You're Now a Broom

Writers have it tough. You can slave over a script, love it with every ethereal fiber of your soul – and then, as soon as it’s optioned and you’re thinking your life just got made, the studio or production company can take your precious baby and turn it into something unrecognizable.

Imagine a person you adore sitting across from you, you blink, and in their place is a broom. It’s a little like that.

Chris Keane, my former screenwriting teacher and present-day friend at Emerson College, knows all about this. Growing up, Chris had heard the story of his father’s crossing the Atlantic after World War 2. It meant something to him. It became a story that he felt destined to write.

On his father’s incredible journey home, there was a poker tournament. A ship full of men eager to leave war behind meant a ship full of men thinking about their future, and wanting it to be bright. The pot grew to over a million dollars (still a lot today, but imagine it in 1945), and the competition turned brutal. Think violence, cheating, and lots of sabotage.

Chris finally managed to capture the real-life story in a screenplay – both a fulfillment of a lifelong dream and an homage to his father – and to get the script optioned.

And then, the unthinkable.

The studio decided that, instead of a ship, they wanted a spaceship, and instead of poker… how about the ultimate X-Games? And World War 2 - forget it. Let's set this baby in the future!

You may have wondered from time to time how some movies get made, or how someone could have sold such a terrible script. Well, maybe the script wasn’t so terrible when they first sold it.

So what happened? Under option, Chris had no choice. He had to rewrite his script to meet the dubious new criteria. Every line he cut, every detail that had to be modified from gritty war ship to rocket in outer space, was painful. Luckily, the script was never filmed (no wonder), the option ran out, and now Chris has another chance to try and get his work to the big screen the way he intended it.

Do you know of any stories like this?

Revisions, Revisions... And Some Decisions

Sorry for the lengthy silence! A bit more on my prolonged absence below, but first I’ll just let you know that, yes, I have been working on my revisions.

Revisions are the most annoying part of the process to me, and sadly, they’re also one of the most important. Wouldn’t life be great if we could just sit down, bang it out, and have that be that?

Alas, this is rarely the case. But I’m happy to report that I think my first draft script was actually in far better shape than I thought while I was writing it. Sure, there were some typos, and, hilariously, one character’s name changed from Kate to Michelle about a third of the way in… but for the most part, it wasn’t too shabby.

I’ve been able to do my first-pass revision (fixing the typos, the messed up names, etc.), but now it’s time for the second, more difficult pass. This is the pass where I have to make decisions on overall themes and, also, on whether or not to include a certain twist at the end. This pass involves going through and tweaking all the details so they support said themes, or said twist. This pass is the annoying one.

The themes/key points are pretty solid in my mind, but figuring out whether or not to keep the twist is a little trickier. On one hand, who doesn’t love a good twist? On the other, I feel like it might cheapen the story a bit. It’s a horror flick, but I really am trying to say something about my generation’s psychological experience with work, and putting a twist in feels a little cheesy – but maybe that’s the kind of too-serious thinking that actually holds a person back when they're trying to do a commerical script. Maybe the best solution is to do one draft with the twist, one without, and then gather some opinions from readers.

AS AN ASIDE

Along with these decisions, there is one more I’ve made, which will partially explain the long gap since my last post. That is that I’ve decided to go a little easier on myself this summer, as much as I want to be 100% No MFA Project. (It is summer break from school, right?) Not to worry, I’ll still be revising, looking for the right NYC pitchfest, starting another script, trying to learn more about film-making, and posting all about it, but I’m also going to be cutting myself some slack, and here’s why:

1. I’m getting married in September (then again in India in November. Same person both times, don't worry!) Ever plan even one wedding? Enough said.

2. Nothing serious, but I may need to have surgery this summer, which will require some time to recuperate. While planning the weddings…

3. I’m supposed to be getting a promotion in July! We’ll see if this actually happens, but if it does, I’ll be handling the promotion, recuperating from surgery, and planning the weddings…

I think you see my point. But life is all about learning to balance, and the one thing I really, truly know about myself is that I have to find a way to balance it all with the writing, or I’m just not the same.