Popularity: 1%

Rewrite ramblings…

Rewrite ramblings...


First off, let me just say that this is pretty much a complete rewrite. I’m not just tweaking and making things better although I am doing that. What’s interesting is how different this story is from the original…

The premise is the same… Same main characters except for the addition of two more main characters.

Why?

They told me they wanted it BIGGER.

I had planned to shoot this film during the summer that just passed us by… Yeah, I was gonna make it myself because I had that much faith in it but to my surprise, a friend showed it to a contact and the contact and his producing partner called me up and wanted it.

Weird situation… I have other streams of income so I wasn’t trying to sell this screenplay. I wrote it for me… I wanted to make it. I figured I’d shoot on HiDef and use one of the .

I just wanna make movies… LOL. Famous last words, I know.

I started out in Super8 like a lot of other folks have but it wasn’t until about 11 years ago that I finally realized that the only way a low budget Indie film with no name actors can compete with the big boys is if story is KING.

Took me a LONG time to realize that and for you filmmakers in the bunch, that goes DOUBLE for YOU.

So right in the middle of writing an earlier spec, I came up with the idea where and I knew as long as it was well-executed. Three months of solid research that would make your head spin like Linda Blair in the EXORCIST and I was ready to write.

The story flowed and just kept coming at me… Of course I did all the right things along the way… I wrote in locations that I was pretty sure I could obtain… Props, certain actors… People I know. All the stuff that I knew I could get my hands on went right into the story. I can honestly say that it was the most fun I have ever had writing…

UNTIL NOW.

But I digress.

The writing of the original draft went so smoothly that I was wondering if I was doing something wrong… I couldn’t believe this was happening but I embraced it for all it was worth.

168 pages later, I was through. Yeah, you know what they say… Now put the fucker away for a couple of weeks so you can clear your head before you get back to it.

Nope.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I printed out the 168 pages and started paperclipping scenes together. Underneath the paperclip I placed an index card with the scene number and page count and then I went to work…

SLASH. CUT. SLICE. DICE. CHOP. TRIM. RIP. SNIP. WHACK.

109 and a half pages with no cheating the margins or line spacing.

Now don’t get me wrong… Even at 168 pages, the damn thing “seemed” to read fast to me… Of course I’ll never know for sure because I’m the only one that’s ever read the 168 pages but at 109 and a half pages this thing read faster than a studio reader on crank.

Then I slept… Still, I couldn’t walk away from it so I started making passes…

A pass on dialogue and subtext.
A pass on character description.
A pass on location description.
Blah blah blah blah blah…

I went down to 107 and a half pages and now this thing was really smokin’ but I wanted to get back to the magic 110.

A pass for secondary slugs (sorry ) and I was back on the firing line…

Cool.

I still couldn’t put the thing down… I printed it out again. I read it out loud and recorded the reading. Sounded okay.

I read just the dialogue. Not bad. A tweak here and there.

Better.

I read just the action. Not bad. A tweak here and there.

Even (can I say more better? Sure I can… It’s my blog).

I printed it out one more time with all the tweaks and headed to my favorite coffee shop…

Once inside, I sat the script down on the table and sipped my coffee. Plain old coffee… Nothing fancy.

Ahhh.

I kept looking at the script while the butterflies ricocheted inside me… I had something. This was it, Baby…

I finished my cup o’ joe and tried to maintain a sense of calm… Upon sitting my refill down, I opened the script and started reading.

Whiz. Zoom. Bang. Flash. Speed. Bam!

All done reading and my heart was POUNDING. I didn’t see any typos… No red marks with my … LOL.

I know I need to SIT on it but I just can’t so I break my rule and email it to those trusted few screenwriters for their take on it…

I don’t hear anything for a week but that’s okay… Normal.

Another day at the coffee shop working on the spec I abandoned… A little progress but it was hard to get back into the spirit of that story… I go home to several messages on my answering machine.

Turns out that one of the readers emailed it to a producer who in turn emailed it to his agent… Not just any agent mind you… But the head of an agency that must remain nameless. The message I got was, “…and he couldn’t put it down…” –or something along those lines.

I was about to return the call to my buddy but when I picked up the phone, somebody was already there…

“Hello? Hello?”

Long story short… Somebody wanted the script but I wanted to make it myself. I turned down the offer but a week later the offer was even better and I snagged it.

My only set of notes?

MAKE IT BIGGER.

I’ve been making it bigger for a year now and by God, we’re almost there… I can see the finish line.

Bigger may not necessarily be better but I still have the butterflies slamming me on the inside… The problem? It’s a different story now. Better yes but different. Bigger? Absolutely. Will it work?

Who the fuck knows? LOL.

The point in this rambling post is that I set out to make the story BIGGER and found a new story inside the old story which in turn is both bigger and better but not that cool little story that I was gonna shoot just this past summer.

Funny how that works…

Unk

Tags:




Thursday: 12 October 2006|1437|Under Uncategorized

Print This Post Print This Post
 

Comments

7 Responses to “Rewrite ramblings…”

  1. taZ on Thursday: 12 October 2006|1757

    Thanks for sharing!

    Darn it, you make it sound so easy. Stop with that! :)

    PS. What I really mean is keep it going!

  2. Spanish Prisoner on Thursday: 12 October 2006|1811

    Sounds fantastic! I wish I could be in that position now. It seems I’m going nowhere right now with my writing. Procrastination. lol.

  3. Unknown Screenwriter on Thursday: 12 October 2006|1836

    I know it’s cliché as HELL but it really is true:

    KEEP WRITING

    But in addition to that… LEARN and NEVER STOP LEARNING. Read the books. Read the articles. Read the blogs. Get involved in discussions either with other screenwriters face to face or, within the comments section or forums on the net.

    Each discussion is like blowing up the balloon that never bursts and one day, you just know that you’re capable of GETTING IT DONE.

    Unk

  4. MaryAn Batchellor on Friday: 13 October 2006|1632

    Question: the bigger one is bigger, different, more characters, etc — is it so much bigger and different that once finished, you could go back to the orginal and rewrite it as a separate story changing up your characters but keeping your original story, concept, premise, etc??

    I.e. is the rewrite the Incredible Hulk and the original is David Banner? I mean, clearly, they are two separate beings…can you have both? Seems like you could…

    Just wondering if, in this case, you may be able to have your cake and eat it too.

  5. Unknown Screenwriter on Friday: 13 October 2006|1724

    MaryAn,

    As a matter of fact, the rewrite is substantially different so that it would stand on its own… The old draft could easily be tweaked into a new, smaller film as it was originally intended.

    So in this case… Cake.

    Unk

  6. Aaron on Tuesday: 17 October 2006|1342

    Nice story, gives me hope that the epiphany will strike me sometime soon.

    But I think the correct grammar is “betterer.”

  7. Dante Kleinberg on Saturday: 21 October 2006|0035

    It’s like a fairy tale! Well, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy/girl/other.

    It must’ve been a nice paycheck/opportunity for you to step away from making it yourself though. Congratulations!

Leave a Reply