Over the last year I’ve been given two gifts by the roommates to help with my scattershot organizational skills. A corkboard sits above my desk now; a bunch of 3x5 cards with obscure information like Graphic Sex? Boredom/Pornography/Bill’s Dad’s Stockpile of Tapes written across them tacked up to it. On the other wall is a large dry-erase board that I use like most people might use a bedside journal. All those times you’re about to go to sleep and have what you consider to be a really interesting idea, so you either try to remember it, go to sleep and forget it or turn over, turn on a light and write it in your notebook. I just get up, grab a marker and write in big sloppy letters, requiring no light or really any need to open my eyes. These end up being like alien communications from a completely different person. The board has things written on it like THE EMPATHY MACHINE!!! I think I know what that’s in reference to…kind of. Maybe. Both boards do, however, have some kind of solid organizational function. At the top of each is a list, a reminder if you will, of all the projects I have any real information on, any kind of germ of an idea worth developing.

The lists are titled, in big letters, ON THE DOCKET:

When I left my steady job some time ago I gave myself a bare minimum goal of two completed screenplays before the funds I’d saved up completely evaporated and I had to rejoin the world of the working man. The joke of it is, I wrote the fucking scripts and still have no sense of accomplishment. My money has certainly evaporated. And yet I still want to pump out one more screenplay before the screaming desire to, you know, eat real food and drink a couple beers in a bar near living, breathing women overrides my self-imposed exile from the outside world.

There are probably over a million articles on the Internet devoted to helping you, the fledgling writer, start a career. There are pyramid schemes and boiler rooms to skim the money from those of you who haven’t learned the sacred art of skepticism. There are platitudes and manuals and even more blogs for your perusal. You can try cold logline submissions, specialty websites and screenplay competitions. And, if we’re just going by the sheer numbers of the thing, they’re all going to disappoint you.

As always, when I say you I mean me. Apparently, there are less than 100 spec screenplays sold every year. Most people don’t break in with screenwriting. They break in with novels or reportage or other legitimate forms of writing.

Which is to say that I’ve become pretty disillusioned. I was always cynical, sure. But now I can’t even stand my own negativity. The first script I wrote was a kind of action/adventure satire about a private detective and a talking gorilla. It’s one of the first outright comedic things my dour ass has ever completed and I’ve wanted to write it since high school. So that was a nice change of pace. Then came the disgruntled Leftist Indie film that no business person in their right mind would ever fund (for the fact that it’s as uninterested with marketability as it is with coherence). It was nice to write that one because, should anyone closely connected with my family have a sudden windfall of cash I have an actual project for them to refuse to fund.

A fun action movie and a low-budget indie? Sounded to me like a well-reasoned career move at the time. One for them (as they say) and one for me. While prepping a few scripts for the Nicholl Fellowship I started getting notes back on the action-comedy. The few friends who got around to reading it were kind of shocked by how commercial I thought the Monkey/P.I. movie was. “Do you know you have a pretty direct Schindler’s List joke in here?” “Well, yeah!” I’d then laugh for a few minutes at my own joke while they looked on at me, either disgusted or impatient. Don’t worry; it’s not a Holocaust joke or anything. I’m not a tasteless asshole. I merely suggest Steven Spielberg is to blame for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. (Here’s your pro-Spielberg counter-argument, loyalists) A little more than a month later, probably as soon as the Nicholl committee folks were printing out their form-letter rejections to me, my Co-director was reading the cynical indie in preparation for his pass.

We met up at a diner to go over some of his proposed changes. “Lots of dialog, man. Some characters talk for pages and pages.” “Well, yeah!” I laughed for a few minutes about the stinging, incisive criticism of the modern business model and so forth. “I mean, it’s not very cinematic, is it? Don’t get me wrong. I hate corporations, too. But maybe we can make up some kind of story to go along with all of the speeches directly to camera about the inherent evil of profit margins?” A long silence settled over the table. I must have looked like I was about to cry because even the waiter in the corner looked uncomfortable. “And what’s with all the Spielberg references?”

“…Darfur?”

In reality his notes might have been more positive because he hasn’t completely abandoned the project. But now more than ever I’ve realized that I don’t have a script to show the kinds of people who would theoretically hire me. Giving up on the concept of the kind of speculative sale that would automatically put me in a higher tax bracket than you dirty plebeians I still don’t have a solid genre entry amidst my “silly stories” as they’ve been called by one or more amongst my compatriots. And yet the next script on the docket is an angry, depressing little story about a lonely screenwriter living in Florida. By the way, all of my e-mail is being forwarded to my navel, yes. Though I can’t be accused of having talent or quality or industry savvy on my side, I have learned a few things about writing in the slow years after Film School. You can’t really choose what you write.

