A screenwriter’s nightmare
Unfortunately I knew where this story was going after just the first few lines. Sadly something that happens all too often. From an email that Paul in the UK sent me:
Hi Scott,
Only ever posted one time before (the Realm Pictures trailer story) but I feel the compulsion this morning to share this with yourself. Call it free therapy maybe…
The following are my genuine entries on my “Momento” iPhone App (a great App for capturing thoughts and for jotting down story ideas btw)…
Thursday 13 January 2011
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20:23 Got a new idea — “The Old Guard.”
Might be a cartoon, a sketch, a script, I don’t know. It’s pretty germ-like right now but here’s the basic deal.
A bunch of retired superheroes in their 60’s and 70’s dwindle their days away in a retirement home, victims of a botched pension scheme. Their powers faded almost to normality they’re left with nothing but memories of glory days and a frustrated sense of justice that can only find expression through the dull administration of a retirement home neighbourhood watch scheme.
The tedium is interrupted by the arrival of the home’s latest resident — who some begin to suspect is actually one of their old enemies from back in the day…
I suppose “The Incredibles” meets “Up!” would be one way to pitch it. I would hope to go with a lot of heart, deal with the mourning of better days and the sense of regret at a life gone by. But with laughs too.
The “team” I figure is made up of several recognisable figures. The de facto leader was actually the number two back in the day, in secret awe of the group’s legendary Superman-like leader. When that leader figure disappeared (presumably killed in battle with the old enemy who just moved in) this guy was the one who took over. And he swore to protect Supes’ girl, the Sue Storm-ish babe of the group. To him it’s all about honour — that’s why he’s never told her that he loves her.
The new guy picks at that particular wound in a subtle way. He’s very much the charming David Niven Pink Panther type as opposed to our fearless leader’s gruff and bluff exterior and there’s humour to be had in the juxtaposition.
There are other characters too, all of whom have seen their powers dissipate. Invisibility is now the ability to just be opaque. Super speed is now just walking without seeming old. The only one who has retained full power is the time travelling Paradox who can swap himself with any other point in his timeline and has therefore buggered off back to his youth leaving his teenage self stuck in a retirement home with old fogeys.
There are two other key plot points. The “villain” has a pill that can reignite old powers for a short period (a super powered Viagra). And he knows that “Superman” didn’t die — he just fell through a portal to another dimension where time moves slowly relevant to ours. Ergo he’s still a young man.
And that’s our team’s rejuvenated mission. To go rescue him.
(Maybe the villain sees this dimension as a place he can recapture his youth…)
So anyway. That’s the germ. Let’s see how it mutates…
Tags: Screenplays, The Old Guard
Thursday 20 January 2011
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18:42 “The Old Guard” continues to percolate. I have a germ of an intro that goes like this…
Intro.
1960. New York. A voice like warm oak coaxes us into the scene; “Once upon a time there were good guys and bad guys…”
And we watch in flashback as a super-powered brawl unfolds, the kind of super-team throw-down you’d expect to find in the comic books; one on ones, banter, laser bolts, dogfights — all the good stuff. Only it looks like the bad guys might just have the advantage, with good guys’ leader in a tight spot. The good guys freeze, caught in the dreadful moment — and we cross fade to the present day to find one of their number now an old man, sat in a fireside chair, several expectant young kids hanging on his story. The old man is Blake Hampton, AKA (though not for several decades now) as the Silver Sentinel. The kids want to know what happened next.
“The good guys won.” This is Archie Forrester, about 15 years younger than Blake and the recipient/host of the retirement party at which they’re at (the young kids being his grandchildren.) It’s possible to put together that Archie was the youngest member of the good guys, a teenaged masked sidekick. He squeezes Blake’s shoulder reassuringly as the kids erupt into superhero games, one of them asking their Mum if superheroes are real, to which the answer is “Don’t be silly sweetheart. It’s just a story.” One kid is more earnest, asking Blake if he can show him how to fly. Blake’s reply is full of sadness. “I wish I could.”
We cut to Archie driving Blake home from the party, both men eager to get away. Their conversation veers from retirement to the past and by the end of it we’ve arrived at the retirement complex that Blake refers to as “The Fortress.”
That’s it for now. Toyed with the idea of Emilia (the heroine) being at Chuck’s (the presumed dead good guy leader) memorial stone but I think that might be too maudlin. We’ll see how it pans out…
Tags: The Old Guard
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23:53 Change of plan. It’s Archie’s 50th. Blake gets the bus home. On the bus there are a couple of “punks” coming on too strong with a teenage girl. Blake gets up to put them right but before he gets there another right minded young guy steps up and puts these guys in their place.
