Mystery Man news

I just received this email:

Hello, my name is Rebekah. I was “Mystery Man’s” administrative assistant for a number of years.
Unfortunately, he passed away not long ago. I’m terribly sorry.

He made it his express wish not to reveal his identity. Before he passed away, he had completed roughly 2/3 of his screenwriting book, and I am partnering with a couple of writers to finish the book using bits from his various articles. I will follow-up with one more e-mail advising how his fans can download his free screenwriting book. I really have no idea yet as to when it will be available.

Again, I’m very sorry to bring you this news, and if you could assist us in getting the word out, we would greatly appreciate it.

I emailed Rebekah back. She confirmed that Mystery Man had, indeed, passed away. I can only assume this is true. If so, it’s awful news.

I’ll be posting things re Mystery Man over the weekend. Let’s start with a Q&A MM did here on GITS on November 12, 2009:

You know him (but not really), you love him (even though he is a mystery) — it’s Mystery Man (on Film). MM agreed to do a Q&A. Without further ado, here he is!

SM: First the handle: Mystery Man on Film. If I were to hazard a guess as to your real identity, which would be closer: William Goldman or Donald Kaufman from Adaptation?

MM: Oh come now, Scott, haven’t you figured me out yet? Hehehe… You should know that both of those men are too insecure for my tastes. I love a confident, stylish, witty writer. (If you don’t feel confident, just just fake it. Insecurities are for schmucks.) Give me men like Marcello Mastroianni. He’s just an actor, I know, but he played a writer in La Notte. He was cool, confident, and oh-so-suave. Plus, he looked damn good in a suit. Who said writers have to dress like derelicts? What’s wrong with a writer being stylish? Different? Memorable? Entertaining? I say be better than who you are. I say become the icon you’ve always admired. I say create that persona and live up to it. That thing Shakespeare wrote, “To thine own self be true,” is such bullshit. Hehehe…

SM: Okay, so way back when you started your original MMOF blog, as you cranked up your Commodore 128 computer, what exactly were you hoping to accomplish?

MM: If I take the time to seriously consider the craft and write an article about it, I can verbalize those thoughts more confidently in meetings. Some of these people in the industry are AMAZING. You have to seriously bring your A Game to the table. Beyond that, I enjoy rocking the boat.

SM: I read where The Unknown Screenwriter was an inspiration to you when you first started blogging. What other screenwriting bloggers are in your MMOF Hall of Fame?

MM: Well, I first began on TriggerStreet. I love writing script reviews. Then Unk was my inspiration to blog. So blame him. To this day, I still love his series on the The Transformational Character Arc. I’d put Go Into the Story on that pedestal worthy of daily visits. People used to complain about me being a prolific blogger. You’re a frickin’ machine! Of course, I read John August, Billy Mernit, Bill Martell, and Tedd & Terry’s articles. Danny Stack is great. He had a fabulous series on The Professional Screenwriter, which I highlighted here. Also, to this day, I love what Julie Gray wrote on theme & the entertaining question. Anytime someone sends me an e-mail about theme, I just tell them to read Julie’s article. I still love what Joshua James wrote on the Emotional Logic of Characters or his great formula of WHAT plus WHY equals WHO. And I love MaryAn Batchellor’s “Purpose of Battle Speeches” (here & here).

Script Mag has great articles on their website and podcasts, too. They just finished a 3-part podcast series on “Your Screenwriting Career in Today’s Market” (part one, part two, & part three, which you MUST take the time to hear. I also have to mention Ray Morton. I loved his article called Fouteen Scripts I Never Need to Read Again (Ever) and “How Not to Annoy the Reader” (Part One& Part Two).

For my blog, though, I wanted to showcase not just screenwriters but also the film bloggers because there is so much to be learned from them. Consider Film Studies for Free and, say, their latest collection of scholarly links on the art of close ups. Close ups, man! Unbelievable. Consider Jim Emerson’s fantastic Opening Shots Project. Consider David Bordwell and, for example, his free excerpts from his book, Film Art. The man’s a wonderful film scholar. Screenwriters should listen to him. I love — LOVE — Bordwell’s .pdf on The Man Who Knew Too Much. I also have a real thing for the mind of Matt Zoller Seitz and his video essays, like Zen Pulp. How about Girish Shambu, my all-time favorite blogger. He had a post on Poetics in Cinema that — I kid you not — forever altered my perspective on storytelling.

If that’s not enough, I recently posted my own 101 Best Articles.

SM: After all these years, you’ve quit blogging in order to take up Tweeting. What do you Tweet, why do you Tweet, and for whom do you Tweet?

MM: I knew the bottom was going to drop in Hollywood and I wanted to carefully follow the stories. When Anne Thompson started writing about the “Indie Bloodbath,” I thought, “Here we go.” The dynamics of content distribution WILL change. The dynamics of spec sales WILL change. You must now build your own road to a screenwriting career. Personally, I think film is dead and the entire distribution system needs to be demolished and rebuilt from the ground up. How do you do that? Start a new movie chain that defies the rules? I don’t know. But these are sober times.