The On The Docket list is speculation in and of itself. One idea usually sticks more than the others. Like the piles of crap on a Brooklyn sidewalk, flies usually congregate on one before they move to the others. And so while the Western idea or the Middle School movie might better round out my resume, I’m gonna go hunting in that fertile land of audience-whoring called A Movie About A Writer.

Or maybe not.

I had an idea the other day that I wanted to get your opinion on. I’m sure you’re aware that for a few years there’s been an ongoing debate about Torture Porn movies and their value or lack thereof. I’ve been following this debate with avid interest. Maybe I’m not the biggest horror fan in the world, but I likes me some splatter as much as the next guy. The Saw movies and Hostel did very well financially, leading a bunch of people to make assumptions about the audience’s desire to see bad actors scream a lot. Political and Social discussions were poorly raised about Torture Porn’s place in the American Cinematic Consciousness while the films being discussed continued to suck independent of meaning. But there is clearly a place in the market for an enterprising individual willing to put forth a new spin on an old idea. I give you Hell Is For The Geriatric: A Serial Killer named CrackerJack who hates Old People kidnaps and tortures them simply for the joy of it while the insanely hot and intuitive Junior Forensics Detective (pick your Actress) Granddaughter of one of the victims attempts to hunt him down. So we’re talking your standard, awful torture scenes but with really Old People. Saggy skin flayed, false teeth pulled, cataract-eyes gouged and maybe recorded conversations are played of Grandkids avoiding phonecalls. Maybe CrackerJack was, uhm, molested by an Old Person when he was young. Maybe CrackerJack IS an Old Person who resents his loss of youth. These are third act problems so I’m not really gonna worry about them now. I think with my minimal description you can see the kind of film I’m talking about already. And that’s apparently the film I need to write. A premise movie.

Because if you look at the 10 Screenwriters to Watch list that Variety put out months ago, nearly every one of the writers contributed something not just concise in premise, but from page one forward. You could see the whole movie play out from reading the opening scenes. It seems a good screenwriter writes a film the audience can watch with their eyes closed. Not that I…you know…read all ten screenplays from cover to cover. But even so, I’ll be goddamned if anyone’s going to watch Hell Is For The Geriatric with their eyes opened!

But who am I kidding? I’ll probably finish it just in time for the end of the Torture Porn Box-Office Boom: Just another copycat with a bad screenplay. So, alright, bring on the Lonely Writer Story. I don’t believe much in pragmatism anyway. Or populism. Not these days. Hell, I can’t bring myself to believe in Barack Obama even a little bit. And I’ve been trying to fool myself on him for a while. Conciliation be damned my friends…or not. I keep watching the debates, desperately trying to figure out why everyone’s so excited with yet another tool/politician. The cure for cynicism is not faith in my humble opinion. A few months ago I made a joke about what it would take to make me lose complete faith in the U.S. Government. “Killbots,” I said. “Armed robots with American flags patrolling foreign countries. Then I’d consider renouncing my citizenship.” I figured I’d have a few years on that pronouncement. And then I was sent this article. In a separate article in GOOD Magazine an engineer published on open letter imploring his contemporaries to stop their work on flying, laser-shooting sentient robots before they’ve invented a new kind of evil. Seriously, ours is going to be the Terminator 2 Generation. Faith is not the answer. I don’t really think Hope is the answer either. These are words that mean nothing.

I think the only way to proceed is with deep distrust – using the negative lessons we’ve learned for a change and bowing to our most radical instincts.

Every day Faith and Hope are corrupted and misused while the worst things in this world fail to improve. And yet there is nothing more sneered at than cynicism. “It’s the enemy of change. Nothing ever got solved by someone poo-pooing from their couch.” And I only bring this up because for someone like me there’s very little difference between Movies and Politics. To me, Obama is a lot like Mumblecore. I feel like I’m supposed to be happy because of concepts not quality. I feel like a fifth grader being told to clap for my classmates because they actually drew a lumpy circle while I was eating glue. But true, maybe a lumpy circle is better than a bellyache. Even I try to fight my cynicism every once in a while - in spite of my better judgment. I went to see Transformers, after all. I bought my ticket with a frown, but Bay (and SPIELBERG!) got my money just the same. That’s probably how I’ll vote in the coming elections. And the results will probably be the same.

I suppose the only answer at the moment is just to keep moving forward, though. There’s always something to work on as long as you’re a little bit skeptical. God knows there’re plenty more weirdly-titled projects waiting for me on the dry-erase board. I suppose it’s going to take me a few more years to develop enough faith (in the market) before I can bless the world with Hell Is For The Geriatric. But beware…CrackerJack is coming...for your Grandmother!

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form