8:45 this morning, John left me a message in regards to the treatment I had faxed to him.

Fast turnaround time is good.

I called him back around lunchtime for a chat. He'd already made a few preliminary phone calls about the treatment. It also turns out that he's done some work in Vegas and has good friends with a production company up there. John likes much of what's in the treatment. He asked why we had picked Kent McCord, and suggested instead a "60 percenter" -- essentially a marquee name. The names he threw out were Kevin Bacon, Dennis Quaid, Scott Bakula, Kiefer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges.

He also said that he's pitching two scripts to New Line at the end of the month, and he wants this to be the third pitch.

We talked some more about what he saw as the bread and butter of the movie (the chase sequence), and how to change this or that to make it stronger (in his opinion, of course). More importantly, he wants me and Tom to think about our "roles" in the project. Namely, what we'd want to do and what we'd want as far as compensation.

So, I immediately set up a meeting with Tom, John, Paul and myself for next Wednesday. We'll spend lunch talking, and then we'll get down to the bottom line. The changes he suggested in the story are quite doable, and make sense, but what will Dan and Paul think about them? Will they want to work with John? Will I get to write the script?

Pretty heady stuff, but this time I'm not letting it go to my head. So much could happen, so much could not happen, that I don't want to spend the emotional energy yet.