Here is a copy of a rough outline of my first script...it looks like it could be feature length if you're curious. I know it's probobly bad, but i almost cried as a wrote the last 2 paragraphs. Just tell me what is good and what i could do without
GUY TALK
FADE IN
Guy is a teenager applying to college in a household where his parents are constantly either fighting or making up from the previous quarrel. They seem to not notice him until he expresses or exhibits behavior characteristic of being hurt, at which point they only ask him ?What?s the matter?? and his father tells him to grow up. Guy needs to go on and build a life for himself but feels bound to his home because of the current situation.
His mother is constantly sick. Guy cannot remember a time where his mother was healthy. She has no terminal illness nor does she suffer from a chronic disease. She merely is always sick. Whether it be a painful joint, a sinus infection, back pains, headaches (which she seems to get at the most opportune times; for her at least), and any other conceivable ailment that is as common as the cold.
She loves guy regardless. And therein lays the conflict of whether he must go off and make a life for his own or settle for a local career of which he will only be mildly interested. This way he may remain close to home so as to tend to his mother. If he decides to leave, he knows that it will be for good. Guy struggles to find some sort of peace in his mind with either idea and eventually, in a heated quarrel with his parents where he receives a cigar burn from his father, goes to California.
He leaves the house fairly certain that the prescription drugs his mother has been forced to take all her life will destroy her immune system and she will eventually die. Coming out to his parents only recently beforehand, his father says ?I don?t care where you end up. Because regardless of the town you call home, I will never be able to say that I have a son living there.?
Attending UCLA, Guy finds a community that he can connect with, friends that care about him, and a tolerant environment that accepts him for who he is. Guy is never outwardly flamboyant. He does however, have certain shyness towards other gay men.
After attending many classes and switching majors numerous times, he ends up with a BA in English. This means little to Guy because he has no clue where he wants to end up. Scarred by the decision he was forced to make, and haunted by the fact that he wants to know how his mother is doing yet cannot get up the courage contact her; Guy goes from job to job finding less fulfillment in each successive career.
The topic of Guy?s career choices have become an issue with him and his partner so much so that it ends up driving them apart. Since Guy has little money to sustain himself and no partner to contribute financially, he becomes homeless. Beaten by gangs and mugged on a regular basis, Guy is constantly walking. Picking up rides as he goes and selling his body for food, he slowly (and unknowingly) makes his way back home to Colorado.
At this point, Guy is in a town near the border of Colorado in the early fall approaching winter. He has contracted what he believes (and we know) to be AIDS, through the prostitution he was a part of. He believes that he will ultimately die alone, cold, and without rectifying the situation with his parents. On the last night he finds a small parking garage where homeless people embrace the recently exited cars? hoods for warmth. There are piles of filth strewn in nooks around the garage and it is in these small cubbies that they live.
Guy is made to feel at home here and although it is disgusting, he realizes he would rather die here than at home. The old feelings of being unloved and feeling hate towards his family come flooding back as one of the garage dwellers offers him some meager soup. She greets him in a familiar way, it is implied that Guy feels something familiar about the way this woman has greeted him.
Through some discussion, Guy unloads the burdens of his entire life onto this woman who has had a ?similar? experience. She reveals that she killed her husband in self defense while he was in a drunken frenzy. Since she was prone to getting ill, she was always on a prescription. After she killed her husband, there was not enough money to sustain the numerous prescriptions she required. That is why she became homeless.
They feel that they have made a connection between one another and she offers him her bed which is nothing more than a few trash bags on top of some old newspapers. He falls asleep as she strokes her hair, humming a song familiar to Guy. We see a look in his eye that is touching, yet tainted by years of cynical indifference. She says ?I once had a son like??, but he is already asleep. She continues humming the tune.
The next morning, she awakes with the young man?s head on her lap, the same way he fell asleep. She tries to rouse him before the newly parked cars get cold. It is a cold morning and her breath is seen hovering in the air. She lifts his head from her lap to look at him and realizes something is wrong. On her knees, she tries to get him up by pulling on his arm and she notices a cigar burn on his forearm exactly where her husband once burnt their son. There is a pause where the woman?s tear-filled eyes are seen and her face is frozen with a look of terror and sorrow. She suddenly screams her son?s name and lifts his limp body up onto hers, embracing him with the love of all those wasted years.
