Ash Finale

On August 15^th, I submitted the 7^th draft of my screenplay “Ash Wednesday” to the Blue Cat competition in L.A. based on a critique they had sent me in June, a special perk they offered that I was welcome to submit a revised draft to see if the judges thought the revisions were or were not an improvement.  This one was cut to the bone at 106 pages and with a completely new and radically different finale.  When on September 2^nd I received yet another glowing review from the new judge, in fact the most glowing review yet, I decided Ash Wednesday was finally complete.

I’ve done as much on this one as I’m going to, save the possibility of more revisions at the request of an agent or studio.  (Not likely as the general procedure is to buy a script and then hire another writer to do any desired rewrites.)  Though there have been other judges who have loved this script, this one loved it in a particularly big and satisfying way.  So I am very pleased, calling this a done deal, and will now direct my energies to the next script. 

                I started this script in the summer of 1993 by writing the story that ran 65 pages.  65 pages just for the story and the script is supposed to be 120 max, I knew I had my work cut out for me.  Since I had no experience writing con artist scripts or thrillers, I spent several years compiling a couple thousand pages of genre research, notes, characters sketches, and plotting ideas before attempting the first draft that ran 405 pages.  (I studied many books on cons but none satisfied me.  It seemed that every con had in common that the victim was either stupid and/or greedy.  Since my characters were neither, I finally just had to invent an original con of my own for which even an intelligent person could fall victim.) 

Since I write my early drafts from beginning to end without stopping and without revising, there were a number of new ideas that surfaced during the draft that I then had to insert into the second draft, which ran 441 pages.  It was the third draft that I intended to get down to a professional length and I completed that draft at 158 pages in April of last year.  As I started submitting to competitions and getting additional feedback, I subsequently produced a fourth draft at 148 pages, then a fifth at 128, and finally a sixth at 118. 

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                This sixth draft was what I submitted to Blue Cat back in the spring.  Among other criticisms, the judge said the script should be no longer than 110 pages and then was invited to rewrite and resubmit by August.  That is what I did. 

                That original 65 page story, though, was where it all started.  I was writing a con man thriller where the rules of the genre basically said that the suspect either is or isn’t.  Well, what I started with in the summer of 1993 was a third alternative.  I had thought of a third ending that I was hoping would just surprise the hell out of everyone, blow everyone’s socks off.  I was thus going to reinvent the genre which I hoped would get the script a lot of attention. 

There were going to be a few other very unexpected surprises too, among which would be the single use of a certain word that is considered so offensive that it is rarely if ever used in films (considered much worse than even the f-word) but would be so hugely dramatically justified that no one would mind.  And so far no one has.  And there would be just a touch of violence in the finale that would be staged so effectively that it would be greatly amplified in the audience’s mind.  The plan was to make a tap feel like a real sucker-punch, something the audience would not soon forget, the message being that there is nothing cool or entertaining about violence.  It is ugly, it is damaging, do not try this at home. 

                That was the intent, a totally different kind of thriller that was always three steps ahead of the audience and with a shocking finale that would make everyone jump out of their seats.  That was the intent; it didn’t quite work out that way.  At first I was told that what I did was something you can’t do in a thriller.  It violates the rules of the genre.  Here I was trying to do something wholly inventive and the feedback that I’m getting is that they want me to follow the rules of the genre.  They wanted the formula. 

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                As for the surprise ending, though everyone agreed it was very effective and satisfying, none of the professionals reading the script were surprised.  The rules of the genre state that this is the way it’s supposed to end so they knew it was coming.  All of my exquisitely laid subterfuge proved to no avail because the professionals were ignoring all the intentional misdirection in the script as they had already decided how it must end.  It made no impact that there were certain scenes that made no sense at all if you assumed a conventional ending.  The supposed illogic that was planted was simply ignored and the convention assumed. 

                So I changed direction a bit.  Instead of submitting it as a thriller, I submitted it as a drama and then started getting better feedback since the judges were no longer being prejudiced about the genre.  Let me add that I had several lay people also read the script, people who were quite literate and had very good story sense but were not at all professionally educated in the rules of genre.  Each and every one of them was completely surprised by my ending.  I became convinced that the general public would be too.  Unfortunately, before a script can get made into a film and presented to the public, you must first get it past the industry professionals. 

