I am on my way to Charleston, South Carolina, diving headfirst into Dixie because the star of the movie I wrote based on the novel I wrote owns a house there. So instead of the story being set in the Appalachian foothills of western Pennsylvania, along the sluggish middle stretch of the Allegheny River where the story was set in both the novel and the screenplay, the movie will be shot in the moss-festooned low country. The star of the movie prefers South Carolina because he can go home after work every night. The crab cakes are better there. It makes perfect sense.
So I am driving to South Carolina with my wife and our two sons, ages eight and four. The producer has promised that we will enjoy ourselves. A lovely room at a historic five-star hotel awaits. Lots of good food. A heaping plateful of Southern hospitality.
I have trepidations. It’s a long drive from Pennsylvania to South Carolina, especially with two restless boys in the back seat. MP3 players have not yet been invented. Lust has not yet fogged their boyish brains. They want mini-golf and Slush Puppies every two hours. Bathroom breaks are frequent.
I am hoping to complete the drive in two days but it is not easy to stay awake at the wheel. I have listened to the same Mary Kate and Ashley cassette forty-six times so far. Meanwhile, homogenized America just keeps rolling past, golden arches after golden arches. The most interesting part of the trip does not occur until shortly after we have entered our destination state, when at dusk the western sky goes black, and the blackness comes rushing toward us like some flattened-out kind of tornado as wide two football fields. It’s coming right at us, locked in on intercept. My wife’s and sons’ faces are pressed to the windows, eyes to the sky, mouths agape. I’m searching for a good place to pull the car over so that we can jump out and dive into a culvert. But then the black thing is upon us, above us, soaring past us on a thousand frantic wings.
Bats, I say after I have managed to swallow my heart. Coming out to feed.
Cool, says my oldest son, and my youngest son says, Yeah.
And I think to myself, It’s an omen.
Because I have trepidations. I have been having them for almost two years now, and, as with the drama of a classically structured play, the tension has been rising, building toward a climax.
In Act One, the novel that would later be adapted as a screenplay—my first mystery novel—received terrific reviews and was picked up in a two-book paperback deal. A veteran movie producer bought the film rights and eventually succumbed to my wheedling and hired me to write the screenplay. I wrote the screenplay, rewrote, rewrote and rewrote it, stripping down the convoluted plot at the request of the producer, getting rid of this character and that, eviscerating the novel until finally the producer declared it exactly what he wanted. A thing of beauty.
I felt okay. The screenplay wasn’t the novel but a movie can seldom be a book. One is built on images, the other on words. Apples and oranges. I had turned my bright red apple into the best orange I was capable of producing. The process had frustrated me, maddened me, exhausted me. But I was okay with the result.
Along came the director. I love your work, she said. I adore it. But where are all those wonderful characters from the novel? I want those characters. Put them back in.
I rewrote the rewrite.
Act Two, the star was signed. He owns a home in South Carolina, he wants to shoot the movie there. Also, he is having problems with one of the names in the script. It has too many syllables. Let’s make it two syllables instead of four. An English name instead of Italian. Easier to say, rolls off the tongue. And by the way, our star would like it if his character can be more physical, get into a fight or two, flex a little muscle. Yes, I know that he wears this catheter-bag thing, I know he has some kind of condition, but let’s give him some car chases and foot races and maybe a brawl or two. Let’s pump up the testosterone.
The director does an interview with Film magazine. She tells them that she has been “putting an edge” on the screenplay. Soon the shooting starts. Soon I am receiving videocassettes by Express Mail. I’m flattered, I feel important. I’m watching the dailies, I tell myself. How cool is that?
But the dailies are disturbing. There are shots and scenes I did not write, weird interpretations, inconsistencies of character. I send my questions back by email. Why is my protagonist sticking a hypodermic needle in his arm? Why does my waifish muse look and act like a carnival tramp? Why is my protagonist whimpering like a baby? Why must all the sex scenes be brutal and violent?
Soon I have the only answer I am going to get: silence. And the dailies stop coming.
Now the producer starts faxing me pages from this edgier screenplay. Three or four pages every night. The cover sheets all say the same thing. Can you fix this please? Because somebody in Charleston keeps putting more edges on the screenplay and those edges just don’t cut it. Those edges couldn’t cut melted tanning butter. The producer wants me to fix the script so that nobody in Charleston can tell I have fixed it.
Artistic dilemma: How do you fix an O.J. joke that isn’t funny, never was funny, never will be funny? How do you fix tender love scenes that now reek of sexual dominance and abuse? How do you put clothes on all those gratuitous tits and asses?
I draw big Xs through those scenes and all the others that have nothing to do with the story. Edges? I don’t need no stinking edges.
