since I’m up, let’s talk about dream scripts
Your eyes do not deceive you, dear readers, that meter to the right is indeed creeping upward. Stupidly tonight however, I physically cut myself off from adding to it, but the slack will be picked up tomorrow. In the meantime, I decided to take a look at some other scripts sitting on available hard drives.
And there it was.
My dream script.
It’s really a pretty pathetic thing. A script I’ve mused and day dreamed about. The script I would rather write on than breathe. A while back in a moment of weakness I let myself write just an opening scene. Twenty pages later I tore myself away from it and vowed not to write another word and it’s managed to stay 20 pages. But no matter what mood I’m in if I crack the file and start reading, I get the giggles and joy and warmth I get from my favorite movie experiences. My soul cries out to write this script. Simply because I love the fucking shit out of the idea.
I suspect most writers have scripts like this. I can’t say for sure, but when you set out to tell stories, certainly the desire to channel something you love back out into the world is natural. Share the love, right? But the advice you get when, like me, you haven’t so much as cut teeth with the original material is don’t do it! And I can see it, if you want to do an adaptation- god forbid something that someone’s heard of and already has it’s rights wrapped up in a chartreuse 3M cocoon, it is not worth the fucking bother. Spend your time and energy on something original. Perfect your craft before you have the gall to take something from someone else, because your craft ALWAYS needs work.
But I’m weak. I really want to write it. I constantly remind myself that legal problems aside, there’s a lot of reasons to put attention elsewhere: You’ve got to be realistic, writing is a craft and it’s supposed to be work. Can’t always be fun. Giving into the desire to write the dream script is probably not going to help work through the hard lessons, and if your skill isn’t up to it, you just do the awesome a disservice. Even worse, you run the risk of falling into the quagmire of fan service which is all good and well here in the inter-tubes, but kinda not so good in the reality of the end goal of getting a movie made. Adaptations catch flak. Sequels catch flak. So if I were to cop to writing, oh, MEN IN BLACK 3, I would seem incredibly immature, delusional, and honestly a little weird- cause did we really need MIIB? Not that the fictional MIB 3 is my dream script- and hey if you’ve written MIB 3 I might be interested in reading it. I’m uh, definitely not knocking it.
It’s futile. Nothing I say diminishes the desire to write my dream script. Which is why it’s a dream script. Plenty of folks must have wanted to write TRANSFORMERS. If you’re a fan of material and it does make it to the screen, the least you can hope is that the writer is a fan. But that too is probably ‘dreamy’. And maybe somewhere some day I will HAVE to write it and move on. Someone else may very well write it. Or I may forget about it. Or die in a car crash or something, it doesn’t matter. It’s nice to have dreams, right?
Share with me if you have one of these dream scripts. If you’re dying to write another GODFATHER installment, let me know. I’ll feel less insane. For the now I’ll read my 20 pages, and reaffirm the vow not to write it until I can and put my nose back to making my own stuff awesome.
But goddamn, it’s a fucking awesome 20 pages.