment on it here…

But well, Carhage stands (only in this framework, obviously) for the old educational system that isn’t determined to produce people that want to make the world a better place even if she claims so, but rather hinder world improvement. They want to make us believe that they’re doing everything in their might to solve old and new problems that are a danger to mankind but don’t change a thing about the pillars of our society. Only by changing the foundations, by leading pupils, that want the good and are full of hope to address the really meaningful and important issues of life, including respect and altruism, instead of being manipulated and being teached to think only of themselves and their own future profit and having to be better as the others that can be met with contempt for knowing or having less, only by changing that real improvement can come – not earlier! To have in mind the next and the common good from an early age, that’s what it’s all about!

Hopefully soon

Inalterable are, in my book and in order to give only few examples, the laws of thermodynamic, the original Ten Commandments, and the absolute necessity of both the protection of our liberties and the separation of church and state as, for instance, put in a nutshell by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States for only that separation guarantees freedom; apart from that I’ve been always moved by the following idea I’ve always adhered to: before you check up how others do it, try your own way! How on earth shall there be truly new approaches for ways out of the crisis our world’s gotten into if we’re just following old paths? If you stick to patterns and guidelines established by others, ab initio, you may never be able to think outside the box and – what’s more important! – become an innovator! I’ve never been supporter of the following advide: “First make it according to the rules and as soon as you know and dominate them you can break them!” Sure, it can succeed as well, but the other way round is the right one, I think, because your approach is fresh and new, and you haven’t been manipulated by nobody. Of course this method isn’t everyone’s cup of tea because it’ll seldom be accompanied by recognition or crowned with success. They’ll call you stupid and lazy and incorrigible, and try to inhibit your creativity, adapt your work to established mean, belittle your achievements, and lead you astray. Unfortunately, there’ll always be the idler that’ll discredit the importance of this hopefully groundbreaking concept, by using a new method of working as an excuse for his laziness.

But as soon as you’re moving on your own rails – it doesn’t matter how slowly the train you’ve built and put on motion –, it can be quite a great help to compare your own with current working methods. Maybe your own hasn’t worked and it’s time to decide for an approved one. Or you can upvalue a foreign one with yours (or yours with another one). If you’re lucky you’ll notice that your approach is as good or even better. And so your own method may become the method of others. If you’re unlucky you may die lonely and unrecognized.

But there’s more: often I’m reading of writers and musicians and actors and other gifted people that only function if intoxicated. They like to call themselves open-minded but I’m sure that you shouldn’t open your mind in order to fill it up with booze (to find courage or chill it), for every drug usage is a cheap (or not so cheap) excuse. If flush or being druggy would help to get us out of crisis our wold would be better from day to day, not worse! Addictive should only be the attempt to save the world without doing harm to humanity or flora or fauna or water or air.

Hopefully soon

Concerning Rewinding and The Real Thing, I’ve compared them with 38 recurring script problems you can find by way of the following link:

http://nofilmschool.com/2013/11/38-reasons-screenplay-isnt-getting-recommended-script-reader/#more-71417

I wasn’t surprised when I found out that in accordance with the author I was off the mark only in one point: „The script is a writer ego trip“. Frankly, I don’t know how I could have written and made apprehensive the different of The Rewinding, differently. Obviously, since then I live in fear that a payed script reader will throw my work on the pile of rubbish since there’s quite a lot in cursive and in boldface and underlined, without taking a minute’s time that would be enough to recognize the necessity of those differentiating elements I only use in this script, by the way.

There was another point in the recurring problems that catched my attention. In August, 2013 I read an interesting article on script structure, by Michael Hauge. Even if it all was too mathematical I did discover with satisfaction that both Rewinding and The Real Thing were following that structure, generally speaking without me having known about it. When I then found the one amongst the 38 points that critizesed when scripts ran things by the book I saw myself further confirmed, and thought: “Wonderful! I hit the mark, again!” I had followed my own schema, had created my own structure that was different, but at the end similar to an established method. So I was right twice.

Sometimes, I incorporate technical considerations into my literary scripts (yet only where I’ve got something in mind that I’d like the audience to see as well, some day). When writing The Rewinding and The Real Thing it was my plan to bring them to the big screen by myself. I’m still in Bolivia where directors and other film workers not always but often enough act on the assumption that you’ll include such considerations, so they are not in the least against it. They consider it rather as what it really is, an assistance that can be adopted, or not. Here, they don’t throw away a script only because there might appear something like: “Kubrick’s one-point perspective”.

The Real Thing was my very first work that, frustrated over the fact that I’d never made a sale, I wrote solely under the angle of success. Afterwards I undid it by grant the script with more depth (what improved it, actually). And so an intrinsic whole emerged that indeed works at first glance but has to be seen twice at least in order to really understand it. Or you do what I did with The Usual Suspects. Run ashore somewhere I watched this movie in order to tide over time. I didn’t know anything about Christopher McQuarrie, Bryan Singer, or Kevin Spacey – or that the former and the latter would win Oscars for their work on the movie. I was gladly surprised but had to see it again later, unhurriedly, pausing once in a while to really understand it. It’s similar to my Rewinding where even least changes could affect it destructively, because everything’s been coordinated diligently.

Yes, even if not everybody will agree with me, I call it a science fiction psychological thriller. To my excuse I only want to reproduce the following quote of Neal Stephenson (whose REAMDE I enjoyed), remarked in September, 1999: “The science fiction approach doesn’t mean it’s always about the future; it’s an awareness that this is different.” What I can guarantee is that my Rewinding is full of memorable moments and impressions you haven’t had before.

Is a writer ego trip really a mistake? Needn’t a script be one? Without pacing the author of the 38 recurring script problems (I don’t really know what he was or wasn’t thinking of, exactly), who for the rest and in the main did a wonderful job, the word constellation ego trip is negatively charged right from the start, obviously. It might better be applied to certain kickers that prefer to take a shot at the goal even if a member of his team with much more chances to score is standing free. A scriptwriter works alone, prepares the field, and has to think like the goal keeper, the back, and the forward. Every match is different and demands to be played according to another tactic. In order that the match may be wun explanations may be necessary, at times so that the tactic can bear fruit. Thus, the author is something like the coach, the captain. What might look like an ego trip perhaps is the very reverse of it. Everything you’ll get to see finally is outcome of the imagination, the meticulous planning and the wonderful production of many minds, of which the scriptwriter’s the first one. On an ego trip are rather those that don’t even give consideration or want to peer such a help for knowing and doing it all better, what I don’t doubt. But should a screenwriter really have to keep quiet about something he supposes would result in the good of the project? Something nobody else would hit on, hence something that would be lost forever? A screenwriter is by definition a person who performs teamwork and wants to be at home in a team, only to then not having any business there anymore.

By the way, I always thought of it as odd and inconsequent when they pretented to look for a big, creative, and new story, but at the same time confronted desprecatingly everything that only smacked like creativity. Thus the already maltreated scriptwriter also has to be schizophrenic for on the one hand he shall create something new, unprecedented, but on the other hand he shall adhere to fanciless rules and don’t make an ego trip that’s reserved to others.

At least it’s granted to scriptwriters to prefix some descriptive or somehow initiatory lines to their scripts. But attention, folks! It mustn’t be too many, for every word might be wrong or offend somebody! And the script itself? You better follow the three-act structure and the wise man appears on page X in torder to show the main character the way.

Compared to what happens to the scriptwriter (providing that it’s about an unknown greenhorn like me) all the other team members are being payed for their work ab initio, having been chosen for dominating their profession. If costume or scenic designers, or persons in charge for special effects (not to mention Marlon Brando & co.) don’t stop until they’ve outdone themselves and got the most out of it for the good of the movie, they’ll hardly be accused of making an ego trip what would be totally absurd, obviously. But to call a script an ego trip is much more absurd, because there’s nothing the scriptwriter has received prescribed, so that he can’t possibly do different than to present an ego trip. An ego trip would be the flight to Irkutsk when the producer has payed your steamboat ticket to Florida. Or the writing of an epic novel you then plan to sell as a script.

Often I get the impression that screenwriters aren’t recognized adequately for having done their job before shooting of their scripts start. Afterwards people gladly use to speak of the artistic, creative, and personal vision of the director or the producer, while the head of the enterprise easily gets forgotten. What would the songwriter say who’d receive such a treatment? Hand on heart: Why should of all things a scriptwriter be cut down in his creativity who lives and breaths the story for months, maybe years while producers and directors may do afterwards what comes to their minds, taking credit for their ego trips, on top of everything? In my discretion you shouldn’t operate with different scales here!

