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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“The Zen of Seduction”

The Touch of Love The Touch of Love

“Come, come closer to me.
I want to smell your hair.”

Her eyes blinked challenge.

“Here, let me…”

I reached for her sharp-bridged nose.
Just as I posied my finger, to slide it
down her face just west of her nose…

“…No, no…”

I passed my finger gently down
the west side of her face. Ever
so gently.

“Marble smoothness, tight, flawless,
taut,” I said.

Her eyes watched my eyes. We
were microsms of fire. Explosions
marred an otherwise boring night.

“Your finger competes with time,”
she almost moaned.

“What do you mean?

“If you don’t kiss me soon, I will
let someone else share my fire.”

I really smelled her then. Lavenders
in Spring. Her eyes, prisons of love.
Her hair, silk dreams. Her mouth,
full with cherry-colored lipstick,
boiled into mine.

A volcanic eruption stilled the blazing
night. Her breasts, grapefruits, soft,
but hard, pliable but firm. As I moved
my mouth and tongue over her tight
stomach, a fragrance, nearly misty-like,
entered my senses.

It was then, at that time, that time whizzed
past me to a time where I felt safe and
comfortable and happy.

Afterwards, she nuzzled me and said,
“You’re just the man for whom I’ve
been searching, my soul mate.”

With that, she hugged and kissed me.

As I fell backwards into a field of daises
growing out of water. this feeling
of tremendous relief swept over me.
There was no splash, but a lot of other
things.

“I don’t believe in soul mates.” My
heart thumped against me like a
stick hitting a drum.

“Well then, we’ll see about that.”

We were off, talking then, as though we
had waited and saved everything up

we wanted to tell each other for
years for a moment just like this one.

THE END

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“Write, Writing, Short Stories, Zen”

Til Death Do Us Part
by Don Vasicek

Vermillion Capulet’s hit with a hammer eyes jerked. The pain, evident in the crimson edges and disbelief, catapulted as she bungled the ring in her hand. The metallic noise struck the dead cement floor. It cracked the noiselessness like a car horn blown in her ear. She gripped her head tightly. Her picket fence teeth stood like a barrier behind her cherry red lips. If you looked closely, you could see an edge of blood in the left corner of her mouth.
Recent, ruby and scintillating against the churlish light, it shoved itself at her animated skin as though it had a deadline to meet.
Vermillion urged her tongue. From somewhere not out of the mystical abyss inside her mouth, she flickered over the blood. Near at hand, a coffee-maker perked.
The Dutch chocolate coffee odor bit at her gaze like an intrusion into the Vatican. The coffee spewed over the lidless glass pot. She watched it splatter on the floor. Enough so that she guarded it’s spitting dark splurges on a human hand.
She inspected her hand. A pane of mirror coffee pot lid plopped blood. A droplet at a time.
Vermillion’s stare chased them. One. Two. Three and so on. They began to suffocate the ring which had come to rest on the outstretched palm of the hand proximal to a matching one on the ring finger which would experience rigor mortis promptly. Suddenly, a telephone rang.
One of those presumptuous sounds, like an ultimatum.
“The Capulet’s, this is Vermillion,” Vermillion stammered.
“A thousand and one are waiting, Vermillion.”
Vermillion pressed at her side. Blood, almost black, saw the world around her side. Not caught up by the snow-white dress, the splotch continued to spread like black death seeping on every side of a meat dealer’s knife.
“Seems Harvester had his lascivious eye on another, Boris,” Vermillion uttered.
“Obsequies to remarriage?”
“You might say I lost my ring somewhere in the vital fluid of life.” Vermillion slumped to the floor.
The phone followed her. It clumped on the hand of blood. The ring there, jumped like a bean, and landed on Vermillion’s heart, just above her laid open rib cage.

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

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“Action, Sex, Violence, Hollywood Zen”

To write a box office hit screenplay, you
should do some research first before you
decide to write a screenplay. Passion for
your subject matter plays an integral role
in the writing of your screenplay, but
common sense dictates that you put certain
elements in your screenplay if you want to
sell and get your screenplay produced.
Otherwise, it will be an exercise in futility
as far as getting optioned, selling and/or
getting produced.

If you research the kinds of genres that
have been the largest Hollywood box office
hits, you will see that action,
violence and sex, however subtle these
elements may be in these films, dominate
the box office.

According to FilmSite.org’s listing, the all-time
greatest box office hits are:

1. “Gone With the Wind” (1939)
2. “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” (1977)
3. “The Sound of Music” (1965)
4. “E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982)
5. “The Ten Commandments” (1956)
6. “Titanic” (1997)
7. “Jaws” (1975)
8. “Doctor Zhivago” (1965)
9. “The Exorcist” (1973)
10. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937)
11. “101 Dalmatians” (1961)
12. “Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back” (1980)
13. “Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back” (1959)
14. “Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi” (1983)
15. “The Sting” (1973)
16. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981)
17. “Jurassic Park” (1993)
18. “The Graduate” (1967)
19. “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” (1999)
20. “Fantasia” (1940)
21. “The Godfather” (1972)
22. “Forrest Gump” (1994)
23. “Mary Poppins” (1964)
24. “The Lion King” (1994)
25. “Grease” (1978)
26. “Thunderball” (1965)
27. “The Jungle Book” (1967)
28. “Sleeping Beauty” (1959)
29. “Shrek 2” (2004)
30. “Ghostbusters” (1984)
31. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969)
32. “Love Story” (1970)
33. “Spider-Man” (2002)
34. “Independence Day” (1996)
35. “Home Alone” (1990)
36. “Pinocchio” (1940)
37. “Cleopatra” (1963)
38. “Beverly Hills Cop” (1984)
39. “Goldfinger” (1964)
40. “Airport” (1970)
41. “American Graffiti” (1973)
42. “The Robe” (1953)
43. “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” (2006)
44. “Around the World in 80 Days” (1956)
45. “Bambi” (1942)
46. “Blazing Saddles” (1974)
47. “Batman” (1989)
48. “The Bells of St. Mary’s” (1945)
49. “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003)
50. “The Towering Inferno” (1974)
51. “Spider-Man 2” (2004)
52. “My Fair Lady” (1964)
53. “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1952)
54. “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978)
55. “The Passion of the Christ” (2004)
56. “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith”(2005)
57. “Back to the Future” (1985)
58. “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (2002)
59. “The Sixth Sense” (1999)
60. Superman (1978)
61. Tootsie (1982)
62. “Smokey and the Bandit” (1977)
63. “Finding Nemo” (2003)
64. “West Side Story” (1961)
65. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001)
66. “Lady and the Tramp” (1955)
67. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977/1980)
68. “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962)
69. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975)
70. “Rocky” (1976)
71. “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946)
72. “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972)
73. “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001)
74. “Twister” (1996)
75. “Men in Black” (1997)
76. “The Bridge On The River Kwai” (1957)
77. “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (1963)
78. “Swiss Family Robinson” (1960)
79. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975)
80. “M*A*S*H” (1970)
81. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984)
82. “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones” (2002)
83. “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993)
84. “Aladdin” (1992)
85. “Ghost” (1990)
86. “Duel in the Sun” (1946)
87. “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003)
88. “House of Wax” (1953)
89. “Rear Window” (1954)
90. “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” (1997)
91. “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989)
92. “Spider-Man 3” (2007)
93. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991)
94. “Sergeant York” (1941)
95. “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000)
96. “Toy Story 2” (1999)
97. “Top Gun” (1986)
98. “Shrek” (2001)
99. “Shrek the Third” (2007)
100. “The Matrix Reloaded” (2003)

Examine each one of these films for sex,
action, and violence. They are present.
Locate these elements in each film.
Utilize what you discover for your own
screenplay and you will enhance your
chances for success. Otherwise, find
another job, or write simply for the
sheer pleasure of writing.

It’s that basic.

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://michaelc.nextmp.net/wordpress
dvasicek@earthlink.netsbox o