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The trailer for Flightplan had me excited about seeing the film. Sean Bean. Jodie Foster. Action in tight places. Sounds like a great thrill ride.

And it was. For awhile.

Flightplan gets off to a great start. Jodie Foster is Kyle Pratt (the role was originally written for a male lead, and when Foster came on board, no one bothered changing Kyle to a woman’s name), a designer of fancy passenger airplanes whose husband recently and mysteriously fell to his death from their apartment building in Berlin. Now Foster and her daughter are taking the husband’s/daddie’s casket back to the States for burial. It’s a long flight. And three hours into it, Julia, the daughter disappears. Foster becomes frantic when she can’t find her, and the suspense begins to build. None of the passengers saw the little girl. Ever. And the captain and flight attendants begin to believe that she was never on the plane. Even Foster begins to wonder if she is losing her mind.

Then the film twists and the reveal is so ridiculously implausible that I lost total interest. I don’t want to reveal too much here in case you want to see it, but the last act is one of the most disappointing I’ve seen. Talk about silly. C-

Last night I returned from Western Illinois University where I had spent the two previous days. The school was doing a production of my one-act play Lifeloop based on the short story by Orson Scott Card of the same name. D.C. Wright, a friend of mine from BYU who is a theater professor at the university, flew me out to see the show and meet with a few of the students.

It was a fabulous production and I enjoyed seeing different actors breath life into it. The set was more dressed than the original production and included a circular fringed sofa and a chair in the shape of a giant hand. The cast was strong and fully committed. The crew was very kind and all performed their tasks just as expected and unseen. After the preview (I wasn’t there for any of the actual performances), which included a small audience, D.C. had me do a brief Q&A.

While at the school I also visited two acting classes, a playwriting class, and an improv club. The other faculty were very hospitable and all welcomed me warmly. I thought that very impressive considering I’m someone of such little consequence. In the playwriting class I attempted to do “1000 Ideas in an Hour,” an ideation session that Scott Card does whenever he visits schools, but this was my first attempt at conducting the activity, and it didn’t go as well as I had hoped. Either I asked the wrong questions or it doesn’t work as well for constructing a play. Probably the former. It’s supposed to work for all forms of storytelling. I just did it wrong. In any case, it fell a little flat. Fortunately I didn’t mention that it was Scott’s activity and thereby spoil his good name.

The other classes went off without a hitch, and I was more than a little relieved that I had a decent answer to all the questions they posed to me.

I was surprised to discover, however, that most of the acting students — be they undergrad or MFA-seekers — knew little about the acting environment of LA. Basic knowledge about unions and headshots and agents and managers was all new to them. Lauren told me that as a theater student at BYU, she never received any practical training either. D.C. said that such was the case in every university. They’ll teach the craft, the technique, the various theories, but they won’t teach the day-to-day skills every surviving actor needs: how to get an agent, how to audition, and most importantly how to sell yourself in a highly competitive talent-based field.

The students were great. They smiled and shook my hand and thanked me for coming. I was right at home with them and more than once felt a pang for the glory days of BYU theater. There’s something about theater people. We all share a love of the stage and therefore seem to bond immediately. Either that or we’re all crazy. All in all it was a wonderful trip, and I enjoyed myself immensely.

I felt my first California earthquake on Saturday night just after 10:00 p.m. Lauren had dosed off on the couch, and I was up reading. The boys were asleep of course. It was a small one, only 3.0 on the Richter scale, and hit us with a single jolt, as if a truck had hit the building. I got to my feet. My heart was racing. It woke Lauren, and after I assured her the boys were fine, we turned on the news and listened to the report that the quake had struck two miles west of Santa Monica–or right in our vicinity.

This is only my second earthquake. The first I felt while on my mission in Venezuela. At the time we lived on the fourth or fifth floor of an apartment building, so we really felt it. But it too was a light quake. I’ve yet to feel a big one. And have no desire to do so.

I enjoy reading screenplays, but they’re so incredibly hard to come by that I don’t read nearly as many as I would like. A few studios have publishing subsidiaries, and occasionally they’ll publish a nicely bound, printed version of the script, but those are rare. (I got a copy of “Seabiscuit” and “Good Will Hunting” this way.) Ebay also has scripts–usually from people within the studio system who photocopy a few and then sell them at the auction–but these too are rare. Plus I’ve learned that some ebay screenplays are actually not the script at all, but rather someone’s dictation as they watched the film. Hardly what I’m looking for.

The best way to acquire a script I’ve discovered is at the used bookstore near my house here in LA. Every year during Oscar season, studios send out “For Your Consideration” scripts to voting members of the Academy. The idea is that the voter will read the script, find it Oscar worthy and either nominate it to the Academy or vote for it once the Academy has picked the candidates.

Oftentimes these “For Your Consideration” scripts are nicely bound–or at least have a hard-paper cover and backing–so they’ll have a lengthy shelf life. But even more important: some of the voters who receive these scripts don’t want them, and take them to the bookstore for in-store credit.

Enter me. For a mere ten bucks a pop, I can buy the screenplay.

My most recent purchase was “The Incredibles,” which I consider one of the best–if not THE best–film last year. I loved reading the script, not only because I found lines of dialogue that never made it into the finished film, but also because I love reading the action–or what in the theater world we call “stage directions.”

Brad Bird is a whiz, and describes the action with such clarity and pizazz that the image he creates with words is as clear as the one we see in the film. Plus he does it with such brevity that the speed of the read matches the film as well.

And for me, that’s the key to great script writing: reading the script is as an enjoyable an experience as watching the finished film itself. It moves with the same pace. It has the same action. All the beats and moments we cherish are there.

But there aren’t enough on the market. If the used book store doesn’t have it, I’m out of luck. Samuel French carries a few screenplays, but not the ones I really want, like Serenity, for example. I’d give anything to get my hands on the screenplay. But unless Joss Whedon thinks it could be nominated (which it never would since it’s a–gasp–sci-fi flick), I’ll probably never see it. And that really bums me out.

You can’t go wrong with matching shirts. Especially when they’re filled with such adorable cherubim like you see here. You can’t see it in this picture but Jake’s got a bad bruise on his left cheek. He fell and hit the coffee table yesterday. It wasn’t pretty. And nor is the bruise. Lauren and I have since moved the coffee table into our room until Jake has mastered walking. We did the same when Luke was first beginning to walk, and it saved many injuries, I’m sure. Plus we have a big open space in the living room now for beach ball volleyball, one of our new favorite family pastimes.

Got a new freelance job today with a quick turnaround. It seems the Church is producing some more Homefront ads–but this time for the US Latin Market, so they’ll be in Spanish. Should be fun to work on. I’ve always loved the Church’s Homefront public service announcements. The series is one of–if not THE–longest running PSA campaigns in broadcast history. Anyway, my ideas go straight to the Church’s AV Department. The spots used to be produced by Bonneville Communications, but that dissolved several years ago. I’m likely one of many writers pitching ideas, so maybe nothing will come of it. We’ll see.