Let us assume we look at a wonderfully creative and promising script but then at second or third glance detect several misspellings that hurt the eye (I don’t like to see them either). Should the script be thrown away only because the scriptwriter’s botched? Or should you consider that maybe those misspellings won’t be heard in the resulting movie? Or be it that (admittedly the case in The Rewinding) a scriptwriter is at the same time a composer and thought of music while writing. (Ho! An artist who’s not limited to only one form of art, that’s something entirely new!) Is that really a mistake? Even if it wouldn’t fit fore and aft, it wouldn’t be the end! You easily erase it from the script! At the end almost every script’s being changed, it doesn’t matter if it sets a musical note or doesn’t! If a screenwriter’s a nobody at the end, then at least you shouldn’t take this gratification from him at the beginning. Obviously, I already see an unimaginative reader bent over my Rewinding and say: “Reference of a piece of music of the author! To the pile of rubbish with that!” Don’t worry, I’ll sell my Rewinding also without my music!

No wonder that so many visionary scriptwriters become directors because it’s only them, mostly, that value highly their own script, really! (Who’d for instance film a Quentin Tarantino script as Quentin Tarantino does?) Or you’re in the rare luck to be friends with a director who doesn’t only appreciate and understands your work but would also like to see it realized. It’s such a visionary producer or director I’m searching for and would like to have for my scripts! 

As for me, I prefer to be a scriptwriter who oversprays of ideas and therefore runs the risk of not being taken seriously, than to be somebody that writes a film that afterwards nobody wants to see. I prefer the good book to the one with the good cover, always! (By the way, if my creation gets butchered afterwards, I don’t really mind if, at the end, people speak of the director and not of the scriptwriter!)

I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that in order to have her/his name attached to a script a second writer must at least (?) change half of the existing script, even if only few changes would be necessary in the first place. This may also be the reason that many good scripts will never be produced. Or that they result in a movie that isn’t that great as it could have been, anymore. Well, rest assured that this isn’t necessary with my scripts. I know that I’m not perfect and that I make mistakes (not only grammatical errors and bad word choices, but also concerning a faultless script presentation), but I also know that I’m quite a good writer. What I do know is that my ideas are spectacular! It’s not necessary for a second writer to change more than those things necessary to be changed in order to have her or his name attached to the project! And I don’t mind others earn as well! ;) But then again: If anybody sees the need in changing half of a script and/or wants to do so, why not? Even if I’d have to share revenue with him or her, or them, it would be better than getting nothing and seeing great movie projects wasted! I may be wrong in other things, but I’m sure everybody involved in my top proyects would earn a good amount of cash, in the end!

At this point it doesn’t matter to me anymore if they’d change it all and only kept with the wonderful idea, making their own thing. With the money I’d receive I’d finally be able to do other proyects (totally my way).

There’s something else I want to say because I mentioned own compositions for Rewinding. Amongst my favorite composers are my mother and my younger brother. My older brother has written wonderful music as well, but he didn’t further grappled with it. Now there’s a script, Newborn that I wrote with the music of my mother in mind, a family film that could find favor with those who still cling to old Christian ideals and family values. It’s most of all my mother’s merit that I’ve become a composer for her deep music delights the heart to touch the soul. Newborn, a movie I’d like to film myself – a movie that by the way, like all my scripts picks up and deepens a brilliant idea that moves to tears (also of laughter) –, is a script I’d never sell without this wonderful soundtrack. Don’t they say that sound makes half the movie? With the music of my mom it would be more, in the end!

