Write that damn script!
A screenwriting morality tale in the Daily Beast from Ricky Gervais:
I was on holiday with my girlfriend Jane in about 1999 in Hungary (yeah, I know, odd choice, but money was tight). We visited this huge Victorian museum one day, and as I was walking round I had an idea for a movie in which all the exhibits came to life and started running amok. The lions, the cavemen, the mummies, even the statues. I thought it would make a great fantasy horror film. Huge effects, an amazing spectacle. When we got back to our hotel room, I started writing the screenplay. I wrote a few lines before we went out and had dinner. The next day I thought I should do some more work on it but decided it was too much trouble.
That was the last I ever thought of it until Ben Stiller called me and asked me to be in his new movie, Night at the Museum. It was a fun little cameo. I think the movie and its sequel grossed more than $1 billion. See, that’s the thing — mostly my sloth has been mistaken for choosiness or even integrity. But in this case it could mean I’m just a lazy fool sometimes.
I’ve had a few of these. For example back in 1988, I came up with this premise: “Guy marries girl only to discover he’s now related to the mother-in-law from hell.” Wrote up a treatment. And never did anything else with it. Then years later, along came the movie Monster-In-Law:
After years of looking for Mr. Right, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Cantilini finally finds the man of her dreams, Kevin Fields, only to discover that his mother, Viola, is the woman of her nightmares.
Gender switch, but essentially the same premise. Monster-In-Law starred Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda. My idea starred… dust and tumbleweeds.
Because I didn’t write it.
If you are follow in the shadow of Charlie Kaufman, coming up with brilliant but obscure story concepts, you don’t have to worry about this type of thing. I mean who else thinks like CK? However if you are a writer who traffics in commercial high concepts, there is always this gnawing reality that some morning, you will wake up and there will be your idea in the trades, big spec sale… only you didn’t write it. Your idea is sitting in a file somewhere, snoring, oblivious, a mess of untapped potential.
Like Mr. Gervais says: “So maybe we should follow the common adage that you don’t regret the things you did as much as the things you didn’t.”
Don’t “you didn’t.” At least if you write the script, you give yourself a shot at selling it. If not…
Dust and tumbleweeds.
For more of the Gervais essay, go here.
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