The final scene is comprised of the woman clinging to her son and realizing that there is nothing she can do. After all those years of only allowing her son to kiss her on the cheek, she slowly and gently kisses the lips on his lesion-covered face. The camera slowly pulls away from the two of them. The mother, kneeling over her deceased son?
FADE OUT
I liked it. Just a few things:
1) Is the main character gay? If he is, you set that up pretty good with the abusive father.
2) The ending is perfect. Where the son dies, very emotional stuff. The only problem I had was do they not know they're related? It's a very good button at the end, it just doesn't seem like they wouldn't recognize eachother? I'm sure you'll figure it out though.
3) At what age did he leave his home? This goes along with the question before, if he'd left at a younger age I could see why they wouldn't recognize eachother.
Those are just a few MINOR problems that I noticed. They're not big problems, but they're things to think about. VERY GOOD. I loved it.
I just don't buy a couple things in the story.
First, the fact that he and his mom would end up in the same homeless situation and not recognize each other just doesn't work for me.
Second, English majors can still get jobs at Wal*Mart if they are desperate so our hero seems to quit pretty quickly. Yeah maybe he won't have a porche but he could afford an apartment and meek out a life. His financial situation seems unrealistic unless he's got a drug or gambling problem.
Third, people seem to go homeless pretty easy in this story. The reality is the bulk of permenant homeless are in the street because they have a mental or drug problem. The rest find themselves in shelters, not in alleys. My roommate deals with homeless fairly often (chasing them off of State property, homes that have been bought through right-of-way agencies to make way for freeways and such) so I have a bit of direct knowledge on this and don't think Colorado would be much different.
These details should be easy enough to work into the story and explain or whatever but you're story will ring false if you don't at least try.
To be honest my first thought on reading it was that it sounded more like a novel. An Oprah Book club best seller.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
I'm glad to hear that you two like it. I was expecting to hear "ughhh...not another whiney, down-trodden, dad-hating teen who can't quit his complaining and just join the army or something."
Even just writing that i realize the "army" option can be covered in juse a few pieces of dialogue.
Otherwise, i'm glad you are keeping me realistic. Instead of him becoming homeless, i took your advice and now, instead of him walking the streets and living outdoors, he will just go from shelter to shelter. he is still making his way to colorado. the whole final scene can be done on cots that are kept in the shelters. one accross from the other. that next morning, she goes to rouse him from sleeping, grabs his arm and sees the burn. she quickly realizes he is dead but all the other residents of the shelter have to leave for the day and since she has no way of proving she is her mother, she cannot accompany him to the hospital.
Since the mother has no way of paying for the vast amount of prescriptions she must take to keep her sane, she slips into a disabling mental state of some kind. there's your mental disability.
That's all i can remember from your posts. Anyone else that sees other problems please say so. Comments are always wanted. IS IT A MOVIE THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO SEE? because that IS the bottom line.
To make this movie right you would likely need a producer because a hard drama like this requires good actors, and a Director of Photography. You can try this on a microbudget, but if you really feel passionately you might want to try to make a few shorts to show to interested producers.
This production seems like something you'd need to sign with the SAG to get adequate actors.
You should get a script your really happy with and shop it around to see if any parties are interested in helping finance.
19
I know this is off topic, but does anyone know of any good books that discuss the inner-workings of the film industry? I have sort of a surface level idea of things, but i would like to become a bit more fluent in the process of making a film (at least the beurocratic nonsense of it all). I'd like to read up on how conceived idea becomes a movie basically.
Also, any descent books on screenwriting in general would be great. since this is the first time i've ever sat down and tried to formulate the thoughts i've been knawing on, i would like to get an idea of how it's supposed to be done. A book that covers format and has writing exercises geared specifically to screenwriting, developing characters and dialogue would be perfect.
if no such volume exists, then let's hear from all of you guys!
and keep those opinions on the idea flowing!
Indie snob, the changes you suggested would completely fix all of the issues I mentioned and make the story stronger.
Regarding the Army option, I hadn't considered that but seeing as the character is gay there is the possibility of a subplot or really dramatic scene in there about the decision to join out of desperation or stay far away out of anger at the "don't ask, don't tell" policies. In fact it might be the Army physical he gets as he's trying to join that diagnosis him as having HIV. You could also add in an attempt to let his previous partner know, or anguish because he knows that's where he caught it from so the previous partner was not as monogamous as he said.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
