“When I feel the powerful visions/Their fire has made alive/I wish I had that instinct—/I wish I had that drive”
—“Mission” from Hold Your Fire (1987); lyrics by Neil Peart
Two things have grown considerably in the fifteen or so years that I’ve been a screenwriter: the volume of material in my portfolio, and, correspondingly, my confidence in my creative skills.
With so many screenplays under my belt (I’ve lost count at this point), as well as two novels I’m readying for publication next year, I can look over my body of work and see the influences from—the echoes of—artists that inspired me in my formative years. I was in high school when I realized that the same wondrous mind was responsible for both Star Wars and Indiana Jones—who the hell was blessed with that kind of imagination?!—and spent a considerable portion of my adolescence studying the screenplays and biographies of George Lucas (those resources, mind you, were not easily available online at that time). One of my early stories during that period, long before fan fiction found a thriving forum on the Internet, was titled “Indiana Jones and the River Styx.” When my novels are published, I’ll cite specific influences that helped shape them here on the blog.
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