Since our last episode I finished two drafts of the screenplay.
The first new draft was huge: 143 pages.
I just needed to build the story, damn the page count. Once the monster was complete, I shrugged and half-decided to forget about producing it. Who would want to watch a two and a half hour film? (Or, at least, THIS two and a half hour film).
So I had Ben read it and rip it to shreds. He did a great job and mostly his feedback could be summarized as "cut 1/3 of the dialog" and so I went through it with a fine tooth comb.
After months of work editing it (thanks to my three hour round-trip commute on the bus each day), I was shocked to end up at 103 pages.
Somehow, I cut an astounding 40 pages from the screenplay. I didn't think it was possible.
But once I started making the dialog less redundant and more concise -- plus cut a few unnecessary (though clever) scenes -- it fit within a reasonable size for a proper screenplay.
So now I have a 103 page script. Amazing.
This latest draft has been distributed to about a dozen friends and colleagues for review and feedback.
The response has been strong and positive, though some of my main bugaboos are still haunting me: Mary is not sympathetic enough ("why should we care about him?") and his third act cleverness seems out of character given how bumbling his attempts at finding Muslim militants are in the second act. I'm working on both though and think some minor changes and subtle hints early on can do the trick.
Ben suggested free-writing on these topics and that I'm at the scalpel (not sledge-hammer) stage.
Indeed. Regardless of all that, I'm going to shoot this damn movie over the summer and the script is finally within range of being complete.
Onward!
P.S. Happy Holidays (and to my militantly atheist friends: Happy Thursday!)