What trailers shouldn’t do is lie – or give you the runaround! I do understand that with trailers it’s about advertising in order to lure people so that they may go to the movies. But what they please should do is show what’s it all about, an excerpt or a summing-up, a synopsis of what you’ll be presented with. I don’t speak of spoilers here I’m being confronted with in trailers too often, by the way, but simply of a little bit of veracity: The trailer shall be true to the film! Don’t read me wrong, if there are maybe 60 curses in a movie, I don’t want that reflected in the trailer either, obviously, but I’d like to see a line saying: There are about 60 curses in here! Something like that! If for example I’ve got to laugh out loud five times while watching a trailer, then in the actual movie I must be presented with many good jokes that do justice to the trailer. I needn’t be able to laugh only five times and the rest of the film get upset for having been tricked. Maybe the five trailer jokes are also morally defensible whereas (almost) any other film joke isn’t?! Please, that’s dishonest and unfair competition! And even if we’re living in a constantly changing world where today is good what was wrong yesterday, a great mayority of filmgoers would want to be informed in a trailer or poster, for example, if in a film they’ll see characters getting to business hetero-, homo-, bi- or otherwise sexually. Or if there’s blaspheming, cursing, swearing, or profanity going on. Because in fact, as is the case with a product’s ingredients list, the components of a film shouldn’t be kept back from the potential cinemagoer. Some people may say now that it’s being done already, but what’s being done isn’t enough, by far! It would be best to have something like the warning notices that appear in big types on packs of cigarettes: THIS FILM IS HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH! (I can already see somebody use this or something similar for his movie poster, not because he’s backing what I’m saying here, or because he wants to trivialize it, but because it would look great and attract people.) There are a lot of those kinds of harmful to health films! In the supermarket obviously there are also those that aren’t very interested in what they’re consuming – but generally even they have a certain idea of what it is they’re buying and about to ingest. And in the evening they prepare themselves beans instead of peas (or the other way round)! Such a security should also take place when going to the movies, but especially where children’s films are concerned! I’ve seen a lot of so called children’s films that made my hair stand on end. Children are all too often bombarded with pure imbecility, laughable characters, loveless animations, absurd conversations, dangerous and pagan philosophies, questionable sexual approaches, introduction into the occult, and over the top violence. That must change immediately, and I call on all the parents to thump for change before it is too late, since it may be that tomorrow everything will be regarded as normal (don’t make any mistake: If we don’t do anything, the next generation will embrace everything the last one refused). At least here I plead for a list with the ingredients to the respective film – and I don’t want to limit to cine films, but think of any audiovisual pgrogram that is targeted on children! If there’s a plan behind to destroy us all, but foremost our children, whose plan is it? And under whose spell are we then? Maybe elite wants to lead us to some place? Where is that? And what will we do for her tomorrow (even if we don’t even notice that it’s for her) what we sure as death wouldn’t have done yesterday? I’d also like best that there would be a reference to if the story is coherent in itself or exhibits a decline towards the end because of a lack of ideas, for example, but that won’t happen, I assume, and that may not even be wrong, for there’s danger that the critics are too subjective – or that they can’t be objective (who criticizes the critics?)! Every now and then good movies receive crushing reviews, whereas bad ones enjoy very good attendance.

Hopefully soon

You want something proven, something established? Then it’s my Shift! You want something entirely new? Then it’s my Shift! Either way you’ll be dead right with my Shift! You can’t go astray! It’s a win-win situation! The problem is that up to now nobody has read my Shift document and thus it accumulates dust. Shift is more than the sum of its parts. But already its many and manifold parts offer more than the rueful sum of divers vanilla series that are in vogue (obviously, they follow a straightened out and boring structure that hasn’t offered anything new, but worked umpteen times). But some day somebody with a similarly good idea will come and his idea, even if it makes justice only to a tiny part of my whole, will appear on television for being so good and new! That’s of course a gloomy scenario of the future (with regard to me) I’m drawing here and I hope it won’t come true again, but couldn’t prevent if nobody ever reads my Shift idea.

The best would be a straight-to-series commitment, but only because Shift is simply too multisided so that a television pilot couldn’t possible do it justice. Many series introducing television pilots are bad because their makers just couldn’t tell something their way but had to make the best of a bad job, compromise, reach a consensus – to the disadvantage of the series! My Shift ideas are just too big and too many; only some of them should be given away right from the outset. Some of the best ideas shouldn’t appear in a television pilot but be presented later on, in crucial moments.

I can only hope that some television network shows interest and actually reads my series idea entirely (as with good series not everything can be seen on the first pages). Shift would also be interesting for Hollywood studios for I’ve been told that franchises are popular there and riding high. Shift definitely has what it takes to become a franchise. Strictly speaking you could cut several promising series and movies out of my Shift rock that wouldn’t have to resemble each other. In my Shift folder I go into it and give plenty of allusions.

So, ABC, CBS, the CW, Fox und NBC – to only mention some Northamerican networks –: Don’t hesitate and ask for my folder! I know that each summer you expect to listen to some 500 short elevator pitches, 30 seconds to two minutes long, and that during fall you ask for about 70 so that beginning with January of the following year you can send 20 payed for television pilots into production. Yet I neither want to try an elevator pitch nor write the pilot episode or the series myself, for what you have far better choices! I just want you to read my Shift document – from start to finish! Once read you’ll buy it from me and create at least one of those series that haven’t been made so far! It will be the series you’d been searching for in vain… until now!

Now I don’t know if the above mentioned networks are friends or not among themselves, but with my Shift in hands they could negotiate incredible, maybe never before seen and rewarding deals. First come, first served, as the saying goes. With all this I want to be served as well, obviously. 

Of course I’m promoting myself, that’s obvious. Already as a child I had the conviction of being uncommonly gifted, but I kept that to myself. Anyway, I only opened by and by. Then I waited for years that somebody would discover me. Obviously, at times I acted, searched for addresses, wrote nice letters, asked around. Well, I’m not a businessman but an artist! This home page may be my last attempt to establish myself as the artist I am and have been for decades. In the course of this attempt I did develop a little bit of business sense what isn’t so bad. But while publicity often praises hell for heaven and, for example, advertises cow dung for face cream, I definitely stand by my evaluation of things. I also don’t want to postpone something fully mature or keep on working another 20 years without gaining achievements. With 17 I made my driver’s license, and today I think that it’s time for a car. A big part of my life I’ve spent in helping others (mostly free of charge, and often without receiving any gratitude) and hope that today (or tomorrow) I will reap something of the help I gave (yesterday). Eventually comes the time that even the most patient and modest man gets twitchy and looks for strategies. As long as they reflect truth, I don’t think they’re wrong.

I’ve got to go farther back there, for it’s quite a funny story. Well, not so funny for myself, really. First of all: Don’t take for granted that others won’t have the same or similar ideas as the ones you’ve got.

My Rewinding and Shift are absolutely original (to only mention two of my absolutely original works). I’m not perfect, but those works are, from my point of view. Sure, I can only imagine what they’d become in the hands of a Steven Spielberg or an Alfonso Cuarón. My only fear is to go on watching the years pass by and that then, maybe in 10 years from now, somebody has a similar idea to mine, but also the money to do it. And even if his idea isn’t as elaborated as mine and the execution of the idea is worse than what would have been with mine as a basis, I won’t be remembered as the one with the original idea (even if I may have had it several years before). I really don’t want that to happen again and again. Some day somebody will come up with something similar to Rewinding, when mine’s been out there for so long. I firmly believe that nobody could present a better script for that idea!

I had written my short story Operation Gravitation, Gravy in 2012. Then I worked on its comic version from 2012 to 2013 (since I had no money, I couldn’t let it be drawn). Obviously, I thought in a movie version based on my comic all along. Then, the 19th of May, of 2014, I read the following on www.hollywoodreporter.com:

“We are thrilled with the sales that Mark Damon and his Foresight Unlimited team have done,” Nozik said. “The market’s response has been so strong, it confirms this film is an original and incredibly fresh story that asks, what if gravity, the most taken for granted and least understood part of nature, betrayed us.”

It’s about Inversion, a movie that shares the same premise with my Operation Gravitation, Gravy. It’s quite sad when you think that those words could have been written about yourself, isn’t it? I’m quite confident that my story’s way different then theirs, because I didn’t copy a thing, I came up with the concept on my own, but maybe that’s what people will think. Still I believe my Operation should be filmed some day.

Well, my Rewinding idea is indeed entirely different but in the end as good as my Operation Gravitaton idea, so that something similar could be written about it, for being an original and incredibly fresh story as well! Dear Mr. Nozik, I’d wish you’d read my script for I can vividly imagine that you’ll like it quite a lot! And – who knows? why not, actually? – maybe you’d put it into practice with the same team that’s about to launch Inversion?!

I wrote the short story The Walking Mirror (as part of my book The King, the Island and the Sea) as early as 1999/2000 and, like with Operation, believing that its premise was auspicious, I’ve been working on a comic I haven’t been able to finance. I only hope the project’s fate will be different and nobody “beats me” by creating a comic or movie with a similar idea first. Only, this time my story’s been published.

