Got a couple of emails this week from readers who caught problems in the script's first three pages. One was a geographical foul-up: I seemingly had the Toluca Substation in two different neighborhoods at once. Not good for a screenplay that purports to be in and of L.A., so I quickly made a slight change to straighten that out.
The other was a little more problematic. Some of the early intrigue had been built around Mayor Russell Napolitano catching a whiff of methane gas in an abandoned tunnel, then preventing a clueless junkie from potentially causing an explosion. But my correspondent, being better informed of his science basics than I, informed me that methane is an odorless gas. So I was forced to revise the scene, and in doing so, I think I made it more visually exciting and dynamic.
All writers use friends, colleagues and yes, even production executives as extra sets of eyes before handing in their material. Writing a script out here in the open is risky. Thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of readers will be instantly viewing our work before it's vetted by anyone but me -- and I don't even have a handle on my high school chemistry. The good news is, if you think of all those people as collaborators, we've got a hell of a brain trust to work with.
The Comments feature has not yet been activated here; we're hoping to get that taken care of soon. In the meantime, drop me an email if you have questions or suggestions. We won't always be able to correct mistakes, but if they're pointed out early enough, maybe we can. Maybe we can even turn them into improvements.
