Screenwriter Mike Jones’ blog “Source Material”

As loyal GITS readers know, I’m fascinated with the creative process writers use to generate story ideas. So it was with great interest I connected with screenwriter Mike Jones who sold the spec script “In the Event of a Moon Disaster” in August of last year, then saw the script make the 2011 Black List. Jones recently launched a cool blog “Source Material”. Here is Mike’s description of why he started the site:

My ideas aren’t born of thin air. They always come from other ideas. And often it takes that outside idea to spark the question “What if there’s a different way?”

For years before the internet I stuffed file cabinets with news clippings, photos, quotes, illustrations, etc. When I clipped something I usually didn’t know where it would go. I just liked it.

At the time the clippings were just a way of remembering. I have a terrible memory. For a long time I felt privately embarrassed for cutting out articles like coupons. I gave myself credit for being a green writer, but I knew I’d need to remember better. I haven’t.

In Crumb, Terry Zwigoff’s documentary on comic book author R Crumb, I watched as the artist pulled out a volume of photos — one of many. He turned to a page filled with photos of street lamps. He needed a street lamp for a panel he was drawing. And not just any lamp; he needed the right one. Before then I’d never heard the term “source material” but I quickly yanked it for my own.

My first script began as a string of these clippings: a photo of teenage couple on a Tilt-A-Whirl, a local news item of a fast food restaurant shooting, and a Raymond Carver story about bottled anger (can’t remember which one; and most of them are about bottled anger).

Reading it now that script has all the flavor of a too-green banana. It gives me a stomach ache but it retains that strong sense of place. I still feel those characters walked and cursed the earth at one point, rather than float above it in some creative cloud.

After a decade in the business my files are now mostly virtual, and spread across Google Docs, my hard drive, and even my Facebook page, along with dusty bookshelves and file boxes in the garage. When I need a character, a situation, or a street lamp I open them up. They are more valuable then any writing book I’ve read or class I’ve taken. They have become my most coveted tool for getting it right, making it unique, and most importantly — making stuff sound real.

This irregular blog — updated without consistency with brief posts — is devoted to the notion of source material. Not only mine, but others when I find it. And if you’ve got some, I’d love to hear it.

I swapped some emails with Mike and he had this to say about the inspiration for “Moon Disaster”:

A case in point — IN THE EVENT OF A MOON DISASTER was the title of a speech written by William Safire for then President Nixon; to be read if the Apollo 11 astronauts were suddenly trapped on the moon. It reads like a burial-at-sea — where the souls of Armstrong and Aldrin are committed to the heavens forever. And it’s utterly harrowing.

I read it nearly 10 years ago and had no idea how to use. But I clipped it and stuffed it away. Between gigs I found it again and this time it sparked something. The script came out a few months later.

I can relate to Mike’s process. I have a whole top drawer of a filing cabinet filled with newspaper clippings and magazine articles. Then about five years ago, out of respect for our planet, I started saving things as PDFs, so I must have thousands of ideas stashed away. How about you?

What is Mike doing now? Just finishing up “Marco Polo” for Warner Bros. and “neck deep” in “Second Act” for Fox Searchlight.

You can visit “Source Material” here.

You can follow Mike on Twitter: @whereisjones.

Comment Archive