But that’s not all! In the same hollywoodreporter article I read that

“Bragi Schut and David Arata – who co-wrote Children of Men, directed by Gravity filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron – authored the script.”

Now, my younger brother had had the same idea of a world with no childbirth anymore, a decade earlier. He had told me the whole story his way, and I’m sure his concept would have made for a better movie. I didn’t enjoy Children of Men as I would have if I wouldn’t have had to think of my brother’s version all the way through (the same occurred with Richard Linklater’s Boyhood; my brother told me his quite similar idea about 15 years ago). But by no means am I saying that I don’t like Cuarón’s work! His Gravity is one of my favorite movies and he’s one of the few directors I’d like to entrust my Rewinding with (I can only image what he could/would do with my script). 

About 25 years ago, when I still went to school, I already had ideas that I would then see realized in Shrek and other movies and series that mix characters and elements of Grimms’ Fairy Tales into new and mostly hilarious stories. I haven’t deepened into the matter, so maybe the idea to do so is older than I think.

Then, when I went to watch House of Wax, Thursday, the 17th of May, 2005, obviously I already knew that it resembled an idea of mine I’d had several years earlier; my story would have been more of a thriller and the search for missing persons, but the quintessence, the bodies showing up in a wax museum, would have been the same (much later I found out that the same idea had been exploited back in 1953; it just seems to be as my wonderful teacher Johnny Delgado used to say: “You can’t create something entirely new but tell the old in a new and better way!”). When, Friday, the 27th of May, 2005, I watched a trailer to The Isle that featured some of my ideas, I wasn’t that surprised anymore, I was kind of getting used to see own ideas appearing in both trailers and movies.

Then there’s 2009’ The Princess and the Frog. The idea of a person kissing a frog and becoming a frog (instead of the frog becoming a person) is subject to one of my cartoons that was realized by two different drawers in the olden days. I knew it was a fantastic idea that could result in a movie adaption. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to publish. I’m sure I’m forgetting some examples now, but on the whole that’s it.

So, can all this happen by accident? Definitely! It happens all the time! When I was young I believed otherwise. There was a time I had the fear that my ideas would be stolen (I guess every creative person shares this fear one way or the other); now, my chief fear is that others have the same idea and beat me to its completion. There are millions like me out there. So I also guess that I’m not the only one that has gone through such an experience. The sad thing about it is that mostly the ones with the ideas are the ones without money. In the worst case there can be a guy that has a thousand wonderful ideas, but he’s lacking the means to make them true, while his neighbor may be an person without creativity, but a rich one. Once he’s got an idea, even if it’s a bad one, he’s got the means to make it happen. He may wind up being celebrated for his isolated idea, while his neighbor eventually may die in misery. It would have been better the genius had received all the help he could get from the rich (who might have become richer). Ufortunately we don’t live in a culture that really helps creative persons. We live in a culture where money speaks words artists seldom hear.

I’m totally able to relate to film studios to allude in their legal documents that they may have (had) the same or similar ideas as those presented to them by word or script, mostly sent to them without prior notice. Sure, there might be danger that some great idea gets stolen, it may be as big or as tiny as it gets, and that’s why every idea should be registered where possible. The better the idea, the greater the danger of the idea being stolen, but the bigger also the chance to have it sold or to find people interested in it.

Talking of me, here’s proof that my ideas do work and that my ideas do sell (even if, until now I haven’t been the one to sell them, actually). My experiences show me that my ideas and scripts do work and do have a value to the market and are promising indeed. I still have some original and incredibly fresh stories to sell, ideas nobody else has presented… yet! Why wait years for that big idea that might be worse than mine when mine’s already here?! It’s my personal utmost concern to break through the vicious circle I’ve been in for too many years!