Then comes the coup d’etat. Can you fix this please? My second female lead, so waifish and vulnerable, suddenly shows up in the script dressed in dominatrix gear, whereupon she simulates auto-eroticism with a mooring rope. I kid you not.
I draw no more Xs. I pick up the telephone. Take my name off the script, I tell the producer. This thing is an abomination.
Take my name off the script, I tell the producer. This thing is an abomination.The producer is a nice man. He knows just what to say. I’ll make them stop messing with it, he says, I promise I will. Go to Charleston. Take your family. Have a good time.
I drive to Charleston. We see bats.
In the lobby of the historic five-star hotel we stand around ogling the splendor. This is cool, my oldest son says. Yeah, says my youngest. The second male lead comes striding in like a pockmarked Leona Helmsley, waves his big cigar around and bullies a porter.
He’s in the movie, I tell my wife.
What an asshole, she says.
The associate producer shows up, sweetness and light. She escorts us to the courthouse downtown where a scene is being shot. A courthouse? I ask, because there is no courthouse in the script. It’s a beautiful building, she says.
We arrive at the set. We watch a scene being shot again and again. I try not to yawn. The scene isn’t working. Something isn’t right, says the associate producer. I mutter, Maybe it’s the courthouse.
The assistant director doesn’t know me but he likes the looks of my boys, cute towheaded lads, so he runs across the street to us. Do you want to be extras? he asks. Cool! says my oldest. Yeah! says his brother. I suppose, says their dad.
The scene is shot again with my boys and me standing so far down the street that we look like smudges on the film. This time the scene works. Three indistinguishable bodies were the missing factor. The AD rushes over to thank us. The associate producer points at me and asks him, Do you know who this is?
No, don’t, I say.
But she does. She tells him who I am. His face goes white. He smiles through clenched teeth. Then he hustles back across the street to whisper in the director’s ear. Like most young directors, this one has her sphincter in a permanent knot. She is terrified that somebody is going to realize that the one essential element in every movie is not the director but the script, that everything and everybody else can be replaced. That’s why directors and actors make so much noise about what they’ve “brought to the script,” which usually means all the ways they have screwed it up. The smart ones, the ones whose egos don’t throb like monstrous pus-filled tumors, have the good sense to understand that their job is to serve the story, not to undermine it.
Not this one. She spins around on her chair, flashes me the fish-eye. When I don’t drop dead on the spot, don’t wither from the laser-heat of her gaze, she leaps to her feet. This set is closed! she shouts. Close the set!
I have been evicted. Banned from the set of the movie I wrote based on the novel I wrote.I have been evicted. Banned from the set of the movie I wrote based on the novel I wrote. How dare I have the gall to complain to the producer about the director’s lack of writing skills, her lack of story sense? How dare I insist that she stop putting her edge, as sharp as a sledgehammer, on the script?
My family and I are herded out of the area, beyond the police tape. The associate producer is livid. She punches numbers into her cell phone. We’ll just see about this, she says.
My youngest son asks, Are we going to be in the movie? And I tell him, It doesn’t look good.
But I am smiling. I am at peace. We have reached the climax of the story, and now I can relax. I have been banned from the set of the movie I wrote. I want to get T-shirts printed up. My badge of honor for the whole family to wear.
But the associate producer has progressed from livid to apoplectic. She beams her outrage across the Appalachians, across the flat vast plains, across the purple mountains’ majesty. In Culver City, the producer goes apoplectic too. Several phone calls ensue. The Hollywood Hills are alive with the threat of litigation.
I feel strangely above it all. A spirit afloat above the battlefield. I say, Let’s go get some ice cream.
Later, back at the hotel, our lips sticky with spumoni, my family and I adjourn to our room to freshen up for dinner. Across our bed, as wide as the bed, is a fruit basket. Fruit and wine, cheese and crackers, chocolates and champagne. Plus a note from LA, the producer’s heartfelt apologies. Ignore her, he writes. You can go on the set any time you want. She tries that again, she’s gone.
But I am out of it now, my hands are clean. The movie will stink like week-old crab cakes, I am sure of it, and I do not care. There are more novels to write, more stories. Meantime the bank account is fatter than it has ever been. I decide to have lobster for dinner. With filet mignon. Surf and turf all around. Charge it to the director.
Act Three, the movie sucks. The producer tries to salvage it by reshooting some of the scenes, but dead is dead, rotten is rotten. I have sole screenwriting credit, so the reviewers all want to know, What was he thinking?
Meanwhile I am back in Pennsylvania along the sluggish middle stretch of the Allegheny River. I watch the blue herons, the geese and the ducks, and I do my best to think like water. I write my novels. I write my stories. I wear my T-shirt. Banned, it says across the front. And across the back, And damn proud of it.
