Well Warren Sapp thinks the Niners have improved a lot. He said something to the effect that 'good teams shouldn't get better like that.' But with the arms race escalating with Seattle, there's no way the Niner's could be passive. Strange the way things are mirrored between the teams. Intense personal enmity between coaches from high profile college teams of the same conference. They each move to an NFC West team around the same time. Each made pretty radical qb changes very unexpectedly, placing faith in the same prototype model. Each had near miraculous playoff comebacks against Atlanta. Each make deals for a wide receiver and defensive lineman on the same days. This is getting spooky ....

They used to say the NFC East was the prestige/most competitive division. The 'black and blue' NFC central division was looked at for fierce rivalries for a long time. The next few years will be pretty competitive and tough in our own neck of the woods. Don't forget the Rams are incrementally getting better and the Cards have nowhere to go but up. If the Niner's can win in double digits next year it might be more impressive than one would think.

A real great documentary on Eddie DeBartolo on the NFL network. Lots of insights and memories.

Kevin and Win, re inside movie stuff. Thanks for your thoughts. I'll relate some of my detailed adventures when the football news hits a lull. I can't say as much as I'd like, but I'll try to say enough in an overview now to give a broad picture. An innocent bit of conversational musing on my part at a small Hollywood party two years ago sent me spinning down a very convoluted trail.

The action/adventure genre is exactly what I'm involved with now. Hardly a choice I ever would have considered on my own, but when one thing leads to another and more and more people get involved, strange doorways open. My thoughts caught the attention of a couple of partners in a rising entertainment company. Content really is king at a certain level, and when you can tantalize the right people with visions of the next big franchise blockbuster, they listen. But then you have to deliver the goods.

I wrote what I thought was some great stuff - mixing and blending different action elements with witty and engaging dialogue, but it wasn't what this specific entertainment company wanted. They loved the beginning, but didn't get where I went afterwards. My swings from subtlety to slapstick humour eluded their sensibilities, I guess.

I took it personally with my offended artistic temperment cursing steadily under my breath at these illiterate Philistines. But then a light went on in my head. This isn't to please myself. It's a business. About making money. And an opportunity for me to get my foot in the door and maybe do more personally pleasing things in the future. But this story now has to appeal to a certain demographic first, and then hopefully reach beyond. So I changed my mindset and took more commercial advice. A year later I totally reconstructed everything except the introductory scenes and wrote a very different story. The one mantra I kept hearing was that "audiences have to fall in love with the main character." So that also was a guideline.

So I worked and slaved over this and sent it in a few weeks ago. And now the partners in the company are really happy with the story I delivered to them But the way things work now is that 'reading a script' is a thing of the past. You have to have visuals and music tell the story in a couple of minutes. And you have to know who you want in the cast. No room for ambiguity or generalities. It was kind of surreal going through current Hollywood names and considering the positives and negatives, but our ideal cast is damn good. All known names, but not mega superstars. There are budget considerations.

I was surprised by learning that many projects are sold just by creating trailers and showing them to investors. Sometimes the actors will make the trailer for free if they're given a percentage of the final product. Sometimes even a mock-up graphic poster will be used to create an image that captivates the intended persons. Kind of a new twist on the 'spec script' concept. So besides a written story I created a really good slideshow. Luckily, we have on board a fantastic musical composer who studied/worked under John Williams. He has credits on dozens of major movies, including Argo. He's a personal friend of one of the partners, and has created some cues and incidental music for this project that I used in the slideshow.

So to this point, I've done my part. I created the story out of nothing, wrote it, created the characters, the plot and so on. None of these other people would have had a clue on their own how to combine originality with the conventional elements of the genre. But the way the business works, I'll be low man on the totem pole. There are only six credits allowed for writing on any given movie. And once investors get involved, they use things like that for their own vanity. Someone invests millions and wants his wife to have her name on the credits? Are you going to say no? Other writers tweak and edit. If they have seniority in the business, they get more money and credit and on and on. At least this business side was explained very bluntly to me so there won't be any surprises. But they also need me for future sequels. I've already explained that I can give them at least five sequel/prequel stories that I have the expertise for that no one else does. They tell me I could be "doing this for the next ten years" if things work out. A big if, obviously. If I can get some formal credits, get into the Writer's Guild and pocket a bit of loot then I'll be pretty satisfied.

The last communication I had was about a week ago about "assembling a killer team on a killer project" with 2014 set as a tentative starting point. As cynical as I am sometimes, these guys have been honest with me, and they have some big A list connections. I wish I could drop some names, but maybe later down the road. There are also "Chinese investors" who got an early word about this project that are sniffing around. I even tweaked the story to add some Asian flavour to the mix when I heard that! I think my slideshow is being used as template now in an animation studio to make it more professional, and no doubt other interventions and reconstructions will occur along the way. As soon as I can share some of this publicly I'll put out links. I can't even mention it on Facebook because of certain sensitivities.

All in all, I'm pretty please with myself. It's been a great creative challenge, and allowed me to branch into things I haven't done before. On the creative level I don't feel intimidated or incompetent, just inexperienced. But I adapt and learn very fast. And my academic credentials have also helped me with certain social introductions and given me some bonus credibility.Not bad at my near-retirement age. In fact, I really love L.A. because no matter how old anyone is, there's a certain perpetual creative surge that envelopes anyone involved in the field. It's a longshot that this project will actually unfold as we hope, but even getting this far has been a blast!