Waiting...

A couple of weeks ago I went to the movies and in front of the movie mixed with the plethora of Coca Cola and Car ads was the trailer to a new comedy coming out in the next couple of weeks. That movie is called 'Waiting...' A film about the waitstaff of a Bennigans type of eatery and their exploits in a day in the life waiting on difficult customers while putting on a happy face. This is what I got from the trailer.

A few days later I remembered to look up the movie online and found the trailer to watch again. The movie stars Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris and Justin Long (Warren Cheswick!). I loved all three of those actors so already this was Casting Gold! The trailer gives the impression that this is a Clerks style comedy where we can join the employees while they laugh at those damn customers. Which I love, I've worked in retail for over 13 years straight and waiting on people sucks! I don't care how much of a people person you are there are some difficult and rude people out there that just suck.

I've always been into who directed what in movies and wanted to know who wrote and directed this. Rob McKittrick wrote it and this was his first film and I soon discovered that he had his own Blog as well, So I checked it out. Rob's blog is quite entertaining as he let's us in on how much of a pain in the ass it was not only getting this film made but how hard it is dealing with the 'suits' in the industry and giving a first time director his shot at his own Script. The events of all of this are still playing out as he recollects past events with a humorous slant. I almost wrote APLOMB I shit you not! Holy crap what is happening to me?

I love his take on suggestions from others on re-writes. Let me tell you something about myself. I've wanted to be a director and a writer of movies in my life and I've written a few screenplays. All in all I like some of each of them and hate a lot of all of them. BUT I cannot take constructive criticism very well when it comes to my scripts. That's why Blogs rock! We don't have editors nor are we expected to have one.

Back in the day which would be the early 90's I had friends who went to UTA and were in the Video program. I say Video and not film because it had yet to develop into a full fledged Film workshop but it was slowly leaning that way. I attended classes without even being a student and worked on many student projects. You can immediately see that the majority of people that want to make films have nothing to say whatsoever as you go through an onslaught of bad short films about Date rape and children finding guns in their parents bedside table and homeless people not getting any help. It's all there every social commentary that you can think of and none of them are interesting at all. They are so devoid of editing and use of tone and structure that you want to rip that gun out of the kids hands and end it all for yourself.

BUT, There are some people there with talent and they stick out like a sore thumb. And everyone gravitates towards them. They want to work with them and they want to be them. My friend and his select clique all had some talent and we had a great time making fun of the other bodies at work there in the department. I wasn't even a Student there! Yet I hung out with them and was up there in the editing suites with my bud all the time. I'm sure that some people that I saw each day believed that I was a student. Even a couple of the instructors met my glance a few time knowingly. It was like a right of passage to discuss Kubrick and Scorsese and Coppola cause let's face in any type of film school situation we are all wannabes. Truthfully i've never been a big fan of any of those guys I always dug the Sam Raimi's and James Cameron's back then.

We made many different projects taking turns working on each others shorts. But an uneasy feeling was setting in. I was taking the weekends to help these people make there mostly mediocre movies with sometimes bright spots but I was not in anyway getting any of my ideas across nor was anyone interested in any of my ideas. Including my pal who encouraged me to write a short script for us to make together. Finally. I was excited and wrote a silly short script about a group of budding musicians that suspected their roomate was a psycho serial killer. It was a comedic romp that I was proud of. It wasn't great re-reading it but I was proud of myself for finishing it in record time. I turned it over to my pal who had already made several video projects and knew how to get things done and was good at recruiting fellow students to help.

A few days passed and he finally told me he'd read the roughly 30 page script and thought it was pretty cool. I was very relieved that he enjoyed it and he added that he'd like to do a rewrite to punch things up. Now this is my best friend who I shared all of my film knowledge with, We'd talk for hours about movies and favorite directors and such. I was excited that we'd actually be working on something togther.

And then Pulp Fiction came out.

A few months pass by and I'm fighting the temptation everyday to call him up and ask him what is up with the project. Finally he shows up at my apartment with the script in hand and he wants me to read it right then. I agree as I can't wait to see what he has done with my characters and plot structure.

