MovieBytes Interview:
Screenwriter Billy Maddox

An interview with screenwriter Billy Maddox regarding the Gimme Credit Writing Competition.

A: It's called The Deceptive Detective, and it's about five pages long.

A: I like my contests like my women.

Grammatically incorrect.

This was the first time, but I get the feeling it won't be the last.

A: As long as I'm paid, you'll hear no complaints from me. Fifty a day, plus expenses.

But cross me, and that's another kettle of fish.

Like the ones you'll see swimming around your ankles on the floor of the Hudson, if you catch what I'm drifting.

A: Feedback is for the weak.

I didn't ask, and they didn't offer.

I look at your feedback, and I see nothing but a black hole filled with the sorrows of yesterday.

A hole to a void.

Feedback?

I don't need no stinking feedback.

A: Where the hell do you market a five page script?

I was beginning to think this whole thing was a sham, a fraud, a forgery, a fairy tale.

Who would contact me, and why?

Tell me that, and then we'll both know more than we did five pages ago.

A: I was born on a dark and stormy night on the wrong side of the tracks with a plastic spork in my mouth.

The usual cliches.

But it wasn't yesterday, and I had a pretty good grip on the rails of that turnip truck.

So if you're asking if I'm a virgin, well...

Let's just say I've been around the block but I can pretend if that'll make you feel more like a man.

A: The city of angels has been my home since I was a cherub.

And that was a long time ago, my friend.

A long time ago.

A: Wherever there's a contest that desperate writers enter, I'll be there. Wherever there's a suit givin' notes, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're blocked - I'll be in the way writers laugh when they're hungry an' they know residuals comin.' I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of one little screenwriter don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Some day you'll understand that, along with my lack of attribution. Here's looking at you kid.

Posted Thursday, August 24, 2006