                I continued entering competitions and continued getting high grades from a number of the judges.  Some of the judges of course did not care for it at all.  That’s one lesson I learned, that there was no consistency whatsoever between judges.  Each judge is going to have his or her own idiosyncratic response to a story.  There were some judges who ranked me in the bottom one –third of the competition (ouch!), some who said it was very mediocre.  Others said it was one of the best scripts they had ever read period!  At WeScreenplay I was ultimately ranked as the 7^th best script out of a thousand.  At Page International I was ranked in the top 16% out of 9,000 scripts where the top 15% won prizes.  I had come that close. 

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                What was particularly satisfying in all this is that all the female judges loved it; and just so you know, it is a requirement at all contests to remove your name so the judges have no idea what sex you are.  I was very pleased that this story about two women written by a man was so well received by women judges.  It was the male judges who found the most faults.  I would have thought it to be the reverse; that the women would see through the fact that these characters were inventions of a male imagination.  They did not.  They all agreed the main characters were very well drawn.  I also can happily report that there were two male judges who loved it, one from Ireland and the other a graduate of NYU film school. 

                However … that bugger of an ending still continued to haunt as every single judge said the same thing – it was a very good and satisfying ending but not a surprise.  When I got that same comment from Blue Cat in June, I decided that I was going to show them.  They thought I couldn’t fake them out?  Well, I was going to.  (I actually did fake out one judge and he got mad at me, obviously priding himself in being intelligent enough to guess the ending of any “amateur” script; his comments expressed a clear annoyance that I “got him.”)  Blue Cat invited me to submit a rewrite and I saw it as a golden opportunity to try out a completely new finale, an ending that went in completely the opposite direction.  It was so radically different that I figured it would either completely blow them away or completely let them down.  They were either going to love this, or tell me I ruined the script.  It was worth $40 for one more judge to tell me which track I was on. 

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                That’s the story of how I’ve come to the present day.  The new judge was completely blown away, said the new finale “was something to behold.”  “It’s rare that an ending like this one feels correct, but it certainly does here.”  I’m hoping this new ending will now help me get the script into the hands of agents and studio executives.  But I’m also hoping that if this thing ever does get bought and produced, that the director will choose to film both endings and see which one works best with the audience.  I’m proud of both of them and am hard pressed to say which one I’d rather see used. 

                With all that said, the following is the critique I received on September 2^nd.   

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Blue Cat Ash Wednesday rewrite review 9-2-17

… without giving away any spoilers, the slightly edited report is below.  I was very fortunate to land another judge who actually got what I was going for, and this one got it in a very big way: 

Subj: 2017 BlueCat Screenplay Competition Rewrite Feedback

Ash Wednesday
                Reader #9007

                What did you like about the script?
                 The writer knows how to start a script off right. The reader has seen many script beginnings, but never one exactly like this. A woman near a wheelchair at the bottom of a pool while a man in a suit reads a newspaper – that’s the kind of thoroughly arresting image that pulls a reader into a story so hard they have to read the rest of the script to see how it ends.
                What makes this kind of opening even better is that it’s always in the back of the reader’s mind throughout the entire script. At every moment where good things seem to be happening for Wednesday, or Jack seems like a wonderful person, the reader thinks: “but… the bottom of that swimming pool.” A few times, the reader was a bit concerned that it didn’t seem like too much was happening in the first twenty pages or so of the script, but the truth is that every action, no matter how benign, feels a bit threatening when the reader knows that, sooner or later, the bottom of that swimming pool awaits.
                Wednesday is the kind of protagonist that not enough scripts have: someone the reader is rooting for immediately. From the moment we meet her, the reader is instantly connected to her and wants to see good things happen for her. She’s both the kind of character that makes the reader want to read through the script as well as the kind of role that a great actress would love to play.
                The finale that begins on p. 97 is something to behold. It’s both horrific and gripping at the same time. The ending feels right, correct, and earned. It’s rare that an ending like this feels correct, but it certainly does here.   The writer has a great writing style that shines in practically every sentence. Clearly talented, the writer conveys so much emotion and story with every visual.

What needs work?
Okay - the above is what the judge wrote. The rest is all me, paraphrasing what was in the report. 

