Funereal blues

Thanks for the comments on my previous entry! I got one comment and a few e-mails, which is more than I expected. Also, if you simply can't wait for me to remember this blog and post something on it every so often, you can access the whole script here.

And now, I'm going to try copy-pasting the next scene. See what you think.

Here's something. I've got a character reading a Biblical passage in this next scene. The passage she's reading is important (it lets us know what the deceased thought of himself), but I'm not sure it's important I put the whole thing in the script. It really slows the momentum down. On screen, it wouldn't be the focus, as other conversation would occur over it. Do you think I could just put the chapter-verse number in the stage directions? I sort of do.

Furthermore, I like this scene's portrayal of religion. It's the only one in the script that doesn't seem to hate it (Paul's kind of bitter). Some of the dialogue is a bit stilted, but I like the last thing Jefferson says to Paul.

The script used to END with this scene, but I realized, slowly, that if we were going to get an idea of the show, we needed to start here. A movie ends with the funeral; a pilot starts with it.

Anyway. . .

INT. ST. MARY' S CHURCH - - DAY

A young man in a priest's uniform stands before a huge crowd. This is FATHER DAVE, and he is presiding over Jake's funeral. The opening credits play over this sequence.

FATHER DAVE
W e knew Jake Emerson by many names, of course. Father. Pastor. Boss. Friend.
(beat)
I, of course, hardly knew Jake Emerson.

The camera leaves him and begins to pan across the faces in the crowd. We see all of the regulars and most of the recurring characters here.

FATHER DAVE (CONT' D)
But. . . I felt I learned a lot from him in the few times we spoke.
(beat)
He w ould alway s say . . .

The door to the church closes. Everyone turns to look. It's Paul. He looks even more dishevelled. Father Dave is briefly shaken.

FATHER DAVE ( CONT' D)
He. . . he would alway s say . . . "We can' t see w hat God' s thinking, Dave. It's better that way."

The camera pushes in slowly, centering on Paul. His face displays no emotion.

FATHER DAVE ( CONT' D)
He. . . he TRUSTED God. What a wonderful thing, it must be, to trust like that. To completely lose yourself in faith. And I know he' s being rewarded for that now.
( beat)
Let us pray.

CUT TO:
INT. ST. MARY' S - - LATER

A pretty girl is standing in front of the congregation, reading something. Perhaps we recognize her, just slightly, from the photo we saw earlier. This is Becky Bormann. She is giving the reading. The conversation between Paul and Jefferson will play over this, but here is Becky's whole speech.

BECKY
A reading from the book of Job.
(beat)
On another day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. And the LORD said to Satan, "Where have you
come from?" Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason. "
(beat)
"Skin for skin!" Satan replied. "A man will give all he has for his own life. But stretch out y our hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face." The LORD said to Satan, " Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life. "
(beat)
So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity ? Curse God and die! "
( beat)
He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? " In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.

Jefferson sidles up to Paul at the door. They talk over Becky's reading.

JEFFERSON
Paul. I didn' t think we' d see you.

PAUL
Jeff, it' s my own father' s funeral.
( beat)
I mean, he changed my diapers, after all.
(beat)
And. . . the Book of Job? Really ?

JEFFERSON
It's what he wanted. He was very clear.

PAUL
(full of disdain)
Right. Of course.

JEFFERSON
Your own father' s funeral is hardly the. . .

PAUL
Forget I said anything.

There' s a pause. We cut to a shot of Becky.

PAUL (CONT' D)
Becky Bormann.

JEFFERSON
She lives here now .

PAUL
(smiling)
Really?
(beat, almost sinister)
Excellent.

JEFFERSON
(oblivious)
She runs the bookstore.

PAUL
There's a bookstore now?

JEFFERSON
Quite a nice one, in fact.

Another pause. Jefferson seems rather embarrassed by the whole conversation.

JEFFERSON ( CONT' D)
Well. . . I didn't mean to come over here and. . . besmirch your father's memory. I just wanted to tell you not to leave right away after the service.

PAUL
I wasn't planning. . .

JEFFERSON
Stay for cake.
(beat)
Please.
(beat)
You have my sympathies.

Paul watches him go and then turns to watch the last of Becky's reading, as do we.





END SCENE

Sorry for the weird formatting. Rip away!

There's always other boys; there's always other boyfriends

The typical rule for the screenwriting blog about town is that you never, ever, ever, ever talk about your work in anything but the most general of terms because, heaven forfend, what if someone STOLE what you wrote?! (Of course, many have legal reasons, etc., but I own my own copyright, so I'm not as worried.)

Well, I'm not worried about that. I've got the copyright law on my side, and I'd like your advice, Internets. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to post a spec pilot I've written piece by piece and ask for your commentary. I'll talk about what I'm going for, what I think works, what I think doesn't work and what I would like to improve upon in the next draft.

