I am so blown away at the timing of the Universe right now! Today, July 3rd, 2026, the World Rugby Museum just posted about my Dad, his jacket, and the collection I donated, and it's making me cry happy tears! This is so going in my Pitch Deck now! This is the post from the World Rugby Museum with a photo of my dad's jacket. https://www.facebook.com/wrugbymuseum/posts/pfbid0vLxEuWSJuYBryyt3uY2YEXnoDtBV3SRx551N5FidsksEto8FMrBDtio9vPkUHpZYl This is the blog the Director wrote about my dad, his jacket, my team, and their wild episode of eating wine glasses at the banquet dinner in Leningrad in 1978, in this way: "With B.A.T.S., Markson had his work cut out. In true rugby style, he was as often to be found treating extreme hangovers as he was physical injuries. In later years, during a memorable trip into the Soviet Union, specialist aid had to be administered to the B.A.T.S. team after several members accidentally ate wine glasses. Markson was, perhaps fortunately, absent on that occasion." They didn't do it accidentally; they did it to intimidate the KGB agents, one of whom was Putin at the time, but he didn't want to inspire others to do this on rugby tours, very nice of him! In my documentary film, "Organized Mayhem: The B.A.T.S. Rugby Club Story" on YouTube, the guys describe the what and why, and the disastrous results when one player didn't understand the how. https://worldrugbymuseum.com/from-the-vaults/museum-collection/trainer-of-bats?fbclid=IwY2xjawS013lleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFsUlNqMEtwWWZORDFCYXF6c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHkXR_1vMvgSonkOZGM4l7mtFC8hj-id2mtF_4tcEmvTolToUsUSln2n58gaB_aem_lf-aQcxB4F1lgJ1GpPU69w

@David Stem, I've noticed that friends and family are often the last people to see an artist's potential. Familiarity seems to get in the way. It reminds me of the passage where Jesus says a prophet is not without honor except in his own hometown. I'm obviously not comparing myself to Jesus—only wondering if the principle about familiarity applies to artists too. Do you think there's truth to that? Even a yes or no would be appreciated. Jason

Most screenwriters are formatting before their character is alive. The problem is that format feels like progress. INT. DINER - NIGHT. Clean margins. Courier 12. It looks like a real script, so you start defending it. That leads to months polishing dialogue and protecting scenes built on an engine that was never running. Ninety pages that look like a movie and feel like nothing. Technically perfect. Emotionally dead. And you can't figure out why nobody leans in. // I know because I did it for years. I moved to Hollywood at 22. The Rugrats Movie came when I was 33. In between: - Three and a half years in aerospace, where I thought I'd die of boredom - Journalism - Advertising - Sketch comedy Every job built a skill. None of it coalesced. Because at the keyboard I did what you're probably doing right now. I ran to the script. I told myself I'd find the story in the drafting. That wasn't a process. That was me treating my ADHD. // Then Sherry Lansing, the President of Paramount, wouldn't let me. She made my writing partner and me write the treatment over and over. And over. She wouldn't let me run to the pages. She made me find the story. The story came from character. And once it was right, the screenplay emerged from it. First draft in five weeks. The notes went from "there's a lot of great stuff here" to "you've written a beautiful story and you should be very proud." That movie opened at #1, beat Will Smith's Enemy of the State, and made $100 million. Eleven years of skills finally coalesced, because someone held my feet to the fire. // So here's what I'd do instead. Build the character before you build a single scene. - The Wound - The Lie - The small life they've settled for - The hunger underneath the plot Then forge the whole movie in prose, a treatment and then a scriptment, while it's still soft enough to change. This is because a living character generates the story. Structure stops being a checklist you force from outside. It becomes pressure the character produces from inside. The scenes have to exist, because the character makes them.

Does anyone you ever get emotional while you’re writing? Like, actually cry? I’ve noticed it happens to me most when I’m really visualizing a scene as a director—almost like I’m watching the finished movie in my head. It’s not even necessarily because the scene is sad. Sometimes it’s just because it suddenly feels real, like I’m witnessing it instead of inventing it. I’m curious if anyone else experiences this, or if your process is completely different. What does it feel like for you when you know you’re really “inside” a scene? The attached image is part of my conversation with my ChatGPT lol.

Now... How are you trying to figure out how to tell it? And what's holding you back?