I guess the best part of this critique is that the negatives weren't very negative at all, mostly all cosmetic, like instead of just saying there's banter, actually write a few lines of dialogue to show the banter.  Some of the judges have criticized my writing style for having too much description, some for having too little.  This one simply took issue with a couple words here and a couple words there thought to be superfluous. 

There's also the continuing debate over the proper way to do scene changes.  I've been writing scripts for more than 40 years and I still don't understand the nuances of a scene change.  It's supposed to be the Number One rule in screenwriting that you don't tell the director where to put the camera, unless a very specific visual is an integral part of the story.  The rule is supposed to be that the scene changes when time and place change.  Time is easy enough to understand.  But place?  What is place?  If the character gets up from one chair and moves to another chair a few feet away, is that a chance of place?  I would say no, but some judges have said yes because it means a new camera set up.  Is it even a change of place when a character moves from one room to the next in one continuous action and the director is shooting it hand-held so it's one continuous take, one set up?  Again, some judges would say yes -- different room, different scene -- even if it's all one set up.  But I say no.  Why make a script difficult to read by making a new scene just because the character throws a wad of paper into the wastebasket? 

I have a scene in Act One where Jack starts in the living room, then goes upstairs into the hallway, then into the bathroom, does his business, then back out in the hallway to admire a trophy case before going back downstairs to the living room to rejoin the party.  This particular judge said that was five scenes -- living room, hall, bathroom, trophy case, living room.  (And though they seem at the time to be completely trite and random, there are several bits of action in this scene that prove crucial later on.) 

Then there's the whole issue of scene and character descriptions.  The rule is supposed to be to keep it as sparse as possible because it's the director's job to decide what the set looks like and how the characters look.  You're not supposed to write, "The living room is appointed with a hutch, a grandfather clock, and a 1950s style sofa," unless those specific set pieces are important to the story.  Again, you're not supposed to tell the director (and art director) how to build and dress the set.  You're just supposed to say, "A 1950s suburban living room," which is what I do.  Some judges have said I need to have more description of what the house looks like, others that I went overboard with my description.  After 40 years, it's still a mystery to me.  Some say a screenplay should be dry.  I disagree.  I try to write so that it's interesting and compelling.  I guess that's why some say I should be writing novels instead. 

I guess the bottom line is that I write it so that I think it sings and if the worst comments I get are like those above, I must be doing a pretty good job

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           That’s the report.  I’ve been on Cloud Nine since September 2^nd.  My favorite part was, “Wednesday is the kind of protagonist that not enough scripts have: someone the reader is rooting for immediately … the kind of role that a great actress would love to play.”  I can only dream of whom they might cast.  This is quite a change from the early readings I had of the script at Ann Arbor Playwrights in the 90s where the dominant criticisms were that Wednesday was a whiny spoiled brat who was completely unsympathetic.  I guess 2,000 pages of notes and 7 drafts finally paid off. 

The head of Blue Cat is making himself available for a one-hour one-on-one conference in New York City at the end of October for any entrant who wants his personal feedback on the script.  I would like to try to attend this if I can get my stomach settled down between now and then.  My nether regions have been out of whack ever since the accident in January.  The doctor gave me some medicine but it made me worse.  I’m eating fiber, fruits and yogurt to try to stem this thing. 

            One critical reason I want to meet with this guy is that hopefully we can talk a little about the changing biz as well.  The one abiding question:  how to approach an agent in this day and age.  Everything I’ve been learning is that you can no longer query an agent and get invited to send a manuscript.  Now they will only read scripts that come to them via recommendations.  That’s why I’ve been submitting to contests.  I would like to find out if it’s kosher to use these judges as recommendations for approaching agents, or if it’s necessary to actually win a contest before an agent will look at you. 

            Another critical question is whether I even want to be a screenwriter anymore.  Everything I’ve learned says that no one buys screenplays anymore.  (Per the Writers Guild, of the 40,000 screenplays that are registered each year, and of the hundreds of films made by the studios each year, thousands if you include direct to video, only a couple dozen spec screenplays are sold.)  The reason you write is as a calling card to be hired to work on other people’s scripts.  I need to find out if this is really true.  At my age I have no desire to be writing other people’s scripts. I will produce my scripts myself digitally but I am not a writer-for-hire, with all the deadlines and stresses and headaches (not to mention total lack of satisfaction) that would entail. 

