Wow! Hard to believe the site has been around for ten years.
It was a little over ten years ago when I started my new job as a tech writer for a large, North American telecommunications company. I was marveling at the work of one of the html coders who said to me, “This is easy. You can do this.”
With a little help from FrontPage, in the early hours of September 6th, 1998, I uploaded the site to Simplyscripts.home.att.net. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I finally got the domain Simplyscripts.com. You can see a late 2000 version of the site at archive.org – here. If you are curious about the origins of SimplyScripts, you can check out and interview Henrik Anttonen did about five years ago for currently hibernating Voice Over web magazine. Over the years the site has written up in places like The Guardian, AMC and Entertainment Weekly. But the best news I get is when I get an email from someone who has had their work options, sold or produced.
Thanks to everyone who has helped make the last ten years of running the site so much fun, entertaining and interesting. – Don
11 Comments so far
1.
Cindy
September 6th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Wow, that was different.
I didn’t recognize any of the names.
I saw there was a Goonies Part II, too, and it wasn’t Andy’s.
Happy Anniversary Don. 😉
2.
bert
September 6th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I spotted an “Alien” script from Robert Skott (aka Sniper), which is kind of funny. Wonder if it was any good?
Happy 10th!
3.
Yeaster
September 7th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Wow, ten years is a really time. Congrats!
Pray for ten more?
4.
Vern
September 7th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Ten years gone by. Here’s to many more. Cheers.
5.
Tod
September 7th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I don’t remember the first SS-version, but I remember the style in 2002 (and I still like it better)
Anyways… Congratulations!! – – I wonder how SimplyScripts will look like in 100 years or so.
6.
Benjamin
September 7th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Congratulations on 10 years. Time really flies when you’re doing what you love. Wishinn you 10 more! – B.
7.
Alan
September 8th, 2008 at 7:55 am
You have a typo. It says 2008 where it should say 1998. But yeah, SimplyScripts is one of my favorite sites on the internet. A lot of people from SimplyScripts have helped me, and I’ve helped a lot of people. Although a lot of the people who I’ve helped weren’t the people who helped me, lol. I think of it more on a “pay it forward” basis. Every time I’d post a new edit of a BANANA CHAN script or a script for another series of mine, or whatnot, I’d always daydream about some producer finding it. For the past year or so I’ve been exiled from the site because Don didn’t like it when I swore at some people who were being stupid. There are politics on this site, and Don does pick favorites. When one of his favorites is being stupid, you can’t point out their crap without getting banned. But I only point out their stupidity because I love them and I want to see them succeed. Some people are too stupid to understand axioms like the fact that “Infinite love is the only truth, everything else is illusion” (a quote from my favorite author David Icke). I hope that one day Don will understand that axiom and let me back on the site so that I can have hope again of someone finding my series Banana Chan on this site and producing it. I lost a lot of my hope and enthusiasm on the day when Don banned me. Most folks in my shoes would have committed suicide with no way to trace it back to Don (as I’ve been told by sympathizers, and I take their word), but I view dire situations as challenges to overcome. Suicide is absolutely stupid in all ways of looking at it, and I hope that none of the other people who Don banned have fallen victim to stupidity. I hope that a producer finds my scripts on my own web-site, or on this web-site if Don lets me return. And I hope that regardless of whether my scripts get produced because of this web-site or because of my own web-site, I hope that Don is proud of me because of the time when I was affiliated with this web-site. I am proud of Don for having this web-site for ten years. Happy ten. I’ll pop open a bottle of wine in your honor, big boy.
8.
James Hollister
September 9th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Congratulations and thanks for all your effort – ten years of SimplyScripts, that is awesome. Let’s hope for ten more!
Here’s to you Don
9.
Anonymous
September 13th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Simplyscripts.com… My haven from life when creativity strikes, thick with scripts to entertain all callers, a place where writers from every stratum can share their vice — I only wish that there were about 62 hours in each day; then I would dedicate more time to writing which would delight me tremendously.
Don, put simply, I respect your “gangsta.” Hope your site will always be available for the many interested movie fans out there right now working diligently, their optimism and enthusiasm regularly tested by major distractions and, occasionally, minor but meaningful bouts with writer’s block as they style their next debut or fashion their revised work. Simplyscripts.com, thank you for being here.
One happy member,
Courtney Love
10.
Chris Reid
September 13th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Congratulations on ten years, Don. After dropping out of film school when my wife became pregnant with our first son, I hadn’t written for years when I came across Simply Scripts about three years ago. If it wasn’t for this site I may have stopped writing for ever. But thanks to SS I’ve churned out a bunch shorts that probably never would’ve been written and my dream of writing a great feature length script is still very much alive.
Thanks Don.
11.
Sniper
September 20th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
It isn’t, Bert. Don’t even go there 🙂
Anyways, happy anniversary, Don. Here’s to the next 10.