So two
weeks ago he wrote me to see how everything was going on my end and I sent him
a good summary of what the year has brought me.
As is typical for him, I have still not heard back. But I thought the summary I sent would make a
good blog post to bring everyone else up to speed on the life and times of this
wistful writer. Ironically, I wrote this
letter during our last searing heat wave, which lasted 8 days. This one has lasted two. I hope that will be it.
So I
wrote him about the condo purchase, which was just 8 lines and on which the
rest of you have already been amply informed.
But I also wrote a fairly detailed account of my creative endeavors which
is something I haven’t been sharing except for my recent tweet announcement
about beginning my first novel.
So why am I writing a novel? After fifty years of creating screenplays,
have I given up on film? Well, yes and
no. Ash Wednesday was a relative success
at quite a few of the literary competitions to which I submitted but, in writing
it and submitting it for critique, I also learned a fair number of things about
how the business has changed, how screenwriting has changed, and how I have
changed.
Ash Wednesday has gotten very
positive critiques (for the most part) from the many screenplay contests I have
entered. The problem is I don't know how to sell a screenplay anymore. You can
no longer just send them to production companies and agencies; they only accept
submissions based on referrals from other industry professionals. How do you do
that? And I find that the whole business has changed. It's no longer at all
realistic to write an original screenplay and sell it. Anything you write now
is just a calling card to get assignments to write drafts for other people's
scripts, something I not only have no desire to do but, at my age, there's no
way anybody's going to hire me anyway.
So I've sort of learned that
screenwriting is no longer my bag. I've begun another project with the title of
"Furious" which is about guns and road rage. I've researched it
heavily, even went to the trouble of taking the gun safety class at the West
Bloomfield Police Dept a few years back (which I was quite impressed with) and
got my license (no gun, just the license) as research. I’ve always enjoyed target shooting as a
sport and am an excellent marksman, quite a crack shot in the Navy and scored
at the top of the class at the WB Police. But whenever I’ve gone to the range,
I’ve always been with a friend who could loan me a pistol so I’ve never seen a need
to own my own nor do I see one in order to write this story. My research will be sufficient.
I think I can write this thing so
that no matter what side of the gun issue you're on, you'll find something to
relate to here. But I'm going to do it as my first novel. Even though I no
longer have a clue as to how to have a career in film as a screenwriter or
anything else, I've always known what the protocols are for selling a novel.
Not that it is by any means easy but, assuming it's good, it's certainly doable.
You get a list of publishers and agents that have a track record with the kind
of book you’ve written. You query them
with a brief synopsis. If they like your
query, they ask for an outline and a few sample chapters. If they still like you, serious talks
begin. That used to be how you sold
screenplays too. The Writers Guild would
send you a list of all the agencies willing to read scripts by new writers. You send a query. If they liked the query, they would ask for
the screenplay. If they still liked you,
then you were called in for serious discussion about rewrites and a plan for
approaching the studios.
But the Writers Guild doesn’t do
that anymore. They still supply a list
of all the agencies willing to consider new writers. But it is no longer a matter of querying and
then sending the script. When you go to any
agency web site, all they’re interested in is the contact information for a
contest(s) you’ve won or a recognizable industry professional who knows your
work and is willing to recommend you.
And being "good" is no longer "good enough" to get
consideration for a screenplay. Most of these contests I've entered have had
thousands of submissions and only the top two or three win and you must win in
order to get a referral to an agent. So you have to be in the top 1/10 of 1% to
even have a chance. In most of these contests, "Ash Wednesday" has
ranked in the top 1/2 of 1% -- but that's not good enough. (I've also been in
contests where I've ranked in the bottom 10% so there is a fair amount of
arbitrariness in all this. And it's not like the other writers aren't good. The
majority of them are graduate students in screenwriting programs at the
nation's top film schools. That's why it felt quite rewarding to rank in the
top 1/2 of 1% against competition like that!)
But I guess the main reason I'm
more interested in novel writing now is that I've always been told that my
scripts have a decidedly literary flavor to them so maybe literature is where
my true calling has been all along. I’ve been told by several people that my
talent is wasted on screenplays and that I should be writing novels
instead. And there's also that pesky
reality that, unless you're going to direct the film yourself, your screenplay
is not really yours. But a novel is entirely yours. Plus there is the added
frustration that you can’t really share a screenplay with people outside the
industry. Screenplays are meant to be produced, not read. Unless you’re a film student or professional,
the structure and format of screenplays do not readily lend themselves to an
easy read by laypeople. Unless you are
seriously into film, you’re not going to be able to lose yourself and become
enveloped in the universe the screenwriter has created, not the way you can
with a good novel. That’s been a major
frustration for me in writing screenplays all these many years. I can’t share them with anybody because
they’re not easy to read and they’re not final products. Only the film itself is the final
product. A novel, of course, is a final
product.