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             I would rather make my money in finance and just continue writing on the side.  But here’s the thing – maybe I’m on the wrong track writing screenplays.  So many people have told me my writing style is so wonderfully literary that I should not be wasting it on scripts, but doing novels.  Yes, I would like to try my hand at a novel just to see if I’m any good at it.  Novels are very different from scripts though.  Novels contain a great deal of metaphor, internal dialogue, and narrative that runs on for pages.  I’m afraid my novels would be written visually.  Like a screenplay, the only thing that would be on the page would be what you can see and hear.  All emotion would be communicated solely with action and dialogue.  Is this something a publisher would want?  I guess there’s only one way to find out. 

            I have decided that my next script will begin as a novel, then adapted to a screenplay.  Selling the novel might help get it sold as a film, and they might even hire the novelist to do the screenplay.  This next project, “Furious,” will be on a very hot button issue – road rage and guns.  We have become such an angry society since the 1990’s, I’m hoping to explore that phenomenon.  The main character will be an anti-hero, a coward who is afraid of the world and these fears get greatly amplified when, early in the story, he is the victim of a mugging. He decides to get a gun for protection and finds himself embracing the gun culture and finding a whole new confidence and courage.  The community likes the new him and, after saving an elderly couple from an assault, he becomes lionized as a local hero.  But the new found confidence quickly evolves into arrogance and his gun-toting ways soon backfire disastrously. 

It will be “Death Wish” in reverse, a novel that was originally the story of how destructive vigilantism is but the studios decided that wouldn’t sell so turned it into a story of vigilantism as a virtue.  I’m hoping to write this in such a balanced and dramatic way that it will speak to those on both sides of this ultra-controversial issue.  I’m hoping the studios will think it sufficiently provocative that it will sell.

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 Finally there’s the issue of my transition to a new career as a financial advisor.  There is a great deal more to say about this which I will save for another blog at a later date, probably a much later date.  Oakland University has severely let me down.  I was hoping they would place me in a job long ago.  I was hoping that the course work would clarify things for me.  The accident put all this on hold for this year and I still have to get with them to see if any of this can be salvaged.  I suspect it can’t be.  Without doing some of the course work, I don’t know yet if I even want to be an advisor.  That was supposed to be the point of the course work, the point of the internship, to get a better focus on this.  Until I’ve been on the job for a while, I don’t know either. 

I know I want to help seniors find a way to have a comfortable retirement.  But is advisement the best way for me?  Sometimes I think I’d rather just start and run my own fund.  Or maybe I’d be happiest just being a professional investor?  There’s also a fourth option of being a tax preparer.  This makes me super nerdy but I find taxes fascinating and, of all the topics covered in last summer’s course, taxes was the most interesting by far.  The online IRS certification course takes only six weeks to complete.  The pay isn’t lavish like the CFP but it also ain’t bad.  And the experience would count toward my two-year work requirement for the CFP.  Preparing taxes is something I’d be very comfortable with.  Filling out forms, applying rules, doing analysis and spreadsheets are all things I’m vastly experienced with.  But I don’t know.  I have to get some exposure to clarify things. 

I do know this much.  I loved the intro CFP course last summer.  I love my new role as Chair of the Troy FastTrack finance group.  I love doing my Marias investments blog.  I love studying this stuff.  I have an advantage right now that I have time and I have three of the six textbooks used in the program.  Perhaps my best prep right now is to simply read those three books and see if I’m loving it or hating it.  I really do hope to find I have a talent for this.  I would love to be able to start putting on a suit every day and going to an office again. 

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 It is really wonderful though to know that there are several industry professionals out there who think I’m a genuinely talented writer.  But is it realistic to think I can have a new career as a writer?  Or is it something you do in your spare time while making money doing something else?  Examples – Tolstoy and Arthur Conan Doyle, both physicians by day and writers by night.  I suspect most writers do this. 

I can only keep writing and see what happens.  I can only keep studying finance and see what happens.  My advantage is that I am equally balanced left and right brained, which I’m told is uncommon.  I am equally skilled and equally comfortable writing drama and dialogue as I am analyzing technical data and solving complex math problems. 

I can only keep going and see what happens. 

(P.S.  There is also the issue of age discrimination.  This is another topic you can write a whole book about.  I do not presently know how to deal with it, but deal with it I must.  And it’s going to be huge!)