Having ideas can also be a curse, if you only pile them and then don’t know what to do. There are millions of gifted persons out there that don’t know what to do with them once they had them. Work on a story? Maybe they lack the talent or the time. Register them? How? Entrust them whom? But then it might be that you can’t protect those ideas by patent or otherwise, for being isolated or not being concise enough (that’s what they might tell you, mostly)! You have to find the way, maybe by connecting them to a story, still. You don’t really have the time and you may or may not have the talent, but then you attempt it anyway. But who says you’ll be happy with the outcome? It might be a waste of time, because a story must be bigger than just one idea or tell the idea in an appealing way that isn’t easy to achieve either. It doesn’t hurt to have many ideas, but even if you do, combining them is still a craft not everybody’s able to perform successfully. That’s why I believe there should be something like an idea market, a market where you can sell your ideas to the highest bidder! There’s a need and there’s a demand! For every person that gets an idea, there are 50 that don’t, that may be searching for one! In the end it wouldn’t matter if it would remain only your idea or if you’d share it with other people; it wouldn’t even matter if somebody steals your idea, even if it would be very sad, admittedly. Why? Because it wasn’t protected in the first place! That’s not the idea, obviously, and I firmly believe that there are still enough honest people out there that would pay for your ideas. And, well, for the same reason you could go on selling them. In any case, the buyers would create different stories.

Obviously, there are other ideas, bigger ideas that should be treated different. Those one idea for one or few buyers ideas should be presented in another area of the idea market – and only to persons that already have arranged a product, who may be lacking just one or few ideas in order to complete it, to finish their book or start their production. An area where for example schreenwriters, directors, authors, designers, creators, and producers could go to take a look at ideas for scenes or entire movies, or comics, or books… and maybe buy something they like. Ideas could be commissioned there as well! Because the person commissioned with rounding off ideas would get to know the project's content he'd only have to sign a secrecy clause.

There could also be a niche for something like story creators or idea combiners in need for specific or non specific ideas (this could result in a new job!) that could join forces with one or more idea sellers or spin doctors, or creative directors in order to make ideas work – and maybe sell them as a larger packet.

I don’t really know how such a market would finally look like or how it could be created and what you could add to it and which aspects should be considered in order that everything’s legal and works out according to established (but not phantasy limiting) rules. I’m just having and presenting an idea here. ;)

Speaking of which: I’ve got some ideas of my own I’d like to sell (you don’t have to wait for an established idea market to ask me about them). He who wants to shoot a thriller in the mountains or an action movie in the desert for example, could receive in each case a scene from me that could in both cases become the feast for the eyes and main attraction of the respective film.

Two things: On the one hand I want to make a contribution to art and reach many persons with my music, my drawings, my stories, and my messages (there’ll always be more of them; in fact, I've got material for the next five years and could, if all preconditions work out, publish two CDs, two comics and one film annually); on the other hand I need support so I can manage that. To admit to something like that costs quite an effort but it's necessary if you want to get to something without watching your life pass by. But those cultural subsidies must be heartfeld and not be mixed with conditions that give me a hard time. Then I’m taken with the Kickstarter concept, but am counted among those persons that maybe would live in stress later on, for wanting to do justice to everyone and then only live to stick to my promise, and pack gifts, and forward them. I may revisit Kickstarter with some project someday, but here, where an own film production is concerned, I’m trying a variation of the inspiring Kickstarter idea. Apart from that everybody who supports my little old me and my art, can with €97.00 (or the equivalent sum in any other currency) receive access to my FOR YOU page, that will feature more and more surprises, so that in the end – at least with regard to this minimum amount – you’ll have gotten your money’s worth with this life membership. In other words: It’s a good investment! By the way, I also accept smaller sums in thanks, but those shouldn’t be lower than €10.00 for otherwise the fees to be payed could be higher than the money transferred. However, if you’d assist me with higher sums – I wouldn’t have in the least something against them! –, then I obviously couldn’t promise that you’ll get your money’s worth, but that my artist’s heart beats FOR YOU, especially and thankfully! Apart from the opportunity FOR YOU (and the beforementioned films) you can also, if you want to, decide to fund a whole project what would enable you to win half of my own profit on the project in question. Requirement would merely be that you don’t run out of money, eventually (suddenly or not) or that you walk out on me or dump me down or leave me in the lurch, it doesn’t matter the reason – I’ve lived through that already and can only say that I don’t like it (my obligation towards you would end and there'd be no money back). Then, that you let me my freedom always for it has more value to me than all the money you could offer me! And closing, that you have confidence in me and rely on that I will give my best.

You can also support me by buying my music via CD Baby where in the following years surely more of me will appear and be audible.