Consider these tweets:

“It’s a massacre. It’s the end of funny money.” (http://bit.ly/12dE1N)

Charlie Kaufman: “It’s a disaster out there… I don’t think the mid-range movie is going to exist anymore.” (http://bit.ly/axfjQ)

“The American Indie business is a walking corpse” (http://bit.ly/fBTWH)

How To Survive The Current Indie Producer Hell: “Cut all your budgets by 60%” (http://bit.ly/cgxlM)

“The ways films were financed & sold for the last fifteen years are no longer do-able.” (http://bit.ly/19tgWX)

“Can the ‘Indie Bloodbath’ be traced to the decline of critics?” (http://bit.ly/12qpQa)

“Anything above a micro-budget level is going to have a hard time getting into theaters.” (http://bit.ly/8HSr9)

Ebert: “The bottom fell out of the market… a collapse of confidence in the prospects of [Indie] film distribution.” (http://bit.ly/YoRvr)

“There may be something more insidious at work. It’s possible there simply aren’t as many great movies being made.” (http://bit.ly/1cIYYz)

Peter Broderick’s 10 Principles of Hybrid Distribution (http://bit.ly/1a7OjL)

“The old model — making a film with investors, taking it to festivals, selling it there — is nearly gone” (http://bit.ly/1CaT4)

10 (9 actually) Responses to the Issues Brought Up at the “Indie Film Summit” (http://bit.ly/yNwMp)

SM: I recently started on Twitter, but being the pseudo-old fart that I am, I’m sure I’m doing everything wrong. So for me and any other Twitter neophytes out there, what advice can you give us so we stop making fools of ourselves in cyberspace.

MM: I’ve made a bigger fool of myself than anyone on Twitter, I think. When I first started, I tweeted too much, which pissed off my friends, and some quit following me. I’m trying not to do that anymore and tweet only the most essential articles. I also got hacked recently. Direct messages were being sent from me with links to phishing scams. Sigh… I’d suggest you not click links sent to you in a direct message unless you trust the source. Even then, they could’ve been hacked like me. If you get hacked, change your password. You’ll have to wait some amount of time before Twitter will allow you to start following people again. You can also follow the Spam twitter account or the #spam thread.

SM: As a Certified Mystery Man Tweet Follower, I am amazed by how much great information about movies and screenwriting you manage to dig up. How the hell do you do it? Are you like glued to your computer keyboard or could that other rumor about your sweatshop of research slaves in Saipan be true?

MM: Are you kidding? I don’t have time to search for shit. It’s called Google Alerts. You should look into it. But I do have an assistant (she’s very much like Ulla from The Producers). Hehehe…

SM: We all know that Kevin Smith, John August, and Diablo Cody Tweet. What other screenwriters can you recommend who share their wisdom with the world in 140 character thought bytes on Twitter?

MM: Only one person I ardently recommend for screenwriters — David Hudson. He’s the most obsessive compiler of film links of anyone in the world. He’s AMAZING.

SM: You’re a screenwriter, a columnist for Script magazine, an ex-blogger, and a Tweeter? Which one of those occupations fills you with the most pride and why?

MM: The reaction to my article on the Raiders Story Conference was probably the highest high of blogging. I was thinking, “Look at this! Mystery Man — MYSTERY MAN of all things — is in The New York Times!” “Look at this! Entertainment Weekly!” “Look at this! John August!” “Look at this! NBC Local News in Dallas!” And then it’s over and you’re back to work again.

My favorite article has to be the one I wrote on John Michael Hayes. I had just finished reading about him when he passed away. I couldn’t believe it. So I told his story and how he became a screenwriter. Get this. John Michael Hayes left his family, who never once supported his writing aspirations. He snuck away while his family was at the movies, no less. He hitchhiked his way across the country from Worcester, Massachusetts, all the way to Hollywood while hopping on two canes (recovering from a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis) and with only $15 in his pocket! Can you believe that? I wrote, “Yeah, all you aspiring writers out there think you have it so rough? Tell me you want to be a writer as badly as John Michael Hayes. Tell me you would’ve done what John Michael Hayes did.”

So I posted the article, and his son, Garrett Michael Hayes, commented, “I’ve read a great number of the recent JMH obits and online mentions. Thus far, yours comes closest to capturing a sense of his life.” Then John’s daughter, Meredyth, wrote, “It made my heart full today to read this and I thank you.”

How can you surpass those highs?

I’ll tell you how. Screenwriting. Making films. Nothing beats it.

There you go, some insight, wisdom, and mojo links from Mystery Man. And be sure to check out MM’s 101 Best Articles.

If any of you have heard anything re Mystery Man, please share your thoughts in comments.

Godspeed, Mystery Man.

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