68 Scenes of Gritty Noir
It's a mixed bag of emotions. As a writer you work and you write and you think and you revise and you question and you write more and more and more and more. And you think the finish line is some absurd and abstract concept that never materializes.
And, really, no one ever finishes a screenplay. Because a screenplay never really reaches a final point. A book, on the other hand, can begin or end in any way the author sees it. She can hire an editor and graphic designer to complete the work and prepare it for an Amazon upload. And voila. It's ready for its audience, the readers.
A screenplay, on top of many revisions, requires many people to say yes to it before it reaches its audience, the viewers. The screenwriter next needs to start pitching it - contests, agents, friends, agents, actors, agents, producers, agents, investors and more agents.
Just because one of those key decision makers says yes, it doesn't mean that the script will get sold or that the movie ever gets made or that the script written will then be the story that gets filmed. And even after that, if the studio has funds for test screenings, those carefully selected viewers then vote on endings. And then yet another version of the story gets released. Perhaps there's a director's cut available somewhere, where key scenes that the author sweated over don't make it to the cutting room floor. But probably not.
Of course, it's a new market and a new economy - a writer can also take on role of producer, bypass most of the above, launch a Kickstarter campaign, recruit local actors and perhaps even attempt to direct the project themselves. Then enter it in various film fests that will determine future finances and distribution deals.
It's an intense and long process and it's an opportunity cost of control vs. earnings.
And, yet, none of that can happen without a finished script. A baseline that will get a director inspired and actors committed to the project. My first draft of this treatment still needs revisions and a check on structure - are the payoffs all there? There's also no dialogue right now. Only scene after scene of a group of characters that the audience will hopefully relate to and find compassion for even when they are behaving like manipulative narcissists and self-righteous pillars of the community.
This particular project began a decade ago. The current title is title #3. As far as its author? Well, I'm definitely not the same person I was when I wrote that first draft, back in 2008. In the past 10 years I've faced and overcome more difficulties, stresses and betrayals than I have in all my decades prior to combined.
Me? I'm still standing. And it was only because I experienced and witnessed firsthand the immoral, dishonest and self-serving behaviors of others and was squeezed into emotional and fiscal decisions that I could have never predicted, and was too naive to see for what they actually were, it's because of all that - and becoming a Single Mother and seeing life from the other side of things - that I finally had the capacity and wherewithal to write this story. This version. These 68 scenes of seemingly good upstanding people doing terrible things to others because other seemingly good people once did terrible things to them. And the cycle of psychological violence continues.
Facade. That is the theme of Cleveland City.
No one in the this life is what they seem.
Not you. And not me.
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