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Friday, March 23, 2007-12:15 A.M. CDT

First of all, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to everyone who wrote and called me with condolences about my father.  I guess I've been very lucky that I come from a small family so I haven't had to deal with a lot of death in my time, so I'm somewhat inexperienced when it comes to such matters.  I always felt kind of "phony" when I offered condolences to others who had lost loved ones, but did it because it seemed like the thing to do.  I have learned through this experience that the condolences really do help the grieving person get through the emotions and feelings, and while I will miss my father until I join him in the afterlife, I don't feel so alone.  It was really quite humbling to see the number of people in my extended "comedy family" who took the time to write or call, and each one of you is a gift from God, as far as I'm concerned.  I love you and cherish you.

I'm in San Antonio, Texas, and just completed the second of seven shows this weekend.  So far, it's nothing special, a lot of tourists and sort of small attendances, but things ought to pick up over the weekend.  In the meantime, I'm keeping myself busy by beginning work on a screenplay.  I've never written one, so I'm doing it to see if I have any kind of flair for it.  If I do, I might be able to make some money at it, which would be good for my family, and if not, at least it will keep me out of trouble.

I had a couple of ideas for stories, but there are movies that came out recently that were very much like the movies I had planned to write, one was "Invincible" and the other was "We Are Marshall."  It was encouraging to me that I was thinking along the same lines in terms of telling a story that Hollywood judged worthwhile to make a film about, but at the same time, it showed me that I have to work a little harder to be original and hopefully still tell a good story with good characters that isn't so far off the beaten path of what Hollywood churns out that no one would want to take a chance on it.  The story I'm writing is loosely based on the real life circumstance that my wife and I go through living in our inner-city neighborhood.  My wife is the secretary for our local neighborhood association, and it's very frustrating for her because the meetings are poorly attended because most of the folks in our area are renters that have been placed by social services and they just don't care about improving the neighborhood because they have other challenges to face, or are just numbed by drugs and alcohol.

Anyway, my story is about a guy who finds himself in just such a neighborhood and he steps up and makes a difference to the people who live there by giving them hope.  In my fondest dreams, the film will do the same thing for city neighborhoods that the movie "John Q" did for universal health care.  Uh, actually, universal health care is still nonexistent, so maybe I should hope for more.  I don't have any fancy scriptwriting software, so I'm doing this the old-fashioned way, starting out with an outline and then fleshing out the scenes.  I don't think I'm very strong at dialogue, and all of the characters are probably going to sound like me, and I don't think that will be very good for the script.  I want the characters to sound good and organic, and not be sterotypes, and that's going to be the hardest part of this job.  I think if I approach this project with the "salami" technique, I should be able to knock it off in a year.  The salami technique is basically slicing up a big project (like salami on a meat slicer) into smaller increments, and dealing with them on a daily basis a little at a time, like eating an entire salami by having a couple of sandwiches each day until it's gone.  I guess the problem is that after consuming an entire salami, you'd be sick of it, and if I can't finish a screenplay without getting tired of writing, I'm basically screwed.

I'm going to call it a night in a little bit and get a good night's rest....I've got a project and a full head of steam, and I want to really get up tomorrow and write some more and get into this thing deep before I get bored with it....I think I might have some low-level ADHD or something, and that's no good for a writer working in a long-form structure.

Good night all.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY