What was the first script you wrote?

The other day, I was chatting with some screenwriters and the subject somehow turned to the first screenplay we had written. The more we talked about it, the more I realized, this is a great question to ask members of the GITS community.

What is that saying: The journey of a lifetime begins with a single step? Well, for screenwriters and TV writers, that single step is represented by that very first script. For most of us, it was a toddler experience: A few halting moves forward followed by face-planting onto cement.

In other words, that first script sucked.

But there are writers whose first script was stellar. I believe Juno was Diablo Cody’s first screenplay. Stephanie Shannon, a 2013 Nicholl Fellowship winner, told me when I interviewed her that her award-winning script “Queen of Hearts” was the first full-length screenplay she had written.

So let’s see what we’ve got, folks. And I’ll break the ice. My first script was called “Stand Up.” They say when you start out, you should write what you know. I wrote about stand up comedy which I had been doing for 2 years professionally. I say professionally in the sense I was deriving all of my income from doing comedy gigs. The act itself was pretty damned ridiculous.

Logline: A young comic goes on tour opening for a legendary comedian who is in the process of losing his mind.

The proverbial hijinks and mayhem ensue.

The older comic was inspired by Jonathan Winters who absolutely slayed me when I was a kid when I’d watch him on TV, but is reported to have had some nervous breakdowns and suffered from a bipolar disorder. But his comic genius is undeniable:

)

I wrote the script in 1986, so we are talking ancient history. To its credit, the story did have a central concept. A beginning, middle and end. At least one character — the older comic — who had something going on of interest in terms of his psychological life. But really, I had no idea what I was doing. You know how most writers target plot points as a way of structuring the narrative? I used a series of my stand up comedy routines the same way. Not that the routines had any sense of forward progression. They were just comic bits. However I did use the older comic’s mental instability and increasingly bizarre behavior to build the tension and stakes.

Still it’s a pretty awful script.

But two scripts later, I wrote K-9. And I wouldn’t have gotten there had it not been for “Stand Up.”

How about you? What was your first feature length movie script? Or TV script? Give it a logline, post in comments, and tell us a bit about your inspiration for it, what you learned from writing it, and this: Have you gone back and read it? If so, what was your reaction?

We all start from some place. Hopefully some of you will take a few minutes to share your experiences with your first script.

Comment Archive