When I told Chris Baty about the script my writing partner, Geography (aka Sarah), and I were planning to write this April, he asked some pretty tough questions:
“So, is this more of a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat kind of film, or is this is a quirky indie-romance? What’s your focus?”
It seems obvious enough to Sarah and I that we're focusing on both. The script has all the elements of a Terminator 2-type apocalypse film (the ticking clock, the race to save the world, chaos and mass hysteria, etc.), and everything you might need for an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-ish modern romance. The universe is collapsing along with the lives of our characters, and though they are from completely different walks of life, they have to find each other, fall in love, and work to overcome their weaknesses in order to save the world only to find . . . well, I am certainly not going to tell you that!
Anyway, Chris asked that I chronicle the ups and downs of writing such a complex script with a partner.
At this point, I cannot imagine how anything could possibly go wrong!
I say this as I knock furiously on wood, but I’ve got a brilliant and patient writing partner, and together we’ve filled out character worksheets (including one for the universe), broken down our plot outline by page, and we’ve met all our writing goals so far. To give you an idea of how excited we are about our script, ourselves, and each other, here is a short email exchange from yesterday:
Tavia: “It’s like watching our most favorite movie but better because it's ours and we're awesome.”
Sarah: “We're brilliant. I can't wait for tomorrow! I hope that you're not wishing you'd partnered with Charlie Kaufman instead.”
I guess you could call this our scriptwriting partner honeymoon phase. But then again, this is just from my perspective—Sarah, how do you feel about this first week of writing?
Sarah: Well, Tavia, I'm glad you asked. If days one and two are any indication, we are well on our way to becoming the world's most wildly successful screenwriting power-couple.
Writing with a wise and hilarious partner makes every step of the process joyful. Where alone I would otherwise be second-guessing my first pages already, or second-guessing the words before I even put them down, I now write with confidence. I know we're on the right track when we are both thinking of the same insignificant details (the universe should be blue!) at the same time. This totally eliminates the need to quibble over who came up with what brilliant one-liner or entire concept, because we've each been able to make the story our own, from scene to soundtrack.
I look at our script the same way I look at our team-up: One genre and one writer would do, but two is more fun! While some folks might say we are throwing caution to the wind, I say: Why not make an action movie in the style of a rom-com, a film noir set at Disneyland? Why not make the movies of our dreams? Let the honeymoon-phase live on!
Well there you have it. We sure do like to pat each other (and ourselves) on the backs!
Oh the glories of week one. We’ll be checking back in next week with more from “Chronicles of an Apocalyptic-Indie-Romance” in week two.
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