Author: Donald L. Vasicek

Award-winning writer/filmmaker Donald L. Vasicek studied producing, directing and line producing at the Hollywood Film Institute under the acclaimed Dov Simens and at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. He studied screenwriting at The Complete Screenplay, Inc., with Sally Merlin, daughter of the famed Hollywood Merlin family of screenwriters and writers, as his mentor. Don has taught, mentored, and is a script consultant for over 300 writers, directors, producers, actors and production companies. He has also acted in NBC’s “Mystery of Flight 1501”, ABC’s Father Dowling starring Thomas Bosley, and Red-Handed Productions’ “Summer Reunion.” These activities have resulted in his involvement in over 100 movies during the past 23 years, from major studios to independent films including MGM’s $56 million “Warriors of Virtue”, Paramount Classic’s “Racing Lucifer”, American Picture’s “The Lost Heart” and “Born To Kill” starring the Charles Bronson of Korea, Bobby Kim, and his internationally-known brother, Richard, who directed, Incline Productions, Inc.’s “Born To Win”, 20th Century Fox’s “Die Hard II” starring Bruce Willis with Rennie Harlan as director, and Joel Silver as producer, Olympus Films+, LLC’s “Haunted World” with Emmy-nominated PBS Producer Alison Hill, and Olympus Films+, LLC’s “Faces”, “Oh, The Places You Can Go” and the award-winning “The Sand Creek Massacre” documentary film. Don also has written and published over 500 books, short stories and articles. His books include “How To Write, Sell, And Get Your Screenplays Produced” and “The Write Focus.” He has been a guest screenwriting and filmmaking columnist for Hollywood Lit. Sales, Moondance International Film Festival’s e-zine, Screenwriter’s Forum, Screenplace, Screenplayers.Net, Screenwriters.Net, Screenwriters Utopia, Spraka & Kinsla (Swedish), Inkwell Watch, and Ink On the Brain. Writing recognition includes Houston’s WorldFest International Film Festival, Chesterfield’s Writer’s Film Project, Writer’s Digest, The Sundance Institute, The Writer’s Network, and the Rocky Mountain Writer’s Guild, Inc. Don completed producing “The Sand Creek Massacre”, a documentary film project that includes the completed and award-winning documentary short, a book, a classroom video, Interactive Media, a study guide, and a lesson plans. The film is being distributed by Films Media Group. Don is on the board of directors of the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston. He is the founder and owner of Olympus Films+, LLC, a global writing and filmmaking company and a screenwriting volunteer on AllExperts.com. Don’s screenwriting agent is Robin Kaver of the Robert Freedman Dramatic Agency, Inc., 1501 Broadway, Suite 2301 New York, NY 10036, 212-840-5751.
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“ALREADY DONE”

During the visualization portion of my Mind-Programming CDs and videos, I ask listeners to imagine what they desire as if it were already so, and to do this with emotion. As an example I’ve used for 30 years: If you’re programming to lose weight, visualize yourself stepping upon your bathroom scale and watch the dial settle upon the weight you desire to be. Then imagine yourself excitedly telling your partner or a friend that you have reached your goal and how good it feels.

Visualization with emotion is the most powerful part of a mind-programming session.

To bring some of this thinking up to speed, I’ll share some recent awareness that excited me when I spent a weekend as a participant in a “Divine Matrix” seminar conducted by author Gregg Braden. Gregg’s message was a composite of his books, “The God Code,” “The Isaiah Effect” and “Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer.”

Much of Gregg’s communication relates to his long search through ancient writings and sacred texts for a more effective form of prayer. As much as I am into mind-programming, I had not considered that classic prayer — asking God for what you want — actually cancels out your request. From a programming perspective, you begin by acknowledging you do not have what you want.

Here’s an excerpt from Gregg’s latest book, “Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer.” He describes accompanying a friend on a hike through the NM high desert. During a time of drought, his friend David wanted to pray for rain within a medicine wheel. “I wasn’t prepared for what I saw next. I watched carefully as David removed his shoes, gently placed his naked feet into the circle, and honored the four directions and all of his ancestors. Slowly, he placed his hands in front of his face in a praying position, closed his eyes and became motionless. Oblivious to the heat of the midday desert sun, his breathing slowed and became barely noticeable. After only a few moments, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes to look at me, and said, ‘Let’s go. Our work is finished here.’

“Expecting to see dancing, or at least some chanting, I was surprised by how quickly this prayer began and then ended. ‘Already?’ I asked. ‘I thought you were going to pray for rain!’

“David’s reply to my question has been the key that has helped so many to understand this kind of prayer. As he sat on the ground to lace up his shoes, David looked up at me and smiled. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I said that I would pray rain. If I have prayed for rain, it would never happen.’”

Gregg asked, “‘If you didn’t pray for rain, then what did you do?’

“‘It’s simple,’ he replied. ‘I began to have the feeling of what rain feels like. I felt the feeling of rain on my body, and what it feels like to stand with my naked feet in the mud in our village plaza because there has been so much rain. I smelled the smells of rain on the earthen walls in our village, and felt what it feels like to walk through fields of corn chest high because there as been so much rain.’”

David had used his thoughts, feelings and emotions to perceive what he desired as an already accomplished fact. Although Gregg does not go into it in the book, in the seminar he said the following day it started to rain and did not stop until after the rain itself had become a problem.

