scottStories

Hollywood. The land of the creative turnover. The consumptive capital of the world. To make it there as a screenwriter is similar to satisfying a late night craving for something salty or sweet. Or both. Surely both. See, when I look at films that I love and inspire me, I look at the great works of horror auteurs like George Romero who grabbed his camera and a great idea and went for it with about $31.50 in his pocket and some game unknowns who believed in him. It was he who drug out some voodoo-undead folklore and remixed its essential elements to comment on American culture and our need to consume, mindlessly, with little memory of the experience afterword. In other words, Hollywood seems to represent to me, for the most part, an industry of satisfying superficial cravings in the short term rather than a producer of great art for the long term. And you know what? That’s totally cool. We need these mostly clever distractions in our lives, and if we’re lucky enough to find a few that sneak under our desensitized dermis and make us think, perhaps we should be grateful. It’s what makes those kinds of films special. Sadly, as the production line is currently set up, truly affecting films are more like happy accidents rather than the intended product. And you know what? That’s cool, too.

As an aspiring screenwriter, I find the screenplay to be a peculiar thing; it’s a blueprint. We don’t splash our last dollop of paint on a canvas and come to the conclusion of our creative journey, nor do we punch the full stop of our final sentence and begin to dream about the cover art. When a screenplay is finished, it’s really not yet begun its life. It’s like enjoying the news of being pregnant, but without any certainty of the gestation date. It’s the promise of life, and sadly, death. It’s no more than the directions on how to put together your favorite toy, but without the accompanying pieces to construct it. You could frame it, I guess, or put it on your coffee table along with picture albums, but like photos of places only you have been, it would be more like bragging than entertainment. No, screenplays, with their plain, dull covers that signify a format that mustn’t be tinkered with lest one see their hours of toil immediately “flushed away“, go into a dark drawer or onto a corner shelf where they sit like bodies of loved ones interred.

At present I’m attempting a horror/comedy in order to better butter my bun for the entertainment takeout window that Hollywood so desperately wants to endlessly supply under the big, eye-catching sign that reads “Over a Squigillion Served”. Right now I’m honing the tone so that I can have moments of laugh out loud dialog and peek through your fingers imagery. I want to set the audience up with a chuckle-inducing jab, then flatten them to the canvas with a horrifying haymaker. So I’m thinking not so much Ghostbusters as Lost Boys. High concept, but darker. Edgier. And if I’m lucky, fucking twisted in just the right way. My way. Without any small animals biting anyone’s balls. Sorry, folks.

If I can do that, I’ll feel better about binning my blueprint after it’s digital file is stored in its online shop window, the letters are sent, and the carcass placed reverently into its second-down-on-the-left sarcophagus.

I’ll also feel better about taking a break and writing my novel. Fuck it. With places now exisiting online to put it together, at the very least I’ll have my Christmas gifts sorted for next year.

No, they’re not real words. Not according to any dictionary I know, anyway. I just thought them up while pondering one of the driving concepts behind my efforts to stay darkly creative in my writing. I like to think I can take almost any piece of information and find its underbelly; the most innocuous subject can be made nocuous with a bit of treacherous tweaking. While I’m not a huge fan of excessive elaboration, the right word, or group of words, collected in the right way and presented in the right context, can pinpoint the right nerve with laserlike precision.

And that’s the rub that abrades my rawest scare button. It’s like the use of atmosphere in film: a gothic castle in the middle of nowhere surrounded by glowing eyes in the underbrush sets a frightening mood. But the gradual revelation of something wicked beneath the most banal of settings strikes an even deeper chord: something is very, very wrong and whatever is behind it is intelligent enough to blend into one’s sense of security. And like a perfect trap, you only know you’ve been caught when you finally see the closed door not as something to keep evil out, but as something to keep you in with it.

Transforming disease, the suffocation of secret societies, the slow turn of madness – story elements that settle onto our internal organs like a foreign malaise eat you from the inside out, just like certain words don’t so much hit you as “find you where you live”. They’re often familiar terms, but delivered with such measured cadence and furtive finesse as to be impossible to deflect. The fear is absorbed, completely. The decision to fight or flee is immaterial. You’re surrounded. It’s over.

As a screenwriter, you have tools at your disposal to create such a fear, and even though we’re best served to speak directly, with punch and an ear towards expedition, without a liberal understanding of vocabulary, one may not know how to use them to best effect. The novelist can weave flowery and depth-sounding phrases in order to penetrate our defenses, but the screenwriter relies on imagery and dialog with the right word here and there to help the reader – someone who is trained to understand visual information – gist the appropriate tone. With screenplays being not the thing but the blueprint, screenwriters have to convince a reader without losing them. So it’s best, I find, to conjure magic with timing and juxtaposition rather than hyper-literacy. As someone in love with language, I miss infusing my work with treasures procured in my literary travels. But I realize that over the years I’ve yearned to make an emotional impact, not take a reader up into the rarified air of polysyllabic heaven where they become distanced from the viscera. I want to comfort them with a taut familiarity by using just the right words, in the right places, and keep them suitably grounded, infectiously close. And I can do that in my blueprints using a sort of shorthand to madness.

That said, conveyed, articulated, phonated…click on the demonic rice field below, stretch your vocabuligaments and feed a few folks, won’t you?