A few words: If I find out you unfairly copied this and presented it as your own, I will first sue, then cut you. And I have sharp, sharp fingernails and an even sharper sense of the law.

Anyway.

I don't want to spoil what's about to go down, but what you're about to read is the most cliched thing ever. No. Really. It's about a prodigal son who returns home and has an old girlfriend who's mad at him and so on and so forth. Really, it's not my most original idea.

But, here's the thing. I love small town shows. Love 'em to pieces. And I love the HBO approach of taking an overexposed genre and then flipping it over to find the reality that exists within it (The Wire is nothing less than one episode of another cop show, spread out over a season -- well, I mean, it's OTHER things too, duh, but it's also what I described it as). The idea that became Custer, which you'll see below, first started to take form in the summer of 2003 when I lived in the titular town for a while. Now, if I talked a lot about the creative process that led to this script, I would pretty much give away the only twist I've got lurking in this thing, so I guess I won't discuss it other than to say that the idea hung out in my brain for a long while and collided with other ideas until it became a first draft.

That was the summer of 2005. This most recent draft was written this summer. I've been working on other stuff, but this is the best thing I've got going right now, so you get to see it.

So anyway. Since you've been properly warned.

This is the opening of the pilot. Everything that plays before the main titles. The show, like many small town shows, is about hyper-verbal people (and, in my defense, the town where I grew up was filled with same). But for the opening, I wanted to convey as much information as possible through visuals. What do you think of this technique? I like the way it flows, but I worry that it might lose some viewers, who will be required to remember a series of faces in a photograph (don't worry, I name them all explicitly later).

What's more, the dialogue in the one scene WITH extensive dialogue is pretty good, but it's not sparkling yet. It's our only chance to really see the main character in his element -- as someone who's NOT an asshole. Because he's not happy when he has to go home (prodigal, of course), and that's going to color his mood for the rest of the episode. To me, it's important that we see that he's not a TOTAL jerk all of the time, and I'm not sure that scene goes far enough in making us see that.

Some people who've read this wonder if by giving a girl we only see for one scene an interesting backstory (which, admittedly, is barely even hinted at), I throw the balance of the whole show off. But I like the idea that anyone in the show's universe COULD potentially carry a whole episode of the show (though I certainly don't intend to give, say, a doorman a soliloquy about his dead wife or something).

Finally, I really like where we leave our main character before the title screen. I think it perfectly encapsulates his relationship with his past.

So what do you think? Read the following 5.25 pages and let me know. Boring? Intriguing? Stuff I'm plagiarizing? Rip into me as much as you want, snowbirds.

Edit: It should be pointed out that I don't really expect to put this in my portfolio, but I DO hope to film it independently some time soon. So bear that in mind, especially if I've crafted a sequence that looks like it will cost millions of dollars. Furthermore, my apologies for the weird white overhang on all of the images. Don't know how to get rid of it in MS Paint.

Click on the pictures to make them big!

Fade in

First, I apologize for the design here. I'll have to fix things up, put new paint on the walls, etc.

Now.

When I first started up my work over at South Dakota Dark, I was quite sure that it would be a place for me to talk about my writing. It would help keep me on task and working and all of those good things. But actually, it ended up dominating my time more and more. Which is fine.

For a long time, I've wanted to write for TV or write about TV. While SDD was started to help me pursue the first, it ended up being more significant in the pursuit of the second. I made a lot of good friends and ended up working with people who were great critics and helped me refine my critical voice. If you look at the stuff I wrote when I started SDD and the stuff that I'm posting now there and at The House Next Door, you can see my improvement. (See? You really DO become a better writer by writing more! Who knew?!) But the criticism stuff started to overwhelm the writing stuff (both in general and on the blog).

So I'm starting this up as one of those fledgling screenwriting (actually, television writing) blogs. But I hope to do this with a difference (and, while we're at it, if you're another fledgling screenwriter, drop me a line either in comments or via e-mail and I'll link to you here). Namely, I hope to make this as public as possible. I've copyrighted most of what I've written, and the best way to get feedback is to actually let people read the stuff. So why should I worry about people stealing my ideas? My ideas, after all, aren't exactly original, cobbled together as they are from millennia of Western history.

Look for this to be updated three or four times a week (SDD will continue to be updated as close to daily as we can manage), depending on what I can think of to say here, etc.

Later on this week: Writing spec pilots and how originality is overrated.

Random scene

So we're supposed to post a page from a screenplay with no other information about it. And here is mine, selected at random from a spec pilot.

Enjoy.

Everybody moves!

Sorry, folks.

Libby gave me a better name, so this whole shenanigans has moved over to http://southdakotadark.blogspot.com.

Please enjoy there.

I'll keep this around to do. . .something with.