As I read I notice that none of the character names were the same as mine. I notice that now there is an elaborate time structure the events in the story start at the end go to the beginning shoot to the middle to the end again and back to the beginning. It was about a Fighter throwing a boxing match and Micro film hidden in a Take Out Pizza Box and a set of hitmen. This mother fucker all of a sudden thought he was Quentin Tarantino. There were even references to Reservoir Dogs for chrissakes! I turned page after page of this ridiculous fucking script that in no way whatsoever resembled my script at all and was trying to hold back my anger.

"So, what do you think?" he asked with a shit eating grin on his face. I decided not to answer the question but to ask my own. "Where's the script we are working on?" He responded. "This IS the script." "Oh, well it doesn't resemble my story in anyway." He took the script out of my hands and flipped through it like I was insane to say such a thing. "There's a character named Dane just like in your story. He's the hitman." "Dane in my script is the drummer to a wannabe band that is a moron and you've turned him into Vincent Vega."

"No one is gonna watch a movie about people who think their rommates a serial killer." Oh ok now the criticism was coming out, before he said it was great but now everyone wanted to see gansters I guess. This was a pretty painful scenario and It made me hesitant to show my writing to anyone else. I decided not to trust these fucks and to stop working on their movies. I got bitter.

Cut to 5 or so years later and I'd written a full length script for a movie all about a fictional film school where plagerism and pretentiousness was rewarded. It had more to it than that but you get the idea. I got back in touch with one of those UTA guys who I told about the script. This guy was a very talented director who's only drawback was that he continued to make spoof films of all of his favorite films such as The Shining and Dirty Harry and avoided straight narratives. All of his films were silent with only music and a few sound effects. I told him that he should try a straight narrative and he agreed. I finally got my script to him and he loved it and he got all the jokes about the school and the inner circle of Kubrickian wannabes that we knew. He said, "I want to make this!" As our President once tried to say and failed, "Fool me once, shame on you." "Fool me twice, shame on me."

We spoke on the phone for hours while I took notes on things he thought I should change and started working on a new draft. By the time I was happy with a draft to show him I sent it to him via Stephen. Stephen was reading each new thing I added to the story and was a great cheerleader to keep me going. We'd debate over what this other guy wanted to change. At times we'd disagree which happens. I would protest bad ideas and he'd protest my ideas. Then called and told me that this was exactly what he wanted that he was laughing his ass off at the script and that he wanted to add his voice to the script as well while he would be typing it in to his specific screenwriting computer program. Cool I thought.

At one point in the script Man of La Mancha is mentioned, just barely is it mentioned. He jumped on to the symbolism of Don Quixote and decided that our main character needed the name change of Daniel Coyote! WTF?!? I protested over and over and finally he agreed that it was too much. Months passed until he let me know that it was finally done. Stephen went to go and pick it up while I was at work at Bankrupt crafts.

He called me up at work. "Uh Dude?" "Hey Stephen what's up?" "Oh man Dude you're not gonna want to read this." "Oh man Dude." I believe a flop sweat began. "What do you mean?" a long breath. "Dude he completely re-wrote everything." "I mean everything!" "There is not a single line of dialogue that is the same, and guess who main character of the story is?" I sighed. "Don't tell me, Daniel Fucking COYOTE!?!" "Yep. that's the one." Wow I was fucking livid and I called him up right away and asked him why after all the talking we did over the phone and all the smoke he blew up my ass about my writing was he completely rewriting everything making it into a completely different story altogether? Why?

I may be biased but his version of the script was fucking unreadable and it was so bad hitting you over the head with symbolism, "Hey everybody look it's Daniel fucking Coyote and he's kinda like Don Quixote and instead of windmills it's Film School!"

Cut to years later after Stephen and I had traded different writing projects back and forth to each other and had become comfortable telling each other different criticisms he proposed and idea. "Hey why don't we coloaborate on a script?" My pulse began to race, my forehead dripped with sweat and my blood shot eyes met his. "Not like that not like that!" "what I mean is that you start witht the first 10 pages and I do the next 10 and we go back and forth." "It's a writing exercise!" I breathe a sigh of relief and set the machete down and agree that is a cool idea.

We now have a blast trying to outdo each other with each new set of 10 pages and now I was having fun and I wasn't looking to be the next Kubrick or the next Scorsese of even Coppola I was just trying to make Dr. Pepper shoot out of Stephen's nose. And man it's fucking fun!