My Scriptwriting

I have a dream. That dream is to write scripts for Hollywood. To date I have written two movies. You will not have heard of them as they were both rejected by the big studios for different reasons--Hollywood makes it hard for an outsider to break in. If you go to the trouble of finding a guy's home number and you call him a few times just to see what he thinks of your script--which is a reasonable, civil inquiry--suddenly everyone thinks you're some sort of crazy. Hollywood insiders are all connected, cousins of cousins, and they all talk.

Any future scripts will be submitted under the name Juan Miguel Estradas. Look out for him! I've noticed a lot of Mexican writers and directors making it big lately. That's immigration for you I guess.

Ok. Here is a synopsis of each.

1. FISHER OF BRAINS

I wrote Fisher Of Brains back in '94 when I was just eighteen years old. I had to write in secret because it is blasphemous (I was experimenting with blasphemy back then, I'm with the Christian Spiritualists now so I try to stay away from blasphemy these days). It its a reinterpretation of the story of Jesus but with zombies. The resurrection of Lazarus creates the first zombie, and this leads to a zombie plague that spreads across the Roman empire. Jesus himself is infected but never fully 'turns' due to his restorative powers, He of course is the protagonist, fighting to undo the terror he has brought upon the world.

Judas is the first one that Zombie Lazarus attacks and because of his natural aptitude for evil, he becomes his second in command.

In the end Jesus kills Judas with thirty sharpened pieces of silver. Lazarus gets away as I wanted to leave it open for a sequel. I present a short extract of that pivotal final scene:

JESUS
End of the road, Jude.

JUDAS
GRR! Get back! You can't be allowed to interfere!

JESUS
Put the head down and walk away. Just walk away.

JUDAS
GRAGGHH! We've had enough of you! Enough! TIME TO TASTE THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB!

Judas vomits over his shirt in anger. He brandishes his clawed hands with a 'shiiing!' sound. It's important that you get this sound right. If you get this wrong it will ruin the whole movie and I SWEAR I will wash my hands of this whole thing. Judas drops the Lazarus head in the dust. It blinks awake.

SFX
Shiiiing!

JESUS
It didn't have to be like this, Jude. Remember that.

JUDAS
Judas LEAP!

Judas leaps into the air, like 20 feet. You can do this in slow motion if you like. But what's that in Jesus's hand? The SHARPENED SILVER COINS from earlier! He's fashioned them into NINJA STARS! His throwing arm becomes a blur EVEN IN SLOW MOTION.

SFX
Thwap! Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!

Judas EXPLODES in mid-air. Pieces fly everywhere. A shower of blood and sharpened coins lands on Jesus. He spits the matchstick from his mouth. ( Please refer to the diagram I have attached. )

JESUS
Go in pieces, you traitorous bastard.

Jesus sees the Lazarus head. He walks over, takes a long swing, and kicks it flying into the air. It BOUNCES down a hill and lands among SOME JAGGED ROCKS. We PAN OUT to see him turn slowly and shuffle away.

FADE OUT.

After five seconds, we hear the sound of BACKWARDS WAILING.

EXT. Desert outside Galilee, night.

FADE IN.

We PAN down to see the head. The earth is broken by tongues of flame in a wide circle around the head. The WAILING increases. And now it is DEMONIC LAUGHTER.

THE DEVIL (O.S.)
(cackles)

The head sprouts long red spider legs from the stump of the neck, rights itself, and scuttles off into the night.

FADE OUT. FIN.

2. JOYLESS WHORISH CITY WOMEN

I wrote this two years ago after my breakup with a woman who shall FOREVER remain nameless. I was feeling pretty bad at the time. Angry I guess. So at the start of the movie I treat the characters pretty harshly (hence the title) but I soften up towards the end to give them a happy ending.

It follows the story of three friends in a big city (Atlanta) who are looking for love and maybe some kind of peace in their lives but HAVE NO IDEA what that would look like because of their city upbringing and ridiculous expectations. All three are whorish and/or joyless in different ways. One is well beyond childbearing age but sleeps exclusively with younger men. She kind of advises the other two on sexual matters but secretly she has no feeling left below the waist. One is a failing writer, and she writes mainly about her torrid encounters with various heartless businessmen, but nobody reads what she writes because it is published exclusively online. The other is a frigid and vaguely religious waif who complains about being unhappy but honestly wouldn't know happiness if it was DANGLING RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER FACE.