In another segment of the seminar, Gregg showed a video of a woman with inoperable cancer being healed at a medical clinic in mainland China. A female technician used an ultra-sound monitor allowing us to see what was happening within the patient’s body as three doctors chanted something to the effect of the healing being “ALREADY DONE.” Within 2 1/2 minutes the cancer disappeared. The success rate of such healings is over 90 percent if the patient is willing to establish new patterns of thinking, diet and exercise.

-Dick Sutphen
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“Dick Sutphen’s Metaphysical World” radio show airs on www.contacttalkradio.com 11 AM — 12 Noon (Pacific Time) every Wednesday. (This is the most popular show on the CTR network). Listen live on the web or download an archive show. We’re also live on an FM station in Seattle and we’re on satellite. In addition to our regular listeners, thousands have subscribed to have iTunes download the show into their iPods. Of the 58 shows on the network, Dick’s is #1. To visit his page: http://www.contacttalkradio.com/hosts/dicksutphen.htm /
iPod owners who would like to have the show downloaded: http://www.contacttalkradio.com/podcasts/Dick_Sutphen’s_Metaphysical_World.xml

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“How to Choose a Good Script Consultant”

Doc Holiday's Grave in Glenwood Springs, Colorado

Screenwriting, as movies, are subjective. What one person likes, another person does not like. If you’ve ever discussed a movie with someone, you know what I mean.

The same goes with script consultants. What each one sees in a script might be different than what each other one sees in a script. So, you should find out what kind of genres/movies they like the best. If their interests fit the genre of your script, then, they will be more objective when helping you out with your script because they have a deeper knowledge of the genre and what works and what doesn’t work with that particular genre.

Another thing to look for when choosing a good script consultant is where his/her focus is. If they have a background in working on high concept projects, then, their focus will be on high concept projects. They will be looking for “cookie cutter” elements in your screenplay. In other words, high concept movies are movies that are the same as other movies, the only difference being a unique and fresh approach to the same genre.

For example, with high concept action flicks, they will compare your script to successful box office action movies, if your script is an action script. The same applies to romantic comedies, animation, etc. The more elements they see missing in your script, the higher price they’re going to charge you to help “fix” your script so that it fits the mold of a successful action script.

The problem with this is that the more they have you fit your story and characters into a successful box office mold, the more it takes your story and characters away from you, your original intention for your script. And, the more danger it puts your script in with respect to being tight, rhythmic, the appropriate tone and mode, and a smooth flow with respect to story, characterization, dialogue, etc.

So, choosing a good script consultant boils down to why you are writing a script and what you want to achieve with it.  Box office success? Acclaim for its story and characterization? A combination of both? Whatever. The fine point of choosing a good script consultant is for you to know what your goal is with your script.

I hope this has been of help to you.

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
The Zen of Writing
http://michaelc.nextmp.net/wordpress
dvasicek@earthlink.net

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“How to Write Theme”

If you eat a tortilla with cannabis butter, within 15 minutes, your body will feel an electrical-like blitzkrieg coursing your body. This charge is a dichotomy. It reverberates throughout your organs, muscles, nerves, etc. Your body is charged. Yet, your mind, which is part of your body for those of you who failed Biology 101, relaxes. And you are fine for the time.

Can you name the theme for this story? What defines the story? One word? Cannabis.

With theme, whether you’re writing a t.v. commercial, an online ad, a short story, a poem, a book about engineering, a novel, an article for a legal journal, a screenplay, etc., theme is what holds everything together that you are writing. Just like the cannabis theme for the above story, without cannabis in the story, it would be anyone’s guess as to what the theme is.

In my Disney-type screenplay, “The Real Ghost”, a boy is racing his bicycle in the dark night to sneak a meet with his girlfriend. It is a small town. As he whizzes past the corner convenience store, one end of a sign advertising Marlboro cigarettes, drops. The sign swings and clangs in a quiet breeze. Frightened by the silence in the street and his not supposed to be doing this attitude, with no one present, the boy glances over his shoulder at it. What is the theme here?

“The Real Ghost” is about a teen boy who tells stories that aren’t true. At the meeting place, his girlfriend yet to arrive in the yard of an abandoned house, he suddenly sees Babe Ruth appear. When he tells everyone in town of this sighting, they accuse him of lying, like he did last summer when he told everyone he saw Sammy Mango walking in Butch Carlisle’s yard at 1 a.m. Seems Sammy had been dead for several years, the victim of a falling pallet of landscaping rocks while sneaking a toke of a joint at the local lumber yard.

Has anyone guessed the theme of this movie yet? Lying is the theme of the movie. The Marlboro sign dropping and swinging reflects the theme of lying. The boy has lied to his parents. He told them he was going over to the gym to shoot baskets. They had forbidden him from seeing his girlfriend, because her father is the mayor, and the mayor does nothing in the town but blow smoke. They don’t want him influencing their boy in anyway, particularly since their boy already blows smoke himself, just to get attention. The clanging sign is a warning to the boy that what he is doing is wrong because he lied to his parents, and the boy doesn’t heed the warning.

By telling everyone that he saw Babe Ruth, the boy’s problems about lying escalate.

The fine point of theme is that it should be reflected in some form, physical, or mental,
in every change of location or time regarding what you’re writing. Every time! It matters not what you are writing. It matters yes that you paste your theme on your and in your characters, their surroundings, and their time in what your are writing. This approach to writing theme will have the same effect that the roots of a tree has. Without the roots, there would be no tree. Without theme, there is no story. Without story, there is just a blob of words.  Without a tree, there is no shade.

Warning: Watch out for falling pallets of landscaping rock.

Donald L. Vasicek at Wrigley Field in Chicago