Adam Scott Thompson at 2014-02-07 21:19:55:

Movies, I suppose, have always been a part of my life. My parents never shooed me out of the room no matter what was playing. I'd watch "Aliens" with my mother and then need to have her sleep with me. I got in trouble at school for shouting "Freeze, muthafucka!" after watching "Beverly Hills Cop 2." I once got a Ghostbusters uniform (pajamas), a proton pack and ghost trap for Christmas and would act out the entire plots of "Ghostbusters" and "Ghostbusters 2" in the living room. Needless to say, movies had an effect on me. But it was years before I finally wondered, "How do they work?" I got my answer in Barnes & Noble in the Film/TV section. I realized these things have scripts, that the actors weren't just making it up as they went along. I bought the script for "Seven," a film that had blown me and my parents away (I'm an only child, can't you tell?) when we first watched it. The next time I went to B&N, I bought Linda Seger's "Making a Good Script Great." It's funny now, looking back I was already a fan of many of the films you talk about on this blog ("Witness," "Aliens," "Die Hard," "Romancing the Stone," "Footloose," "Coming to America," "The Silence of the Lambs," etc.) because of my mother. She's my Clair Huxtable, and my number one fan. We still chop it up like Siskel and Ebert. Anyway, I wasted a lot of my time in college enjoying the experience rather than learning the craft. I was content to be a poser because no one around me knew enough about what I did to ever hold me accountable. As I moved into a post-college reality -- 2008's economic shit sandwich didn't help -- I had to come to grips with my addiction to alcohol. The physical detox wasn't so bad -- just a three-day trip to the hospital for pancreatitis -- but I had to wonder what had driven me to drink in the first place. I didn't quite figure it out then -- although I got sober and have been since Dec. 7, 2009 -- but it was about what I wasn't doing in my life to be happy. I wasn't digging as deep as I could into the craft I had claimed to love, into the art form through which I'd filtered all my life's experiences. Another trip to the hospital, this time for another gastrointestinal ailment, shook me more than the first time. "What if I had died? Could I have said that I'd given it my all?" The answer, in a word, was no. That was 2012, and ever since then I've been on a mission to get serious and make up for lost time. I found your blog, the only screenwriting periodical I visit on a daily basis, and learned what a balanced diet is: Think concepts. Watch movies. Read scripts. Write pages. Live life. In 2013, my thirtieth year, I thought of more concepts, watched more movies, read more scripts and wrote more pages than in any other year by far. And I lived life more abundantly. I just finished writing a script about a pregnant assassin hiding from her Russian employer in Alaska. I don't think I'd have even developed that concept if it hadn't been for you. I'd never written an action-thriller before, but I know now that the market's hot for them. I wouldn't have thought of anything to do with Russia, but now I know it's a major film market (which explains the resurgence of Russia and Russian villains in actions films). And I know that female actors are *dying* for more leading roles and vehicles. So there it is. I feel better about turning 31 than I did about turning 30. I hope to gain representation this year, and maybe sell something. I owe you a lot. I mean the tips and interviews and contests are great, but what you've done is to show me what's truly required of a screenwriter. I guess, in a Campbellian sense, you're my Mentor. Thanks, Scott.

Scott at 2014-02-08 00:29:21:

Adam, what a profound personal story. We humans are funny creatures. We can live with the knowledge that each of us has an expiration date... yet keep that awareness so far at bay, we go on as if that date with our own 'comet' will never come. Sometimes it takes a jolt or two to make us aware, like you, of what we have been missing and what we could be missing by not giving it our all. What's that refrain from Joni Mitchell? "Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got til it's gone." As I said in my OP, it saddens deeply to even THINK about someone who has a gift and doesn't seize upon it, who has a passion, yet doesn't summon the courage to take the other life path. Here you are, Adam. I know there are those who think life is all chance, but when I read your words, I could see this suffused in them: Destiny. Who knows where your path will lead you. But each day, you can wake up and go to sleep knowing this... You are on YOUR path! Godspeed, my friend. You and those like you are always welcome here.