Over an elegant breakfast at an outdoors cafe, the three joyless and/or whorish women all agree to help each other on one last ditch attempt to find love (or marriage, which in their world amounts to the same thing.) They each take a separate newspaper (The Atlanta Journal, The Atlanta Express, and the Atlanta Post) and choose a singles ad.

BUT HERE'S THE TWIST...they all answer the same ad! The guy has posted the same ad to all three newspapers!

They all fall for the guy because: 1) he is young and lean, which attracts the old one, 2) he is rich, which attracts the unemployed writer, and 3) he is deeply religious and traditional in some unspecified manner, which attracts the frigid waif.

A kind of hilarity that women might appreciate ensues for some sixty minutes. I honestly didn't like writing this one but I kept going as I thought it might make a few bucks. It sags a bit in the middle as I ran out of anger. An extract follows.

( A note on the names. It gets to me sometimes how everyone in a movie has to have a different name. In real life names are reused more often than not. I know no less than three Daves and I think the Bob count is up around eight. So let's be realistic. I explained this in my cover letter. That is what a cover letter is for. )

EXT. THE PARK, day.

FADE IN.

The girls meet in THE PARK as agreed.

BRITTANY (the old one)
Well ladies, I've done it!
Are you ready for the big reveal?
(whispers)
By the way...where are your guys?

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
Oh, my guy is hiding nearby.

ANNE
(giggles inanely)
So is mine!

BRITTANY (the old one)
Okay guys! On three! One...

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
...two...!

ANNE
...three!

JOHN SMITH emerges from behind the tree. The girls all look at him, wave, and then look around expecting to see the other guys. A pause. None appear.

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
Didn't your guys hear us?
(shouts)
Three!
Guys! Come on, let me get a look at you!

ANNE and BRITTANY (the old one) look at each other, confused. JOHN SMITH folds his arms and leans against his tree. He smiles and waves.

ANNE and BRITTANY (the old one)
(together)
...but that's my...
...so he's your...
...but he's...

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
No, no, no! He's mine!
John? Tell them!

JOHN SMITH walks over to the ladies. He puts an arm around BRITTANY (the old one). She smiles. He puts an arm around ANNE. She looks confused. BRITTANY looks confused. BRITNEY (the unemployed one) looks confused.

JOHN SMITH
The truth is...Britney, Brittany, Anne...
I'm all of your guys rolled into one.
Britney: I'm rich. I can buy you dresses
and shoes with bows.
Brittany: I'm young. Really young. Like twenty three.
You won't have to feel decrepit around me.
And Anne, dear sweet Anne. I'm a Mormon.
There's only like two more notches on the sexual repression scale after Mormon.
But when we're married, it won't matter! We'll be able to do all the crazy shit you read about in those books you keep under your mattress!

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
Hold on, back up.
When WHO is married?

JOHN SMITH
Why, all four of us!
You don't think I was just leading you on, do you?

JOHN SMITH reaches into his pockets and withdraws a single velvet box. He lifts the lid.

ALL THREE GIRLS
Wow!

In the box are THREE ENGAGEMENT RINGS with THREE SUFFICIENTLY VULGAR DIAMONDS.

JOHN SMITH
Will you girls do me the honor...
...of being my lawfully wedded wives?
In Utah, I mean? Oh yeah we have to move to Utah.

It ends with them all living happily ever after. I decided to go for a sequence of still shots with writing over them like in movies from the 80's. I don't know why people don't do that anymore, that was great.

So why have I brought this up, you ask? Well, working in the plant isn't going so well and I still dream of that Hollywood lifestyle. I recently received an unsolicited email from the NaNoWriMo guy talking about something called 'Script Frenzy', where you write a movie in a month. I could do that. I figure I could be out of here before summer.

It gets awful sticky here in the summer.