Tags: The Old Guard
Friday 21 January 2011
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11:59 Here’s a theory. The villain posits that THIS reality is in fact an alternate reality. That it shouldn’t exist. That Chuck is the one mourning them, back in the real world, the one that THEY were separated from back in the day. The argument (expounded by Blake) then rages that this is the reality they have made for themselves. That mistakes and regrets are just forks in the road and there is no one true path. But the hook is there. What if this IS a villain’s creation? What if their friends are back there waiting for them? Needing their help maybe. And that’s what slowly gets them to accept the plan…
And then this entry from Paul:
Thursday 17 February 2011
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08:26 So “The Old Guard” are dead. Killed by Jonathan Ross no less.
His forthcoming comic “The Golden Age” (a title I considered btw) is about a bunch of retired superheroes in a retirement home. Matthew Vaughan is up for making the movie.
Paul finished up his email this way:
So there you go. The brief but enjoyable life story of “The Old Guard.”
(Just to be clear this isn’t a preamble to a lawsuit or anything! Similar ideas have a way of landing independently. Frustrating but understandable.)
But I was interested in your take Scott (and that of your readers too — please feel free to publish this if you wish). Has Jonathan Ross committed euthanasia on my script? In the plus column it obviously looks like a marketable idea and I had a definite theme of dealing with the passage of time. In the minus column, let’s face it, it’s going to get made in another iteration fairly shortly.
I’m sure you probably have a better insight than most on this one (I don’t know the ins and outs but “K-9” and “Turner & Hooch” both came out the same year. Had you heard rumblings of a similar script moving into production? Did it effect your writing process at all if you did?).
If you get the time to share your thoughts that would be great.
In the meantime, thanks for the column. Great reading, every day.
Paul
Why did I have the sinking feeling when I read the first few lines of Paul’s email? Because I had just seen this the day before:
Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class writer/director/producer Matthew Vaughn tells me that a major Hollywood studio is very keen to fully fund his next big project: The Golden Age about a retirement home where superheroes end up. And the title is also a reference to early comic books of the 1930s when Superman and Batman first appeared. It’s based on the yet-to-be-published comic book written by Brit TV chat show host Jonathan Ross, who’s a huge comics buff. Vaughn is currently in LA editing X-Men: First Class for Fox, but tells me he wants to get actors attached to the new project before the script is written. His wish list is Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, and Warren Beatty to play the retired superheroes who help out their grandchildren when their middle-aged parent screw up the world.
As an acquaintance of mine from years ago used to say when confronted with bad news, “Well, that’s sucks donkey dicks.”
Paul’s experience is something that happens. There are only so many good ideas and writers everywhere are constantly trolling for them. One time Siegel & Myers had a spec script going through one last polish, literally days away before going on the market. The script was based on a comedic premise I had come up with: Couple adopts the child from hell (not literally, just a problem child). Woke up one morning to see the sale of the spec script Problem Child: “A young boy is just short of a monster. He is adopted by a loving man and his wife.” We sent the script out anyway and were told by one exec, “If you had gotten this out a month ago, we would have bought it. But because of Problem Child…”
If you are trying to generate mainstream commercial ideas, what Paul has experienced — and yes, me — is likely to happen to you, too.
What can you do? Here are a few things I’ve figured out over the years:
* If you lose a story because someone else sold something similar, allow yourself one night to drown your sorrows, then get back to work the next day. It’s not bad luck, it’s not the universe conspiring against you, it’s not karma, it’s simply the fact somebody else worked a little bit harder and a little big quicker than you.
* Generate a lot of story concepts so you have a number of them to go to in case a project gets blown out of the water. [This is just a good practice anyhow and should be a core part of what you do as a screenwriter].
* Understand this: The fact you came up with an idea that ended selling — albeit not by you — is a sign that your creative instincts align with Hollywood’s. [Yes, that’s right: I just turned a negative into a positive. Screenwriters are forced to do things like this or else we’ll go insane].
* Become Charlie Kaufman: If you come up with obscure ideas like Synecdoche, New York, chances are nobody will be in competition with you.
And there’s this: Sometimes a competing project that sells is not a bad thing. As Paul mentioned, there was a situation with K-9 where the project ended up in a race with Turner & Hootch. What I was told is that T&H had been languishing in development hell at Disney. Then our script sold. The Disney folks figured, “Well, if Universal thinks there’s a movie in a cop-and-dog story, let’s dust off this script we already have in development.” In other words, T&H might never have gotten made if it hadn’t been for the sale of K-9.
Remember the business ethos of Hollywood: similar but different. If your script is different enough, it’s possible Studio B will buy it to go up against Studio A who bought another script with a similar concept.
The final thing is this: If your project gets snatched out from under you by the sale of another similar script, you have to chalk that up to fate. It just wasn’t meant to be. You can be bitter about it with your screenwriting friends — it’s a favorite gripe as every writer has sad sagas like this in their personal history — but do not let that bitterness eat away at your creativity. Instead it should motivate you to work harder, work better, work faster.
How about you? Have you had an experience like Paul? How do you deal with seeing someone else sell a project you had been writing or planning to write?
By the way, there’s another takeaway from this post: The way that Paul was developing his story? Reminds me of how Judd Apatow came up with Knocked Up — by writing emails to himself as noted here.