Like a pair of new socks...

I’m starting this blog from my rented room in Seattle, WA, overlooking Ravenna Park in Seattle’s U-District. Who am I and why am I writing this blog? I am Adam Zang (no, I’m not Asian, although that question does come up once or twice a week) and I am a screenwriter. Actually, a freshman screenwriter whose decided to chronicle the ups and downs of optioning his first script to a Canadian production company.

After graduating Carleton College in the June of 2005, I enrolled in the Vancouver Film School’s Writing for TV & Film program. After spending a year in Vancouver, in August 2006 I went back home to Michigan burnt out and broke. I had written about a thousand script pages while at VFS, and while I had grown as a writer, I felt frustrated with my situation, namely because I was living jobless in my dad’s house and in student loan debt hell.

And then came an e-mail from Dylan Thomas Collingwood of Collingwood Management.

Dylan had read a script I wrote at film school called Northbridge, a murder mystery set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Dylan repped Neil Every, one of my instructors at VFS, and Neil had given him the script because Neil was looking for a film to direct and he liked my script (notice the past tense “repped”—Neil and Dylan have since parted ways).

In his e-mail, Dylan said he was impressed by my writing and requested more writing samples. I sent him off This is What We Call Home, a low-budget coming of age drama, the first feature script I wrote at film school. Three days later, Dylan asked me if I would option him both scripts. He wanted Northbridge more than This is What We Call Home—Northbridge is easily the stronger of the two—but I couldn’t give up the rights to Northbridge because I had told Neil I wanted to work with him on it. Neil had helped me immensely in the early drafts and I felt (and still feel) that I owed him the chance to direct. Dylan didn’t think he could find funding if Neil was attached as a first-time director. And so we began negotiations on This is What We Call Home.

I started a pseudo-journal after I agreed to Dylan’s offer. I will post these entries until we’re caught up to present day. At the time of the first entry, I was working a non-profit job in Ann Arbor, living in a spare room at my dad’s house, and battling through my first full winter in Michigan in five years.

I will keep this blog as closely related to the screenwriting business side of things as I can. Occasionally, personal issues will surface—it is only human that they do—but I pledge not include anything that I would not like to read if I were not writing a blog. I hope that makes sense. I cannot include specific dollar amounts (due to contractual agreements) and will include updates on the state of the Detroit Tigers baseball club—the future 2007 World Series Champions.

On to November 13th, 2006:

I decided that I’m going to option This is What We Call Home to Collingwood. His offer is low. I’m hoping to negotiate a slightly better deal, but I really have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. I have no agent and no experience. I’ll probably end up blowing it and getting less than what he originally offered. I at least want to get on the dvd commentary and explain all the deep symbolism and metaphor in the script. Riight. I would love to get this movie made and be paid to write for a living. That’s the ice cream dream, man.