There’s also the problem that after
a 60+ year love affair with film, my passion for cinema has been waning for the
past several years. I used to go see 3
or 4 films per week; now I’m lucky to see that many every year. Audiences have
become rude and crude. It used to be a
real high for me to sit in a crowded theater and absorb all the energy from an
audience that was really into a great film.
But now everyone is busy texting or checking their email throughout the
film; they’re not even watching it! Why
are they paying $12 to come a multiplex and then not even watch the film; and
worse! – engage in all this rude behavior while they are there distracting the
rest of us? I still enjoy going out to
see special films, but unless it’s very special, I now much prefer to see them
On Demand at home, or on Netflix.
And I don’t particularly like the
films the studios are making anymore.
I’ve lost my desire to go participate in that industry. But even if I
were to go back to L.A. to try to start a new career, I no longer have a clue
as to how I would approach that. Ever
since I started dreaming about my career back in grade school, it had always
been my goal to write, direct and produce my own films. And throughout the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s many
young filmmakers were able to do just that.
No more. Now the best you can
hope for is to work on other people’s films, not as a stepping stone as it once
was, but as a very blunt definitive end in itself. Yes there are a number of fine films being
made for older audiences but the people making these films have been in the
industry since their 20’s. There are no
opportunities for anyone starting out in their 60s. And even if there were, I have neither the
inclination nor the energy to help make those kinds of films. And trust me, it would require a huge amount
of energy, energy I just don’t have any more.
So where does that leave my options
for my film career? My decision in
recent years that I no longer desire to pursue a conventional film career has
given me a new peace of mind. But that
doesn’t mean I have to give up entirely.
Affordable digital technology has still left it within reach to write,
direct, and produce my own little homegrown movies and it’s not that difficult
to find distribution on the Internet, particularly YouTube and even
Netflix. (Even David got the film he
made in 2004 on Netflix.) And this is also where switching to novels may
prove very beneficial. If I can publish
a novel and then adapt it to a screenplay, that might open enough markets to
crack some doors. But if not, I still
have the novel and I will find ample satisfaction in just that much. Even if I don’t publish, I will find ample
satisfaction in just having written it.
I would like people to read Ash Wednesday so I will be adapting that to
a novel. But for my first novel, I am
starting from scratch with a brand new original story.
So what is “Furious”? My first recollection of road rage being a
news item was in the early 1990’s when there were a number of freeway shootings
in Los Angeles. That’s when I first
conceived the story so, like Ash Wednesday, it’s been in my computer for a long
time. Heaven knows I could never have
imagined at the time that the story would still be in the news and still very
relevant nearly 30 years later. Mine is
the story of a milquetoast tax preparer who has had a considerable history of
being bullied and is afraid of the world.
When he gets mugged early in the story, he finds himself drawn to the
gun culture for self defense and it doesn’t take long for him to become
proficient. It gives him a whole new
confidence and soon he stumbles into a situation where he is able to stop a
robbery and save the lives of everyone in the store.
This makes him a local hero which boosts his
self-esteem even more. He joins a local
police civilian auxiliary force and soon becomes a celebrity. But alas, as things evolve he takes it too
far and one day a minor blunder threatens to erupt into a major tragedy. He realizes that the courage he has acquired
with the guns has been a false courage and the only way to avert the impending
tragedy is to find within him a new courage, but a courage that will probably
destroy everything he’s built – and threaten his job, his family, his very
freedom. This is basically the story of
a coward who ultimately finds redemption through the painful process of finding
a strength within himself that he never before knew existed.
I’ve actually been the victim of
several road rage incidents in the past 30 years, the most frightening of which
was a day when I was on Northwestern Highway driving home from the office and
this idiot pulls out of a parking lot right in front of me (with me doing 50)
and I had to honk at him to keep from having an accident with him. He was really furious with me. In rush hour bumper-to-bumper traffic, he
chased me for 3 miles until he finally caught up with me. I was completely sandwiched in with eight
cars surrounding me so there was no escape.
I was trapped like a fish in a barrel.
Fortunately, all he wanted to do was roll down his window and scream
“Dumb Ass!” at me. All this fury because
he honestly had expected me to slam on my brakes going 50 and let him out of
that parking lot ahead of me. All I
could think of the whole time was that, had he had a gun, I would not have been
able to get away from him.
So that’s the story. It’s “Death Wish” in reverse. Actually, I’ve always wanted to buy the
rights to the Brian Garfield novel and remake that film because, unlike the
movie, the book’s theme is that vigilantism makes the problem worse, not
better. But the studio obviously felt
that such a theme would not do well at the box office so they completely
flipped it through that film and its many sequels to make the case that private
citizens taking matters into their own hands would be a good thing. If criminals knew that any random person
could and would blow them away, they would stop committing crimes.
“Furious” isn’t exactly about
vigilantism. It’s not even about
anything particularly dramatic as I feel that sometimes small drama makes a
bigger impact than big drama since small drama is something that happens to a
lot more people. That’s my objective
here. Write a small drama with which
more people can relate and write it in such a balanced way that whether the
reader is pro or anti gun, they make a connection.
That’s what it means to be a
wistful writer.
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